jenno

3 books read for LibriVox

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Discourses on Livy Niccolò Machiavelli, translated by Ninian Hill Thomson
You get Machiavelli thinking through how republics preserve liberty, using Rome’s tribunes, public conflict, and political institutions as his working examples. It’s dense and sometimes repetitive rather than easy reading, but rewarding if you enjoy watching a sharp, unsentimental mind test political ideals against history.
The Book of Jade David Park Barnitz
Fair warning, this is decadent verse cranked all the way up: skulls, worms, and a poet so bored with the universe he sneers at his own book. If you have a soft spot for Baudelaire-drunk gloom that occasionally tips into camp, it's a strange, morbid little pleasure.
The Maid of Sker R. D. Blackmore
An old Welsh fisherman narrates, salty and self-serving, the story of a little girl washed ashore from a wreck and who she might be. Blackmore preferred this to Lorna Doone; it moves slower, but Davy's voice carries the whole book.

3 books read for LibriVox

filter sort era

Discourses on Livy Niccolò Machiavelli, translated by Ninian Hill Thomson
You get Machiavelli thinking through how republics preserve liberty, using Rome’s tribunes, public conflict, and political institutions as his working examples. It’s dense and sometimes repetitive rather than easy reading, but rewarding if you enjoy watching a sharp, unsentimental mind test political ideals against history.
The Book of Jade David Park Barnitz
Fair warning, this is decadent verse cranked all the way up: skulls, worms, and a poet so bored with the universe he sneers at his own book. If you have a soft spot for Baudelaire-drunk gloom that occasionally tips into camp, it's a strange, morbid little pleasure.
The Maid of Sker R. D. Blackmore
An old Welsh fisherman narrates, salty and self-serving, the story of a little girl washed ashore from a wreck and who she might be. Blackmore preferred this to Lorna Doone; it moves slower, but Davy's voice carries the whole book.