#reading rec
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I'm finally starting to wrap up the high-level outline of my SJ redemption SVSSS longfic! In an effort to be as accurate as I can be on abusive behavior and thought patterns as I go over my outline to fill in more details, I've recently started "Why Does He Do That?" by Lundy Bancroft. Honestly I'd highly recommend this for anyone to read - it offers great insight on how to identify abuse and describes the common patterns of thinking in abusers, debunks common myths on the causes of abuse, and outlines what to expect (and not expect) from someone who is truly trying to recover from abusive behavioral patterns.
#will post my resources on understanding c-pstd and childhood trauma separately since I think this book deserves it's own spotlight#fanfic#tw abuse#reading rec#lundy bancroft#svsss
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um hello!! im very new to comics, but of the characters I’ve seen so far, I really like Barbara and I was just wondering if you had any comic recommendations on where to start..? its very confusing trying to get into it all, but I’d like to be able to hold a conversation about someone I find interesting with my boyfriend so I can hear him info dump on me more cus he’s deep into dc so :)
Hi!!! That is so sweet omg 😭 Welcome to the weird wonderful world of comics!!! and also i’m so sorry for what I’m abt to throw at you lmao
Since you’ve sent this ask into an Oracle-centric blog, I’m gonna keep this rec list Oracle!Babs-centric (& also encourage my fellow mods to add on if they also have some recs!) I actually don’t have a whole lot of recs for Batgirl!Babs anyways, but I’ll be tagging my gen dc blog at the end in case you’d like to talk abt those or any other characters!
Also before I get Into the recs, I wanna give you some words of encouragement: there’s no right or wrong way to read! You’re also likely gonna have some well a lot of confusion at the beginning, esp bc there will be Events™️ that have ramifications™️ and you’re not always given full context of what’s come before or what’s happening concurrently with what you’re reading. I’ve been doing this for awhile and if I’ve learned anything, it’s that the more that you read & explore, the more fun you’ll have & the more things will usually start to make sense! But it’s all gotta start somewhere first! :D and you’ve def chosen a great character to be your launching point!
Im gonna be hopping around a bit in my recs here but I’ll try to keep it mostly in chronological order. That said, first up:
Suicide Squad (1987) - she appeared semi-regularly starting in #23! This was also her debut as Oracle! I really enjoyed the overall run & would normally highly recommend it, but also want to warn that it’s a pretty heavy read in terms of content itself (canon-typical violence ofc esp for a SuiSq comic, discussions of suicide ideation, period typical stereotyping/‘subversion’ of said stereotypes, but that’s a deeper discussion for a different blog) For that reason, I don’t necessarily recommend it for a first-time reader, esp if you’re wanting to solely focus on Babs. Team books usually aren’t super great when you’re reading for an individual character, in my experience, esp in a case like this where the character isn’t always necessarily part of the team or appears sporadically enough to disrupt the flow of following a storyline.
Birds of Prey (1999) - This team book breaks that prev rule tho, bc Babs is the leader & is in Damn near every issue of this run 😂 There’s several smaller team-ups before the main ‘99 run (BoP:Manhunt, BoP:Wolves, etc), which are also good as a prelude before the main run itself. This will be the longest thing that will give you a LOT to parse through & ymmv with a lot of it. (Dixon & Simone are the most prominent writers for it & without getting Into It they each have their Issues™️ & Crimes™️) It also crosses over with a few events/references others. Imo it’s a good window into what comics are like overall, esp when you get into a longer run with multiple writers at the helm. But it has an added bonus of keeping a pretty small cast at its forefront (for about half the run, it’s solely Babs n Dinah!) It also has a follow-up run in 2010 which is broken up by-
Oracle: The Cure - (technically a 3-issue mini-series but!!!) this one’s a culmination of Oracle & Calculator’s (it’s not rivalry? That can’t be the right word… Uhhh, nemesis-sitch?) from BoP & leads right into bringing Babs back to Gotham in Steph’s Batgirl run as well as the next BoP run I mentioned just a sec ago. It’s what I like to call connective (t)issues lol. Ymmv I think depending on if you’ve read BoP ‘99/TT ‘03 beforehand, but I hadn’t read a lot of TT before reading it at the time, and I enjoyed it a lot!
A couple individual issues I wanna suggest:
Batman Chronicles #5 - Oracle: Year One!!!!! Cannot rec this one enough!!! In lieu of reading Killing Joke (which really only serves Bruce, Joker, Jim Gordon’s characters) read this!!! LICHERALLY her origin in coming into her own as Oracle!!! This one is THE place to start, actually, before you read anything start here 😂
Batman: Gotham Knights #6 - okay, this one is admittedly a self-indulgent rec. Without spoiling the plot, it’s CLASSIC soap-opera level shit. The TENSION at play & the layers of Bruce & Babs dynamic, the messiness of the batfam!!! 👌 *chefs kiss* GK as a run in general too was a LOT of fun for me & Babs is a pretty prominent player in much of it, but this issue rlly takes the cake for me ngl
And to tie it all together for an extra couple of Important Event recs that you’ll run into esp if you pick up BoP first:
Batman: No Man’s Land - okay, this event was a Behemoth. It’s a LOT to read, but it is REALLY good imo as a launching point for where Bat-comics were at the start of the millennium. Babs takes the narrative role SO many times throughout & she rlly comes into her own by becoming a linchpin for the info system she builds for the batfam. Again, I don’t wanna discourage you when I say it’s a Long read, bc it’s well worth it imo, but also 100% okay to skip when you’re just starting out! It’s a big time sink!
Batman: Officer Down - okay put away the meme forJUST A SEC, our old friend Jim Gordon’s been shot & it’s up to Batma- oh wait bruce sulks by Jim’s bedside while Babs rallies the troops and GETS SHIT DONE to find who shot her dad? INTERESTING 🧐 In all seriousness tho, & compared to NML, this is a much easier bite-sized event that can give you a taste of what Event/crossoverComics™️ are generally like 👍
Bruce Wayne: Murderer?/Fugitive - okay so, take that same energy of the batfam having to Put In The Work to help Bruce out & flip it around bc now Bruce is the Main Suspect. The drama, the Intrigue™️. Pretty much everyone in the fam gets a moment to shine & this is def peak of how Babs fits into the fam during this era. This one runs a bit on the longer side & babs is again, more of a support role here, but god damn I loved it a lot!
I feel like I’m obligated to at least Mention Batman: War Games, mostly to note that it finally shakes the foundation of Oracle being the batfam’s main support (her CLOCKTOWER gets nerfed in this event 😭) If you read all of BoP and skip over this event & then are confused abt why Babs is suddenly being ejected from Gotham, just remember that her clocktower gets blown up, Steph dies, Bruce n Babs have a falling out & that’s basically why Babs starts flying around the country & settles in Metropolis for a bit instead of going back to Gotham. I reread this event at least once a year bc it gave me brainworms, I can not in good conscience recommend it to anyone bc no one understands her (War Games) like i do 💕 Godspeed if you decide to read it o7
Other recs/mentions:
Batgirl (2000) - okay if you end up reading NML, you’ll be introduced to Cass in it, & this run picks up with her. Babs is in it a LOT at the beginning as supporting cast to Cass (up to War Games ofc, but I won’t say much more abt that lol) I’m ngl, when I was trying to get more into comics, this run was what HOOKED me
Batgirl (2009) - so in a similar vein, Babs also features as a support for Steph too in her batgirl run. It’s… different from Cass’ run, but I also rlly love this one too. And also am forever bitter that the Batgirls run didn’t realize their potential BUT WE’RE NOT GETTING INTO THAT HERE.
Gonna mention Batman: Gotham Knights one more time bc again, while Babs isn’t a main focus, I think it’s rlly good at tying the batfam together during that era & giving a reader glimpses into other characters/dynamics. I think I got more out of it after I had read a few other runs from this time period (namely Robin, Azrael & some prominent stuff with Huntress), but can also see it as a potential launching point for new readers too 👍 if you wanna get more into the batfam/Batman but are intimidated by the Big Runs, this can potentially be a good bridge!
Gonna rapid fire mention that Babs as Oracle has a lot of appearances in Robin (93), Nightwing (96), JLA (96), Azrael (95) and obvsly Batman/Detective Comics from the 90s into 00s. I’ve read a few of these runs, and ymmv depending on how attached you may get to certain characters. But that’s what comics is all about! Getting attached and exploring other characters n teams n stuff!
A Gen note that I wanna end on: I wasn’t exaggerating when I said earlier abt how the more you read the more you’ll have fun. I can’t even begin to count the number of times that I’ve read something from a 90s/00s comic & was essentially jumpscared by a sudden Oracle cameo that I wasn’t expecting! She pops up in so many things throughout the universe at the time!!! She was THE info broker for all the supers!!! It makes me so insane that DC threw that all away to magi-cure her and demote her back to batgirl when she had grown so much 😭
anyways I hope you have fun!!! And again if you’re ever looking for other recs my more Gen dc blog is @dyketectivecomics! If my fellow mods or anyone else have some recs to add or to dispute haha, I’ll be tagging this so others can see/rb/reply to add their recs too 👍
Okay! \o/ that’s all I got for now! Happy reading anon!!!!
#barbara gordon#oracle#oracle day#birds of prey#reading rec#~randy#added a cut bc length 👍 and to add a warning that this isn’t just a list#I wanted to include some commentary bc having a reading list is good sometimes#but also having a Guide™️ is what I’m ultimately aiming for when I’m curating my lists now in 2024#esp bc I’m gonna be revamping the duke list soon but THATS a convo for the duke blog 😂#okay enough tag rambles. I hope this helps anon! sorry it took a Hot Sec!#you sent this right as the holidays were swinging at me full force 😭
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Another EXCELLENT release by writeblr's own @ashen-crest, I cannot say enough how much I absolutely loved this book. If you haven't checked out the Lutesong Trilogy yet, I highly recommend you go check it out. The characters are absolutely delightful, this is one of the few (only?) romances I've ever read that had me actually literally crying at the end, and the worldbuilding is really reminiscent of the spirit world in ATLA (especially the episodes with Hei Bai and the Painted Lady). If you like anxious bard bois, nerdy determined politician girls, and friendly overprotective feral shapeshifter spirit children, this is the book for you
#etta rambles#writeblr#writeblr community#book review#indie author#indie books#fantasy#fantasy romance#other people's writing#reading rec#website links
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Fairy Tale Retelling Book Recommendations
A favorite genre of mine. Here are the books I recommend in this category or that people have recommended to me. If you have any recommendations of ones I've missed, let me know! Always looking for more book recs.
Spinning Silver by Naomi Novik
The Bear and the Nightingale by Katherine Arden
A Court of Thorns and Roses by Sarah J Maas
To Kill a Kingdom by Alexandra Christo
Sea Witch by Sarah Henning
The Wrath and Dawn by Renee Ahdieh
Stolen Enchantress by Amber Argyle
Curse of the Wolf King by Tessonja Odette
The Witch's Heart by Genevieve Gornichec
For the Wolf by Hannah Whitten
House of Salt and Sorrows by Erin A Craig
Girl, Serpent, Thorn by Melissa Bashardoust
A Curse so Dark and Lonely by Brigid Kemmerer
The Evil Queen by Gena Showalter
Forest of a Thousand Lanterns by Julie C Dao
#book recommendations#book rec#reading recommendations#reading rec#books about fairy tales#fairy tale#fairy tale retellings#spinning silver#naomi novik#the bear and the nightingale#katherine arden#a court of thorns and roses#sarah j maas#to kill a kingdom#alexandra christo#sea witch#sarah henning#the wrath and the dawn#renee ahdieh#stolen enchantress#amber argyle#curse of the wolf king#tessonja odette#the witch's heart#genevieve gornichec#for the wolf#hannah whitten#house of salt and sorrows#erin a. craig#girl serpent thorn
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Okay, now that I've had my happy little emotional outburst. Here's the book I read today. Selected on the sticker recommendation of the mysterious Bookstore Kate, who I still have not actually encountered but who has delightfully gay taste.
I'm not looking it up until after I post this because I want to have a big AHA! moment if I'm right, but I am SO suspicious that this started as Good Omens fanfiction.
It's very cute and like...charmingly silly. Lots of found family feels. The romance felt a little...Idk, obvious? rushed? to me, but I think that's just because I've gotten used to ships that come from long-form media and aren't 100% canon, so they're more drawn-out and subtle.
The real delight comes from the gaggle of misfit magical children who bring the adults together (including the Antichrist.) The blurb at the top is very accurate.
The main character is a record-player-loving, slightly chubby middle-aged man stuck in a miserable bureaucracy full of rules he feels bound to and overseen by Extremely Upper Management (yes, that is what they're canonically called), his favourite colour is yellow, and his love interest is a tall skinny dude with terrible fashion sense who is...nope can't tell you, spoilers, but definitely Crowley-like in some ways. Less ways than the main is Aziraphale-like, but it's there.
Highly recommended reading for the GO fandom while y'all suffer in between-seasons hell. Just a very nice light read.
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As far as Princess Tutu fanfics go, Königsspiel is a fantastic read every time.
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hey if anyone is looking for a story about a young superhero conflicted about her powers I would recommend chum!! I am only three chapters in but having a blast!!
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Do you have a LOSH reading guide? I’m a big BIG fan of the Superfam, and wanted to branch out to some other groups (namely the Flash and Wonder families). I’m currently reading YJ 1998, and figured I might as well pick of Legion of Super Heroes since that’s the group the Superfam seems to intersect with the most, excluding JL.
I literally cannot recommend enough the Reboot Legion of Super-Heroes run - otherwise known as the Post-Zero Hour LOSH or 90s LOSH. This is Jenni's team and if Bart had not had his weird aging and remained in the future this would have been his team.
To START reading this series you need to begin sort of in the middle of two comic runs but this is the reading order.
Legion of Super Heroes (1989) issue #0
Legionnaires issue #0
Legion of Super-Heroes (1989) issue #62
Legionnaires issue #19
From here you will be bouncing back and forth between them - there does come a point where the team splits up (when part of the team is stranded in the past) where you no longer need to bounce between the two as each continue on their own separate plots but eventually they do intersect again and it's back to bouncing back and forth until the comics end...
Then to continue the series;
Legion Lost
Legion Worlds
The Legion
After The Legion you can find them again in
Final Crisis.
Other relevant/important specials;
Teen Titans/Legion Special
Titans/Legion of Super-Heroes: Universe Ablaze
There are additionally dozens of other comics where this team guest starred in or had special events centralized on them. Their core comics are generally pretty good at telling you when they are going to another playground, or did.
OTHER LEGION COMICS
I really really love the 2006 cartoon tie-in comics
The Legion of Super-Heroes in the 31st Century
I hope you enjoy and have fun reading!
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Babel on Sale
Yes, the book that got screwed over in the 2023 Hugo awards, the one by R.F. Kuang. Don't know about other retailers or elsewhere, but Kobo and Amazon both have it at $1.99 at the moment (Canadian and US sites thereof).
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I just finished @a-kind-of-merry-war' incredible book "One Night in Hartswood" and you guys! It's so good!! My heart, the pining has me screaming into a pillow. The identity porn was on point and there were so many parts that had me grinning like an idiot or freeze with my mouth hanging open.
The final act was everything i could have wished for. It had the perfect amount of drama and angst and such a satisfying conclusion
I adore all of the characters. Especially Ash. The sarcasm! The grumpiness! The way he's giving his brother shit but loves him so dearly!
I can also very much recommend the audiobook. There are two voice actors (one for Penn and one for Raff's pov) and it's so cool to hear the different accents. Also their voices are really nice to listen to
In conclusion, everybody go read this book! (i say very selflessly and not at all because i want to scream about this book with someone and read Ash fanfiction)
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january reading list! ❄️
happy new year everybody! to start off my year im going to really dive into the left hand of darkness and then do my dear friend a favor and finally start a little life. elizabeth zimmermann will also be by my side as i embark on my journey towards my january aran: the handsome chris sweater! :^) this will be a busy month!
#own post#reading list#january#reading#litblr#contemporary literature#ursula k le guin#the left hand of darkness#a little life#knitting#booklr#reading rec#reading atm#winter reads
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For anyone who likes fantasy with interesting settings and magic, an archer as a main character, great romances but also family love, betrayal, and a good dose of whump in the last 1/3 of the book then I totally recommend Daughter of the Moon Goddess by Sue Lynn Tan. Easily became one of my favorite books even before I got to the betrayal part.
#daughter of the moon goddess#sue lynn tan#books#reading#reading recommendations#reading rec#book rec#book recs
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I JUST SAW A RECOMMENDATION OF TRASH OF THE COUNTS FAMILY AND THEY USED THE WORDS: "Soon he encounters Rosalyn, Crown Princess of the Berck Kingdom. Rosalyn is a cold-hearted and ambitious woman. To everyone’s surprise, she is lovestruck at the sight of Rok Soo and leaves everything behind to pursue him.
As a result, what comes next is filled with hilarious moments and some heartwarming romance coated with serious plot twists"
I-I CAN'T- OMG THIS IT HILARIOUS!!! THIS PERSON SERIOUSLY SAW THE MANHWA AND RECOMMENDED IT AS A SHOJO ROMANCE MANHWA! GOD- THIS IS AMAZING-
"she is lovestruck at the sight of Rok Soo and leaves everything behind to pursue him."
HOW DID THEY SEE ROSALYN AND THOUGHT OF THIS LINE!?????? LIKE WHAT THE HELL??????
Talk about missing the point, I can't help but wonder how many people went to see the manhwa and are commenting "Yo, when does the romance starts to develop?" Or when the wars come and the confused screams start to accumulate-
I CAN'T- THERE ARE PEOPLE IN THIS HOUSE, I CAN'T START LAUGHING LIKE A GODDANM WITCH-
Leaving this aside, go read Trash of the counts family! It's amazing, specially for me who read the novel (Not all of it yet, but certainly way ahead of the manhwa for now) It's incredible to see certain scenes illustrated. The art is amazing and it's just getting better as we go.
#trash of the count's family#out of character#reading recommendations#or the fails at it#those poor children#and adults#i am dyiiiiing#reading rec
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Anyone feel like reading a horror? I have a good rec but keep in mind in a few days almost all the ch are gonna be locked, cause yeah, it's on webtoons.
The MC is stuck in a high school romance novel, with everyone around her looking like human shadows, and only the ML having a face, she follows the plot to the dot, however the day the confession is supposed to happen, for the first time something not a part of the plot happens, and that something is a zombie outbreak. Not only that, but every time she fails to fulfill the plot for any reason, she wakes back up on the morning the glitch happened. The characters, story and the art style are all great. Characters are well thought out, the story has a nice flow, and the art does a great job at showing how a typical romance manhwa descends into horror.
I myself don't really like zombies tbo, but I really love this. I actually gave it a try because before it was even picked up for an eng serialization, I loved that creator's previous work, and did not even read the summary, so the ending of ch1 really did a good job of hooking me thru surprise hahaha. After it got an official tl I waited for it to go past the fantl but then I thought I might as well wait till it ends, so I just started reading it again last night. Here's the link:
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Huge library envy! 😳
A more general question - what is your advice to hobby researchers for building a balanced biographical sketch of a historical figure? How do you approach biographies to account for various biases and perspectives, as well as simply mistakes? To what degree should you refer to the primary sources directly?
I took awhile to answer this cause I think it’s a really good question (series of questions?)
General Research Advice:
The best advice I can give anyone is to get really familiar with how to use online resources. There’s a lot of free ones- and it’s not worth subscribing to something if you already know how to find it for free (unless you have disposable income and wanna support databases that have a paywall- but consumption should be optional and not a result of ignorance!). The most important thing with these is to get familiar with their search functions. I honestly find posts with long lists really overwhelming, so I’m not going to do that for you. Instead, here’s some key starters:
- https://archive.org/
- https://founders.archives.gov/
- https://www.loc.gov/
I can guarantee, if you get really good with a few useful tools, you’ll be a lot more-effective than if you run around looking for every possible resource. You could spend days on these sites and get a whole lot out of it.
Unfortunately, I kinda think books and other physical-resources (like maps or artwork or even tours of locations) are the opposite story. Most of them are going to cost something to access (even if it’s just the gas-money to go to your local library); and the more you can access, the better-off you’ll be. I say that because their scope is limited to what information they individually-contain, so it’s not like you’ll get anything out of becoming an expert in reading an individual book (or visiting a specific battle-site) like you could in becoming an expert in using an individual search-engine.
So with books and physical-resources, it’s a cost-benefit analysis every time, and then just pulling as much out of things as you can. Do you have the ability to visit a museum or a site? If so- can you take pictures of the exhibits to pull notes from later? Do you have specific questions you want to answer from your visit? Is there an expert on-site that you can get contact information from? Does the book have a good appendix of sources, and if you recognize any- were they trustworthy?
A personal library is a nice luxury, but it’s expensive and it has second-order effects of requiring storage and organization and then just being burdensome to move around with. So, if you want one- make it as cheap as possible. Thrift stores are your best friend. I know some places don’t have many of those (one of the reasons I didn’t enjoy California), or the time/ability to go thrift shopping, so I’ll also recommend thriftbooks. It’s a site that sells used books for decent prices with free shipping and a rewards program.
Bias & A Balanced Approach
I thought I’d made a post about this before, but a quick search didn’t find anything so, here it is, two-step process:
Know the writer
Cross-check
Know the writer:
What’re their credentials?
Where do they come from?
What’s their cultural background?
What influences them?
Who do they work for?
Are they making money off this?
Are they gaining influence from this?
What else have they produced?
Are they consistent in their messages?
Cross-check:
Use the appendix- go to where the information came from and, if you don’t trust- verify (this is where the search tools online are really helpful!).
Read broadly. The more material you’re familiar with across various disciplines, the more likely it is that you’ll be able to sniff-out inaccuracies or skewed framing. Being more broadly-focused also helps you recognize a specific author’s strengths and weaknesses and where you can trust their word or not.
Also- how much do you care?
As a hobbyist, I’m assuming you’re not making money off of research or being graded on how well you retained information. If you’re learning for fun, don’t bog yourself down so heavily with worrying over accuracy that it’s not fun anymore. It has to be a sustainable balance because- if you can’t find the energy to read a lot, you’re going to be worse at recognizing the quality of what you’re reading.
Basically- take pride in knowing what you know, but also...you don’t know anything anyway, so have fun with it.
Everyone has biases. You have biases!
Learn them, love them, harness them.
Bias is the spice of knowledge- no nutritional value, but it makes everything taste better.
I can be really critical of biographies that have obvious biases (and I think we need to be for ones like Chernow’s Hamilton that define public-understanding of a character), but bias is not a bad thing for a biography to have. It’s the story of someone’s life and if there’s no bias, it’ll come across dry and unfeeling. If the author is trying too hard to disconnect from the humanity of the character, it won’t say anything relatable and therefore won’t mean anything. What you’re really looking for is whether the bias is responsibly-handled.
Primary and Secondary Sources
I feel like we all have a gut-instinct to value primary-sources (i.e. contemporary sources for the sake of this conversation) as the end-all to understanding an event, and I wanna say upfront, that’s not true at all. There’s important utility in both.
Primary sources:
Give first-hand accounts of things
Give invaluable insights on the subject themselves.
Give details of something as close to the event as possible.
Secondary sources:
Give broader context to make details make more sense
Give insights from someone with expertise in fields you might not know much about.
Give details about events that the author of a primary source did not or could not know.
So, obviously you have to use them in conjunction with each other, and here, I think you have a sort of ‘inside-out’ or ‘outside-in’ approach.
Inside-out: your primary sources are as close to the event as possible, so starting there, you’ll basically be working your way outward from the contemporary author’s limited perspective, pulling out topics that you want to understand more about and then looking for more information on that topic.
Outside-in: your secondary sources are outsiders’ perspectives on the conglomeration of sources they’ve drawn together. Your task is just to hone in on those sources individually and see if you can gain anything new out of doing your own assessments.
As for how much you need to use one or the other...
I think that’s really a self-assessment. Just be really honest with yourself on your own reading-comprehension and how much assistance you’ll need with contextualization for a specific topic. The more unfamiliar you are with something, the more you should probably go outside-in for awhile until you can start to recognize things for yourself.
Hope this was useful if you managed to read all of it!
Happy Hunting!
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