I’m reading Moby Dick (annotated Norman Critical Edition) and really liking it so far. The annotation helps quite a bit with understanding the historical and literary references.

Listening to The Jakarta Method thanks to a suggestion by a Hexbear user. Holy shit, I can’t believe how uninformed I was about Indonesia. Far more important for the US in the 1960s than Vietnam.

Trying to listen to Culture and Imperialism by Edward Said, but I’m finding myself bored in the first few chapters and might give up.

Theory list I am very gradually (over months) reading:

-Theories of Surplus Value

-Socialism, Utopian and Scientific

-Grundrisse

-Art in the Age of Mechanical Reproduction by Walter Benjamin

-Intellectual and Manual Labour by Alfred Sohn-Rethel

-For fun, a book from an art exhibition, called The Economy Is Spinning which takes influence from Sohn-Rethel among others

I started listening to the Super Imperialism Audiobook on the youtube.

Currently Minima/Moralia - Theodor Adorno, and Postmodernism, or The Cultural Logic of Late Capitalism - Fred Jameson.

I’m currently trying to comprehend bits and pieces from Anti-Duhring.

I’ve been reading Mutiny: A History of Naval Insurrection by Leonard F. Guttridge. It’s funny cuz he’s a labor historian and his sympathies are clearly with the sailors in most cases, but it’s published by a naval press and the intended audience is clearly officers. Also there’s a chapter on the Kronstadt sailors.

W.E.B. Du Bois’ Darkwater. I was reading about the East St. Louis Massacre of 1917 (it’s horrific) and wanted to learn more.

Just finished David Graeber’s Utopia Of Rules and while it is only a collection of essays. Some of it comes across as extremely utopian. Ostensibly it’s about bureaucracies but it presupposes that bureaucratic processes are bad and inefficient. If you like Graeber (and I generally do) I wouldn’t recommend it.

Reading The Theory of Capitalist Development by Sweezy. About 1/3rd way through I’d say and it’s been amazing.

Information Technology and Socialist Construction by Daniel Saros

Good so far, but I just started. Saw it recommended by Morozov

Just finished “The Devil’s Chessboard.” The book really goes out of its way to shower JFK with praise, but it’s quite informative with regards to how the security apparatus took a central executive position in US government. I’m pretty convinced at this point that Kennedy was killed by an op spearheaded by Allen Dulles

Since finishing the book, I’ve started reading Marx’s Capital. I didn’t expect to read the phrase “One coat equals twenty yards of linen” over 50 times, but here we are. The book got much more engaging once it started laying out what “capital” is and how it differs from an equal exchange of commodities.

Recently started Babel by RF Kuang. Couldn’t get back into the Poppy War trilogy after the wait for The Burning God but this one’s holding my interest so far.

Losurdo’s Liberalism: A Counter-History. It’s a banger. I’ve read excerpts of his before, and really liked them, but his books are wild. He quotes like a motherfucker, which is incredibly insightful, but takes a bit longer to read than other authors I’ve read. Literally 145 citations in the first 35 pages.

Four books I think of:

• Primavera con una esquina rota by Mario Benedetti for some Spanish practice, takes place in the 70s and follows a few characters affected by the Uruguayan dictatorship
• Capital vol 2, no further explanation needed, I haven’t been reading as much of it as I should tbh, but I am continuing to slowly make my way through it
• The Tondrakian Movement, by Vrej Nersessian, about a Christian sect largely based in the peasantry in 9th to 11th century Armenia that admittedly I first heard about in a CK2 mod lmao, but who were anti-feudal, pretty pro gender equality, etc.
• I’m going to decline to name this one lol

Been re-reading Kafka’s The Metamorphosis and suspecting that Gregor Samsa did not actually turn into a beetle. I think it’s all in his head and that he’s just crazy and thinks he’s an insect. I think this because:

• he gets transformed into a “vermin,” which could actually be a person;
• Kafka’s father, with whom he had a Freudian relationship, frequently called people he disliked “vermin”;
• Kafka said that the “vermin” should not be illustrated at all;
• does Gregor’s family really act like they’re in the same house as a giant beetle or a crazy person?

Hexbear atm. Very busy in physical world.

Last book I read was See What You Made Me Do, which was about domestic violence but was also very pro-cop (and anti-dprk)