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PaperclipPerfector  2d ago (text post)   1629 thread views

Small-Scale Question Sunday for March 2, 2025

Do you have a dumb question that you're kind of embarrassed to ask in the main thread? Is there something you're just not sure about?

This is your opportunity to ask questions. No question too simple or too silly.

Culture war topics are accepted, and proposals for a better intro post are appreciated.

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So, what are you reading?

Still on a bunch of stuff. Picking up Rawls' A Theory of Justice. Scott Alexander's claim that the book converted a lot of academic Marxists to left-liberalism has intrigued me.

Goethe's Sorrows of Young Werther. It's short, with suitably lively prose to paint the picture of unfettered big-R/little-r romantic emotionality. Haven't finished it yet but the closing section kind of reminds me of reading Faust in how it's unravelling into disjointed fragments.

Gray Matters: A Biography of Brain Surgery. A popular nonfiction book written by a practicing brain surgeon, that explores the profession from a medical, historical, and social perspective. Who knew that the surgeons, in order to access the brain, literally drill four holes in the skull, slip a cutting wire through two of them, and saw back-and-forth, repeating on all the holes until a square is cut out? It's a glimpse into a field that is usually inaccessible to outsiders. I'm only about a quarter of the way through but I would highly recommend it.

Last week I finally finished Montaillou. Took me the guts of a month to get through, what a chore.

Onto Orbán: Europe's New Strongman by Paul Lendvai, as reviewed by Scott. Another book I'm reading for research purposes. About a hundred pages in and it's a very easy read, I'm learning some interesting tidbits about the man himself I can use.

Last week I finally finished Montaillou. Took me the guts of a month to get through, what a chore.

Was it worth it?

I wouldn't say so. The only reason I read it was to gain an insight into Catharism, but that only takes up a very small portion of the book. The rest of it is dedicated to describing life in the titular fourteenth-century French village in minute, exhaustive detail: how the villagers worked, ate, formed relationships etc. Some of this was interesting, but it wasn't really relevant to the purpose I was reading the book for and hence felt like a bit of a waste of my time.

Understandable. It's exactly what I hope to get out of it, though.

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