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Novels Non-Fiction Literature

Arsene

varishangout.com
What are you reading, what are you interested in, what do you recommend, etc.

Recently I've been reading "Talleyrand" by Duff Cooper, which is a great biography on Charles-Maurice de Talleyrand-Perigord. He was a diplomate active before, during, and after the French revolution and served for 5 regimes (Lous XVI, The First Republic, Napoleon, Louis XVIII, and advise Louis-Philipe), perhaps because of that he is often overshadowed by other figures during those time but he was still one of hte most audacious, affluent, and skilled statesmen in European history and his life story is super fascinating.

I also recently started listening to audio books after thumbing my nose at the for a long time, though I've definitely changed my mind after listening to "Prophet's Prey" by Sam Brower. It is a first-hand account of Brower, a P.I. hired to help a family in Short Creek who has been ex-communicated from the Fundamentalist Church of Jesus of Latter Day Saints (FLDS) by their "prophet" Warren Jeffs. The FLDS is an offshoot from the mainstream Mormon church that chose to not abandon polygamy and child brides in the late 1800s and has become and extremely insular and fucked up cult that exists and is still widely ignored up to this very day. Brower goes through his experiences investigating them, as well as some history about them and their crimes, and how he helped bring Warren Jeffs to some justice. It's also worth noting Brower sounds like he is straight out of a movie, I'm sure he embezzles a bit about his story but if even 10% of it is true he is a bona fide badass. I highly, highly reccomend Prophet's Prey to anybody into true crime and/or cults.

And speaking of true crime I'll just give out a GOAT non-fiction reccomendation: In Cold Blood. If you haven't read it, go and start it asap, I think it should be mandatory reading.
 

translation gundam

varishangout.com
Regular
been reading a book about the knight's templar. called The Templars The History and the Myth From Solomons Temple to the Freemasons by Michael Haag
and the other book the dude wrote about it The Tragedy of the Templars The Rise and Fall of the Crusader States.
it talks about how the modern conception of the knight's templar and the crusades isn't as black and white as you would have first believed, it isn't just Christians vs Muslims in an all-out holy war, there are a lot of grey areas, and political shit going on in the backdrop. like the knights templar having a praying room for Muslims guests, and one of the stories in it is a knights templar correcting a Muslim guest on the direction he was praying because his compass was giving him bad directions and he wasn't paying towards Mecca, and then they brought in a musism scolor friend of there to basically telling the dude after he wouldn't listen to the knight's templar help.
every eye-opening read to say the least and getting me back on my crusade fix.


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Beginner

varishangout.com
Regular
I've got like, 2 dozen dense pieces of academic shit I've gotta read before the year is out.

I'll start with one because no one wants to read the entire reading list I've got for this thesis (even I fucking don't because half the entries are trash shit by intellectual charlatans).

So, Moral Origins by Christopher Boehm

Basically it's laying the case that morality ain't a social construction - that it's an evolutionary adaptation (a really fucking important one at that).
If you keep being told society is nothing more than power dynamics and shit (first of all, tell them to read something other than Foucault) and that doesn't sit well with you, but don't have a good grasp on an opposing position, this book is a good place to start.
Book cops a lot of shit for to apparent 'christcuckery' (even on goodreads, though they don't talk like /pol/) because of the cover, but I can tell you, at least from what I've gone through so far, it ain't like that at all. Guy's not a sociologist, he's a primatologist. As in, an actual scientist and not someone who masturbates furiously to the thought of being mistaken for one. Points out that the whole 'might makes right' mindset (e.g. the governing principle of Twitter conduct) towards your social circles isn't unique to humans, it's one that actually pops up in primates too... and it's a good way to wind up fucking dead.

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translation gundam

varishangout.com
Regular
I've got like, 2 dozen dense pieces of academic shit I've gotta read before the year is out.

I'll start with one because no one wants to read the entire reading list I've got for this thesis (even I fucking don't because half the entries are trash shit by intellectual charlatans).

So, Moral Origins by Christopher Boehm

Basically it's laying the case that morality ain't a social construction - that it's an evolutionary adaptation (a really fucking important one at that).
If you keep being told society is nothing more than power dynamics and shit (first of all, tell them to read something other than Foucault) and that doesn't sit well with you, but don't have a good grasp on an opposing position, this book is a good place to start.
Book cops a lot of shit for to apparent 'christcuckery' (even on goodreads, though they don't talk like /pol/) because of the cover, but I can tell you, at least from what I've gone through so far, it ain't like that at all. Guy's not a sociologist, he's a primatologist. As in, an actual scientist and not someone who masturbates furiously to the thought of being mistaken for one. Points out that the whole 'might makes right' mindset (e.g. the governing principle of Twitter conduct) towards your social circles isn't unique to humans, it's one that actually pops up in primates too... and it's a good way to wind up fucking dead.

View attachment 1779
that book looks interesting I check it out sometime in the future.
 

boloros

varishangout.com
Mine Were of Trouble by Peter Kemp.
His memoir of the Spanish Civil War and actually cares to explain a lot of what was going on before and during the conflict. He fought on the side of the nationalists and as a result this book went without reprints for half a century (double checked, it was actually for 60 years.)

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Some passages:

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