— my goodreads is here if you want to add me, but my commentary is minimal there

just finished Blitzed: Drugs in the Third Reich, quick read about Nazi drug culture

it made me think about doing actual reading re: WWII, and you know, I might

I've had some A.J.P. Taylor books for a while, and I haven't read them, but perhaps I will.

But first I'm reading Silent Spring, because I haven't before and the introduction is promising: It was clear to the industry that Rachel Carson was a hysterical woman whose alarming view of the future could be ignored or, if necessary, suppressed. She was a “bird and bunny lover,” a woman who kept cats and was therefore clearly suspect.

I'm also reading Into The Silence: The Great War, Mallory, And The Conquest Of Everest, exploration literature through the lens of the British experience of WWI

and it's got some beautiful writing in it: The stark simplicity of his diary entries suggests the values of a generation of men not yet prepared to yield their emotions to analysis or reflection.

and: BRITAIN HAD NOT FOUGHT a major continental war in a century, and the high command exhibited a stubborn disconnection from reality so complete as to merge at times with the criminal. A survey conducted in the three years before the war found that 95 percent of officers had never read a military book of any kind.

This cult of the amateur, militantly anti-intellectual, resulted in a leadership that, with noted exceptions, was obtuse, willfully intolerant of change, and incapable for the most part of innovative thought or action.

reminds me so much of Scott And Amundsen which ohmygodbees gifted me some time ago

but anyway it's also an example of how I play myself for this fifty book challenge because it's 700 pages long

oh that reminds me quite a lot of Scott

right??

and it makes sense because it's dealing with the "campaign style" mountain expeditions around the turn of the century

but the glory of amateurism remains such a theme with everest, even today

depressingly, yes

i have some good WWII recs if/when you want to get into it (nonfiction I assume?? but)

also gonna add you on goodreads in a minute bc I love book buddies

this is now my holds:

I also actually checked out The Coming of the Third Reich and Dark Continent because there were zero wait times on those titles

the coming of the third reich is one of my recs LMAO it's a good look at the 30s and the build up to the regime

too bad it's in a terrible format at my library

I hate adobe digital editions why only this…

also I think I read/used dark continent in school too?? it sounds so familiar

oh nooooo

can vouch for ordinary men tho too and so can ammay

iirc richard evans has 3 books total in a series and coming of the third reich is just the first one, but i havent read the latter two

yes, I know this but decided to start at the beginning

yeah its a good starting point

because of the mystery of library holds I can't really do a structured program like I'd want but whatever

I'm capable!!

LMAO

between dignity and despair by marion kaplan is a good look at Jewish life in the 30s from the pov of women

I strip the DRM off of Adobe Digital Editions, because they’re the worst. People who want to Stay Honest can just delete the file when they’re done with it.

ooh

There’s a program called Epubee that looks more complicated than it is. You fulfill the ADE and get the DRMed Epub or PDF, and then you open epubee and have it load that directory with the ePubs, and it unlocks them and drops them in a decrypt folder.

Then you can do whatever to them in Calibre... convert to mobi, keep as ePub, etc.

Treat it like library overdrive audiobook mp3s that you’re supposed to delete when you’re done with them.

(They don’t DRM audiobooks anymore, because it made them too platform-dependent.)

Actually, if you have a Mac, I’m not sure all of this is the same. But I think it is. A lot of people have issues with Adobe Digital Editions. I think there are also DRM-stripping plug ins for Calibre.

I do have a mac but I figured it out

I usually just wind up using the Libby app now but this still makes dealing with ADE so much easier, esp if I want to read on Kindle. It’s easier on my eyes.

anyway speaking of books I feel like I've seen king leopold's ghost referenced way more than usual for… well, the obvious reasons.

but I'm not sure I know of a historical event and a book about it so intimately linked in the popular imagination.

oh ho ho

alex do you have any good recs for books on mining and prospecting disasters

not off the top of my head but i'll get back to you

i'm laughing that this is the rec I'm approached for though

tbh you are the person I know who knows most about american history generally

oh, do you want specifically american mining history? like, the gold rush, &c?

most rec plurks on my timeline: can you rec me books i want fantasy & queer romance
this plurk: give me all your 19th century mining disasters

Specifically American yeah

well that saves me the deep dives on aberfan

LMAO

Okay I'm getting further into The Coming of the Third Reich and getting to the parts about the Communists is very

"ah yes, tankies"

It's dangerous to be reading about the Weimar Republic and going "ah yes, just like today" but, otoh

meanwhile, in School Reading:

OK I read Ordinary Men in the space of two days and that was a mistake

it's very good but a total mood crasher

ooof

yeah it's super good but also:

oof

library deadlines doing me dirty

i was also expecting a more vicious demolition of "hitler's willing executioners"

all the real viciousness came after the book was published lmfao

this is the afterword added on responding specifically to goldhagen

but I see a lot of l'affair goldhagen was carried on by other critics/historians, in other presses