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comment by Devac
Devac  ·  998 days ago  ·  link  ·    ·  parent  ·  post: Dear Hubski, what are you reading this summer?

I was reluctant to start The Mind of a Murderer by Richard Taylor. So far, I'm pleasantly surprised, but it's mildly annoying how author's delivery can't always decide between wanting to be scholarly and clinical vs trying to shock or disgust the reader.

Somewhat plugging holes that Durant and similar efforts didn't touch anywhere near exhaustively with translations of African History. From earliest times to independence by P. Curtin et al., and The Cambridge Illustrated History of China by P.B. Ebrey. Currently checking out more like those in Polish.

Planning to get my ass through the Oxford's Balliol college list for classics, at least some of them, along with following four recommendations.

- A Very Short Introduction to Classics Beard, Henderson -- that one I finished already. Kinda meh overall, but it put classical studies in general in an interesting light.

- The Greeks. A Portrait of Self and Others P. Cartledge

- The Classical World: An Epic History from Homer to Hadrian R. Lane Fox.

- Roman Social History S. Treggiari

I think I told about starting one of those (Roman Social History?) some months ago, but I've been too all over the place to finish it.

And there are a few "if I get to it"-s that are less driven by personal motivation or clear goal and more because they balance off something else or piqued my interest on their own. I'll try to add them sometime later today.

EDIT: And here are those books:

- The Modern Researcher, J. Barzum, H.F. Graff

- Adventures of Ideas, A.N. Whitehead

- How to lie with statistics, D. Huff (yup, it's almost embarassing it took me this long to even approach it)

- The Moral Obligation to be Intelligent and Other Essays, J. Erskine

- The Meaning of History: Reflections on Spengler, Toynbee and Kant, H. Kissinger (more of a curiosity than anything else -- it's his thesis)

/EDIT

Audiobooks are so much better for fiction than reading.