MeatballDom t1_jdyvygc wrote on March 28, 2023 at 4:57 AM

Reply to comment by GoodSpeakersRWorthIt in Bookclub and Sources Wednesday! by AutoModerator

There's a good reason most of those are in the 400+ page range.

And keep in mind that many of them are proper academic works, so they'll include a lot of pages on notes, bibliographies, historiography, abbreviations, and other things you can just skip over. In fact, if you're only interested in a certain set of years you can just skip the chapters that cover things before them, but you're getting a better overall product.

As for space, most books can now be found in digital format, but a 500 page book isn't as thick as you might think.

GoodSpeakersRWorthIt t1_jdyy01j wrote on March 28, 2023 at 5:20 AM

Thanks for replying.

Yeh, skipping to the good stuff makes sense. Just extra dolares n space for stuff I'm not gonna use.

I actually can't read tablets, hurts my eyes (even w those gunnar pc glassses), + physical space is limited.

Was hyped to find those "BASIC ART" Taschen books. They really are amazing quality and short, and give you a great pov. Way better writing than I expected, and thoughtful analysis, so wudd if it's not every single painting, u kno.

A past 100yrs history version of that would be ideal.

yurr academic/researched work is necessary, but I find a lot of academic writing fails at writing. Exceptions being ppl like Baptist and CLR James, Thiong'o, sometimes Zinn.

Mills is the worst. Literally repeats an obvious idea for 10 pages at a time, with little cohesion.

S'like, Dude, Mills, give it a couple more passes before publishing, lol.

I feel like, especially, anything history-inclined, you should always use examples and case studies. But he writes oceans of generalities, supported in footnotes/bibliographies, vs. Baptist's ability to novelize threads from various sources (being a competent enough writer).

So you get the themes from slave narratives, plantation investor's deals w lawmakers, accountant records/audits, and political movements, banker policy, all with real-world examples, with the econ ethnic stakes made pretty clear. (and still all the academic footnotes etc)

Vs. the more cooped-up, badwriter academic vibes, where it's like allergic to specific, lived experience examples.

anyway....

Pardon my frivolous ranting, how often does one get to talk about books nahdaze.