Sep 28, 2022·edited Sep 28, 2022Liked by Joel J Miller
Joel, why don't you just go ahead and admit it? This is your day job, right? How DO you do this each week? I stand and applaud each of your posts I wade through because of their tight and concise and helpful content.
This post, though, is many posts in one (each of these subheads could've been its own post)! I had hoped to order a full set of the Very Short Introductions, with the naïveté that it will take me a very short time to read them. There are 754 volumes.
LOL. The trick on writing them is mostly in thinking about them for several days here and there, so when I sit down to write I pretty much know whatever I’m going to say. I also spread the writing over a couple days usually.
As far as reading them, one cool hack with Very Short Intros and Essential Knowledge both is that they have a lot of titles on audio. Great for taking long on a walk.
Good stuff, as always. I'm not surprised to learn that we share similar interests. What we don't share—unfortunately for me—is adequate shelf space. I'm likely to die under a collapsed stack at this point.
Alkan is who I had in mind! Though the story, as I understand it, is that he was reaching for a copy of a book—maybe a volume of the Talmud—on a top shelf and the bookcase came down on him. What a way to go!
While not as compact as some of what you’ve presented, it’s hard to beat The Harvard Classics. I inherited thirty volumes, leather bound. Years ago I set, but never finished, a goal to read through them all. I’ve just realized that this is the perfect time return to that goal.
Joel, why don't you just go ahead and admit it? This is your day job, right? How DO you do this each week? I stand and applaud each of your posts I wade through because of their tight and concise and helpful content.
This post, though, is many posts in one (each of these subheads could've been its own post)! I had hoped to order a full set of the Very Short Introductions, with the naïveté that it will take me a very short time to read them. There are 754 volumes.
LOL. The trick on writing them is mostly in thinking about them for several days here and there, so when I sit down to write I pretty much know whatever I’m going to say. I also spread the writing over a couple days usually.
As far as reading them, one cool hack with Very Short Intros and Essential Knowledge both is that they have a lot of titles on audio. Great for taking long on a walk.
Good stuff, as always. I'm not surprised to learn that we share similar interests. What we don't share—unfortunately for me—is adequate shelf space. I'm likely to die under a collapsed stack at this point.
Thanks, man! I appreciate your feedback. I have to cull my library pretty regularly to preserve space. I actually wrote about that process—including a story about a guy crushed by his books! https://millersbookreview.substack.com/p/criteria-for-culling-a-library
Alkan is who I had in mind! Though the story, as I understand it, is that he was reaching for a copy of a book—maybe a volume of the Talmud—on a top shelf and the bookcase came down on him. What a way to go!
While not as compact as some of what you’ve presented, it’s hard to beat The Harvard Classics. I inherited thirty volumes, leather bound. Years ago I set, but never finished, a goal to read through them all. I’ve just realized that this is the perfect time return to that goal.
Ed, I love that idea! Because they’re are (or can be) bounded, sets are great for setting goals around. And that Harvard set really is choice.
Saving this post to refer back to! I'm definitely interested in the Very Short Introductions!
There are tons of great titles in that series.