I like to binge read and self educate. When coming to a new topic (let’s say History of Western Art or Pharmacology) I’ve never found a single place where I could look up the key texts that a university student would be reading to get into the subject. Usually I search around and find an actual university’s reading list or something equally well put together but it’s hit and miss.
Had anyone ever come across a single place that holds this kind of info over a wide range of subjects? (Books specifically)
I have no idea why none of you are mentioning libgen.
Thank you, never seen that before
Yeah pick your favorite university, lookup the course catalog for your subject of interest, then for each class grab the syllabus/reading list for that class.
Use your favorite online resources to get those books/papers.
Pretty much what I do. Sometimes I find the list isn’t public or the course is more niche than in interested in.
Best thing to do is read … and read as much and as often as you can. Especially when you are young and under the age of 30 as all that reading will shape and guide the test of your life and you will remember and be impacted by everything you take in.
I’ve never seen such a thing.
I usually just read the Wikipedia article, and then check the sources at the bottom to dive a little deeper but they usually aren’t books.
Every wikipedia article has a bibliography at the end.
I find it’s more often than not ‘heavyweight’ texts, especially on history articles where really really niche researchers have books or papers on the matter. That’s useful. But I’m generally more after what a professor would assign first year students as an introduction to The Romantics or English Painters. Sometimes Wikipedia has that, sometimes it has “Brush techniques employed by Turner in the summer of 1798 by Prof George Bannister, Prof Rodger Walker et al.”
they look like kids’ stuff, but they’re pretty deep dives into the topic they’re talking about
