January Books 28) Ta Hsüeh and Chung Yung
This is the Penguin edition of two of the Four Books of Confucian learning, their titles respectively translated as The Highest Order of Cultivation and On the Practice of the Mean. It is a bit of a shame that Penguin chose to stick to the old Wade-Giles transliteration; in the pin-yin more often used today the titles are Daxue and Zhongyong. (Or to be pedantic, 大學 and 中庸.) Although the two books are mercifully short, I found their conservative, paternalistic world view unappealing; a society built on this philosophy could easily become stagnated. I don't have much knowledge of China, and this was probably not a good place to start broadening it (and perhaps it would have been better if not on an intercontinental red-eye at the time).