Fiction or Non-Fiction, academic or casual, theory or non-theory, feel free to mention books of any genre and on any topic.
On the theory side of things I’ve been rereading Marxism and the National Question by Joseph Stalin. It’s a very interesting read and I wish communists of all nations in France would read books on this subject.
On the fun side of things I’ve been reading The Moon on a Rainy Night a manga by Kuzushiro. I’ve yet to read volume 5 but for now it has been a very enjoyable book about the relationship between Saki, a pretty sweet girl, and Kanon. Kanon is deaf and so it’s part of her story and an excuse to talk about equity, but she’s also a pretty “average” (for the lack of a better word, I mean it in the best way possible) girl with her own personality and likes. I feel it’s rather common to have stories where a character is defined solely by their handicap or their minority so it’s nice to actually have someone rather than just a property.
I still have a ton of books to read, including a ton of manga, including a ton of romance and slice-of-life. Right now I’m also at half the first volume of The Mimosa Confessions by Mei Hachimoku, a light novel about a trans woman who just came out, told from the perspective of a friend. And so we see her facing challenges, some personal and others like bullying. I quite like it for now, as someone who is trans myself.
I was reading this: https://en.people.cn/n3/2026/0617/c90000-20468260.html
Finally got to Chapter 4 of What Is To Be Done. Very polemic of a book, makes it hard to understand sometimes.
So I just finished “Periodic Tales” by Hugh Aldersey-Williams, which was quite pleasant; it tells stories of all the elements in the periodic table, some historic like their discoveries, some anecdotes and some are the authors very own experiences. If you like chemistry and history you should give it a go.
Today i started “The Alchemist” by Paulo Coelho and “On the Juche Ideology” by Kim Jong-Il. This is mostly because of the now 5 hour train ride that was only meant to take 2,5 h (curse you German capitalism!!!), so i just read out of boredom.
Meanwhile i am still struggling with Anti-Dühring. I have just got through the first chapter with less than half to go. It’s a good book, but the excursions on war tactics or prussian law are a little tiring.
I recently got back into Terry Pratchett’s discworld series. I just finished “Reaper Man” and I am now on “Witches Abroad”.
The series is really great. The comedy is well written and it’s constantly subverting expectations. The characters are all so different and feel alive in ways that many authors fail to manage.
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.
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."
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.
I’ve been reading the Hunger Games series. I recently started Mockingjay.
Have you read Battle Royale by Koushun Takami? (the novel, not the manga)
It’s a precursor to HG that doesn’t adhere to the young adult genre. Pretty good. I’ve read it three times.
I have not, but I’ll add it to the list
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’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.
The Dark Forest is really dark. I struggle with the topic of death and I had a really hard time emotionally with it. Managed to get to the end but I don’t know if I need to read it again, also in contrast to the first two books.
I found the whole series fascinating; definitely comes from unique angles in my opinion/experience. Really got me thinking about things I hadn’t considered, and with different perspectives and nuance than I would likely ever arrive at on my own. I feel like the series is worth reading in its entirety, but I can also commiserate with losing interest or even feeling too fatigued to bother finishing. (Also, there was a weird part dealing with gender that felt almost like a non sequitur; I found it jarring and necessary, but I’m also not out here any literary awards.) What language are you reading it in? If it’s English, it might be worth noting The Dark Forest has a different translator than the other two.
I’m reading it in English. I do plan to power through, but I really can’t pretend to care about Luo Ji’s imaginary to real girlfriend pipeline and everything that occurs in-between. The whole thing just seems silly to me, and not in a good way.
I just reached part 2. I’m hoping things start to get more interesting from here, but I did need to take a little break after slogging through part 1.
Yeah, I want to say that nonsense ends up being at least partially justified story-wise, but it’s been a while since I’ve read it, and I don’t know how true that is. 😅
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.
Definitely need to read neocolonialism as well.
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)
I felt the same, had to stop reading this book halfway through because of the western chauvinism.
