I’m very happy to have learned more about historical art, a topic I am horribly lacking in. Learning about the intricacies of Gothic Cathedrals beyond the flying buttresses was great and put the style of architecture into a whole new light.
That being said, I’m going back to my bread and butter in learning about warfare! ⚔️✝️
I feel like I hit a bit of milestone with this one, not because of the content, although it was another great book, but because it has shown how far I have come in my newfound reading journey.
If you go all the way back to the beginning of this thread of reposts, you’ll see I started reading again with the goal of not just learning, but also with rebuilding my habits. I hadn’t read any books since I was in grade school and I felt that my mind was rotting away. Like I said in my post four months ago, my attention span was shot and I needed constant stimulation to just operate throughout the day. The task of just sitting down and focusing entirely on a book was actually quite difficult at first—I wasn’t illiterate, but at the beginning of my little literary journey I constantly had to go back to reread pages and paragraphs because my mind would wander in the middle of them. Because of this it would take me weeks just to finish the shortest of books.
However, with my last book, about 300~ pages, I finished it in just two days. For people who have read constantly for their whole lives this may not seem like much, but for me this is quite the milestone. I intentionally sat down with the goal of finishing it within two days and I did it. I don’t how many hours exactly I spent reading, but probably around 7-8 hours in total? So, I still have work to do in regard to my speed and efficiency—I still have to reread a few paragraphs here and there, just not even close to how much I used to four months ago—but I am quite proud of my progress. (I may also go back to reread some of the books I began with because I doubt I internalized everything properly.)
It’s amazing, I can genuinely feel my mind working better in practically every aspect.
However, on “Sword and Scimitar”, it truly shows how evil Islam is as a religion. Everyone needs to be educated on the doctrines of this religion. How any sin can be forgiven by going on Jihad; how the Islamic doctrine of “loyalty and enmity” literally engraves tribalism into the religion itself, and so much more that I get uncomfortable thinking about.
Regardless, onto my next book. This time about Medieval Architecture.