One thing that happens when you blog (almost) every day is that you notice your thought patterns more than you otherwise would – writing things down kind of makes them difficult to ignore. So what have I learned about myself, in addition to the fact that I’ve got a worrying cleanser addiction? Mostly, I just seem to be lazy: “Maximum impact with minimum effort” could well be the slogan of the blog. Which brings me to today’s subject.

A while back, I wrote about Penguin’s Little Black Classics and I have now discovered the non-fiction equivalent: the Very Short Introduction series by the Oxford University Press. These aren’t quite as slim as the Penguin books, but still small: between 100-200 pages in A5 format. They are all written by respected, internationally acclaimed experts (often from Oxford University, but also elsewhere) and cover everything from Anaesthesia to Witchcraft, with lots of history, politics, science and culture in between. There are hundreds of books by now.

It’s a mystery how I didn’t discover these earlier, as they’ve been around for some time already. What happened was that I visited the Alhambra souvenir shop in Granada and bought short introductions to Islamic History and The Spanish Civil War (the latter admittedly not the lightest holiday reading, but otherwise very enlightening). As soon as I got back from Spain – literally on the very same day – I bought six other books in the series: on Mongols, Celts, Koran, Bible, Genes and Quantum Theory. Yeah, I’m strange.

Some people might be disparaging towards such superficial reading material, but although the books are relatively slim, they aren’t intellectually lightweight. I’m sure the quality varies from book to book, but I’ve enjoyed the ones I’ve read very much and have felt much better informed after finishing them. Part of it is due to the low base effect, but still.

The thing is, while I agree in theory that it would be preferable to read many serious books on all the important subjects in the world and form an independent, nuanced opinion on all issues, I have no time (and in some cases, no interest) to do this. And if the choice is between not knowing anything about Game Theory at all and reading an introduction by one of the leading authorities in the field… I’ll happily go with the latter. Plus these books make excellent and quick thematic reading for holidays – just steer clear from the ones that focus on civil war.