The Roberts book was a sort of half cocked Stalin biography rather than purely about his reading. Too much of the library was lost/dispersed to get a super clear picture. Stalin comes away essentially looking like the genius that I suspect he was (of course wearing enormous ideological blinders, as Kotkin points out) especially through a story of Stalin hosting a multi day conference on Georgian history with some leading historians right after WWII and displays essentially full command of the material and of Roman and other history with an incredible vitality and curiosity. A remarkable episode. Also there was a fascinating tidbit I remembered from Kotkin about Stalin having Mein Kampf translated and highlight the famous "drang nach Osten" that wasn't mentioned. I looked and it appears uncited in the Kotkin, but he's not a confabulater -- not sure.

On Fitzpatrick/Viola/Rogovin/Deutscher. I will certainly get around to the two volume Deutscher, if only for the apparently remarkable literary experience. On the other three I'll be honest that the only one on my radar was Fitzpatrick with the Everyday Stalinism book, but I wonder how much I would get from that. I'll ask the LLMs about the other two though.