Just Finished Reading: Indian Philosophy – A Very Short Introduction by Sue Hamilton

Despite having a general (and genuine) interest in this area as well as reading several books on Buddhism over the past year or so, I honestly struggled with this small volume. Part of the issue was that it attempted to cover a very wide area of study in a mere 139 pages. Another issue was probably that I found the writing quite dry and overly academic. I also found myself becoming confused by the number of unfamiliar terms and unknown authors presented throughout the book. Despite all of this I did come away from reading it with a somewhat better understanding of the history of Indian Philosophy and an appreciation of how it all hangs together. I expect, or at least hope, that this will help me to put further future planned readings – again largely in the area of Buddhism – into some kind of coherent context. I think that this book was on reflection aimed too high for the general reader coming to this subject (as I did) with little background knowledge or preparation. There was a lot to take in and little space to cover all the necessary bases. Not my favourite VSI book to date.