Has anybody read any good books lately?

I read non fiction during the day. I've just finished a book on the Mercian King Penda, the last pagan king in England and a book on the Early Anglo Saxon Kings, I've just finished reading some on the circumstances leading up to the fall of the Western Roman Empire as I want to get a chrionology in my head.

I'm reading a Jane Casey, Maeve Kerrigan novel now at bed time, I'm waiting for Mum to finish one of the books I gave her for xmas, Louise Penny, The Grey Wolf, then I can read it. I love the Harry Grimm series by David J Gatwood, the Ruth Galloway series by Ellie Griffiths, all the SImon McCleave books and so many more, James Oswald, Phi Rickman, Kate Ellis and Lindsey Davis

Just checked out your book titles on Amazon and I would be very happy person if I had them all. 

Most of the books I read are free with my kindle subscription, or availble from libraries. I get a few from charity shops, when I can. I've fallen out with one local charity shop and the others seem to be not doing books as much, our local supermarkets have book tables where you can donate unwanted books and buy others for 50p a book which goes to a nominated charity. I also use world of books or awesome books where I can get some some at greatly reduced prices, especially some of the academic books, although still expensive at around £10 a book, they're much cheaper than the cover price.

Another good one for Roman history fans is unRoman Britain which goes into how Romanised Britain actually was. The later Roman Empire is interesting and something we hear little about with classicists prefering to concentrate on the Julio-Claudians and a few others Like the Flavians, Hadrian, Marcus Aurelius, and Constantine the Great, many of the rest were total disasters, ruling for a short period before being killed by the szme troops who put them there.

Now I'm reading Queens of the Wild by Ronald Hutton as a break from late antiquity and the early Anglo-Saxons

Most of the books I read are free with my kindle subscription, or availble from libraries. I get a few from charity shops, when I can. I've fallen out with one local charity shop and the others seem to be not doing books as much, our local supermarkets have book tables where you can donate unwanted books and buy others for 50p a book which goes to a nominated charity. I also use world of books or awesome books where I can get some some at greatly reduced prices, especially some of the academic books, although still expensive at around £10 a book, they're much cheaper than the cover price.

Another good one for Roman history fans is unRoman Britain which goes into how Romanised Britain actually was. The later Roman Empire is interesting and something we hear little about with classicists prefering to concentrate on the Julio-Claudians and a few others Like the Flavians, Hadrian, Marcus Aurelius, and Constantine the Great, many of the rest were total disasters, ruling for a short period before being killed by the szme troops who put them there.

Now I'm reading Queens of the Wild by Ronald Hutton as a break from late antiquity and the early Anglo-Saxons

I like the uncertainties too, I think thats why the Anglo-Saxon conversion period interests me so much. But I do like a lot of prehistory too, I find the neolitic fascnating, but also sites like Catal Hoyuk, I think Turkey will reveal much more about early humans and I suspect that "civilisation" happened much earlier than we previous thought.

I'm not a huge fan of the Romans, they destroyed to much, but maybe it would be fairer to them to say that I don't get on with many classicists, who amp up the late republic and early imperial period at the expense of the chaos of the later period. I can't get on with the Greeks either, it's all Greek to me, lol.

I often wonder when looking at neolithic burial sites, at what they were doing and what they believed. I know it's the current trend to see all henge building as to do with "the ancestors", but I'm not sure about that? I'm sure that ancestors were important, but I'm wary of the interpretations of people like Mike Parker Pearson and that ancestors were important before humans developed the idea of gods? Theres something about that theory that dosen't sit right with me, maybe because it's presented as fact rather than an interpretation?

I don't read anything online, I never know where to look, when I do find stuff it's often in a format and font I find unfriendly. At uni I really struggled with J-Stor, partly because it had little on it for what I was studying at the time and I found it difficult to navigate and being such a massive technoklutz didn't help either.

I often find books from reviews in other publications, bibliographies from other books and just searching for authors other books and the "if you like this you might like....." on amazon I quite often look at somewhwere like Oxbow books and then try and find them elsewhere.

I seem to miss the good titles when perusing kindle subscription books, so thanks for sharing yours. My knowledge of Roman History is limited, but I completed a week of training on a Roman archaeological site in England years ago, and I also worked as a volunteer archaeologist at Pompeii. It was an amazing opportunity and I felt very privileged. My interest is mainly prehistoric and Iron Age material culture of the Levant. There are fewer certainties than with Roman archaeology but for me, that is the attraction. 

Do you use any open access platforms to read research papers? It seems that in some research areas, open access is becoming more widespread. Sadly, many of the papers I would like to read are subscription only.