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    Book Thread

    jesus jones
    jesus jones
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    Post by jesus jones Fri Apr 09, 2021 3:06 pm

    read this one this week:
    Book Thread - Page 21 9781642595253-f_large-6f1fbf68ebe9e1e713f4b42b3504564f

    starting this one today:
    Book Thread - Page 21 Borderandrule_72

    got this one in the queue:
    Book Thread - Page 21 10219841
    WP64
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    Post by WP64 Fri Apr 09, 2021 7:43 pm

    Gene Bootcut wrote:Thinking of reading Eric Hobsbawm's Long 19th Century series - The Age of Revolution: Europe 1789 - 1848, The Age of Capital: 1848 - 1875, The Age of Empire: 1875 - 1914 and also The Age of Extremes: The Short Twentieth Century, 1914 - 1991. Probably quite daunting but I've been meaning to read him for years and my interest was further piqued by the excellent LRB documentary that came out yesterday https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=wVQ4dfC34TI

    do we have anyone who's read any of them and wants to tell me how brilliant they are?
    I read them two or three summers ago. They are excellent. As someone who was educated in the American public schooling system, my historical knowledge is extremely limited. Honestly, I made it through an undergraduate program in the humanities without being able to supply an accurate definition of the basic terms of modern political discourse. His 20th century book (Age of Extremes) is also great, which I read the following year. After I finished reading the whole series, I finally felt like I had a established a pretty solid foundation to actually engage with and think about the world.

    So yeah, cannot recommend them enough. Keep in mind that it is a thematic (not narrative) history. It takes a little bit to adjust to his prose as well. The first ten pages are about pre-Revolutionary nutrition and transport and he is very specific because he is trying to demonstrate how epochal the French political and English industrial revolutions were to human history, which had a really significant material impact on the actual lived experience of time and space. But I do remember that my initial reaction to the first chapter of the series was kind of negative because I didn't really understand what he was doing yet. Just stick with him. He will take you where you need to go, basically.

    I am actually really envious of the great postwar British intellectual tradition. He was the oldest and the most decorated of the Marxist historians but people like E.P. Thompson and eventually Perry Anderson and the whole NLR milieu have been so important to my political education and intellectual development. There really is no equivalent to them across the pond, unfortunately.
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    Post by Nick Tue May 04, 2021 7:54 am

    I’m reading Pynchon’s The Crying of Lot 49. This is fantastic and I’ve enjoyed every page. I read V about 4 years ago and found it exhausting. That took me a long time to finish but Lot 49 is considerably shorter and while Pynchon still requires you to focus on each paragraph or you’ll be lost with his storytelling it pays off by how hilarious he can be.

    I don’t know if it will take another extended period of time before I read another Pynchon novel. Always been interested in Gravity’s Rainbow though from what I’ve heard that is quite the challenge.
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    Post by Nick Sun Feb 06, 2022 1:14 pm

    I just finished Dhalgren by Samuel Delany. I can’t really describe it as it’s unlike anything I’ve read. It’s at points offensive and kind of disgusting but that’s what Delany is going for with this bizarre story.

    This is part sci-fi I guess and certainly dystopian and I’m sure in a few weeks I’ll have more concrete feelings about it. Dhalgren is definitely one of the most remarkable novels I’ve ever read and would love to see a filmmaker be brave enough to undertake a project that stays as true to the source material as possible.

    Some of the background suggests a lot of the story is Delany putting visions he was having that had him placed in a mental hospital into a story makes sense. This isn’t a story a totally sane person would write.
    undo
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    Post by undo Sun Feb 06, 2022 3:07 pm

    https://www.dukeupress.edu/cruel-optimism
    https://www.newyorker.com/magazine/2019/03/25/affect-theory-and-the-new-age-of-anxiety

    This is so intriguing and interesting to me but I am too dumb to read and understand this kind of writing. I'm really trying but I might need to bail.
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    Post by Duff... Sun Mar 20, 2022 6:54 pm

    Keep seeing some old bastard on the train reading a massive tome called The Triumph of Nancy Reagan.
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    Post by Ned Braden Mon Dec 26, 2022 6:18 pm

    Read The Bell Jar for the first time over Christmas.
    I enjoyed it. Favorite passage:

    “I saw myself sitting in the crotch of this fig tree, starving to death, just because I couldn’t make up my mind which one of the figs I would choose. I wanted each and every one of them, but choosing one meant losing all the rest, and, as I sat there, unable to decide, the figs began to wrinkle and go black, and, one by one, they plopped to the ground at my feet.”

    Right now I’m reading Trust by Hernan Diaz. Three parts in and so far loving it. Really great character study of the protagonists, transposed against a study about the characters the larger public is creating to describe the same. Another way I’d describe it is, what if Elon Musk were super private and didn’t spend all day running his mouth? And also, he was a weird, mostly innocent dude; but we all still assumed he was a monster because how could he not be one?
    Look forward to finishing it.
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    Post by Ned Braden Mon Feb 27, 2023 2:53 am

    Super late to this, but the Beastie Boys Book is fucking nuts huh?

    Just the best shit. It’s sorta like “The Dirt” if it we’re written by literate geniuses instead of illiterate geniuses.
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    Post by Nick Sun Dec 03, 2023 11:51 am

    Spending the weekend totally absorbed in William T. Vollman’s You Bright & Risen Angels.
    Ned Braden
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    Post by Ned Braden Wed Jan 17, 2024 2:25 am

    The Bob Mehr Replacements book, Trouble Boys is an absolute must read for fans of the band or for fans of Rock & Roll in general.

    The entire thing is gold, but here are a few highlights off the top of the dome:

    The story of how this, which I’d never heard before, ended up happening:


    This quote about chandeliers:
    Paul Westerberg wrote:“They always fall. But damn, it feels so good for that one split second.”

    The joy and kinship I felt with the Mats upon reading this word for word description of a sport I used to play back in Pensacola with my buddies Ryan, Tom and Mitch; and just knowing that if nothing else, we had this in common:

    Book Thread - Page 21 Img_2410
    (ftr, we called it “knife Olympics,” which is arguably an even better name better name).

    Thanks for the recommendation, national treasure Bob Odenkirk.
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    Post by Ned Braden Wed Jan 17, 2024 9:26 pm

    Ironically this Mats deep dive has come at the worst possible time as I’m blowing off important work that absolutely needs to get done by month’s end in an act of self sabotage reminiscent of the band but way less interesting.

    That “Dead Man’s Pop” compilation that includes a superior version of “Don’t Tell A Soul” has me falling in love with their penultimate album for the first time.

    Keeping this in book thread cause it’s all linked, why not. Fucking best band ever.

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