• LeninsRage [he/him]
    ·
    3 years ago

    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.