Grand unified books thread

[Sophie Scholl]

I saw this and had to share it since there are a few other people who read Dragonlance Back In The Day:
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[Oexmelin]

For those who are interested, the Cundill Prize just released its shortlist:

The Huxleys: An Intimate History of Evolution, Alison Bashford | The University of Chicago Press

Red Memory: Living, Remembering and Forgetting China's Cultural Revolution, Tania Branigan | Faber & Faber (UK), W. W. Norton (US)

The Declassification Engine: What History Reveals About America's Top Secrets, Matthew Connelly | Pantheon Books

The Perfection of Nature: Animals, Breeding, and Race in the Renaissance, Mackenzie Cooley | The University of Chicago Press

Queens of a Fallen World: The Lost Women of Augustine's Confessions, Kate Cooper | Basic Books (UK, US)

Dust on the Throne: The Search for Buddhism in India, Douglas Ober | Navayana

Charged: A History of Batteries and Lessons for a Clean Energy Future, James Morton Turner | University of Washington Press

The Madman in the White House: Sigmund Freud, Ambassador Bullit, and the Lost Psychobiography of Woodrow Wilson, Patrick Weil | Harvard University Press

[The Brain]

The Cretan War, 1645-1671: The Venetian-Ottoman Struggle in the Mediterranean, by Mugnai. I had to stop reading this book a few pages into the introduction. The language is I suppose a kind of English, but not of a sort recognized in the English-speaking world. While it is possible with effort to understand what the author is trying to say, life is just too short. It's not the first time I have to abandon a Helion book on Italian history because of language issues. It's unfortunate that they are unwilling or unable to have a person look over the English before publishing; the subject matter is very interesting and not widely written about in this language. I looked at the credits and acknowledgments and there is no mention of an editor.

[Richard Hakluyt]

I have that book too and had the same issues. A damn shame. I'm sure a couple of weeks work by any competent English speaker could have sorted it out. Perhaps the print run was just too tiny to justify the expense 

[mongers]

Can one have too many dictionaries?

[grumbler]

Can one have too many dictionaries?

Not if they eschew obfuscation.

[mongers]

'Into the Void' - the Geezer Butler autobiography, worth if for the admitted Spinal-Tapesque moments and the matter of fact descriptions of four working-class brummie  blokes have insane adventures in the world of 70s/80s rock and roll.

[The Brain]

What's a good (preferably in-print) edition of Poe's works? Not necessarily complete, but the major fiction and poetry ones at least.

[Barrister]

What's a good (preferably in-print) edition of Poe's works? Not necessarily complete, but the major fiction and poetry ones at least.

Aw man - you just brought me back.  I read all of Poe's work as a kid in a set of 19th century prints my dad had - not first editions, but old.

I wonder what happened to them.  Maybe my dad still has them.

[Sheilbh]

I'd look for Oxord World Classics, Penguin Classics or Norton for a good well-annotated and edited collection with a decent introductory essay.

From a quick skim the 2003 Penguin Classics one seems to have a broader selection (or bigger text) as it's over 500 pages to the OWC 350 or so. The Norton is about 1,000 pages and seems fairly completist - poems, stories and letters.

[Syt]

I got Lovecraft's works from Penguin Classics and they came with rich annotations that I found pretty insightful. Might be something like it exists for Poe from them?

[Admiral Yi]

I had to give up buying Penguins cuz the print is so damn small

[Sheilbh]

Might be of interest to folks here - new maor biography of Metternich just translated into English. Positive review by Christopher Clark:
https://www.lrb.co.uk/the-paper/v42/n19/christopher-clark/a-rock-of-order

Read elsewhere it's not just a new telling but based on a lot of archival research, so lots of major and minor points put in a slightly different context. Arguably a little revisionist as it's broadly sympathetic to Metternich.

Edit: One for the list for me - can feel myself going on a 19th century kick soon.

[mongers]

Stuart Maconie 'The Nanny State Made Me' - excellent entertainment. 

[Sophie Scholl]

I breezed through The Jannisary Tree by Jason Goodwin. It's the first book of a little historical fiction detective series set in the 1830's Ottoman Empire with a eunuch court advisor/detective as the lead. I enjoyed it and plan on reading the rest of the series. Nice details on things and really makes the setting come alive with its details about food, clothing, wider culture, and the like.