Books

Re-reading "The Bell Jar" from Sylvia Plath. When I read it 50+ years ago, I seemed to have missed the critique of the 50s Red Scare politics woven into the social aspects of story. Sad she wasn't around to write more.

I just finished The Memory Police by Yoko Ogawa today. It was interesting, but not satisfying. I'm not entirely sure what the point was.

Finally reading To Kill a Nation by Michael Parenti, and finding it very enlightening. I really have no background knowledge of the fall of Yugoslavia, but have been very interested in it recently. There are definitely parallels to the Ukraine war now. It's a very beneficial read on how the media can distort reality to favor the west's narrative.

In the last chapter of The Wretched of the Earth for this current reading. Amazing work, and very useful. Took a bit longer due to ongoing things but worth doing! Will begin on Nkrumah's Neocolonialism, the Final Stage of Imperialism next.

I liked this from Fraud, Famine and Fascism: (Referring to someone visiting Ukraine in 1941) " 'One can come across an ordinary village girl ... during our talk we discover that the girl is well-versed in mathematics, physics, chemistry ... People are well informed. One could discus any political or social theme with the peasants.' One can only wonder what kind of 'genocide results in such cultural and educational advances."

Does anybody know a book that explores translation? I know that Stalin talks about language and how it relates to culture and nations, but I don't know if there's any book that specifically talks about the social part of translation.

I've been reading the Hunger Games series. I recently started Mockingjay.

I'm reading The Dark Forest by Cixin Liu (sequel to The Three Body Problem). I'm about 200 or so pages in and so far, it hasn't really grabbed my interest. This is a stark contrast to the former which I couldn't put down. I'm hoping the story picks up soon.

This week I've finished reading "How the West Brought War to Ukraine" (2022) by Benjamin Abelow. It's incredible how many things aren't even mentioned in the mainstream when talking about the Russo-Ukrainian conflict, and how most of it is conveniently blamed on "Putin going insane"!

The book is pretty short, about 80 pages long, but I'm still happy to have read it to the end. I think this is the first book I've read to the end in a long time, because up until now, even in Marxist theory, I've only read essays. 😅 But I think this is a step in the right direction to change that.

I've read Kristen R. Ghodsee's Why Women Have Better Sex Under Socialism. DISCOURAGE people from reading this book! I would rate it as 2/5, it provides some limited data, most of which shows that USSR and the Eastern Bloc was one of the best places in the world to be a woman, yet the author does not refrain from saying "we definetely can have the same thing without ToTaLiTarIaN government". She also vulgarizes Rosa Luxemburg in the last chapter, by saying that she believed that reform and revolution were different ways of achieving the same goal. I would take any recommendations on the "woman question" though, maybe except from Ultras like Kollontai who wanted to focus on universals and disregard the particulars (which Trotsky, curse his name, pointed out - focusing on universalization in the area of family, transforming the idea of "mine" and "yours" in regards to children leads to justifications of neglect of children, a shame he couldn't see the same universalization he was committing in the national question, by focusing on an ideal of an "international" revolution and interpreting INTER-NATIONAL as cosmopolitan)

Been reading Communism, the Highest Stage of Ecology by Guillaume Suing. The stuff of Cubas agroecological practices has been really interesting to learn about as well as the history of Soviet planning in this space. Just finished a chapter which talks pretty positively of Lysenko, gonna have to read more on him but not sure where to start

I've been reading Kirstin Lavransdatter. It's a realistic medieval Scandinavian fiction story about a girl who runs headfirst into the expectations of women of her time.

Also reading Marx because the political reading list never ends.

How to Read a Book by Mortimer J. Adler. It's a good book. I skipped the "Elementary Reading" though. He mostly talks about USA's education system until the 70s in this chapter.

the body keeps the score by uuuh van bessel,i believe AND the identity of psychiatry and the challenge of mad activism by some science nerds

also...if anyone has any recommendations for any psychology books or articles on mad activism or critiquing bourgeois psych pls help a sis out. i'm PLANNING things, comrades.......i need sources

ive been putting off reading lust for life (vincent van gogh biography)

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Recently found out about "Stalin: The Court of the Red Tsar" by Simon Jonathan Sebag Montefiore. I get the feeling it's a pretty lib book, but has anyone read it? Is it worth a read?