Book shelf recommendations

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Mogador

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Some suggestions please for the ideal bookshelf for the platonic ideal of the eclectic author that lives in our heads. Research and reference focused please, but that doesn't exclude fiction, so long as it has a looking-something-up quality.

My starters, in no order, are:

- The Book of Imaginary Beings, Borges
- Outline of History, HG Wells
- Some collection of Lord Dunsany's shorter short stories
- Histories, Herodotus
- 1001 Nights
- Aesop
- OED and all that
- Rogets
- KJV Bible, your preferred supplementary translations, Bagavad Gita, etc

Go on, surprise me.
 
I don't read an awful lot of non-fiction these days. I do recall:
Heroes, by John Pilger. The flyleaf said any history teacher should start by chucking a copy of Heroes to every member of the class and it weren't lying. Pilger got around and it's still a good source of info on numerous modern, though becoming recently modern, then probably modern again, conflicts.
 
A good atlas, preferably a historical one that shows not only contemporary geographic labels but the extent of empires like Greek, Roman, British, Mongol, and the like.
 
I have a bookcase with just history books, probably half of them about Nazism and the Holocaust, a shelf of Latin America, a smattering of Roman, and the rest mostly about the Cold War. If any of that tickles your fancy, I can recommend something.
 
JLT said:
A good atlas, preferably a historical one that shows not only contemporary geographic labels but the extent of empires like Greek, Roman, British, Mongol, and the like.
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There's an ORBIS for that. (And another one too). ;) It's only the Roman Empire ... but then the Greeks didn't have an empire in the sense that we know the word, and I haven't found a similar resource for the British and Mongol Empires. (Wikipedia and YouTube are fine, within reason, but they don't usually delve into the same detail).

For Roman and Greek history and mythology, I'd recommend at least the books of Dr Philip Matyszak. :) Thoroughly researched but written in a lively style, easy to follow, and with the more-than-occasional joke as well. (We shouldn't forget the ancients had a sense of humour). Thoroughly recommended.

(And no, I am not Philip Matyszak or one of his students. ;) I just enjoy his books).
 
Rath Darkblade said:
the Greeks didn't have an empire in the sense that we know the word
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I was thinking of Alexander, although strictly speaking, he was Macedonian. His "empire" is usually considered a cultural one rather than a political one. After his death, the empire fractured, but he spread the use of Greek language and arts into areas where it persisted for centuries.
 
Yes, true. And by encouraging his soldiers to marry (or at least "form alliances with local maidens", as a 19th-century author might put it), he also spread Macedonian 'culture' into previous unknown lands.

Lastly, Alexander also built towns where-ever he went, most of them unsurprisingly called Alexandria. (The Egyptian one is only the most famous).
 
I have several recommendations for your bookshelf:

1. A good medical dictionary. Because characters are bound to get hurt and it helps to know how certain injuries present themselves.

2. A good first aid book. So you can fix them up properly.

3. A DSM-4 or 5. 4 is cheaper and uses more psychological terminology that is important to understand the changes made in 5. (Which I honestly don't like 5. It's too simple).

4. A book on Forensics - Such as Howdunit Forensics by D.P. Lyle.

5. A book on poisons such as: The Poisoner's Handbook: Murder and the Birth of Forensic Medicine in Jazz Age New York by Deborah Blume or Dreisbach's Handbook of Poisoning: Prevention, Diagnosis and Treatment, Thirteenth Edition. I got mine for really cheap through Thriftbooks and it's totally worth having. Because NOT all poisons are the same. Even between heavy metals.

6. For your Fictional US Legal needs: Study of Law: A Critical Thinking Approach (Aspen Paralegal Series) - I found mine at a Thriftstore and before that, used this book in my Paralegal classes. Really explains the different areas of law and how the US system works.

And if you're reading this list and are thinking, "hey... Luxuria? Do you like to cause your characters misery?"

Yes. I do. :D
 
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Mogador said:
On Latin America, certainly.
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That's a huge ass world. Anything in particular? Caribbean? Mexican revolution(s)? CIA regime changes turning the Cold War? That one is topical right now. If you think that's big story today, you should see what the 50s and 60s were like.
 
Homer Potvin said:
That's a huge ass world. Anything in particular? Caribbean? Mexican revolution(s)? CIA regime changes turning the Cold War? That one is topical right now. If you think that's big story today, you should see what the 50s and 60s were like.
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I'm primarily interested in books that stand out as being fascinating to read for reference regardless of my personal prio interests. I knew very little about the Aztecs until I read a brilliant book about them, for example. If that's too vague because everything on your Latin America shelf is brilliant please do get out the figurative blindfold and dart and let me have one at random. Lets narrow the dart throwing down by saying continental (not Caribbean) and pre-20th century.
 
Mogador said:
I'm primarily interested in books that stand out as being fascinating to read for reference regardless of my personal prio interests. I knew very little about the Aztecs until I read a brilliant book about them, for example. If that's too vague because everything on your Latin America shelf is brilliant please do get out the figurative blindfold and dart and let me have one at random. Lets narrow the dart throwing down by saying continental (not Caribbean) and pre-20th century.
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Hmm. Most of these are academic history books, which aren't terribly fun to read. It's 20th century but I would recommend Companero about Che Guavara. Fascinating individual who probably would have shit his pants if he knew he was going to end up on tee shirts and college dorm posters. And also a fascinating study of the true idealogues like him compared to the fellow travelers like Castro, who just as easily could have adapted polka music instead of communism if it provided a path to power. Both of those are historical archetypes that appear all over the place.
 
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