What Book Are You Currently Reading?
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  What Book Are You Currently Reading?
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Author Topic: What Book Are You Currently Reading?  (Read 396925 times)
ChainsawJedis
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« Reply #1250 on: April 11, 2015, 10:57:23 PM »

Currently Reading After Camelot: A Personal History of the Kennedy Family 1968- to the Present by J. Randy Taraborrelli.
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MalaspinaGold
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« Reply #1251 on: April 12, 2015, 12:30:55 AM »
« Edited: April 12, 2015, 02:54:07 AM by MalaspinaGold »

Just finished:


An excellent book, I was able to follow it even though I'm not overly familiar with the subject. I especially liked the extent Priestland explored the satellites and the third world Communist parties (I must say I was absolutely ignorant of African Marxism prior to reading this book). I wish it had spent more time going over Western communist parties; besides France and Italy, hardly any space was lent to Communist parties post WWII, though I suppose that's because they were mostly too small to be relevant.
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TNF
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« Reply #1252 on: April 14, 2015, 09:08:55 AM »

I'm still scratching my head about the last Zizek volume I read, but I decided to read another one, because even though the last one was kind of confused rambling, I still feel like I got something (though I'm not sure what) out of the last one.

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TheDeadFlagBlues
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« Reply #1253 on: April 17, 2015, 02:40:17 PM »

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FEMA Camp Administrator
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« Reply #1254 on: April 17, 2015, 06:18:56 PM »

I'm still scratching my head about the last Zizek volume I read, but I decided to read another one, because even though the last one was kind of confused rambling, I still feel like I got something (though I'm not sure what) out of the last one.



I think it's hilarious that Zizek has his face next to Lenin, plastered repeatedly across the book's cover.
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Lumine
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« Reply #1255 on: April 17, 2015, 07:21:08 PM »

A rather old version of Maurice Druon's The Poisoned Crown. I have become very interested in The Accursed Kings as of now, so I'm planning to acquire all seven as I find them.
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Murica!
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« Reply #1256 on: April 22, 2015, 11:26:19 PM »

I just read The Kronstadt Rebellion by Alexander Berkman, great read that I very much recommend to my Bolshevist friends TNF and Snowstalker.


And the link:
https://www.marxists.org/reference/archive/berkman/1922/kronstadt-rebellion/index.htm
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TNF
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« Reply #1257 on: April 23, 2015, 08:25:10 AM »
« Edited: April 23, 2015, 08:31:08 AM by ☭ Working Class Bro ☭ »

I'll definitely look into it. At the same time, I would recommend Trotsky's Hue and Cry over Krondstadt, which explains that the rebellion was not a move to save the revolution from Bolshevik overreach, but actually a reactionary peasant uprising backed by the White Army.
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Murica!
whyshouldigiveyoumyname?
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« Reply #1258 on: April 23, 2015, 09:24:49 AM »

I'll definitely look into it. At the same time, I would recommend Trotsky's Hue and Cry over Krondstadt, which explains that the rebellion was not a move to save the revolution from Bolshevik overreach, but actually a reactionary peasant uprising backed by the White Army.
I'll definitely read it, but it sounds hilarious.
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Murica!
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« Reply #1259 on: April 23, 2015, 09:43:21 AM »

I was right, it was pure propaganda against the the sailors of Kronstadt with out an actual argument other then the typical Bolshevik "Their Petty bourgeois Counter-revolutionaries!" and "If we let the Soviets be free, then they'll destroy themselves!".
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RogueBeaver
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« Reply #1260 on: April 28, 2015, 10:03:24 PM »

Luis Francia's A History of the Philippines
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ChainsawJedis
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« Reply #1261 on: April 29, 2015, 02:29:18 AM »
« Edited: April 29, 2015, 02:31:01 AM by ChainsawJedis »

Next I am going to read Ted Kennedy's autobiography True Compass. After that I intend on starting the Song of Ice and Fire (Game of Thrones) novels, but I might read Jack Kerouac's On the Road first. My friend also suggested to me I should read a play called The History Boys by Alan Bennett. I may look into that as well before I start Game of Thrones.
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traininthedistance
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« Reply #1262 on: April 29, 2015, 07:18:53 PM »



Rereading this in honor of National Poetry Month.  Which, thanks to spring's late start this year, has been less cruel than usual.  The lilacs haven't bloomed yet, and they are of course the cruelest part.

Previously:



Which, among its many virtues, did a pretty great job of making me feel nostalgia for all the tennis I watched and played (very, very badly) in my youth.
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TNF
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« Reply #1263 on: May 03, 2015, 01:09:02 PM »



Started this one yesterday, after finishing Michael Parenti's Make Believe Media, which was pretty good. So far, this one is a pretty phenomenal work, breaking down the usual narrative of World War II as the sole battle between the Axis and the Allies and concentrating on the contradictions within each of the major powers and the ways that minor powers and movements within occupied territories responded to occupation and fought fascism in their own way. The author proposes that World War II was really two conflicts that intersected with one another, an imperialist war fought for imperialist aims (Allies v. Axis) and a 'people's war' fought by ordinary people against fascism who were seeking more than just a return to the 1930s and business as usual after the destruction of the Axis.
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Filuwaúrdjan
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« Reply #1264 on: May 04, 2015, 09:11:48 AM »

Which, among its many virtues, did a pretty great job of making me feel nostalgia for all the tennis I watched and played (very, very badly) in my youth.

It's a lovely book isn't it? As someone who also grew up in the country but not to a farming family the essay on the Illinois State Fair spoke so truly to me...
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© tweed
Miamiu1027
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« Reply #1265 on: May 04, 2015, 10:37:20 PM »

Michael Parenti's Make Believe Media, which was pretty good.

Parenti sure is a fun read for those with left-wing sympathies.  he doesn't hold back.  a liberal professor all but refused to let me cite him in a paper, calling him a "loaded source".  I could hardly object.
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Miamiu1027
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« Reply #1266 on: May 04, 2015, 10:48:42 PM »

I just read The Kronstadt Rebellion by Alexander Berkman, great read that I very much recommend to my Bolshevist friends TNF and Snowstalker.


And the link:
https://www.marxists.org/reference/archive/berkman/1922/kronstadt-rebellion/index.htm

hah.  Kronsradt is the white-knuckle issue within the revolutionary left.  everyone has a life-or-death opinion on it.  anyone who criticizes the Bolsheviks is an "infantile leftist", as Our Father Lenin tagged them ca. 1919.
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TNF
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« Reply #1267 on: May 05, 2015, 09:22:42 AM »

Michael Parenti's Make Believe Media, which was pretty good.

Parenti sure is a fun read for those with left-wing sympathies.  he doesn't hold back.  a liberal professor all but refused to let me cite him in a paper, calling him a "loaded source".  I could hardly object.

He's one of my favorites. He also has a sense of humor about him, which is more than you can say for other popular left-writers, like Chomsky, for instance. Speaking of Parenti, I just started reading this by him, and am enjoying it as well.

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Miamiu1027
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« Reply #1268 on: May 05, 2015, 02:08:15 PM »

Chomsky has a dry sense of humor, occasionally you'll pick it up.  he doesn't tell overt jokes.
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TNF
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« Reply #1269 on: May 05, 2015, 02:42:40 PM »

Finished The Assassination of Julius Caesar a few hours ago. Next up:

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Yelnoc
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« Reply #1270 on: May 06, 2015, 03:10:06 PM »

The Socialist Party of America: A Complete History by Jack Ross. It is indeed complete, weighing in at 753 pages, the book chronicles the history of the Socialist Party of America, from its antecedents in the populist and trade unionist movements of the nineteenth centuries, to the fragmented landscape of successor parties which populate the modern socialist landscape.
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DemPGH
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« Reply #1271 on: May 08, 2015, 03:24:19 PM »

Michael Hicks' The Wars of the Roses.

Interesting, if sprawling coverage. I've always preferred a more limited definition of what constituted the Wars of the Roses - i.e., the conflict between Queen Margaret/Henry VI and the Duke of York/Earl of Warwick. Warwick flipped sides and was killed along with Henry VI's son in 1471 at Barnet and Tewkesbury. Henry VI was killed/died shortly thereafter. And that ended it. There were residual effects, but I'm not sure that's still the Wars of the Roses.

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World politics is up Schmitt creek
Nathan
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« Reply #1272 on: May 08, 2015, 07:01:49 PM »

I'm working my way through The Wind from Vulture Peak: The Buddhification of Japanese Waka in the Heian Period by Stephen D. Miller (the poetry translations in the book are by Miller and Patrick Donnelly). Miller, who teaches at UMass Amherst, was my professor for several classes a couple years back and one of the best teachers I've ever had. The book is an epic, astoundingly detailed and thorough coverage of the introduction and development of Buddhist themes in the imperial poetry anthologies through the end of the twelfth century. I'm just starting the section on the Shikashū (Collection of Verbal Flowers) anthology of the early 1150s (the exact year is unknown).

Within the past week I've finished two books about women in pre-Reformation English Christianity, Empress and Handmaid: On Nature and Gender in the Cult of the Virgin Mary by Sarah Jane Boss and Margery Kempe: Genius and Mystic by Katherine Cholmeley. Empress and Handmaid relies heavily on interpretive frameworks of which I'm a little suspicious--psychoanalytic theory and Frankfurt School critical theory--but I think the specific arguments that it makes are sound. Margery Kempe is hagiographic, occasionally tedious in its author's need to make clear her own piety, but a refreshing antidote to the misogynistic 'hysterical woman' way its subject is sometimes understood.

I've also read My Year of Meats, the first novel by Ruth Ozeki, author of the dark-horse highlight of my 2014 reading list, A Tale for the Time Being. You can tell My Year of Meats is a first novel--themes, conceits, narrative structures, and occasionally plot points and characterizations from A Tale for the Time Being are already present in it but in clearly larval form--but I'm still glad I read it.
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MalaspinaGold
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« Reply #1273 on: May 10, 2015, 02:10:06 AM »

Some goodies I've finished reading:



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TNF
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« Reply #1274 on: May 13, 2015, 11:15:47 AM »

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