Reading List August 2026

What I've read on holiday during August 2026

Here is the list, complete with comments, of what I read in August 2026.

Basil H. Liddell Hart, Storia militare della seconda guerra mondiale, Oscar Mondadori#

Published in English as “History of the Second World War”.

The volume explains each battle across every WWII theater (Europe, Africa, and the Pacific). It’s a monumental tactical and strategic analysis of the entire conflict, but it’s a bit outdated (published in 1970); I suppose I’ll have to supplement this reading with more recent works on the topic. Some examples of Liddell Hart’s biases debunked in later literature:

• He depicted Rommel as an apolitical military leader, whereas later research proved him wrong. (See Role in Rommel Myth on Basil H. Liddell Hart’s Wikipedia page.)
• Overemphasis on the “Indirect Approach”. He forced the complex campaigns of World War II into his rigid theoretical framework, attributing success or failure almost entirely to whether a “direct” or “indirect” strategy was used—often downplaying industrial capacity, logistics, and raw attrition. (See Irwin, A. S. H. (1993). “Liddell Hart and the Indirect Approach to Strategy”. In The Science of War: Back to First Principles, Routledge.)
• He framed the German victory over France as the ultimate vindication of his personal theories on armored mobility, minimizing the systemic French doctrine, communication, and leadership failures that actually enabled the collapse. (See Russell Hart’s Guderian: Panzer Pioneer or Myth Maker? for more info on this issue.)

Olivier Norek, I Guerrieri d’Inverno, Rizzoli#

Published in English as “The Winter Warriors”.

The prose didn’t fully convince me, but the powerful chronicle of the characters’ sacrifices and their moral example are inspiring. It feels more relevant than ever since it echoes what is happening in Ukraine against Russia (once again). Best novel of the year so far.

R.F. Kuang, Babel. Una storia arcana, Oscar Mondadori#

Published in English as “Babel (Babel, or the Necessity of Violence)”. Read for my partner’s book club August meetup.

I hated this book. It feels as though two completely different works were smashed into one. Spoilers ahead, as I need to address key plot points.

• First part: A fantasy celebration of life as a student in Oxford that reads like Harry Potter fan fiction. Certain relationships lack the space to be fully developed—for instance, those between Ramy and Victoire. The section regarding the Royal Institute of Translation and its inner workings is fascinating. It’s okay.
• Second part: After Professor Lovell’s murder on the ship, the novel shifts to a moralistic critique of colonialism via characters who change in a flash. The first example that comes to mind is when Robin, Ramy, and Victoire mistreat Letty for being a British woman who hasn’t experienced the same discrimination; yet, in previous chapters, they were best friends—there is no narrative reason why this hostility suddenly arises. Another controversial passage along these lines occurs when Victoire conceals Letty’s panic attack from public attention in the college’s buttery.¹ Again, there is no reason Robin would think this about Letty when both have been outsiders at Oxford. All the dialogue and footnotes highlighting white privilege and the way Westerners have overshadowed other cultures by imposing their canon end up feeling grotesque. I am sympathetic to the core thesis, but the book treats you like an idiot by conveying its message in such a didactic manner—it has no faith in the reader’s intelligence. Furthermore, it makes no sense how Robin, the protagonist, becomes as ruthless as his half-brother Griffin, adopting his methods to destroy Babel by the end of the book without any real buildup. Even if we charitably view this stylistic choice as a parody to highlight the darker side of anti-colonial struggle, it doesn’t work.

It’s overly simplistic from a historical perspective regarding the causal roots of colonialism, and sermonic and paternalistic regarding issues of sexism and racism in this fantasy version of 19th-century British academia.

I did, however, enjoy the worldbuilding around the magic tied to the act of translation and the silver bars. But that isn’t enough to save the novel.

Overall, while the prose is well-crafted, the novel lacks substance.

Min Jin Lee, Pachinko. La moglie coreana, Piemme editore#

Published in English as simply “Pachinko”.

Family drama is the backbone of good literature, and Pachinko checks all the boxes here.

The novel explores the often-overlooked tragedy of discriminated Koreans living in Japan before and after WWII: many could not return to Korea after 1945 or chose to stay because they were born in Japan and had never known their ancestral homeland. There is a derogatory term for these first-, second-, and third-generation Koreans living in Japan: zainichi. The word appears frequently throughout the novel.

Pachinko depicts a generational story of resilience and hope regarding a Korean family subject to social, economic, and epistemic injustice. Yet the novel is not merely a piece of social and historical criticism; it is a testament to how one can flourish despite hardship, while raising poignant questions about the parent-child dynamic.

I loved how Lee used each character to illustrate how discrimination changed shapes yet remained deeply rooted beneath Japanese society at different points in the 20th century.

Strongly recommended. Apple has adapted in 2022 the book into a tv series.²