!historychads next on my reading list is Niall Ferguson's “The Pity of War”.

Ferguson is one of the very few conservative historians who are considered “respectable” (though many in /r/askhistorians dislike him for his British Empire apologia).

In The Pity War he presents his thesis that WW1 was Britain's fault, he believes the Bongs should have allowed the Germans to crush France and Russia, that France would have fallen rather quickly without the Bongs therefore not prolonging the conflict and that an German dominated Europe would have been a better outcome as it would have meant no Hitler, no National-Socialism, no Communist Russia (that's doubtful, if the Germans beat the Russians the Revolution still happens, but I guess the Provisional Government could have survived in this scenario and avoided a Bolshevik takeover !anticommunists thoughts on that?), and most important for Ferguson, the British Empire would have lasted for much longer.

!historychads (cause I saw someone else ping and that seemed like a good idea)

I finally finished The Graves are Walking: The Great Famine and the Saga of the Irish People by John Kelly. I liked it...?

There were very interesting parts but Kelly's writing style seemed all over the place. Lots of jumping around among people, introducing someone just to have them assassinated and you wonder why he spent the time to introduce this minor Irish priest or landlord when just giving details about the assassination, or saying assassinations picked up, would have been just as effective. I wish he had spent more time on the British political leaders and soup kitchen stuff. He also goes on a bit about the Irish emigres and their experience and growth in America with a weird bit about Tammeny hall. The section was interesting but entirely disjointed from the rest of the narrative history and not long enough to really be an in depth telling of the Irish immigrant community. The talking about processing into the new world was way more connected and made sense, just the political and New York centric part didn't.

But I liked it well enough that I am now reading his book on the Black Death. We'll see if I stick it out. The potato famine book took me a month and a half to get through due to length and constantly needing to re read bits to try and understand where he was going with it. But I love the black death more than I love Irish people and might have an easier time.

Read A higher Call, about two ww2 pilots across enemy lines, one a yank B17 fortress bomber,

And the other a Krautland turbo fighter ace, and their duel experiences of the war over the skies of Western Europe and North Africa.

I believe it's an exceptionally well told war story

I've long since finished “The Count of Monte Cristo” and whole heartedly enjoyed it. I'm reading an abridged version of the Mahabharata I got as a gift but got stuck on the darn intro.

Why are you all reading boring history shit lmao

Still working on what I started last week, but with the addition of the book of Daniel

Starting to read "A história de amor de Fernando e Isaura", by Ariano Suassuna. Nothing special so far, but it was a gift from my foid so I better memorize it in case there's a quiz later

I've been reading The Rise and Fall of the Great Powers. Kinda nice to read a history book that seems more direct than more modern books. Also interesting how major wars are just so costly that no nation can keep it up forever, some of the figures the author gives are staggering, like at best nations will be spending 2-3x their revenue on war, at worst more like 10x.

finished my rereading of principia groomercordia

Been reading Outlive by Peter Attia. Seems a lot better than the typical longevity book, it doesn't promise that you can totally stop/reverse aging with one weird trick and is mostly just promising to retain functionality until closer to your time of death, i.e. you get to stay active and mostly healthy until 12-24 months before you die and maybe live a decade longer than you would have otherwise. Mostly the plan is to achieve this through exercise diet and exercise, the only exotic substances recommended so far are FDA approved cholesterol meds.

Just started Use of Weapons. It's part of Iain M. Banks' Culture series, about a far-future post-scarcity society run by super intelligent AIs who roam the universe fricking up every other civilization they encounter just because they can. It's good so far but it's been a few years since the last time I read one of these books and I'd forgotten how little introduction Banks does. He just sort of throws you into the middle of a situation and lets things unfold. It works from a literary perspective and I always end up enjoying it, but it's slightly annoying to develop a mental picture as I'm reading and have to revise it every couple of pages because I made a wrong assumption about the shape of the room the characters are in.

I just got Tender Is the Flesh by Agustina Bazterrica and am gonna read that

its about vegan cannibals or smth, idk

Just borrowed Wasteland by Oliver Franklin-Wallis, no idea if it's good or not, but someone recommended it to me.

Currently reading "Robot" by Adam Wisniewski-Snerg. The book is almost good enough to make up for having to read and spell the author's name.

Just finished The Yiddish Policemen's Union by Michael Chabon, I really enjoyed it, the mystery aspects worked really well, plus

Current reading The Romanovs: 1613-1918 by Simon Sebag Montefiore, a really fun overview of the dynasty, feels poppy but there's definitely meat to his research

Also reading Utopia by Saint Sir Thomas More, might just be r-slurred but it's boring , and Books of Blood by Clive Barker it's really good, but Barker is 100% a degenerate.

Finished "The Redemption of Time," the batshit crazy semi-official fourth Three Body book. I honestly liked it, it was fun to go absolutely wild with the setting and see more about the actual alien cultures and the deep lore. And most of the weirdness works well in the context of it being fanfic.

However, the ending was so funny in a bad way that I have to spoil it. Basically all of the series took place in a previous incarnation of the universe. After a side character from the previous book became a billion year old entity called the Seeker that literally saved female 10-dimensional God from Satan (off screen), our hero's matter eventually reassembled in the new universe as a science fiction novelist. That novelist's name? Cixin Liu. Roll credits!

That sounds really interesting, I love stories about subtle internal conflict like that.

I've been reading Requiem for Battleship Yamato by Yoshida (English translation because I don't speak Nippon), which is a continuation of a continuation of my trying to build a picture of how apocalyptic the War was for the Germans, Soviets and Japanese. Last one I read was also about the Yamato, A Glorious Way to Die by Russell Spurr, which was pretty good.

I'm mostly reading it while I wait for really slow measurements in the lab though so I will probably start on Gans' The Origin of Language while I'm at home. Wouldn't read that in the lab since I'll probably need to take notes. Requiem is pretty short, not even 200 pages, so it shouldn't take very long, so then I can get on to another of the variously large stack of books on my desk.