Discussion questions:
What new books are you reading?
Do you prefer fiction or non-fiction?
Question of the week:
What books are you eager to read that you haven’t read yet?
Enjoy!
@whoami@barazaafrica16@baraza.africa
Tagging those that were here before. Enjoy.
Not books, but mostly been reading other people’s worldbuilding posts lately. Been really on a kick developing my fictional worlds and have been really interested in what others have created as well!
My web novel is historical fantasy so there’s that.
But you still need to develop the “world.”
Where do you suggest I look for world-building ideas online?
I’m on the worldbuilding subreddit, it’s actually the only thing keeping me on Reddit still but it’s definitely in a slow decline along with Reddit in general. Been transferring my lore posts to Lemmy in the past few days though as I do want to leave Reddit at some point, and even started a worldbuilding community on Lemmygrad! Hopefully I can help grow the writing and worldbuilding scene on Lemmy!
Same here. I want to world-build here but don’t want anyone stealing my ideas (I know, I know, it’s a baseless fear, but still).
I would be interested in join such a community. I have a dream of having DND campaigns in a home built world.
I think this is the one: https://lemmygrad.ml/c/worldbuilding
Thanks!
Started reading Fanon’s ‘Wretched of the Earth’. So far just reading the preface by Jean Paul Sartre which is already very good, I imagine this was ground breaking and very exciting when it was released, during the time of great optimism in the “third world”, the Bandung conference etc. For fiction I’m reading The Three Body Problem by Liu Cixin. I really struggle with fiction generally. I usually find it very hard to pursue fiction for some reason.
I know I’m a broken record at this point but:
Read A Song of Ice and Fire.
I’m about 20% through Inventing Reality and still struggling to stay engaged. I might put it down for a bit and start Killing Hope or Fraud, Famine, and Fascism.
I bought the entire Paper Girls series and that arrives today.
I also just bought the Peter Kropotkin collection with some freebie kindle credits I had. I had a digital copy of Conquest of Bread but it was pirated. I don’t know when I will get to reading any of them.
Killing Hope should be classified as a must-read for anyone serious about anti-imperialism. Rogue State is an invaluable sister piece.
Just do not let the anger you will feel consume you. William Blum’s work is instrumental in understanding the evils of empire, and once you delve into the nitty-gritty of shit like the psychological terror operations unleashed on the Philippines and Guatemala, there is no turning back. There is no return to the comfort of ignorance. The U.S. is the primary contradiction.
I think this sells me on Killing Hope. I’m jaded as it is and am aware quite a bit of what the US has done. I mean People’s History, Untold History of the US, Blackshirts and Reds, and even my fairly based college history professors have helped in that regard. I’m eager to be more angry lol. I might start it tonight if I can get to a stopping point on Inventing Reality. I can come back to that later. It ain’t going anywhere.
I feel that Killing Hope is standard, but then again, I grew up knowing about this shit.
Also thanks for reminding me and about Rogue State. I need to add it to my library.
Why would you say you’ve found Inventing Reality had to stay engaged with?
I think it’s mostly just with life stuff happening right now it’s hard for me to focus on reading as much as I’d like, let alone just find the time to read. It’s also not quite as easy of a read as Blackshirts was. I don’t think it’s a bad book at all.
Probably because some of Michael Parenti’s works pale in comparison to his speeches and talks.
He does set extremely high expectations with his talks.
Yeah. His books are secondary in quality.
Oof, I’m not sure I’d put it like that.
I have a book about Freud and what a fraud he was and how he had ramifications for today because people still look to him and Jung and psycho-analysis… but I haven’t gotten around to it… yet.
Im like 80% in Confessions of an economic hitman by John Perkins. Book is good and is easy to consume, tho his views are way too idealistic. His testimony is great but i can’t stop thinking that he is one of those guys that believes that this is not real capitalism but corporatism, as if it was a completely divorced economic system.
Well To Be Fair he was in the system. He only got ‘out’ as it were because of a girlfriend he met in central America who had a conscience. One of those things you know. You are so in the system that even though you’re shown the reality of how awful it is, you still want to believe it was somewhat ok because of whatever. Like libs that get a taste of radical thought, they’re so preprogrammed…
But still. Straight line from the tactics of economic hit men to Jeffery Epstein. Shit never ended and is still happening today
Yeah, this book was written during the early 2010s, I think, and has the time-period stamped on it, essentially.
Currently reading The Last Wish, which is a bunch of short stories following Geralt from the Witcher. Really enjoying it so far and if anyone here is a fan of the games or watched the show you’ll like it. The short stories will also be recognizable if you watched the show as well.
I read the first two books of the Witcher and had a lot of trouble getting into them. I’ve loved other fantasy books but never enjoyed the Witcher when I read it
What about A Song of Ice and Fire?
I’ve read the whole series (besides Fire and Blood) and really enjoyed it
I hate Fire and Blood.
I’ve heard its awful but haven’t read it yet. Why do you hate it?
Because of the smut.
I hate it, I hate it, I hate it.
The excerpts I’ve read make GRRM look like the characature that people say he is.
I didn’t like that part of the whole series and I have a hard time looking past it in what I read of his. (I would absolutely pay for a censored version of the works if that was ever made available)
Yeah I heard people with similar opinions, that’s why I think I’ll finish this book and then read the other short story book (Swords of Destiny I think it’s called) and then just stop there.
I mean if you like the first two, there isn’t a harm in trying it to see if you do but I just personally didn’t
NOICE
I’m still on my re-read of A Song of Ice and Fire.
I finished ‘Custer died for your sins’ yesterday, which was good, though a bit dated. I’m just about finished with ‘I am Malala’ which is better than I thought. I’m almost halfway in ‘settlers’ which is good. I’m halfway in ‘The Fall’ by Albert Camus, which is ok, and the first fiction I’ve read in a bit. I’m also reading ‘The Dialectical Biologist,’ though I’ve taken a break, and I don’t think I’ll finish ‘Karl Marx’s eco socialism’ right now. I probably prefer fiction though I mostly read non-fiction because it seems more important. I’m eager to read ‘Four thousand weeks: time management for mortals,’ ‘socialism or extinction,’ ‘half earth socialism,’ and ‘parable of the sower.’
Settlers by J. Sakai is the one with the bad citations and is dated nowadays.
I would suggest Fight Like Hell by Kim Kelly for the other side of the story when it comes to the labor movement in the United States.
I know Settlers is dated now, I just wanted to see what all the hype was about. It’s got some good information but I definitely want to look into the more reasonable and well sourced works of Gerald Horne among others.
Yeah, Gerald Horne’s works are better and more reasonable.
By the way, I had just noticed your absence for almost a month just a few days ago, so it’s funny you happened to come back now.
I never intended to leave. I love this place. But I am a mod now of Hexbear. So that also takes priority. But I’ve also been pushingn for Lemmygrad a long time now. And I will continue pushing for it. So there’s that.
Reading Ordinary Monsters right now, it’s a fun dark fantasy novel. I generally enjoy both fiction and non-fiction for different reasons. I like to pick a fiction and non-fiction book to read. Next non-fiction book I’m planning to read is I Am a Strange Loop.
Is that last one a web novel?
Let me click that link…
there is a pdf of it floating around :) https://digitalphysics.ru/pdf/Kaminskii_A_V/I_Am_a_Strange_Loop--Douglas_Hofstadter.pdf
Nice!
I’m starting The Restaurant at the End of the Universe and will probably finish it quite quickly.
I overall prefer non-fiction as I like to learn things while reading.
I really have been wanting to read Twice-Told Tales by Nathaniel Hawthorne (author of The Scarlet Letter, classic Statesian novelist)
The Hitchhiker’s Guide series is fantastic and really funny in my opinion. Hope you enjoy!
Oh, Nathaniel Hawthorne, famed American novelist. He’s kinda a big deal lol
I would think but I’ve meet an odd amount of people who haven’t heard of him so I thought I’d mention who he was
Oh.
That is odd.
He is at least somewhat knowable outside the States.
I would think he would be more famous than he is but many people have said only that the name sounds familiar but didn’t know what he wrote or that they were unfamiliar with him as a whole
Yeah I get that.
Sutree by Cormac McCarthy and Ulysses by James Joyce at the moment. Just finished some Marxist theory with Engles.
Reading rules
Thanks.
Just finished Chapterhouse Dune. I’ll try to find Brian’s sequels at a library if I can, or maybe Foundation.
Oh dune… Such amazing literature
Thinking about re-reading The Hunt for Red October, I know it’s trash, but it’s entertaining trash
By Tom Clancy?
But it’s anti-communist trash at that! There’s better garbage out there. And you might even find a hidden gem in the meanwhile. Don’t do this to yourself… You have so much to live for! Plus, here, have this coupon!
Yeah I know, but it’s entertaining anti-communist trash
besides, my copy is a hand-me-down from my mother, it’s not like I’m giving Clancy any of my money
I’m reading the Bible right now, not because I’m religious but because I was curious. I’m at Leviticus right now. Genesis and Exodus were entertaining but currently I’m only reading about laws which is a bit boring, to be honest.
Leviticus is the part where Christians fail their challenge to read the Bible through
I got half-way through the Old Testament and plan to pick up where I left off soon enough.
I read The Qur’an in the meantime.
How was the Qur’an? I have a translation I should probably read but haven’t got past the translator’s preface
Depends very much on the translation and exegesis. I read the International Sahid version or whatever it was called. I didn’t read the hadiths, though.
Heh, I’m still going at de Beauvoir’s magnum opus, the second volume to be exact. However, I did read in the meantime al-Kawakibi’s works and I am in the midst of writing an essay analyzing the employed language in relation to the inflitration of Western modernity into the Ottoman Empire.
I hope I can finish de Beauvoir by the end of the month (very unlikely) so I can get my hands on Capitalism as Civilization: A History of International Law by Ntina Tzouvala.
de Beauvoir? You mean the famous feminist (and possible Marxist)?
Indeed she is. Though that didn’t stop some communists criticizing her for her individualistic bourgeois philosophy.
Her work was also presaged or done better by communist authors who themselves were female as well but none of the communist books really struck it big.
Her’s did though.
Still, whatever one may think, she did support the May '68 protest movement, which many famous French philosophers never did…
The importance of her book is in the breakthrough it accomplished in deconstructing the millenia-old patriarchal/paternalistic logic which indiscriminately governed (Western) society. So it definitely merits its critical acclaim.
By the way, she supported the PRC since its establishment and visited China in the fifties. She wrote an investigative book about her visit entitled The Long March.
Yeah, but she was more of a “Maoist” type (before Gonzalo).
I’m not sure if she was a Marxist. Her chapter on historical materialism and Engels in The Second Sex is… problematic.
Oh boy.
Go on… I’m happy to be wrong. I only read that chapter but I wasn’t overly impressed.
No, I wasn’t doubting you; I said “Oh boy” because it’s such a pity and I can only imagine what the author took issue with Engels on, considering that he’s something of a punching bag even among Marxists.
Oh, I see. That’s one of those phrases that can mean a lot of things! When I get time, I’ll have another look and see what the beef was.
If you’re curious to know, she argues, unlike Engels in his Origin of the Family, that the rise of private property and the social relations of production are a useful yet insufficient explanation for women’s servitude.
According to her, the women’s material (physiological) incapacity in the production process constitute an inherent disadvantage only if viewed through a certain perspective (e.g. historical materialism). In other words, women’s alterity isn’t intrinsic to her biological sex, but rather the consequence of the imperialist human consciousness which seeks to objectively accomplish its sovereignty.
Basically, the classical doctrines of Marxism are based on a modernist tradition which seeks to uncover “objective truths” which conflict with de Beauvoir’s deconstructionist portrayal of women’s conditioning in the West.
I see.
Oh Ntina Tzouvala’s work is great. Let me know what you think when you get round to her book. It’s in paperback now, so more affordable than it was at first. Unless you mean a PDF, in which case there are probably copies online.
There are indeed digital copies online ;)
Just began A Thousand Ships by Natalie Haynes. It is about the end of the Trojan war and possibly the aftermath (? Not sure yet) from the point of view of the women of Troy and Greece. Currently at Chapter 10/43, enjoying it so far. Interesting getting the female perspective of the ancient (mythological?) war.
This is the first non-fantasy/sci-if book I’ve read in a while. Will be getting back to that after this probably, I never seem to deviate too far from those genres.
Oh, I heard of that one. I do like historical fantasy so I may check it out. I’m also writing historical fantasy.
