Hey folks,
Hope you all are having a lovely weekend and getting to relax and read a good book.
What have you been reading lately?
I read like 30% two years ago and understood very little. Hopefully if I return to it now id be able to comprehend a little better
Started and finished Blackshirts and Reds by Micheal Parenti. I really enjoyed his writing style as well as his analysis.
Das Kapital manga. Stumbled upon it yesterday. I haven't been able to focus on or digest academic text length theory about economics so it was great to have some concepts explained and illustrated with a story and with pictures.
Still reading the long 20th century. It still slaps. The kind of book that's extremely worth taking notes about, because even if you disregard its conclusions, it still draws on such a rich range of references that you could make reading its bibliography your full-time job.
The conclusions are also very good tho
Same here, I'm on chapter 1 of The Long 20th Century and every other sentence or paragraph is so full of information. What I've been doing with my book is annotating the parts on imperialism with the concrete, horrifying examples, that other books and articles have made their goal of describing. So when he goes into the full blown resource extraction of unprecedented scale by Spain or England, I add anecdotes of African farmers not meeting their rubber quotas and being brutalized. Or for England, the control of the colonies involved things like the Boer Wars and Concentration Camps.
I just happened to start listening to the Revolutions podcast near the same time, so I'm getting a ton of context in parallel. Especially when he gets to Haiti and Spanish America.
The thing that's drawing me into the book more, though, is how it's letting me fill out my understanding of all kinds of tiny details. I've been using Notion, like so, to catalogue all the bits I don't fully understand, then go back later and research them properly. Finally gaining an understanding of trade in the most abstract sense is very gratifying.
like so
Aaaahhh is it ok to nerd out that I also use notion for theory, grad school and tracking my book reads.
If you haven't already, get Hypothes.is. The markdown translates pretty well from hypothes.is annotations on documents and books, to Notion Pages.
Also, that's AWESOME. I look forward to seeing what you end up with!
Oh you're right, this whips. I installed it and my brain is immediately expanding with the possibilities, goddamn. Great rec!
ahhh let’s form a hypothesis group or send me your profile name. I have annotated a bunch of marxist stuff on marxists.org.
I'm choppa1890 on hypothes.is. Right now a lot of my notes are art and grad school.
Just started Pedagogy for the reading club. Beautiful written, though it gets a little critical theory-y at times and I get lost.
I've been rereading China Mieville's October (spoiler: Lenin wins) and for my own super secret radical reading circle, we've been reading Alan Wood's History of Bolshevism.
China Mieville’s October (spoiler: Lenin wins)
Hell yeah, I love a happy ending.
Halfway through KSR Blue Mars, which has been a fun trilogy all around
Enjoyed this so much. Anyone have recommends that ring some of the same bells?
Forces of Production .
It's been a while since I understood this little of a book.