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snake and bake posted:Whoever mentioned a book club, I would be interested in that. Maybe it will fare better this time, some people finding themselves with an unexpected surplus of reading time My votes would be for The Half Has Never Been Told (would love to re-read, can confirm it's a fantastic book and a comprehensive takedown of the Lost Cause bullshit) or The Ministry for the Future (want to read and heard good things)
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Dec 28, 2020 17:35
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Epic High Five posted:My votes would be for The Half Has Never Been Told (would love to re-read, can confirm it's a fantastic book and a comprehensive takedown of the Lost Cause bullshit) or The Ministry for the Future (want to read and heard good things) Oh oops. To be more clear, I was just recommending books in general, not necessarily for the book club. I'd be down for whatever though, I don't really care what it is or if I've already read it before I haven't heard of Ministry for the Future but I'll check it out. Literally any book mentioned in this thread gets auto-added to my list of books to read. Y'all have helped me find some extremely excellent books, so thanks for that edit: oh, I forgot to mention one because I'm a scatterbrain, but also currently reading Reinventing Collapse: The Soviet Experience and American Prospects by Dmitry Orlov and come to think of it, that would probably be my book club vote because it seems like a potentially valuable read at the current time snake and bake has issued a correction as of 18:11 on Dec 28, 2020 |
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Dec 28, 2020 17:50
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I was the only person to finish the last book club hosted by oxsnard which was "A Fine Balance" by Rohinton Mistry, which was really great. If you do make a book club, just know 90% of people won't post again after saying they will read it. Currently reading "Children of Time" by Adrian Tchaikovsky. Really unique scifi so far. err has issued a correction as of 17:43 on Dec 29, 2020 |
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Dec 28, 2020 20:09
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err posted:I was the only person to finish the last book club hosted by twoday which was "A Fine Balance" by Rohinton Mistry, which was really great. If you do make a book club, just know 90% of people won't post again after saying they will read it. This has been the outcome numerous times, and why this is a discussion thread and not a reading group lol Getting people to show up online for stuff is pulling teeth at the best of times, but when I ran the first iteration not a single person, including the one who picked the book, showed lol
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Dec 28, 2020 20:12
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The Half Has Never Been Told is required reading IMO. White Trash: The 400-Year Untold History of Class in America is a decent companion piece and highlights how racism really hosed up many opportunities for class solidarity in the US.
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Dec 28, 2020 23:15
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The Half Has Never Been Told is a pretty good starting point for learning about the Civil War because you get a good sense of the socio-political situation in America in the decades before the war. Some of the narrative history is pretty clunky but that's a minor quibble. Slavery's Capitalism would also be a good place to start. Books like these help all the more if you decide to tackle stuff like Shelby Foote's Civil War history (still required reading imo). While I wouldn't consider Foote a Lost Causer he does kinda flirt with it in some respects. Generally he gives you enough raw material to make your own judgment of all the major players of the war, with the glaring exception of Nathan Bedford Forrest. By far the most irresponsible thing Foote does is in his coverage of the Fort Pillow Massacre, when Forrest ordered his men to mow down hundreds of black troops who had surrendered when the fort was taken. Foote selectively quotes from one of Forrest's own sergeants who took part in the massacre but omits the part where he says Forrest ordered the black troops "shot down like dogs." Foote tries to absolve Forrest of any responsibility and it's really transparent and gross.
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Dec 29, 2020 16:09
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The New Jim Crow is also a great book to learn lots of critical stuff that is hidden from you, and also get really really mad a whole lot
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Dec 29, 2020 16:15
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err posted:I was the only person to finish the last book club hosted by twoday which was "A Fine Balance" by Rohinton Mistry, which was really great. If you do make a book club, just know 90% of people won't post again after saying they will read it. Cool. I enjoyed Tchaikovsky's Shadows of the Apt series so I'll def check out Children of Time. Thanks for mentioning it Epic High Five posted:This has been the outcome numerous times, and why this is a discussion thread and not a reading group lol Well that's a bummer lol
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Dec 29, 2020 16:50
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Eat This Glob posted:The Half Has Never Been Told is required reading IMO. White Trash: The 400-Year Untold History of Class in America is a decent companion piece and highlights how racism really hosed up many opportunities for class solidarity in the US. 1000% agreed that The Half should be required reading for any American but goddamn it's a rough one to get through. Cried throughout it. I had to space it out in small chunks because it made me so simultaneously furious and sad that I could hardly cope. I don't normally react that strongly to reading about the horrors of history, but that book really loving got me. 
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Dec 29, 2020 16:59
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Epic High Five posted:The New Jim Crow is also a great book to learn lots of critical stuff that is hidden from you, and also get really really mad a whole lot everyone should read this imo
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Dec 30, 2020 22:48
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If you want a little relevant reading material you can always check out The Day Freedom Died: The Colfax Massacre and the Betrayal of Reconstruction. A short synopsis could be :A contested election goes real bad. A compliment to New Jim Crow could be: Slavery by Another Name The Re-Enslavement of Black Americans from the Civil War to World War II. It's been a while since I've read them but recall them being good and then angry while reading it.
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Jan 13, 2021 14:59
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Kim Stanley Robinson was just recently on Pod drat America to discuss his incredible (reading but not finished yet) book The Ministry for the Future, and reaffirmed my love of him by exactly elaborating my own opinions on the book Solaris versus the movie Solaris. I highly recommend both (the podcast and the book, not the movie which is boring trash) His argument that nothing he writes is actually insane because soviet-bloc and adjacent writers were way crazier is one I'm extremely lmao about
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Jan 17, 2021 10:04
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Epic High Five posted:Kim Stanley Robinson was just recently on Pod drat America to discuss his incredible (reading but not finished yet) book The Ministry for the Future, and reaffirmed my love of him by exactly elaborating my own opinions on the book Solaris versus the movie Solaris. I highly recommend both (the podcast and the book, not the movie which is boring trash) dissing tarkovsky like this.. man
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Jan 17, 2021 11:24
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Judge Dredd Scott posted:dissing tarkovsky like this.. man Maybe he's only seen the American version?
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Jan 17, 2021 15:26
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Both versions are bad like I guess it's a great movie if you're a film nerd but if you're a normal person it's absolutely a movie that holds its audience in contempt and actively seeks to waste their time
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Jan 17, 2021 19:45
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I really liked Stalker but thought Solaris wasn't very good; I just don't think Tarkovsky's style worked as well for Solaris and it suffers by comparison to the book
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Jan 17, 2021 22:00
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Epic High Five posted:Both versions are bad lmao as compared to what? IMO it is far more humiliating to be treated like an infant by hollywood execs and directors.
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Jan 18, 2021 05:47
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started reading The Ministry for the Future and that first chapter is some pure doomer misery porn. would be curious how many people set it down then.
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Jan 19, 2021 03:20
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Just finished The Black Jacobins by CLR James. It was probably the best history book I've ever read. It's also the first explicitly Marxist history I've read, so that's probably why. A lot of effort goes in to highlighting class interest in the slave trade, but James also goes into some depth on the personal foibles and flaws of the key actors. The tone can be very conversational, but then when the text zooms out a little to look at the entire stage, James has really excellent rhetoric that reminds you of the brutality and bloodiness of the capitalist system, and the complete lack of empathy from Napoleon and the bourgeoisie in the face of their own interest. If anybody's got any similar recommendations, I'd love to hear them.
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Jan 20, 2021 14:45
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Definitely pick up Eric Hobsbawm's Age of _______ books. I've only read the first two (Age of Revolution and Age of Capital) but they're excellent.
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Jan 20, 2021 15:03
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meefistopheles posted:Just finished The Black Jacobins by CLR James. It was probably the best history book I've ever read. It's also the first explicitly Marxist history I've read, so that's probably why. A lot of effort goes in to highlighting class interest in the slave trade, but James also goes into some depth on the personal foibles and flaws of the key actors. The tone can be very conversational, but then when the text zooms out a little to look at the entire stage, James has really excellent rhetoric that reminds you of the brutality and bloodiness of the capitalist system, and the complete lack of empathy from Napoleon and the bourgeoisie in the face of their own interest. Yeah, I was amazed about how well written it was for a history text. I've read other books on Haitian revolution but they were a lot drier. Trouillot's Haiti: State Against Nation goes over the Duvalier regime and Silencing the Past has like one chapter dedicated also to I guess class relation between the black creoles vs. recently arrived slaves.
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Jan 20, 2021 16:44
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Should I read Thomas Carlyle's history of the french revolution or is that a waste of time?
Red and Black has issued a correction as of 09:55 on Jan 21, 2021 |
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Jan 20, 2021 21:03
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is the verso physical book club any good?
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Jan 24, 2021 15:23
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Chomskyan posted:Should I read Thomas Carlyle's history of the french revolution or is that a waste of time? Would you read it to know Carlyle or do you want to know more about the revolution?
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Jan 24, 2021 16:01
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Boatswain posted:Would you read it to know Carlyle or do you want to know more about the revolution? Mostly the latter. I'm a bit put off by Carlyle since he was an open advocate for slavery, but I've heard his history is good
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Jan 24, 2021 17:36
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finished The Ministry for the Future and it was great, highly recommend, though I think it's probably less CSPAM than advertised because KSR is fundamentally a techno-utopianist even if he's pretty unique in still having people drive the change in his stories. I definitely don't get where people who describe it as bleakly grim are coming from but that's probably just a product of having dehumanized and faced to climateshed
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Jan 27, 2021 21:17
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Chomskyan posted:Mostly the latter. I'm a bit put off by Carlyle since he was an open advocate for slavery, but I've heard his history is good I'd start with a modern primer (such as P. M. Jones') and work you way back to Carlyle and others.
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Feb 1, 2021 04:51
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Just finished the Spy Who Came in From the Cold by le Carré. I picked it up after he died and only recently got around to it. I can see how British intelligence was fine with this getting released. It came out in 1963 and portrays the British burning a few of their assets in the GDR as a horrendous moral stain. Meanwhile in reality, mass murder and assassination were becoming the main tools of Western secret services either directly fighting or advising puppet governments fighting socialism. Also the George HW Bush probably killed Kennedy that year too.
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Feb 7, 2021 06:02
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i started reading Nixonland, only a chapter in but it seems excellent. kinda wanna pause and just start with his Goldwater book...I think I saw nixonland mentioned in this thread somewhere so  for the rec
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Feb 12, 2021 17:53
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In Training posted:i started reading Nixonland, only a chapter in but it seems excellent. kinda wanna pause and just start with his Goldwater book...I think I saw nixonland mentioned in this thread somewhere so the reagan book after it is p good too
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Feb 12, 2021 18:21
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Epic High Five posted:finished The Ministry for the Future and it was great, highly recommend, though I think it's probably less CSPAM than advertised because KSR is fundamentally a techno-utopianist even if he's pretty unique in still having people drive the change in his stories. I definitely don't get where people who describe it as bleakly grim are coming from but that's probably just a product of having dehumanized and faced to climateshed i just finished it, and yeah it's not as grim as i described. the story was a little weak but its a good book for people who dont know much about climate change/economics/socialism
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Feb 24, 2021 00:59
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err posted:i just finished it, and yeah it's not as grim as i described. Yeah, the huge reliance on drones and crypto-as-revolution was a whole subplot of it being frankly baby-brained to me but for anybody less wholly insanely doombrained about the climate apocalypse I can see the resonance. The notion that it is anything but the highest and most lofty levels of optimism seems misguided to me though. I think the main thing that really landed was the fact that the early measures done in contravention to toothless and worthless global accords actually being effective resulted in 1) the western world using the bought time to continue to change nothing and get worse and worse and 2) to punish and distrust the developing world for trying it in the first place is what really landed for me Not every author can be a Peter Watts who is totally committed to us being on he most horrific possible timeline I guess
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Feb 24, 2021 01:04
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In Training posted:i started reading Nixonland, only a chapter in but it seems excellent. kinda wanna pause and just start with his Goldwater book...I think I saw nixonland mentioned in this thread somewhere so the Goldwater book was good from what I remember. Also, do not look at the authors social media, he was into Russiagate during Trumop
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Feb 24, 2021 01:56
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Epic High Five posted:I think the main thing that really landed was the fact that the early measures done in contravention to toothless and worthless global accords actually being effective resulted in 1) the western world using the bought time to continue to change nothing and get worse and worse and 2) to punish and distrust the developing world for trying it in the first place is what really landed for me he also fully states that violence is the thing that made change around the world, and even quotes Mao at one point and talks about Maoists. and yeah blockchain tech being the one of the most fundamental aspects is pretty funny, and he even mentions the "old cryptocurrencies" that were wasteful and worth pennies at that point. I also thought Frank's story didn't really get the closure it deserved, he just kinda died, even though we had that gripping first chapter with him that made us resonate with him the most
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Feb 24, 2021 04:06
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Neptune's Brood by Charles Stross has interstellar colonization as a ponzi scheme driven by cryptocurrency, which is then collapsed by FTL travel.
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Feb 24, 2021 15:11
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going full art cop on this because it is necessary finished last night Milan Kundera's The Unbearable Lightness of Being, and dear loving god he sucks and that is a poo poo book. Starts off well with some good ideas, but it is some of the worst of postmodernism in literature: all humans suck, nothing is worth living for, bla-bla-bla without anything edifying for living other than some vague notion of beauty that is so incredibly poo poo and mediocre due to their egocentric narcissism that no wonder that all his characters loving suck it has all the superficial beats to be regarded as "serious" literature, which is why a lot of low-tier garbage criticism heaped praise upon it; the relevant political content and criticism of the novel gets submerged because the bitchmade author, through his poo poo characters, keeps going back and forth in inanity about living for the sake of love, but "love" here as a bad aesthetic because everything is light and has no meaning and no importance; what a loving spineless coward, a poo poo-tier liberal intellectual that deserves to be nowhere near actual great liberal authors like Borges who actually offer some conviction in their belief. dear god (of course, Borges was a motherfucking S+ tier modernist so again gently caress postmodern literary mediocrity forever)
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Mar 16, 2021 17:49
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Cynicism isn't postmodern, although I agree Kundera is cheap kitsch.
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Mar 17, 2021 22:32
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VideoTapir posted:Neptune's Brood by Charles Stross has interstellar colonization as a ponzi scheme driven by cryptocurrency, which is then collapsed by FTL travel. Oh god I loved that book. I also forgot I read it until that summary.
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Mar 31, 2021 02:38
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years late but I just read traitor baru cormorant, a book about kamala harris joining propaganda due
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Mar 31, 2021 02:40
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about 1/4 of the way through Starfish by Peter Watts and I'm getting a very real sense that things are about to get Big hosed Up
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Apr 22, 2021 01:37
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