2021 reading list

All the books I read in 2021. More than 80% of the books were consumed in audio format. All the books are listed in the order read. My favorite titles are bolded and there are short reviews/impressions/excerpts under some of the titles. My lists for 2018, 2019, and 2020.

Some stats at the end of the post.

Дневник Лишнего Человека – Иван Тургенев (2nd read)
Constantine the Emperor – David Potter (2nd read)
This book in the category of biographies that not only cover the subject in detail but can also serve as standalone history of the period.
The Letters of Pliny the Younger – Pliny the Younger
The Conquest of Happiness – Bertrand Russell
The Consolation of Philosophy – Boethius
The Fall of the Roman Empire – Peter Heather (2nd read)
King John – Marc Morris
The Fall of Rome and the End of Civilization – Bryan Ward-Perkins
A short takedown of the silly continuist thesis.
The Hitchhiker’s Guide to the Galaxy – Douglas Adams (2nd read)
The Annals – Tacitus
Restaurant at the End of the Universe – Douglas Adams (2nd read)
Life, the Universe and Everything – Douglas Adams (2nd read)
I, Claudius – Robert Graves
So Long, and Thanks for All the Fish – Douglas Adams (2nd read)
Mostly Harmless – Douglas Adams (2nd read)
Dirk Gently’s Holistic Detective Agency – Douglas Adams (2nd read)
The Long Dark Tea-Time of the Soul – Douglas Adams (2nd read)
The Demon’s Brood – Desmond Seward
Hannibal – Patrick Hunt
The Ghosts of Cannae – Robert O’Connell (2nd read)
The Razor’s Edge – Somerset Maugham
Claudius the God – Robert Graves
The Jewish War – Flavius Josephus
Cicero – Anthony Everitt
How to Read and Why – Harold Bloom
The Monkey’s Voyage – Alan de Queiroz
Paul – Paula Fredriksen
From Jesus to Christ – Paula Fredriksen
Pompeii – Steven Tuck (course)
Paleofantasy – Marlene Zuk
How to Tame a Fox – Lee Alan Dugatkin
The Story of the Human Body – Daniel Lieberman
The Subjection of Women – John Stuart Mill
The Rational Optimist – Matt Ridley
The Evolution of Everything – Matt Ridley
After Tamerlane – John Darwin
The Great Game – Peter Hopkirk
The Letters of Abelard and Heloise – Pierre Abelard and Heloise d’Argenteuil (William Levitan tr.)
The Thirty Years War – C.V. Wedgwood
How the Irish Saved Civilization – Thomas Cahill
Emperor – Geoffrey Parker
Imprudent King – Geoffrey Parker
The Book of the Courtier – Baldassare Castiglione
A Distant Mirror – Barbara Tuchman
The Scientific Attitude – Lee McIntyre
Fatal Discord – Michael Massing
Pretty detailed double biography of Luther and Erasmus.
Heretics and Believers – Peter Marshall
The Mabinogion – Sioned Davies (tr.)
How to Read Literature Like a Professor – Thomas Foster
The Imitation of Christ – Thomas a Kempis, William Benham (tr.)
Empires of the Sea – Roger Crowley
The Magician of Lublin – Isaac Bashevis Singer
Against Empathy – Paul Bloom
Science Fictions – Stuart Ritchie
The Parthenon – Mary Beard
The Colosseum – Keith Hopkins and Mary Beard
The Ancient Roman World – Ronald Mellor, Marni Mcgee
The Table Talk of Martin Luther – Martin Luther, Thomas S. Kempis (ed.), William Hazlitt (tr.)
The Bondage of the Will – Martin Luther
The Praise of Folly – Desiderius Erasmus
Innate – Kevin Mitchell
The Civilization of Renaissance in Italy – Jacob Burckhardt
When Christians Were Jews – Paula Fredriksen
Thomas Cromwell – Diarmaid MacCulloch
Roman Warfare – Adrian Goldsworthy
The Wars of the Roses – Dan Jones
The Landscape of History – John Lewis Gaddis
Free to Learn – Peter Gray
The Road to Serfdom – Friedrich Hayek
God’s Philosophers – James Hannam
The Idea of the Brain – Matthew Cobb
Early Greek Philosophy – John Burnet
A Vindication of the Rights of Woman – Mary Wollstoncraft
The Scout Mindset – Julia Galef
Vindolanda – Adrian Goldsworthy (Vindolanda #1) (2nd read)
The Encircling Sea – Adrian Goldsworthy (Vindolanda #2) (2nd read)
Brigantia – Adrian Goldsworthy (Vindolanda #3) (2nd read)
Babylon – Paul Kriwaczek
The Last Kingdom – Bernard Cornwell (The Last Kingdom/Saxon Stories #1) (2nd read)
The Pale Horseman – Bernard Cornwell (The Last Kingdom/Saxon Stories #2) (2nd read)
Lords of the North – Bernard Cornwell (The Last Kingdom/Saxon Stories #3) (2nd read)
Sword Song – Bernard Cornwell (The Last Kingdom/Saxon Stories #4) (2nd read)
The Burning Land – Bernard Cornwell (The Last Kingdom/Saxon Stories #5) (2nd read)
Death of Kings – Bernard Cornwell (The Last Kingdom/Saxon Stories #6) (2nd read)
The Pagan Lord – Bernard Cornwell (The Last Kingdom/Saxon Stories #7) (2nd read)
The Empty Throne – Bernard Cornwell (The Last Kingdom/Saxon Stories #8) (2nd read)
Warriors of the Storm – Bernard Cornwell (The Last Kingdom/Saxon Stories #9) (2nd read)
The Flame Bearer – Bernard Cornwell (The Last Kingdom/Saxon Stories #10) (2nd read)
War of the Wolf – Bernard Cornwell (The Last Kingdom/Saxon Stories #11) (2nd read)
Sword of Kings – Bernard Cornwell (The Last Kingdom/Saxon Stories #12) (2nd read)
War Lord – Bernard Cornwell (The Last Kingdom/Saxon Stories #13) (2nd read)
The Scythians – Barry Cunliffe
The Rise of Athens – Anthony Everitt
Thebes – Paul Cartledge
Hellenica – Xenophon
A World Lit Only by Fire – William Manchester
How to Write a Thesis – Umberto Eco
The Ancient Celts – Barry Cunliffe
The Travels of Marco Polo – Marco Polo
The Birth of Classical Europe – Simon Price, Peter Thonemann
The Inheritance of Rome – Chris Wickham
The Face of Battle – John Keegan
The Field of Blood – Nicholas Morton
Matilda – Catherine Hanley
Augustine – Robin Lane Fox
The Great Siege – Ernle Bradford
The Fort – Adrian Goldsworthy (Vindolanda #4)
The Anglo-Saxons – Marc Morris
The Grand Strategy of the Classical Sparta – Paul A. Rahe
Genghis Khan – Frank McLynn
The Roman Way – Edith Hamilton
The Power of Myth – Joseph Campbell and Bill Moyers
Discourses and Selected Writings – Epictetus (Thomas W. Higginson tr.)
The World Before Us – Tom Higham
Letters from a Stoic – Seneca (Robin Campbell tr.)
The Winter King – Thomas Penn
Classical Mythology: A Very Short Introduction – Helen Morales
Written in Stone – Christopher Stevens
Ancient Warfare: A Very Short Introduction – Harry Sidebottom (2nd read)
The Enemy at the Gate – Andrew Wheatcroft
Experiencing Medieval Europe – Kenneth Bartlett (course)
The Tragedy of Empire – Michael Kulikowski
The Apocryphal Gospels: A Very Short Introduction – Paul Foster
Rebellion – Peter Ackroyd
The Pilgrim’s Progress – John Bunyan
In Defense of History – Richard J. Evans
Augustine: A Very Short Introduction – Henry Chadwick
A Needle in the Right Hand of God – R. Howard Bloch
Paul: A Very Short Introduction – E.P. Sanders
Decent introduction to Paul. Would recommend it along with Bart Ehrman’s Peter, Paul and Mary Magdalene. One thing sorely missing from Sanders’ book is that he doesn’t talk about the sources (that’s Pauline epistles). It’s very crucial that the readers know about which letters of Paul are judged to be his and which are considered forgeries, so we can actually sort out what Paul himself believed and not take forgers’ ideas for Paul’s. Sanders almost exclusively cites from authentic letters (I didn’t check every citation, but don’t remember him citing anything from forged letters—Ephesians, Colossians, 2 Thessalonians, 1 and 2 Timothy, and Titus), but it would be nice if he explicitly talked about the sources and why they are problematic or not.

Sanders provoked some thoughts about how to treat history of people and ideas from the past:

There’s a tendency among some historians (and people in general) to synthesize the thoughts/opinions/views of an ancient person from surviving materials.

A lot of times these people collate arguments from multiple sources, that span an authors lifetime, into a single argument and pretend that this frankenstein of an idea existed, or even more absurd, that the ancient author had this comprehensive worldview throughout their life without change. Or if they find a person contradicting their previous views, they try to harmonize and accommodate those views.

When treating past people’s ideas we should always follow these rules and make them explicit:

– Each document should stand for itself. Don’t try to build a worldview from multiple documents that the author himself was unaware of. Here the sequence/chronology of the sources is of high importance to trace the evolution of ideas or changes in them. Worldviews are not static.

– Contradictions in the author’s ideas doesn’t mean that there must be an overall philosophy that should accommodate them (or that the author had this overall philosophy). Maybe the author totally rejected their previous ideas during their lifetime, or improved them, or maybe they’re just contradictions because the author never actually explicitly tried to reconcile their different ideas. There are no philosophies without contradictions. After all we are fallible.
Social and Cultural Anthropology: A Very Short Introductions – John Monaghan and Peter Just
The Dream of Enlightenment – Anthony Gottlieb
The Red Prince – Helen Carr
Wolf Hall – Hilary Mantel
Revolution – Peter Ackroyd
On Grand Strategy – John Lewis Gaddis
The History of Astronomy: A Very Short Introduction – Michael Hoskin
Ancestors – Alice Roberts
The History of the Franks – Gregory of Tours
In Search of a Kingdom – Laurence Bergreen
God’s Jury – Cullen Murphy
The Richest Man Who Ever Lived – Greg Steinmetz
Galileo’s Middle Finger – Alice Dreger
Who We Are and How We Got Here – David Reich
The Cheese and the Worms – Carlo Ginzburg
The Bible: A Very Short Introduction – John Riches
The Waning of the Middle Ages – Johan Huizinga
The Astonishing Hypothesis – Francis Crick
The Canterbury Tales – Geoffrey Chaucer
Memoirs of My Life – Edward Gibbon
Third Thoughts – Steven Weinberg (2nd read)
Chaucer’s People – Liza Picard
Sexual Selection: A Very Short Introduction – Marlene Zuk
Biological Anthropology – Barbara King (course)
The Ancient City – Numa Denis Fustel de Coulanges (Willard Small tr.)
The Black Cloud – Fred Hoyle
Guns, Germs, and Steel – Jared Diamond
The New World – Winston Churchill (A History of the English-Speaking Peoples vol. 2)
Roman Architecture – Diana Kleiner (course YOC)
Conquerors – Roger Crowley
Orthodox Christianity: A Very Short Introduction – Edward Siecienski
A Short History of Humanity – Johannes Krause
Over the Edge of the World – Laurence Bergreen
Protestant Ethic and the Spirit of Capitalism – Max Weber (Talcott Parsons tr.)
Conquest of the Americas – Marshall C. Eakin (course)
Capitalism and Freedom – Milton Friedman
The Return of Martin Guerre – Natalie Zemon Davis
Early Modern England – Keith Wrightson (course YOC)
Marco Polo – Laurence Bergreen
On the Ends of Good and Evil – Cicero (H. Harris Rackham tr.)
The Borgias – G.J. Meyer
The Renaissance: A Very Short Introduction – Jerry Brotton
Inventing the Middle Ages – Norman F. Cantor
Never Greater Slaughter – Michael Livingston
Journeys of the Great Explorers – Glyndwr Williams
The Age of Revolution – Winston Churchill (A History of the English-Speaking Peoples vol. 3)
The Courage to Be Disliked – Ichiro Kishimi and Fumitake Koga
The Beginner’s Guide to Stoicism – Matthew Van Natta
Sicily – John Julius Norwich
Mythology – Edith Hamilton
Europe in the High Middle Ages – William Chester Jordan
The Time Traveler’s Guide to Medieval England – Ian Mortimer
How Innovation Works – Matt Ridley
Omnipotent Government – Ludwig von Mises
Bosworth 1485 – Michael Jones
City of Fortune – Roger Crowley
In the Wake of the Plague – Norman Cantor
Life in a Medieval City – Joseph Gies and Frances Gies
World Without End – Hugh Thomas
God’s Shadow – Alan Mikhail
The Borgias and Their Enemies – Christopher Hibbert
The Secret History of the Mongol Queens – Jack Weatherford
The Great Warming – Brian Fagan
The Faithful Executioner – Joel F. Harrington
Treasure Island – Robert Louis Stevenson
The Invisible Gorilla – Christopher Chabris and Daniel Simons
Clausewitz: A Very Short Introduction – Michael Eliot Howard
Monasticism: A Very Short Introduction – Stephen Davis
The Invaders – Pat Shipman
The History of Medicine: A Very Short Introduction – William Bynum
The Clash of Civilizations and the Remaking of World Order – Samuel Huntington
Genghis Khan and the Quest for God – Jack Weatherford
The Anatomy of the State – Murray Rothbard
The Bronze Lie – Myke Cole
The Winter King – Bernard Cornwell (The Warlord Chronicle #1)
Survival of the Friendliest – Brian Hare and Vanessa Woods
The Sacred Band – James Romm
Enemy of God – Bernard Cornwell (The Warlord Chronicle #2)
The Map That Changed the World – Simon Winchester
A Story of Us – Lesley Newson and Peter Richerson
Your Inner Fish – Neil Shubin
1491 – Charles C. Mann (2nd read)
The History of the Vikings – Christopher R. Fee
The Travels of Reverend Olafur Egilsson – Olafur Egilsson (trs./eds. Karl Smari Hreinsson and Adam Nichols)
Medieval Bodies – Jack Hartnell
Exercised – Daniel Lieberman
Range – David Epstein
Nature Via Nature – Matt Ridley
A Hangman’s Diary – Franz Schmidt (ed. Albrecht Keller, trs. Calvert and Gruner)
The Hedgehog and the Fox – Isaiah Berlin
The Origins of Virtue – Matt Ridley
The Horse, the Wheel, and Language – David Anthony
The detail and scope of this book puts all other historians and history books to shame. Stop dumbing down ffs!
Evolution (Oxford Readers) – Mark Ridley (ed.)
A Historian Goes to the Movies – Gregory Aldrete (course)
The Sultan and the Queen – Jerry Brotton
Excalibur – Bernard Cornwell (The Warlord Chronicle #3)
The Reluctant Mr. Darwin – David Quammen
Some Assembly Required – Neil Shubin
The Great Mortality – John Kelly
Ancestral Journeys – Jean Manco
The Secret of Our Success – Joseph Henrich
A Companion to Contemporary Political Philosophy – Robert E. Goodin and Philip Pettit (eds.)
Caesar’s Legion – Stephen Dando-Collins
Voyage of the Beagle – Charles Darwin
Rome is Burning – Anthony Barrett
Castles – Marc Morris
The Blood Meridian – Cormac McCarthy
Antiquity – Norman Cantor
World War Z – Max Brooks
The Denial of Death – Ernest Becker
Ubik – Philip K. Dick
Tree Story – Valerie Trouet
The Wind in the Willow – Kenneth Grahame
The Blank Slate – Steven Pinker
Reformations – Carlos M.N. Eire
Around the World in Eighty Days – Jules Verne
Life in a Medieval Village – Frances Gies and Joseph Gies
The Jugurthine War and the Cataline Conspiracy – Sallust (tr. Alfred W. Pollard)
How We Think – John Dewey
Christendom Destroyed – Mark Greengrass
Understanding Greek and Roman Technology – Stephen Ressler (course)
The Pursuit of Glory – Timothy Blanning
The Greek World – Robert Garland (course)
Iron Kingdom – Christopher Clark
Vanished Kingdoms – Norman Davies
The Cathedral – William R. Cook (course)
Philosophy of Biology – Alex Rosenberg and Robert Arp (eds.)
Francis I – Leonie Frieda
The Complete Essays of Michel de Montaigne – Michel de Montaigne (tr. Donald M. Frame)
The History of the Byzantine Empire – Charles W.C. Oman
The Formation of a Persecuting – R.I. Moore
The Classical World – Robin Lane Fox

# of books read: 261
# of pages read: 88,305
- average book length: 338p (though this is affected by the inclusion of courses which have 0 page count)
- 31 out 261 books are by female authors

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