Debt, The First 5000 Years by David Graeber.
Kept seeing it recommended around and here and decided it had to be read. Definitely enjoying it!
I'm about a third of the way through Black Marxism by Cedric Robinson right now. It's been interesting to contrast it with Settlers re: the applicability of marxism(-leninism) to contemporary constructions of race and national liberation struggles in the imperial core. So far, it's mostly been a very witty rehashing of Braudel, and a lot of really deep historiography into slave and indigenous rebellions in the americas. I feel like he sort of essentializes the African experience in a way that seems a little reductive. I'm eager to delve into the radical tradition proper and learn from him this weekend. I just need to finish putting my laundry away.
Interesting, I’ve wanted to check out Black Marixsm for a while. In what way would you say it essentialises the African experience?
I cant remember the particular page, but theres a section in chapter three where he talks about an African conciousness and epistemology that embraces surrealism as a mode of expression and then said it applied to all African diaspora peoples. In parts I read today he does distinguish between different peoples more consistently.
Xinjiang of China : its past and present, from china intercontinental press under the state council information office
hmm i used the EVIL COMMUNIST big gobument institution of the library. dont thing its online
Just finished the little topping book and am back to the Jakarta method. Also slowly grinding through Heart of the enterprise.
Capital is Dead: Is This Something Worse? -- although I can't say I've understood the whole thing. I just finished a very abstract chapter that talks about Sartre a lot.
Have hears that one’s very new school left in its writing lol
That book has really stuck with me. It's the thing that really helped me get through 'but why would anyone vote for trump?' I keep going backnforth on whether his narrative interludes are actually really thematically useful, or if he just really wishes he could be McCarthy.
A book about non-league football (soccer).
A Syrian cookbook written by refugees.
A book about the history of my local/formerly local coastline.
Just finished Mike Skinner's biography.
I'm trying to read The Eighteenth Brumaire of Louis Napoleon but ngl, the style of English used in translating Marx and/or how he wrote can be pretty challenging to get through at times.
Finished Eric Foner's Free Soil, Free Labor, Free Men and The Second Founding over the past two weeks. Beginning his Reconstruction next before heading into the Gilded Age. In the economics department I'm taking a break from Marx to alternate with Keynes's The General Theory of Employment, Interest and Money and then Trotsky's The Permanent Revolution before returning to the Grundrisse. For more leisurely, drawn-out reading on the weekends I'm turning to Hunter S Thompson's Fear and Loathing on the Campaign Trail '72, which I think will be interesting reading while I'm also going through the McGoverning alternate history timeline (where a deranged CREEPer resolves to blow up the Brookings Institute on the same night as the Watergate burglary, resulting in an earlier and bigger Watergate scandal that helps McGovern actually win the 1972 election by an extremely narrow margin)
On the fiction front I was able to catch up on the latest two books of Dan Abnett's Gaunt's Ghosts series, which is set in the Warhammer 40k universe. Dunno if anyone here is a fan, but finishing the last few chapters today I wanted to share a short passage completely without context that is one of the most viscerally horrifying in the entire series if you know what's going on:
They heard the wailing rush of blades nearby. It was very close.
"Oh shit," whispered Merity. "It heard us. It heard the shots. It's coming."
"Leave me," said Fazekiel.
"Balls, I will!" Merity replied. She tried to hoist Fazekiel up, but the woman had blacked out and become a deadweight.
"Come fething on!" Merity snarled.
"I came looking for you," said a voice behind her.
Merity looked around in surprise.
It was Dalin.
Audibly said "Oh fuck" when I read that one. No I will not explain.
Currently reading through Trotsky’s The Transitional Program. Planning on picking up Orientalism next month.
