1. I'm not sure I would recommend this as a must read unless you happen to be interested in it, but in all the readings I did about the Vikings this year, Gwyn Jones' "A History of the Vikings" was probably the most interesting. So much so that I actually bought it! (That was for British history, for Byzantine studies I also read "The Viking Road To Byzantium" by H.R. Ellis Davidson, and "The Varangians of Byzantium" by Sigfus Blondal, which were also really cool). 2. I can't think of any books I've read lately that I would "disrecommend," because all the books I've read lately were for school. I haven't even read a novel for like 2 years....I can think of boring class texts, like "Celebrating the Fourth" by Len Travers. I had to take American history this year, but speaking as a Canadian, the history of July 4 is really boring :) (Oh yeah, sorry, text books don't count :)) 3. Aside from all the textbooks I still haven't read, I have also just started to read stuff about Indo-European languages. I'm a history student, but linguistics is incredibly fascinating to me, almost to the point of making me want to switch majors. The first one I am reading (almost done) is "Indo-European Origins" by V.R. Curtis. It seems to be a non-mainstream book on the subject and it's kind of "out-there" at times, since it talks about "Indo-Europeans" as a cohesive culture and group of people rather than just a language group. What I mean is, it's very interesting, but I'm not sure if that's good or bad, ha ha.... Anyway, if you like Vikings, and Indo-European language, then those are some books for you :) Adam Bishop
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