Discussion questions:
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What new books are you reading?
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Do you prefer fiction or non-fiction?
Question of the week:
Who is your favorite author or authors?
Other threads include:
What video games are you playing? What have you finished recently? What do you plan to play? - Video Game General Discussion Thread #15
https://lemmygrad.ml/post/395127
And
What movies are you watching? What do you plan to watch? What have you watched recently? - Film/Cinema/TV Show/Streaming Show General Discussion Thread #15
I just finished reading John Darnielle’s third book Devil House which came out earlier this year.
It’s about a true crime author who is asked by his editor to write a book about a sensational crime that went largely unreported and was completely unsolved. An abandoned porn store was defaced and turned into the site of a satanic, ritualistic murder. No arrests were ever made.
So the author buys the house-turned-porned store-turned-crime scene, moves in, and begins investigating.
I hate true crime, and after reading this book it’s absolutely clear John Darnielle does too. It was a ridiculously good read, one of the best fictions I’ve read in a while, my favourite of the year for sure.
For anyone still on the fence: a slumlord and a real estate developer get hacked to bits with a broadsword and not one moment of the book ever acts like this is a bad thing, really, because didn’t they have it coming? It’s not about them. They’re dead.
As far as non-fiction, I’ll be starting Reform or Revolution and The Mass Strike by Rosa Luxembourg (I was given The Essential Rosa Luxembourg as a gift), and also How We Get Free: Black Feminism and the Combahee River Collective
For the theory discussion group I lead, we’ve been reading Caliban and the Witch: Women, The Body, and Primitive Accumulation by Silvia Federici, a pioneer of Marxist Feminism. It’s an exploration of the ways in which the period of transition into capitalism, the time of Marx’s primitive accumulation, was also marked by an increase and a fundamental shift in the forms of violence against women in order to create a class of unpaid reproductive labourers. This oppression was most visibly and powerfully enforced through sexual violence and culminated in the witch trials.
We’re also about to dig into Transgender Marxism, a collection of essays on queer liberation through Marxist thought
For anyone still on the fence: a slumlord and a real estate developer get hacked to bits with a broadsword and not one moment of the book ever acts like this is a bad thing, really, because didn’t they have it coming?
this does sound compelling
Oh, that last one is one that I’ve had my sights on for a while.
Parenti’s Assassination of Julius Caesar.
Have been relistening Mike Duncan’s History of Rome a while ago and while it’s an excellent story he’s telling, it’s a bit strange how he sticks to the story told by ancient story tellers. Of great men driving history by their ambition, quest for honor, etc, etc. Just kept asking myself “what was the actual driving force here? What were the class antagonisms? Man I wish someone wrote a materialist history of this”.
Turns out the goat himself did. So refreshing to read history analyzed like this, critiquing the childish, idealist, individualist version we’re constantly told by mainstream historians and school books.
Also felt good to get some validation for the instinctual dislike I always had for the likes of Cicero, Cato, etc and the interest I had for the Gracci, Caesar and many of the famous tribunes.
Ah, interesting.
