The Podcast of the Lotus Eaters - Christmas Podcast

00:00:00.000 hello and welcome to podcast of the lotus eaters uh christmas algorithm feeding pre-recorded

00:00:18.480 um slop vids right more or less i'm joined by bo all right yes um yeah so apparently we've got

00:00:25.740 to keep the algorithm fed while we're eating turkey and putting crackers and whatever else so um uh but

00:00:32.520 bo and i were commissioned to do something uh and we decided to do our christmas recommendations

00:00:37.820 check out the graphic um which is very good i don't know why we employ all these editors when

00:00:43.700 i can do that in paint in 20 minutes um but you know there we are uh and we're gonna be talking

00:00:49.240 about books in this one aren't we right yeah our favorite books a few book recommendations

00:00:53.140 book recommendations for christmas so um i'm gonna have to start with the flashman series

00:01:00.100 the greatest series of fictional novels that has ever been written in my opinion it's up there

00:01:07.580 it does anything contend with flashman for me sharp bernard cornwall sharp it's a similar i'm also a

00:01:15.340 massive fan of hornblower stories and the master and commander ones but flashman is up there it's

00:01:20.180 very very very good i mean the reason it's funnier than sharp yeah sharp's not very funny this is

00:01:25.400 funny the reason they all tie together is because actually all of those books you just mentioned

00:01:29.840 and flashman they're all teaching you history yeah everything that happens in these books

00:01:35.860 is historical fact and the author clearly knows his stuff i mean right down to the level of reading

00:01:41.300 the papers and the diaries of the people involved except what he has done is he has inserted an

00:01:47.480 absolute bastard into the narrative a self-serving cowardly bastard yeah who who through his attempts

00:01:56.340 to dodge any danger whatsoever and be a complete cad ends up finding himself at every major historical

00:02:04.920 battle the british were involved in in the 18th century starting with the retreat from afghanistan

00:02:10.880 so and i love these because you learn so much history but it's not dry in the slightest it's not

00:02:16.160 oh this battle happened here and blah blah blah but it's it's no you're in it and he's he's chasing

00:02:20.980 women um and and he and he's coming a cropper at the hands of jealous husbands and um you know

00:02:28.040 over ambitious generals and all the rest incompetent generals bloody brilliant stuff yeah no like captain

00:02:34.160 jack from master and commander and hornblower from hornblower and richard sharp from sharp

00:02:40.200 uh they're all heroes in various ways some more brutal than others but they're all heroes and

00:02:46.140 they're all goodies and it's a very they're all serious narratives yes and it's all very serious and

00:02:51.640 a little bit dry i love them but a little bit dry flashman is pure entertainment yes funniness

00:02:57.800 and he is he's not heroic he's not heroic not in the slightest he's a coward yes but that's that's

00:03:03.700 interesting and that's funny and that's entertaining well and the funnier thing is he always comes out

00:03:07.900 smelling like roses that's the thing yeah that's why it's funny and why it's entertaining and good

00:03:12.020 he and he ends up he ends up coming out of the retreat from afghanistan looking like an absolute

00:03:16.600 bloody hero when he was when he was anything not so so christmas top reading i would say that that's

00:03:22.480 my number one book recommendation and i know you've gone for um something a bit more classic a bit

00:03:27.120 decline and fall much more serious much more serious perhaps a reflection of our characters

00:03:31.660 i am a bit more dry but no if you're going to go for serious some serious history

00:03:37.600 um the goal for me the gold standard is edward gibbon right writing at the very end of the 18th

00:03:43.980 century um and he wrote a very very large book the decline and fall of the roman empire

00:03:49.540 it's so long that you nearly always you'll see it in many volumes three volumes or something well

00:03:55.980 i've got mine they're in six volume oh right okay and even if you do find one big thick volume you'll

00:04:01.620 probably see that's abridged right if you find the audio book somewhere even though it'll be 30 hours

00:04:06.640 long it will still be the abridged version the full thing is very very very long if you want to know

00:04:11.140 about the decline and fall of the roman empire this is it is it this is it it's the gold standard it's

00:04:15.140 better than modern books on the same side oh yeah yeah yeah of course it doesn't suffer from any

00:04:18.920 wokeness or anything like that it's back it's 200 plus years old um and he's read everything there is to

00:04:24.920 read so you don't need to go out and read some obscure third century account gibbon's done it for

00:04:32.620 you when when did he write this right at the end of the 18th century okay the very very late 1700s

00:04:38.840 or into the early 19 uh 1800s so zero wokeness oh yeah yeah it's like 200 years old plus so um

00:04:46.360 so it's a kind of fall of the roman empire so it's it nominally starts at the age of the

00:04:54.240 antonians and goes through to the fall of rome in the west with alaric and actually a bit beyond

00:04:59.660 but he does go back and talk about occasionally go back and talk about uh the republic or the first

00:05:05.940 caesars but it's really from the first century ad through to like the fifth century ad fourth fifth

00:05:12.920 century ad so if you're interested in that part of history basically the bulk of the roman empire

00:05:17.860 not really including the first caesars although as i say he does go back and talk about augustus and

00:05:22.340 tiberius and caesars from time to time but more as an aside mainly if you're interested in the roman

00:05:26.840 empire and how and why it collapsed edward gibbon does he cover byzantium not really no not really

00:05:35.860 what a bit well so he covers the he goes all the way through the age of um constantine and he goes

00:05:42.300 beyond much beyond that as well so the first bit of byzantine history but does he go up to the 15th

00:05:47.800 century 1452 no right but the first that's not rome then in my opinion it is but okay he gave him

00:05:55.700 he set himself the task yeah of going up to the the fall of actually goes beyond that he goes up to

00:06:02.680 justinian and beyond so anyway you get the first few hundred years of the byzantine period but he

00:06:08.880 doesn't go up to like i say the 11th century or anything like that but to be fair enough his word

00:06:12.640 count was already pretty strong at that point so yeah yeah you can't you can't fault him really

00:06:16.780 yeah um next up i've got horus rising so um so this is i was never interested in warhammer

00:06:23.700 until i joined here and i found out that everybody was a warhammer fans i thought well i'm not going

00:06:27.780 to do the little plastic figurine thing i'll read the law and i was surprised to discover it's actually

00:06:33.200 really bloody good yeah it is and because what i mean what it's about is it's about the sort of it's

00:06:38.520 the decline and fall of of a later imperium um and the reason it's such good sci-fi is because it is

00:06:45.920 it is also completely and utterly unwoke it is utterly masculine and it's also it's it it can be grim

00:06:54.840 and on occasions dark but i just find it it's it's the only sci-fi where i could actually think oh yeah

00:07:01.580 this could actually happen because it's got none of the high-minded ideals it's got all the corruption

00:07:07.380 it's got all the infighting um and it's just such a thoroughly bloody masculine book if you if you

00:07:13.480 read this it will put at least 30 extra hair on your testicles reading this book it is so masculine

00:07:19.720 so unwoke and such a refreshing change from the sort of bullshit we get these days

00:07:24.440 it's the thing for the 40k universe that in the distant future there is only war

00:07:29.100 yes so it's like unremittingly dark yes um yeah i love warhammer i've played warhammer ever since i was

00:07:35.920 i don't know seven or eight years old uh gave it up in my teens but uh actually playing the tabletop

00:07:41.420 game um but uh yeah the law is great yeah the horus heresy the surprisingly deep the emperor of man

00:07:48.500 yes the the heresy of one of his of horus his right hand man and uh that that whole saga yes it's great

00:07:56.120 stuff it's great stuff um you've you've you've also gone serious for your second pick the lives

00:08:02.420 yeah well when when i was asked recommend some books the first ones that always come to my mind

00:08:08.200 are histories ancient history that is my thing first and foremost yes not just history not just

00:08:13.740 politics but specifically ancient history so why is this one so good then well um plutarch is

00:08:21.140 uh i mean people different people with different ancient historians classicists might disagree with

00:08:25.860 me on this or argue with me about this but it's again one of the gold standards when you want to go

00:08:31.360 back and learn about certain people or certain periods in ancient history sometimes it's only

00:08:37.600 plutarch you've got so in in that in those terms alone it's fantastically important so when was this

00:08:44.640 written uh well he's in the first century second century oh ad he's very often talking about much

00:08:52.980 earlier people so for example you've got a biography of alexander julius caesar augustus anthony

00:08:58.580 on and on and on and on and on the thing that occurs to me is he probably would have had access

00:09:04.320 to sources that we just don't have that's true yeah there was that library of alexander that burnt

00:09:09.280 down a few times alexandria alexandria yeah yeah yeah yeah so so he no doubt had had access to

00:09:14.780 sources that we just simply don't have anymore we just got plutarch absolutely no doubt um it's

00:09:19.400 frustrating that a lot of ancient historians don't mention their sources very often

00:09:22.900 but sometimes they do very occasionally plutarch will mention i got this bit of information from

00:09:28.460 this person who's entirely lost to us so we know for a fact he had access to material we don't have

00:09:35.120 which makes it again just pure gold dust and anyway if you're interested in ancient history really

00:09:41.220 reading the original texts plutarch there's a few names herodotus thucydides polybius plutarch

00:09:51.180 how do you even still have this well good question a lot of them were copied in late

00:09:57.340 antiquity and the early medieval period by monks usually christian monks they were copied by hand

00:10:02.780 so it's luck really what did and didn't get copied what did and didn't get burnt down

00:10:08.520 destroyed and lost over the centuries so yes it's luck often like for example tacitus we'll talk about

00:10:15.660 in a moment um there's only a handful of copies two or three copies original of tacitus and even they

00:10:20.240 aren't extant they aren't complete uh so it's fragments really we've got fragments often from

00:10:26.480 the ancient world but anyway a lot of plutarch has survived um so sometimes like you want a biography

00:10:33.480 of one of alexander's generals he went on to become extremely important in the generation after alexander

00:10:38.320 it was only plutarch that we've got so and the other thing it was all in translation he wrote in

00:10:44.320 greek originally but it's all in translation if you buy a penguin paperback now uh but it's relatively

00:10:48.900 easy to read it's not like gibbon is quite difficult to read you know even someone like shakespeare to be

00:10:55.160 honest it's quite difficult you have to get your ear in you have to get used to it whereas this in

00:11:00.300 translation anyway it's very accessible you can just pick it up and read it and um if you're interested in

00:11:05.340 ancient history it's the best among the best um for my third pick i thought i'd do a double act i'd

00:11:12.180 throw in the bible and the quran that's interesting i didn't think you'd pick that well for yes um i mean

00:11:19.000 it is a christmas stream so so you've got to have a bit of bible in there um my overwhelming impression

00:11:24.140 of the bible was um old christianity is not like modern christianity that that was a big time i mean

00:11:34.860 to be fair god was a bit he's a bit rum the way he treats some of the people in the scriptures in the

00:11:41.500 old testament yeah right you can see you can see why modern christians tend to gravitate towards the

00:11:47.580 new testament when you read the old testament i mean it is a bit i mean he turns a woman into a

00:11:51.840 part of salt because she looks over her shoulder it's like yeah yeah it's a bit rough i mean i

00:11:57.020 imagine you're talking about the king james bible yes um because there's many many translations of

00:12:02.320 the bible you should probably read whatever's easiest well yeah i mean i'd say try the king james

00:12:07.760 it's it's the og yes yes anyway um yeah i would i mean i've read i've read the bible all the way

00:12:16.020 through a couple of times some of the gospels more than once some of the stories in the scriptures more

00:12:19.520 than once uh but yeah you're quite right to say that the god as appears in the old testament

00:12:24.620 is a very fire and brimstone often and the way jesus of nazareth talks about god in the gospels

00:12:32.120 is very different yes it's all loving and all forgiving yeah it's like well that's not they

00:12:36.920 don't quite match up remember the story just a few pages like they changed the actor in the second

00:12:40.920 film didn't admit it why the quran then well the quran is interesting because i mean we'll start

00:12:48.640 it's if if you think reading the bible is hard work the quran is just a complete mess slug it's

00:12:55.360 it's a real slug i'm just all over the place it's and it's not a narrative with the story and

00:13:01.320 characters as a lot of the scriptures and the gospels are it's more like just a set of uh statements or

00:13:07.660 a set of um demands do do this don't do that yes just a list almost like just a list of that

00:13:14.440 it's the hadiths really that tell the story there's a bit more story in there yeah the quran itself is

00:13:18.980 very very dry so there's a bit about riding to the moon and cutting it in half on the back of a

00:13:25.200 unicorn i mean that that is that is deep isn't it yeah yeah yeah it's a bit there's a bit more

00:13:30.140 exciting i mean actually we talked about this before the probably the better book on islam is is tom

00:13:35.040 holland i know he's a woke historian but tom holland's in the sword in the shadow of the sword

00:13:38.800 because the story of muhammad is actually quite epic yeah you know he he doesn't do anything with

00:13:45.040 his life until he's 40 then he founds this religion doesn't go anywhere for 10 years because he's

00:13:49.860 preaching peace and then he moves from mecca to medina and he's like oh let's try changing this up a

00:13:55.360 bit let's make this um a warlord religion where basically you can do anything you like to anyone who

00:14:01.600 isn't a muslim but don't do it to a muslim and also kick up 10 to me and that turned out to be a

00:14:07.240 business model that took over everything and actually his story of of winning basically the

00:14:14.040 whole of arabia is actually quite an epic story yeah yeah if you believe it because as you mentioned

00:14:20.980 tom holland yes uh and other scholars have uh questioned the chronology of events shall we say

00:14:28.720 but nevertheless as it stands yes fascinating story and give it absolutely influence that

00:14:36.340 that islam has on our modern world and on modern europe i feel it kind of behooves you to to dig

00:14:42.880 under the skin a little bit no your enemy yes yeah yeah yeah and it is an interesting story there's no

00:14:48.140 doubt about that and finally you've gone for the annals annals annals tacitus yeah if plutarch is a gold

00:14:54.360 standard then tacitus is the gold standard right again talk about ancient history if you're interested

00:15:00.760 in the lives of the caesars the age of the caesars um and it's not extant so for example all of the

00:15:08.780 reign of caligula is missing from tacitus but he wrote the histories and he wrote the annals again if

00:15:14.880 you're not a big reader get it on audiobook in fact i'm sure it's free on youtube as an audiobook

00:15:19.900 like a librivox recording or whatever um if you're interested in history and you really want to know

00:15:26.560 it you don't want to rely on someone like tom holland or mary beard or some 20 you don't want to rely on

00:15:31.680 some 19th 20th or 21st century yeah chill even me you go straight to the source you go to the horse's

00:15:38.600 mouth you go to people like suetonius tacitus when was tacitus writing again the first century okay

00:15:45.320 he's writing in like the age of uh like not diocletian um the age of uh hadrian and trajan

00:15:54.680 okay yeah it was a young man under um domitian and he was an older man writing under the age of

00:16:01.040 hadrian and trajan type times okay so into the second century ad

00:16:05.980 okay is his depiction of trajan any good then given that he was the boss at the time he doesn't

00:16:13.040 talk a great deal about trajan right well he's one of the good ones wasn't he he was well well

00:16:16.920 yeah unless he was on the other end of his armies well yes you know trajan is considered an

00:16:20.460 unbelievable success he did a massive alexander style campaign in the east yeah or a pompey

00:16:27.260 style campaign in the east and just swept everything in his path letters were coming back from the east

00:16:33.180 almost every day to the senate in rome say i've just beaten another king i've just beaten another

00:16:36.660 peoples i just won another battle and they couldn't keep up with it they're like you're too

00:16:41.080 successful if anything like like alexander you're too successful we'll never be able to

00:16:44.120 they got tired of winning did they yeah yeah almost almost yeah no trajan's a winner

00:16:48.780 there's no two ways about that excellent

The Podcast of the Lotus Eaters - December 27, 2025

Christmas Podcast ｜ Our Book Recommendations

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