I'm about halfway thru the dispossessed by le guin. Absolutely loving it so far I read conquest of bread before and am gonna reread it after dispossessed then maybe left hand of darkness
Reading Just Mercy with my math/science students to keep up with their ELA class. Gonna roll in a couple of lessons pertaining to the incarceration system into math and science, just looking at arrest data by race and then again by income level, I think.
For personal enjoyment, I hope to finish Proofs and Refutations by Lakatos before the end of the year.
Started Hammer and Hoe. Fascinating to see the explosion of a communist movement from a small cadre to over a hundred organizers and hundreds in the mass organization.
reading the Lobster Daddy's book out of curiosity. it's an absolute trainwreck so far. the guy talks about how nihilism is bad, but he goes to such incredible lengths to scramble together SOME form of meaning from, like, order and chaos and whatever. it just leaves you feeling more nihilistic than before.
i'll read better books later, i promise. i'm mostly reading this to be able to give a good faith critique of the 'philosophy' in the book
Lol that is awesome. How bad is the actual writing, not the ideas, but how comprehensible is it?
it's actually very readable. this probably explains why it's so damn popular
I'm never reading it, so thank you for your service :rat-salute:
halfway through the grapes of wrath. This book is incredibly anti-capitalist.
The Bank—or the Company—needs—wants—insists—must have—as though the Bank or the Company were a monster, with thought and feeling, which had ensnared them. These last would take no responsibility for the banks or the companies because they were men and slaves, while the banks were machines and masters all at the same time.
The bank—the monster has to have profits all the time. It can’t wait. It’ll die. No, taxes go on. When the monster stops growing, it dies. It can’t stay one size.
In their lapels the insignia of lodges and service clubs, places where they can go and, by a weight of numbers of little worried men, reassure themselves that business is noble and not the curious ritualized thievery they know it is;
Check out Elmer Kelton's The Time It Never Rained after. I'd put him a slight notch below Steinbeck but it's very similar and similarly Based:
Still, whenever a man got to feeling sorry for himself in this part of the country he had only to look to Mexico to see someone in worse condition. Drouth had become a crippling plague down there—starving the fields, starving the livestock, starving the people. The migration of Mexican wetbacks swelled steadily. More and more of them stopped by the ranch, hats in hand, to ask for a job or for something to eat. Desperation lay dark in hungry eyes. More often than not, the hombres wore ragged clothes which no longer fit them. Sometimes their trousers were tied with a length of cord to keep them from falling. Charlie would watch a Mexican hungrily eat raw lard or bacon grease straight out of a can to satisfy some awful craving, and he would feel his stomach turn over.
Occasionally he came across a wetback far out in the pasture, heading north afoot. Often they scurried for cover, fearing he might be a border patrolman. Once an old Mexican walked to him with his trembling hands in the air, expecting Charlie to clamp steel cuffs on him and take him to jail. Instead, Charlie took him to the house and filled his belly, then pointed him north, into the raw wind. There was more work to the north, and fewer chotas.
When his back ached from lifting feed sacks, Charlie was sorely tempted to hire one of these men for however long he might be able to keep him. It was not the law which stopped him; Charlie shared the Mexican’s dim view of hard and fast boundary lines. He considered the law to have been passed in ignorance by people a thousand miles away who would not accept the jobs themselves and knew no one who would. The same people who cried to keep foreign workers out were happy to bring foreign wool in so they could buy it cheaper. That way they hanged the rancher on two scaffolds at the same time.
The Devil in the Kitchen by Marco Pierre White.
I was half bakedly reminiscing about when I worked in a kitchen recently and this book reminded me why I'll never go back unless its my own kitchen lol
