About to start The Capital Order by Clara E. Mattei
Gimme some recommendations
Started reading that new translation of Losurdo's book on Stalin. Really, really liking it so far. About 10% into it.
so far literally nothing. its been a bad week
but here's some I have recently read or have on the docket coming up:
- To Kill A Nation (parenti's book on yugoslavia, honestly should be required reading)
- The Anti-Communist Impulse (super early parenti, remains to be seen if it will be as good as his later work but I was grabbed by the intro a bit)
- We, the Drowned (historical fiction recommended by someone on here, haven't started it yet)
- If We Burn (the new Vincent Bevins book, about all the mass protest movements of the past 10-15 years and why most of them failed to achieve their aims)
Post about the capital order if you have thoughts or questions! I liked it but had nobody to discuss it with lol
Do you read any novels? Not to be like
but they contain embedded knowledge about other people's experiences and can really help you escape a funk (or fall deeper)a lot fewer recently but I used to. And We, the Drowned is kind of a novel I think? I feel like there's a lot of trash novels, and a lot of very good, but firmly escapist novels out there, and those categories have lost a lot of luster for me. Like I used to be a big John Green head but his archliberal worldview kinda doesn't do it for me like it used to, same with his brother hank. Its one of those things where if I can only make enough time to read one or two books every like 2 months, then I feel obligated to make the most of them by reading books that will teach me something or reinforce something or give me hope, politically, or whatever, which deprioritizes a lot of the stuff I used to read, like scifi and other novels. Plus I mostly get book recs from here, or from ambient exposure/references in media or articles, so those recs are slanted heavily towards theory
I might pick up grapes of wrath though and put it in the queue for whatever that's worth lol
and I never did finish American Gods despite trying for over a year. Fiction is ironically better in this regard but one thing I struggle with is that reading, even though I really enjoy it, sinks a lot of time and just doesn't grab out for attention like the internet does. I don't even go many places online besides here and youtube, but between those two there's basically unlimited content which is much more grabby than most books
lmao
I enjoyed it but I wasn't blown away by it, it wasn't a "can't put it down" book for me. I think it gets better but idk lol
This year I seem to have mostly read novels I was recommended in the process of chatting up other leftists: Perdido Street Station, Journey to the End of the Night, & How the Steel Was Tempered
I tried to reread Use of Weapons then Excession and was horrified to discover I now find Iain M. Banks annoying???
Read Hyperion and the anthology Stories of Your Life and Others by Ted Chiang because I heard it had a good short story which was mangled into the script for Arrival then went back and skimmed fucking uhhh Forever War by Joe Haldeman again because it's sort of historically significant as Vietnam War brainrot fiction. Briefly looked at Stranger in a Strange Land for the same reason. Tried to read Man in the High Castle but I just was not in the mood. I should probably pick back up on the scifi???
I think I also read Stories of your life and others... it is on my shelf at least
I honestly can't remember. My memory is shit for things like that.
A Confederacy of Dunces by John Kennedy Toole. However a friend loaned me a copy of Brutal/Kunnin so I think I'll burn through that before I get too deep.
Kapital Vol. 1 (shout out to the c/theory book club!)
Kings of the Wyld by Eames
Fossil Capital by Malm
Those are the currently reading list. My partner got my a bunch of Terry Pratchett novels for the holiday and Eco's Name of the Rose has been sitting on my desk a while.
Im reading Anti-Dühring, almost 100 pages in but the section on world schematism hurt my head
Working on my thesis, I am reading idiotic things on idiotic topic, can't disclose due to identifiable information. I read song of achilles recently. And earthsea 1-4. No plans, really, except some random fantasy slob that sounds interesting
I just finished Unmasking Autism and am gonna let my brain finish digesting it for a couple days.
I wanna try and finish a splatterpunk novel called Cows by Mathew Stokoe. I don't recommend it if you get grossed out by gore and bodily fluids and all the stuff in between. This book has all the trigger warnings. But somehow I deeneath, I'm getting a weird but somewhat comforting view of our world and just how hopeless it is. What the story is about is a nice sort of slice of life prose, but his writing is very discriptive and disgusting.
I am planning on finishing Jesus and John Wayne. It's a history of the church in the US, how it became so misogynistic and abusive and how it weaslef it's way into modern political discourse.
I also wanna try and get a chunk of Killing Hope knocked out but that book is straight up depressing.
After all that I'm gonna do a dive into some theory adjacent texts regarding LGBTQ+ and race.
