Fiction or Non-Fiction, academic or casual, theory or non-theory, feel free to mention books of any genre and on any topic.
The Naked Lunch by William S. Burroughs
It’s sickeningly beautiful, confusing and linguistically dense. So far (30 pages in) it shows an astonishing lot of situations and behaviours one can analyse. For example the portrayal of the US police state, surveilling everyone and arresting people on arbitrary things, like owning vaseline, which encapsulates the essence of a police so well.
Highly recommended for anyone whose stomach doesn’t cramp from the graphic language (my copy has a card that reads “I hereby confirm that i am at least 18 years of age…”). It’s a classic for a reason.
Thanks. Added to the reading list.
I just started to read Women and Socialism by August Bebel.
I’m reading Capitalism in Crisis by Fidel Castro. It’s all speeches he gave in the late 90s. Interesting stuff.
I finished The Principles of Communism, Wage Labour and Capital, and Value, Price and Profit. I found a collected works .pdf file in my mother tongue (it is very hard and expensive to find a printed copy because gommonisimo bad and we don’t have any paper left); they were easier to understand that way.
For continuing my theory study, I started Socialism: Utopian and Scientific by our favorite class traitor, Friedrich Engels.
I’ve got gifted Utopia by Thomas More, and I’m also reading that. The edition I’ve got is ass, but still intelligible.
Great progress, comrade. This is the (I think) the correct order of reading them as well.
I hope you’re gonna read The three sources and the three component parts of Marxism after you’re done with Engels.
I was planning to start The State and Revolution, but I might read that instead.
Yeah, it’s short enough. Only 8 pages.
Definitely reading it before S&R then.
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Always studying 红宝书 alongside whatever catches my interest day to day week to week
I’ve been reading Blackshirts and Reds over and over, and actually printing copies to hand out.
Not many people in my area have read it, so I’m glad to do this work.
I’m reading Caliban and the Witch. It’s a really amazing overview of various processes that occurred during primitive accumulation.
Started skimming through these:
- Building The Commune: Radical Democracy In Venezuela
- Extraordinary Threat: The U.S. Empire, The Media, And Twenty Years Of Coup Attempts In Venezuela
- Bad News from Venezuela: Twenty Years of Fake News and Misreporting
I had a print copy of Building The Commune a few years back but I passed it along to someone else before getting very far in it. Right now I am just flipping through these to get some historical details but I’ll probably just settle on one of them to fully read.
Also came across this recently, though I have no idea if/when I’ll get around to reading it, but it seemed interesting: The red earth: a Vietnamese memoir of life on a colonial rubber plantation.
Still reading Elementary principles of philosophy Georges Politzer
I’ve heard many people say good things about the book, but I’ve never opened it. Do you like it ?
The analogies and examples are often times fallacious and misleading. If anyone wants a good introduction to the philosophy of Dialectical materialism, I recommend Adoratsky’s Dialectical Materialism The Theoretical Foundation of Marxism-Leninism.
There’s an .epub version over on Comrade’s Library.
I agree yeah, I find myself re-reading several paragraphs because I just sort of get lost in the examples.
It’s part of the prole wiki marxism 101 guide and also one of the first philosophy books I’ve ever read so it’s difficult for me to read it. But overall it’s really good at explaining.
for fiction before bed i’ve been reading “metal from heaven” by august clarke, recommended by someone on here, don’t remember who.
for non-fiction i just recently finished “make it stick,” a book about more effective study habits. there’s a lot of things i want to study and learn in the future, and i was never really forced or able to learn good study habits in school. the basic ideas seem very useful and widely applicable!
Probably me, how are you liking Metal From Heaven?
First I’m hearing about this book, really interesting. It doesn’t really fit my style but I’ve got a friend in mind to gift it to, excited to eventually hear their opinion about it
it’s alright so far! i’m about halfway through atm, glad to be reading it. some pros and cons as always
i like the material nature of ichorite and how it affects the story, characters, and worldbuilding. i’m intrigued by the author’s conception of the contradiction between the aristocracy and the burgeoning bourgeoisie, although it seems like each is portrayed as a class and not a set of people to varying degrees at different times. when it does the former i get sucked in
i do wish there was more of an explanation for why crawlies are somewhat normalized vis a vis the patriarchy. that stuff is always interesting to me in queer fantasy/sci-fi because it gives you an idea of what the author’s conceptualization of patriarchy is. like it totally makes sense to be normalized in the aristocracy, but why and to what extent in the lower classes? it’s also way hornier than i was expecting lol. i don’t really appreciate the neutral/positive view towards the sex industry, especially in a book featuring some form of queer liberation
in terms of writing style i think it’s interesting that there’s so many long paragraphs of descriptions with a kind of weird or disjointed character to them. it really helps you get into the MC’s head. i feel like it’s sort of at the expense of dialogue and consequently the development of her relationship to some of the other characters, but that also makes you feel as shy and uncomfortable as she seems to be in social situations sometimes
read The Starving Saints by Caitlin Starling the other week and really enjoyed it! I have primarily been blowing through my library network’s graphic novel collections otherwise, read one called Old Head that I LOVED about vampires and basketball, and Prokaryote Season by Leo Fox (one of my favorite cartoonists atm)! Really trying to boost my reading stamina so that I can dive into lengthier works of theory, but have been slowly digging at Luna Oi’s first textbook on dialectical materialism and ML for the last few weeks. My goal this year is to read, read, read!!
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Just started Aberration in the Heartland of the Real. Im so hype
November 1918 by Alfred Doblin,1:citizens and soldiers 1/2：a people betrayed 2/2:return of the frontline troops 3:Karl and Rossa
