It certainly was not what I expected. I had gotten it because of another book mentioning how it was similar to theirs and focused on Asian writings. Well, it is in no way similar. this is strictly a Bibliography type list of books. No write ups about content for most of the books. Many have just 2 sentences which is hardly a decent overview. The book that said it was similar had full page essays for each book they recommended. That is NOT in this book at all. If I had the time I would have skimmed it in a day but was frustrated with the lake of helpful info for me so it took me 2 days.