Reading Material
Sep. 16th, 2011 06:44 pm![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png){kind=small}
rebeccmeisterI finished reading The Fatal Shore. The Epic of Australia's Founding (by Robert Hughes) some time last week. It's a fantastic book, and it only took me a year-plus to finish it (what can I say, I read nonfiction very slowly). I'd recommend it to anyone who gets bored by most history books - this one has seafaring adventurers, torture, all kinds of gruesomeness, and excellent vignettes about some of the key players in Australian penal history. Hughes sets a wonderful standard for historians; the book is clearly well-researched, and engaging.
I'll point out just one figure who was ahead of his time: Alexander Maconochie. He thought that using prisons as a punishment system to deter criminals was a stupid idea (though it was an idea that would persist for at least another hundred years after his time). Instead, he established a merit system that would allow prisoners to earn their way out of prison. Given the nature of English society and laws at the time (extreme punishment for modest crimes), I can only imagine that Maconochie's system gave a lot of hope to those who got to experience it. It was quickly put to an end.
Anyway. That said and done, my list of books to read is currently packed up in a box somewhere, along with all of my books.![[livejournal.com profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/external/lj-userinfo.gif)
scrottie has loaned me one book (Neuromancer), but I am feeling hungry for recommendations. Fiction or nonfiction, I just look for literary works that illuminate life. A number of you know me well enough by now to make some apt suggestions. So please, suggest.
I'll point out just one figure who was ahead of his time: Alexander Maconochie. He thought that using prisons as a punishment system to deter criminals was a stupid idea (though it was an idea that would persist for at least another hundred years after his time). Instead, he established a merit system that would allow prisoners to earn their way out of prison. Given the nature of English society and laws at the time (extreme punishment for modest crimes), I can only imagine that Maconochie's system gave a lot of hope to those who got to experience it. It was quickly put to an end.
Anyway. That said and done, my list of books to read is currently packed up in a box somewhere, along with all of my books.
scrottie has loaned me one book (Neuromancer), but I am feeling hungry for recommendations. Fiction or nonfiction, I just look for literary works that illuminate life. A number of you know me well enough by now to make some apt suggestions. So please, suggest.
