Sample Saturday is when I wade through the eleventy billion samples I have downloaded on my Kindle. I’m slowly chipping away and deciding whether it’s buy or bye.

Dublin Tenement Life by Kevin C. Kearns

Why I have it: appeared on The Resident Judge of Port Phillip’s #6degrees chain.

Summary: An examination of life in the slums of Dublin from the early nineteenth century to the middle of the twentieth (and how living in the tenements has been the subject of memoirs about the ‘rare ould times’, equally criticised as ‘blinding nostalgia’).

I’m thinking: Yes (I do love Irish-misery-porn).

The Tall Man by Chloe Hooper

Why I have it: Because it’s ridiculous that I haven’t read this yet.

Summary: In 2004 on Palm Island, an Aboriginal settlement in northern Australia, Cameron Doomadgee was arrested for swearing at a white police officer. Forty minutes later he was dead in the jailhouse. The police claimed he’d tripped on a step, but his liver was ruptured. The main suspect was Senior Sergeant Christopher Hurley. Hooper followed the case alongside the pro bono lawyer who represented Doomadgee’s family.

I’m thinking: Yes. Why, why haven’t I read this yet?!

Useful Delusions by Shankar Vedantam & Bill Mesler

Why I have it: Came across it when reading about Anna Sorokin.

Summary: Self-deception does harm to us and to our communities. But if it is so bad for us, why is it ubiquitous? Vedantam and Mesler argue that, paradoxically, self-deception can also play a vital role in our success and well-being.

I’m thinking: Yes.