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Thanks for this! I've been looking for a good book on the Spanish Civil War, in either Spanish or English. The one American book I was recommended by someone, I didn't like. I'd like to keep searching regardless of the book's language or what country it has won prizes in. Could you also include book awards from other non-english speaking countries?
Earlier quoted context omitted.
I wonder if it partially because "write like a human" is kind of a vacuous request. Like, it's the objective everyone including me has been saying that we want, but there's no one way to write like a human and and humans don't even have a good definition past "I know it when I see it." There's a lot of work in the humanities about different aspects of good writing, but that's not quite the same thing. And anyway they…
Each person writes in a different personal way, so writing “like a human” would actually require a model being able to purposefully make the specific choices that an individual human writer does. However, general purpose LLMs like Fable have been trained on huge amounts of all kinds of data, and therefore find it exceedingly hard to break out of the grooves carved by that data. They can’t avoid defaulting to centroid…
Thank you for sharing this. I do think book prizes are a better-than-average signal but I previously volunteered with a book award. I will caution that pretty much every publisher mass-submits these books for consideration in every remotely relevant prize. It is a cost of doing business (similar to how photographers pay to enter photography competitions to try and win the "award winning photographer" title, or busine…
Thanks for this! I've been looking for a good book on the Spanish Civil War, in either Spanish or English. The one American book I was recommended by someone, I didn't like. I'd like to keep searching regardless of the book's language or what country it has won prizes in. Could you also include book awards from other non-english speaking countries?
- "The Spanish Civil War" by Paul Preston
- "Homage to Catalonia" by George Orwell
Books on the same topic on my reading list (and quite frankly can't wait to get hold of them):
- "The Spanish Civil War" by Hugh Thomas
- "The Fight for Spain" by Antony Beevor
Thanks for this! I've been looking for a good book on the Spanish Civil War, in either Spanish or English. The one American book I was recommended by someone, I didn't like. I'd like to keep searching regardless of the book's language or what country it has won prizes in. Could you also include book awards from other non-english speaking countries?
Books on the Spanish Civil War I have read and can wholeheartedly recommend: - "The Spanish Civil War" by Paul Preston - "Homage to Catalonia" by George Orwell Books on the same topic on my reading list (and quite frankly can't wait to get hold of them): - "The Spanish Civil War" by Hugh Thomas - "The Fight for Spain" by Antony Beevor
Thanks for this! I've been looking for a good book on the Spanish Civil War, in either Spanish or English. The one American book I was recommended by someone, I didn't like. I'd like to keep searching regardless of the book's language or what country it has won prizes in. Could you also include book awards from other non-english speaking countries?
So I'd read The Collapse of the Spanish Republic, by Stanley Payne. He was a journalist in Spain through the entire period, so most of what he does is provide a first hand account. He never claims to try to be impartial, but he's pretty nouanced, as he knew a lot of the players personally.
Earlier quoted context omitted.
Books on the Spanish Civil War I have read and can wholeheartedly recommend: - "The Spanish Civil War" by Paul Preston - "Homage to Catalonia" by George Orwell Books on the same topic on my reading list (and quite frankly can't wait to get hold of them): - "The Spanish Civil War" by Hugh Thomas - "The Fight for Spain" by Antony Beevor
I've only read Homage to Catalonia out of those, which is a personal retelling from Orwell, are the other books in the same style? What's the difference you'd say between the ones you list?
Regarding the other two authors in my previous comment: Hugh Thomas was also a leading Hispanist historian [2], and Antony Beevor is a prominent military historian [3]. I expect both books to be in the same vein as Preston's.
(Quick aside for the astute reader that noticed all of the recommended authors being non-Spanish: I find Spanish politics extremely polarized; the Spanish Civil War being perhaps the most polarizing topic. As such, I find outsider's perspectives to be more balanced and objective.)
References:
1. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Paul_Preston
2. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Hugh_Thomas,_Baron_Thomas_of_S...