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Questions That Don't Deserve Their Own Thread.

Post em here.

I'm looking for books that give a good "feel" of the life and culture of earlier generations.

I noticed when I was trying Lovecraft for the first time that I was less interested by the material of the story than by the details in the background of what life was like and how people behaved in the early 1900s--things that weren't highlighted or pointed out at all, just the assumption of how life normally was in the author's time. It just felt natural. It's hard to explain. But I'm looking for things that were written in different parts of recent history--past 200 years or so--that give a good feel of what life was like back then without being blatant or artificial about it. Preferably things that are also written about some interesting subject matter--maybe accounts of adventures by soldiers or explorers or something? I'm not really even sure what's out there.

Sorry for the vague question, but any recommendations?

This is the cheapest version i can find, should i buy it?
Pic looks kind of ugly.

Don't judge a book by its cover, user. The knowledge inside is all that matters, unless you're a pompous ass

Obviously, but why did they make the cover so bland?

Maybe the World of Yesterday, by Stefan Zweig

Some of their covers are far worse. The Crime and Punishment one comes to mind.

Lol i always thought that one wasnt real.

Let's say I'm writing a book about a guy investigating a suicide that he actually believes was a murder. It later turns out that it really was just a suicide.

What would that be called? A reverse twist?

The really dense books are dense because of that. Hugo, Austen, Tolstoy, and Orwell’s essays might fit what you want. Of course there’s Moby Dick if you really want to get into the nitty gritty of things.

What are the books that have unique approaches to dealing with time travel?

Someone please tweet the OP pic to Sam Hyde / Million Dollar Extreme.

Subversion of expectation.

And how do I do that without pissing the reader off? I don't want them to feel let down

OP that's not the most recent version of that pic.

choose my next book
>the sun also rises
>the waves
>nausea

There is an historiography genre/method called microhistory that might interest you. Try looking into The Cheese and the Worms by Carlo Ginzburg, Montaillou by le Roy Ladurie, and maybe Natalie Zemon Davis (her articles are better than Martin Guerre, but maybe look at Martin Guerre since that's the big famous one). Also Darnton's The Great Cat Massacre.

Microhistory comes out of cultural history and cultural anthropology which tries to give "thick descriptions," essentially hermeneutic understandings of a culture that are internal to that culture's own self-understanding. A major figure in this is Clifford Geertz, whose essay on the Cockfight in Bali is famously literary and a hermeneutic induction into the self-understanding of the Balinese. Contains the famous phrase that culture is the set of "stories we tell ourselves about ourselves."

You might also look into realism as a literary genre, and some of its philosophical justifications. Especially later realism. Try Balzac and Stendhal though.

Make the reader feel smarter than the investigator, insert sections where the reader getst the impression, that the investigator is wronng so they later get a 'I knew it!'-feeling

Aristotle:

Do I really have to read the Nicomachean Ethics before I read the Politics?

Is Kindle and ebooks that bad if you're on a low budget? I could buy used books an resell them if paperback is that much better.

I want to read something by a British explorer of Africa or India in the 19th or early 20th century. It's gotta be common enough to find on audiobook. Any recommendations?

Richard Francis Burton is the guy you're looking for.

Okay. Can you recommend one of his works specifically? I'd like a nice mix of history and some cool adventure stories though I know I can't be too picky

He wrote 40 books so there should be plenty to choose from. I've only read his biography and The Jew, the Gypsy and El Islam but he is the archetype of your description. Doubt you'll find anything in audiobook format though since he was jew-aware and has thus been ignored by the postwar jewish cultural complex.

I feel like reading something dun and comfy. What are some good epic fantasy stories that aren't lord of the rings? I hear alot about the book of the new sun, song of ice and fire, wheel of time, stomlight archives and malazan. Which of these are good?

Second to Richard Francis Burton. Rice's biography, followed by the trip to Mecca.