I just finished Malcolm X's autobiography, which was great. Looking to start Maoism: A Global History some time this week.
I always find it incredible that he taught himself using the dictionary. Word by word. Like it was a book.
Yeah that's so crazy, the willpower to do that when you can barely write and haven't read a book since the 8th grade. He touches upon this when he talks about the West-Indian Archie's ability to remember vast amounts of numbers, but the amount of human talents lost or nearly lost to racism, sexism, and capitalism are so immense.
All while in prison.
The human brain’s abilities are greater than we ever realize. Everyone is beat down into believing they ain’t shit and they don’t have the power to change situations only adapt and since we’re great at adapting that’s what most people do. Which means get enough money to survive.
Try reading Hyperion by Dan Simmons or Accelerando by Charles Strauss! Those are the books that helped me bridge from a lot of the schlocky sci-fi I was reading to more heavy stuff. Of course you can't be productive all the time and if reading 40k is a nice reprieve for you or something relaxing I don't mean to take that away from you.
I'm rereading Hyperion. Really interesting book. Hasn't changed my life or anything, but I'm enjoying my second read more than the first.
What's been different on the second go-around? I really enjoyed that book a few years ago and have been thinking about picking it up again. I have a hard time re-reading things since I feel like there's just SO MUCH that I haven't read and it gives me some FOMO.
I'm not sure, really. I remember the first time around some parts felt like a slog, and I'm not getting that this time.
I really liked those. The setting was a little strange to me, specifically the old alien structures or whatever, but everything else was awesome.
yeah, when I first read them i had to force refresh my mental picture whenever they were mentioned lol
I like the weird mystique they add to the world thoughYeah, I definitely didn't mind it all. But those and Dandelion Dynasty are the best sci-fi\fantasy whatever I've read in years.
Open by Andre Agassi. I hate this book as much as he professed to hate tennis. I wanted to throw my phone into the shower but I also wanted to read the next page, especially when he thought giving out his rackets to homeless people was a good thing. I had to bounce after he married Brook Shields and got mad about a scene she did in Friends.
I'm like three chapters into The Shock Doctrine and I'm already overwhelmed. The CIA's torture of random Canadians, later repeated on people around the world and esp from the Middle East, is heartbreaking and infuriating. Somehow the economics stuff (so far) I more or less knew, if not in such stark terms, but I had no idea about the MKUltra torture. If I'd heard of MKUltra before, it was straight up conspiracy theories or jokes about LSD, not torture. I actually had to google it, thinking it's some half-hidden half-conspiracy theory stuff, but it's straight up on wikipedia. Idk, it's fucking with my mind. Every time I think I know how evil the CIA is...
Yea that book itself is shocking and I think is what radicalized me the most. The process of first learning about how evil America is and then having to integrate it in yr brain is like difficult, but then everything happening around you makes 1000x more sense and becomes way easier to digest/understand lol
I just finished reading Permanence by Karl Schroeder . Part of the story is about a conflict between different factions of human space colonies, one of which is called the Rights Economy. They attach nanoscale RFID chips to everything to denote who owns the copyright/patent on every object, and charge everyone microtransactions to do basic things like walk down a street or open a door.
finally reading Jon Lee Anderson's 'Che'. i got a copy months ago but hadn't gotten around to it. i regret not starting it sooner! right now, i'm right in the middle of the Cuban campaign and i'm flipping pages in the middle of the night—i just can't put it down. to anyone who hasn't read it i highly recommend it. inspiring stuff. i'm already dreading reaching the end. Hasta la Victoria Siempre!
Working on Blood in my Eye in the Perusal group, as well as This Bridge Called my back and The End of Policing for a prison abolition group I'm part of. So much to read and learn, so little time. I'm also doing an online BA in Organizational Psychology so I can hopefully learn to fight the bastards from inside.
I'm about a fifth of the way thru 'The Long 20th Century' by Giovanni Arrighi and it's providing me with a powerful lens to understand history with and making me think a lot. I'd appreciate recommendations for some slower slice-of-life novels that capture the same feeling as 'what's eating Gilbert Grape' (less the quasi-pedophilia).
I am in Chapter 1 of the Long Twentieth Century. Someone a few posts ago suggested listening to Revolutions seasons while reading the book.
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Braiding Sweetgrass, which some chapos recommended. Super great book, I really want to learn more about indigenious cultures after I finish this one
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Storm before the Storm, which is Mike Duncans book about the fall of the Roman Republic. TFW the elites in ancient rome actually did more for the plebs - free grain & frequent debt forgiveness - than American elites are today. (they still had slavery and treated non-Roman citizens like absolute trash tho, not gonna jerk them off for doing really basic shit for SOME of their citizens)
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And finally, a decently well-written lesbian vampire romance novel called Better Off Red, because I need to turn my brain off sometimes.
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Just finished reading To Kill a Nation. I enjoyed it, though it felt like a response to a history I hadn’t really known in the first place (despite visiting the area as a dumb tourist a couple years back), so I’ll probably try to read up more on Yugoslavia soon.
I also finished listening to the fifth Malazan audiobook, it’s a series I’ve been slowly making my way through over about a ten year stretch - I barely remember what happened in each story, and every time there’s 100 new characters to keep track of. Still, it’s nice to get lost in some deep fantasy.
Currently trying to focus on a smaller number of books and not lose my patience, Pedagogy of the Oppressed (slow going!) and rereading Capitalist Realism because the Rev Lumpen Radio Podcast is doing an analysis
