Interesting Things to Read

A selection of some of my favourite sites, which I think may prove of interest to others.

Theoi. An encyclopedia of the gods, titans, heroes, creatures, and monsters of classical Greece. Engrossing.

English Monarchs. Pretty much what it sounds like. Monarchs of England, and its precursor states, along with supporting information about people and events of each dynasty.

British Battles. Pretty much what it sounds like, although the site also includes some American battles, mostly from the civil war. A work in progress. Some periods of history are missing. One assumes they'll be added later. Still, what's here is very good.

Heart of Albion Press. A collection of books on eclectic aspects of English history and folkways. Lots are free, some are for sale. The general trend seems to be to print a physical run of books, and once those are all sold, then it's free online. Lots of fascinating information here, even if some is questionable.

Ere Now. “A generation which ignores history has no past — and no future.” The slogan sums up the site's philosophy. A *huge* collection of history books, free to read. There's an effort made to organize it by historical period, military history, and 'common topics', which largely fails. Just sort through everything, and see what's there. It's mostly solid history, but even the speculative stuff (about who built the pyramids, for instance) is well-written and interesting. This site has saved me hundreds of dollars in book purchases.

The Luminist League Archives. Old books, religious texts, and magazines. The magazines section is a treasure. Old science fiction, detective stories, adventure pulps, back issues of 'Fate', etc. You can read the stuff online, or download it.

Global Grey. Free books. This is a woman who takes public domain books, edits, formats, and cleans them up, then nicely packages them in various formats. You can get all of these titles in other archives, but GG's titles are just nicely made. The downside to such a labour-intensive method is that there are huge holes in her library. They're all free, although you can buy 'collections' (i.e., packages of books) at a quite reasonable price. The site has the most annoying interface, in which things rotate if touched by the cursor, but it's worth it to have the well-made books.

A Podcast to the Curious. Devoted to the fiction of MR James. Often deals with ouevre of James' contemporaries and acquaintances. Uneven, but generally interesting.

Burma

So, I went to read about Burma, in light of the recent coup, and the fact that this Suu Kyi woman seems to keep bouncing in and out of prison rather like a yo-yo. I started at the State Dept site. It kind of obsesses over recent history, sanctions and other coercions we've applied to make them do our bidding, and programs we've instituted there, which is prolly what I should have expected. They did, however, have a link to the CIA factbook with economic information, which is probably where I ought to have started to begin with. And that link returns... 404.


CIA apparently did a reorganization a few months back, and State didn't bother to update. I accept that there are going to be occasional flubs in any operation, but honestly... State's links point to a 404 on what's not just a major gubbermint website, but one with which you'd expect State to closely coordinate its activities. I'm disgusted, and more than a little appalled.