Current reading list

The Voynich Manuscript is a Renaissance-era collection by an unknown person or people, mostly of drawings of plants that don't exist and written text in an unknown alphabet and unidentifiable language. Numerous theories exist as to its origin and purpose. This is a beautiful, actual size reproduction of each page of the manuscript, along with scholarly articles on it.

One of my friends sent me The Anchor Book of Modern Arabic Fiction. It's a collection of authors and stories that I otherwise wouldn't have encountered.

Everyone is supposed to have read The Wretched of the Earth in college; I guess I missed out. So far, I find that Fanon relies too heavily on general statements, with very few real-world examples.

Ditto Pedagogy of the Oppressed; better late than never.

Maimonides is considered the greatest medieval Jewish philosopher, and Guide to the Perplexed is his major work. I thought I should be at least familiar with it.

Quotations From Mao or "the little red book" is historically significant.

One of my interests is the assassination of JFK. I have noticed that many conspiracy theorists dismiss The Warren Commission Report without having read it, so I decided that I should at least see what is so objectionable about it. As far as I can tell, the only issue anyone could have with it is its conclusion that Lee Harvey Oswald killed JFK, and acted alone (which I happen to agree with). Otherwise, it's very thorough, other than only devoting a little over two pages to what is today the most popular conspiracy theory, that the CIA did it.

I will have more on these as I finish them.