I decided that these merry days leading to Christmas, when we’re infused with positive sentiments and hope for humanity, are as good as any other to read… #Hitler’s Mein Kampf.

😲

Not really! In fact, I’m a bit embarrassed to leave my e-book reader lying around so that others can see what I’m reading… But my Theory of Reading actually supports and encourages reading anything that has been very influential (for good or for ill) regardless of its literary merits, its veracity, its applicability today, or its moral qualities.

Not to put them all necessarily in the same bucket, but I have read The Iliad, The Odyssey, The Communist Manifesto and Atlas Shrugged — and I would read The Bible and The Quran too: all of them #books that are ( in a way or another) wrong, false, corrosive, harmful, evil, racist, sexist, pro-violence, or pro-war — or even all of those things at the same time!

Granted: #MeinKampf may well be the wrongest among the wrong books… And in a way, that contributes to making it “useful” as a reading.

https://www.goodreads.com/review/list/64930929-tripu?shelf=currently-reading