by bccdee | 2026-01-28 21:48:19+00:00
> Unfortunately, reading books for entertainment is ridiculous. […] The only people who still read books for entertainment are women who prefer their porn to have DIY visuals. The stats back me up on this. If you’re tempted to disagree, go walk the aisles of Barnes & Noble.

Instead of "walking the aisles of Barnes & Noble," I wonder if the author of this piece has tried looking up actual sales figures? Yes, people do buy books. Mostly fiction. More than a billion books are sold per year in the US. Sales of books have been steady & mostly rising over the past two decades. Romance is the most popular fiction genre, but not by huge margin. Thrillers are the runner-up, then science fiction, then fantasy.

It's really not promising that this article opens with flagrant conjecture.

> The average ancient historian led troops […] The average modern historian passed a few tests

The average ancient historian just made stuff up sometimes. A guy like Plutarch writes with a massive slant, and because the average ancient historian was one of maybe 5 guys, he's often all we've got. The average modern historian, by contrast, does the actual rigorous scholarship required to get concrete information out of historical sources. I'm no historian, and I have little exposure to historiography, but even I can tell this is a ridiculous way to look at history.

> Contrast Xenophon with Mary Beard, who studied at Cambridge and now teaches at Cambridge.

Sure, let's. What will we discuss? The quality of her scholarship? Inaccuracies in her work?

> She holds the same opinions as everyone else at Cambridge. She’s remarked before that, “I actually can’t understand what it would be to be a woman without being a feminist.” This seems like a peculiar failing for an ancient historian.

Clearly that was too much to hope for. We're discussing "wokeness" or whatever. I don't see what it has to do with her body of work. Anyway, she's obviously saying she can't understand contemporary women who are not feminists, but maybe that flew over the author's head.

> I don’t know if she’s ever talked publicly about religion or democracy or climate change or immigration, but I could tell you exactly what she thinks about these things anyway. So why would you bother reading what she thinks about Rome?

Because she knows more about Rome than I do, obviously. She's a historian, not a political pundit. Anyway, I thought reading books for entertainment was "ridiculous," but here you are, reading about Rome. That's entertainment. It's okay—I like Rome too. You don't have to pretend like you're reading about the second Punic war to "cultivate wisdom." You can admit you enjoy it.

> There are hundreds of people with just as much experience of the human condition as Xenophon who have written great books throughout the millennia […] Bernal Díaz del Castillo was a conquistador who wrote about conquering the Aztec Empire. […] Have you read all of these? If not, why would you even consider picking up another book written by another Cambridge professor?

Right, but those aren't historians. Those are memoirists, and their accounts of their own lives are not reliable. Bernal Díaz del Castillo the conquistador was not a neutral observer of the Aztec Empire.

Gee, if only there were some rigorous, academic discipline where experts (perhaps Cambridge professors) sifted through primary sources to discover the truth…

> you can’t find [people with "unique experiences and perspectives"] by traveling around the world. The world is too hyperconnected now, and everyone is converging to the same opinions.

Go downtown and sit next to the first person you see begging on the street. I guarantee they've had experiences which would astonish you, and you won't even have travelled outside the city limits. Honestly, some people are so quick to assume they know everything.