People born blind or deaf-blind.
Some years ago the Perfect Master was asked if any non-Muslims had been to Mecca on a hajj. Even before starting reading I thought, “Burton, if anybody.” Sure enough…
I especially liked the last two lines.
Any one born into poverty, raised in uncertain circumstances who becomes a rich, successful person in their own right. Like Stephen King or Bill Clinton.
Diaries and collections of papers from the Colonial era through the American Civil War. The Papers of Henry Bouquet are among my favorites. I also enjoy a lot of the stuff written as memoirs by the people who lived then and early county histories such as Northumberland County in the American Revolution.
Personal travel journals of people from Burton’s time. Going to out of the way places not many people had been yet. Freya Stark, Younghusband, Burton, but also unknown wives and daughters, dragged along to dusty corners of the globe. They are invariably interesting and eye opening reads. Some were the gentlemanly class adventurers, but also children raised in far flung outposts, etc. I have a largish collection, I used to haunt the used book stores for them. They are naive, revealing and somewhat charming, as a rule.
These are good, but so are the stories of idiots who commit suicide by stupidity. Like the folks who take a “shortcut” in a snow storm, and end up freezing to death in their Kia, or decide to buy a boat and sail to Hawaii with a stranger they pick up at the marina, and end up stuffed in a foot locker on the bottom of the ocean.
Great stuff!
I guess serial killers are totally boring to me, because by definition it’s just motiveless malignant evil. You’re never going to learn anything by studying these people.
I’m not interested in Gary Ridgeway. I’m much more interested in his three ex-wives. Like, how did you manage to survive living with a guy whose hobby is raping and strangling women? Like, didn’t you notice you were living with a psychopath?
You might enjoy the TV show ‘evil lives here’
I’ve been reading books by North Korean escapees recently. Fascinated by their lives and hardships and what tips them over the edge to leave NK.
StG
I love stories about people who fight oppression.
I went through a long period of reading everything I could find on serial killers, including anything by John Douglas, the FBI agent who revolutionized their identification. The most compelling part of those stories for me was the ability of someone like that to compartmentalize and to function within society - so killers like Dahmer, who barely did, were of less interest to me, compared to someone like the BTK killer, who I wondered about for years until he was captured.
In retrospect a little weird, and I hadn’t thought about any of that for a long while until I saw this thread.