• Memorabilia - Xenophon
• How to read a book - Mortimer Adler
• On the nature of things - Lucretius [unfinished after first three books]
• Autobiography - Benjamin Franklin
• Red plenty - Francis Spufford
• Designing freedom - Stafford Beer [unfinished around fourth chapter]
• Cybernetyka a zarządzanie (Cybernetics and management) - Marian Mazur [unfinished around second chapter]
• The Artful Albanian: The Memoirs of Enver Hoxha - Enver Hoxha, selection and commentary - Jon Halliday [stopped reading soon after the diaries turn to post war era]
• The Interpretation of Dreams - Sigmund Freud [unfinished]
• Welcome Back, Alice - Shūzō Oshimi (Technically it is a manga, but I liked it so much I wanted to put it in here)
• You can't win - Jack Black
• Confessions of an English Opium-Eater - Thomas De Quincey [Happily finished, I think it's one of the prettier works, and definitely one of the best prose works I've read. I don't know if it's just me growing, or the book being that unusually good, or both, but I have been both moved immersed by multiple passages, and stimulated by the digression De Quincey cannot help but put here and there in this unusual but very lively and vivid style. It was both entertaining and enlightening, I will definitely come back to this book.]


• Age of Revolution, 1789-1848 - Eric Hobsbawm [Just started this right now. I have already tried read it once, but the amount of facts Hobsbawm drops overwhelmed me and I've quit reading after the first chapter, I think. Now, reading it after De Quincey, I'm much more sensitive to Hobsbawm's style, and even somehow his way of ordering facts and analyses sounds much more functional and ordered. We'll see after first few chapters, though.] [Looks like Hobsbawm didn't get his deserved reading once again. Alas, I didn't even end up as late as I have managed to get through him the last time. However, the reading this time was much more vivid, it was simply that my other interests were much more curious than the Age of Revolution - 17.04.2024]


• I plan to read Boswell's Life of Samuel Johnson along with his London Diary after I'll finish De Quincey, but I might get bored by that time.


• All Quiet on the Western Front - Erich Maria Remarque. [Rather good novel. I remember quite vividly the scenes of warfare, some of the personal scenes and the ones that have reflected the best on the long monologues of the Paul Baumer. The book focues stronly on the moral state of the young German generation in light of their lives being tarnished by the war. Within that context it has several themes, along with interesting exposition of the daily life, and warfare, on the front. It is rather a short work, but if I'm afraid that if it'd be to be longer, the entire message of it would have to be rethought. However, I think that it'd be much better for the novel and more artistically valuable, if the long monologues of Paul would be moved into the plot (Which reinforces the main themes quite splendidly), and the characters more developed and explored.]


• The Priceless Gift - Cornelius Hirschberg [This one I just have freshly finished reading. It is the kind of book I randomly stumble into, and which captivates me in a peculiar way, as I can read it without much thought or need to make notes, and yet it changes my outlook and provides fresh and interesting ideas. The book itself is an invitation to lead a cultured life through exploring of history, literature, art, music, mathematics, science and philosphy. In other words, through a humanist education. The author does that through various means. He introduces some of his biography, which is a biography of a middle aged man who has been an ambitious auto didact since his teenage years. As he goes through every of the subjects mentioned, he makes numerous remarks about the nature of the subjects and the reader's (especially the auto-didact one) approach to them. He introduces some general ideas and gives strictly technical advice like choice of books or order of learing. The value of this book to me has lied mostly in it's holistic view. It exposed the tunnel vision I have somewhat fallen into, but also has shown me that most of areas of the cultural life I have been neglecting are actually worthy of my consideration. One of the most interesting poins was the Hirschberg's insistence on the study of history, which, as he remarks, opens up the methods of study as the further directions as well, and so should be the basis of any auto didactic education. Looks like the direction I have taken already was good, but I should read more political and general history. This book, like any other, could use further reviewing, but, rushing after accepting Hirscherg's advice, I'm going to focus now on reading about The Great War with the Teutonic Order.]

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