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So, what have you been reading recently? | 📚 Weekly book discussion, review, and recommendations thread, November 9th, 2025
(lemmygrad.ml)
Fiction or Non-Fiction, academic or casual, theory or non-theory, feel free to mention books of any genre and on any topic.
The Conquest of New Spain by Bernal DÃaz. I'm only 30-40 pages in but the casualness of colonialism is stark. DÃaz regularly mentions coming across land features new to the spaniards and he'll say something like, "this river was named Tabasco by the natives but we decided to name it Rio de Lopez after my homie because he saw it first and it is known by this name on the maps". His first interaction with natives involved being asked by the Governer of Cuba to raid a nearby village and make the people into slaves. Another time they came across a "beautiful native woman" and at the end of their interarction he says, "and she came with us" only to not be mentioned again. I am incredibly doubtful they asked at all. He writes all this decades after he experienced it and as someone who has family who were in US military the way he talks about it is disturbingly familiar.