I finally got around to reading this excellent book by Bhante Sujato but couldn’t see it coming up in its own thread any where so thought it worth posting.
Despite a mostly academic flavour (I can’t say I understood it all) it is an excellent distraction in difficult times. Bhante’s humour is in evidence and the excitement of the search for what the Buddha actually said about Mindfulness is rather wonderful to experience.
This site has a number of other books by our fantastic founder.
IME the heavy scholarly writing is only really the first 7 chapters, which are laying the foundation for the rest of the book. From Chapter 8 onward, there’s is an exploration of what mindfulness is and it’s context, thorough exploration of the various sources, and culminates in an attempt at re-constructing a pre-sectarian satipatthana sutta: https://satipatthanamula.com/
I also greatly enjoy Bhikkhu Anālayo’s works, both are, to me, actually fun to read as the scholarly side of them has an investigative flavor.
I found this a most helpful book too. Particularly for the understanding it shed for me on what looked like vast differences between the teaching of meditation as vipassana or samatha that sometimes happens, rather than as both.
You probably already know this; but for the benefit of others, another of Bhikkhu Sujato’s books, A Swift Pair of Messengers[archive] addresses exactly that.
Hope you’re doing well too. 
