The 306 Greatest Books #58 - The Prince

I am going back and posting all of my previous book reviews so that they are listed on my site in chronological order. The reviews are dated for the time when I read the book, hence the reason many of them will be listed for times before this website existed. 

The next up on my reading of the 306 greatest books is The Prince by Machiavelli. This book can be found on the Sybervision Book List.

All my life I have heard about Machiavelli and how Machiavelli portrays the "winning at any cost" type scenario. This mindset all comes back to this book, The Prince. However, that is not what I got after reading it. The book is very short, especially in comparison to the other Science and Civilization books on the list, but I also found that I got very little value out of it. The best thing I could see the book used for was as a companion book on how to rule properly. Overall, I felt the language used made the book difficult to read but at least the contemporary illusions were well explained so the book was not difficult to understand. This is definitely not in my top list of books to read, nor anywhere near it.

The 306 Greatest Books #57 - 1984

I am going back and posting all of my previous book reviews so that they are listed on my site in chronological order. The reviews are dated for the time when I read the book, hence the reason many of them will be listed for times before this website existed. 

The next up on my reading of the 306 greatest books is 1984 by George Orwell. This book can be found on the Norwegian, Observer, BBC, and My Book Lists.

Out of the four 100 Greatest Books lists, there are only a few books that appear on more than two lists. 1984 is one out of the few on multiple lists and I can understand why. 1984 is a very powerful novel dealing with possible totalitarian future society and how one might survive in such a society. The only problem I really had with this book was the utter hopelessness of it. Through every page, every paragraph of the book, you had this hope that everything may be ok and that everything turn out right in the world again. Unfortunately, after all is said and done, you knew that it wouldn't. Although this is a fascinating book to read it is very depressing but I must say that it is a definite must read, if only to warn people just might be possible. Because, well, you never know.