Christopher > Recent Status Updates

I am truly flabbergasted by the utter stupidity - the extreme simple-mindedness - of this book so far. von Mises makes the most sweeping of generalizations, wholly ignorant to the reality of that which he is generalizing. To him, everybody who is a socialist is that way out of pure envy; there is no other reason. Even the rich are in envy of the richer, and so they support communism? He makes many absurd statements.

I am very curious what is going on in this book. So far it seems to be a series of unrelated narratives, but I am certain that eventually they shall be brought into a common thread under Melmoth. The Spaniard's Story is both indicative of either the hatred of the non-Catholics for the Catholics or of Catholicism, as well as the problem of obsessing on sin and guilt.

Islam, once the religion of the culture of science, philosophy, music, but now on its decline. Timur is dead! ibn-Khaldun has invented sociology. The Mamlukes are coming! The Mamlukes are coming!

Slow, with lots of names and little action. Not very memorable so far. I was hoping for more from a biography of such a legendary figure, but being only a quarter done I can hardly complain.

I have no idea why I started this book. It was just sitting there on the shelf, and despite having more than a dozen other books on the go, I grabbed it. Interesting so far, and rather short. Perhaps I'll read August 1914 soon, provided the next hundred pages are as decent as the first.

Interesting so far. I hadn't expected another story with homosexual themes when I began the work, especially so near to the period when my last read book, Maurice, was written.

I'm really not feeling this one. Darwin tries to explain so much that in the end you have no idea what's being said - what is the idea behind all these random and discursive statements of alleged fact? He says so much that, in the end, nothing is said. He gives little interpretation, and what he does tends to be contradictory to the views of other historians, apparently, yet he says not why his is superior.

Oh England, Merrie England! How rapacious your children, how gluttonous your kings! The one thing that can be said for you is that your children have care for justice. Compared with the rest of reforming Reformation Europe, very few people were executed during the reign of Henry VIII, despite Anne and Catherine's heads.

Interesting, but not fun enough for me to be over-thrilled about reading it on a daily basis; maybe 5 chapters a week, for each is very long and takes maybe 2 hours, something that does not go well with the dozen other books I read in a day.

I almost want to check out the chapters I am missing in this abridgment, so witty and clever is Giacomo Casanova!

Oh, the pain! The suffering of this book! I was hoping for another Candide, but instead I get his little, useless, and braindead half-brother!

It would seem that the author is quite the fan of Richard Burton. I am too, so it looks like we'll get along just dandy.
Considering how little Burckhardt knew about the lands and the peoples in those lands in which he was to travel, it is pretty amazing that he survived as long as he did. I can't wait to see how he went about spiriting himself into Mecca!

Oh Luther, what a horribly scared and deceptively simple man you were!

This is a pretty fun read so far, despite being a biography of a 19th century Algerian sultan! Probably be reading it for awhile, 'cause I absolutely hate reading on the computer, and this one is from archive.org

If there is one topic in history about which I am woefully underinformed, it is the last century. Hopefully this will be the book to repair some of this problem, and so far it seems to be pretty good. How did wars go from featuring a few thousand men on each side to many millions? Transport, taxes, and urbanization.

Something of a slow, yet enjoyable, read.

I've never been a fan of Dickens, but this may just be the odd one out. Perhaps I was simply too young, reading Little Dorrit and Hard Times at 12?

Not as good as The Renaissance, but then again I wasn't expecting it to be. That was a book on art, culture, scholarship, whereas this is a book on a religious dispute: loving culture and hating religion, I cannot but prefer the Renaissance to the Reformation. But still, as always, being from Durant, it is a masterpiece.

Pretty much just a list of brutalities. Sending mastiffs to eat runaways, roasting chiefs slowly over a fire, bashing babies' brains against the rocks. The usual atrocities.

Interesting book so far. Reading Burton's biography has resurrected within me a fascination for ethnography and exploration.

Pretty good so far. Xenophon has been the introduction I've been looking for to the Greeks but could never find - I've owned, but ignored, Herodotus and Thucydides for years, hoping to start off with this book. Thus my surprise to finally come across it in a local used book store after so many years of waiting. I am not disappointed, so I'd say that is a good indication.

This is, as always, a masterpiece, by the master of the 20th century [popular?] history writers (and his wife), Will Durant. Every page is filled to the brim with so many facts and almost every page includes Will's charming cynical wit. Love it!

A chapter a day and this shall take almost 2.5 months (well, all three volumes will). Gotta pick up the pace!

This just keeps getting better and better!

This has been sitting on my self for ages, and for ages I've talked myself into (and out of) reading it. Now, finally, I shall endeavor to complete it. Love it so far.

Been wanting to read a Shakespeare play for a long time. Now that I'm on The Reformation by Durant, and he has been alluded to a few times already, I thought that there's no time like the present. So far I'm enjoying this one; I've only ever read two (Romeo & Juliet and Macbeth) in school - never before on my own, though I am not a stranger to reading plays in solitude.

Too general, broad; very few precise statements, mostly sweeping. On the positive side, I had never heard of the Mary Celeste, and reading about that on wikipedia was quite fascinating.