Five Books
It’s been very quiet round here for a while. I got to the point where I didn’t have much more to add; it felt like I’d said everything I had to say on the topic for the time being. The only next step was to do a lot of research, or talk to a lot of people, in order to create a reading list. Which I didn’t have time to do.
But I just came across Five Books and thought it was interesting enough to point at. Every day they interview an expert on a topic and they suggest five books you should read about it.
Personally, I find the interview format gets in the way a little. I’d just like the names of the books and a paragraph telling me why that book was chosen. Maybe I’m needlessly ruthless about such things, but it would be easier to browse, if less fun to read for the sake of reading.
Some of the topics seem quite up the street of Septivium, maybe Classical Music, The Atom, Thomas Keneally on Russia or John Lanchester on High Finance. Others are perhaps much more specific than Septivium would ever be: Psychoanalysing Argentina, Samuel Johnson.
The books tend toward the popular non-fiction, rather than hard-core textbooks, and some of them seem a bit more reading around a topic, rather than learning to become a real expert in it. But there’s a lot of material there, so very well worth an explore.
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