| TITLE | ISBN | AUTHOR | READ |
|---|---|---|---|
| RATING | COMMENT | ||
| Imperialism: the Highest Stage of Capitalism | 978-0717800988 | Lenin | Many |
| Superb | The power of monopoly is immense and all-encompassing. Humanity has been thrust into a deeply unnatural state, we have become trapped in a prison whose author’s names are multitude but all follow the same ideology: capitalism. Enclosure is now the rule. The downtrodden cannot break their chains until all of the lower classes become a union of people. | ||
| The Iliad | N/A | Homer | 1x |
| Superb | A beautiful book. It felt as though each fallen soldier was given their own gorgeous, and many times amusing, epitaph. The detailed descriptions of warriors on the battlefield being maimed or committing acts of heroic combat made me feel like I was there at Troy, as well as feasting, and indulgent-to-death drinking. Achilles behaving as a godlike man-child. All these complex feelings compounded when gods such as Neptune would help a soldier or engorge a river to stop the relentless advance of one side. I wish I could sit around a campfire and listen to the oral re-telling of this story in its original form. | ||
| The Origin of Capitalism | 9781859843925 | Wood | 2x |
| Superb | A final response to the lie that capitalism has existed since the inception of humanity. The author deftly and succinctly explores where the transition into capitalism began. A whole year’s worth of education is packed into this very accessible book. | ||
| The Communist Manifesto | 978-0717802418 | Marx & Engel | Many |
| Superb | “The history of all hitherto existing society is the history of class struggles”. This capitalist system we live under cannot continue. We must commit to the struggle to free ourselves. There has been a often silent war from the bourgeoisie against the proletariat and the peasantry and we cannot stand idly by any longer. Workers! Unite! And break your chains! | ||
| The Russian Revolution 1917 (Abridged) | N/A | N.N. Sukhanov | 1x |
| Superb | There is not much I can write here to express my gratitude for this Menshevik-Internationalist deciding to write this book from his journals. This is the raw view of the revolution, nothing held back, not even his scathing views of the Bolshevik and their insistence to ‘go at the speed of the proletariat and peasantry’, something the Mensheviks clearly thought abhorrent and un-marxist. Towering intellectual figures like Martov brought down part by their rigidity and part by circumstance, this tome feels like the Menshevik counterpart to Trotsky’s (Bolshevik) telling of the revolution. You cannot get a complete view of the revolution without reading this (and one day in the future I will likely read the entire unabridged version, it is that insightful). Sukhanov does a very good job of being impartial, but he does not hold back from criticism – and in many ways his disdain for certain figures like Kerensky and even his own non-International ‘fraction’ of the Mensheviks almost feels modern, perhaps from the language he uses in frustration. The most heartbreaking moment is when he’s at the Soviet Congress around October 26th, on the outside looking in after the ‘pure’ Mensheviks and SRs left in protest. These ‘pure’ groups blind to the fact that the Soviet was now the only centre of power; Sukhanov sits there physically in congress but on the outskirts of the revolution he cared so much about -- after he was one of the first executive committee members in February… now he’s nothing, in touching distance yet unable to effect change any longer in the very heart of the world socialist revolution. His accurate-to-reality sarcasm is entertaining, but being keen is not being correct, and he himself is still blinded by his Menshivism, and in that darkness despite seeing so much he could not understand what the Bolsheviks knew so plainly: the people cannot wait. | ||
| Red Petrograd | 9780511562952 | SA Smith | 1x |
| Superb | The evolution of Saint Petersburg into the nexus of the revolution. The workers learning, coalescing, cooperating. Building themselves and each other up to take control of their labour. The workers wheelbarrowing their bosses out of the factory in a rage to the edge of the Neva, only to laugh when he wets himself in fear, and he wobbles away ultimately unharmed. Watching a revolution form from the downtrodden workers is better than drugs. | ||
| The Trial | 9780805210408 | Kafka | Many |
| Superb | The confusion, the insanity, the absence of timely communication, the benign terror! I simply love the way this book makes me feel. It’s a maze of bureaucracy, a 1920s disintegration of a man, an annihilation so impersonal and so rote and quiet that they’ve almost gone back in time to erase him from ever existing. For some reason reading his confusion and anguish is calming, because I know the ending. The story structure feels a bit Joseph Conrad Heart of Darkness, where every chapter he loses more options and has no way out, a claustrophobic ever-narrowing corridor! | ||
| Parable of the Sower | 9780446675505 | Butler | 1x |
| Superb | One of the best fiction books ever written. Pinpoints and then extracts society's future issues and puts it in this book. I'm surprised she didn't have a time machine or a crystal ball when she wrote this. The chaos of the future is clear to see for anyone with a brain to think. | ||
| Left Wing Communism an Infantile Disorder | N/A | Lenin | 1x |
| Great | Reading Lenin tear apart the most foolish of the left’s most self-defeating group does not get tiring. Needs to be re-read. | ||
| The State and Revolution | N/A | Lenin | 1x |
| Great | I seemed to enjoy this, it was so long ago I need to re-read it. | ||
| Fahrenheit 451 | 9780007491568 | Bradbury | 2x |
| Great | Dystopian classic, every moment onward seeing books being burned sent chills up my spine. | ||
| Brave New World | 9780060929879 | Huxley | 1x |
| Great | The debauchery and unrestrained nature of this book made me feel oddly sick. Incredible dystopia. | ||
| 1984 | 978-045152493 | Orwell | 1x |
| Great | Today we are always under nefarious observation. This book gets more relevant each passing month, depressingly. Ever since TikTok and the proliferation of replacing words with algorithm-safe equivalents I’m reminded of the horrors written on these pages. Altering language to fit the censors the way so many do today is equivalent to a slow strangulation of the English language. Insipid words such as grape, self-delete, unalive are sickening obfuscations of their real equivalents. | ||
| At the Mountains of Madness | 9780812974416 | Lovecraft | Many |
| Great | This book is the reason for my obsession with the Transantarctic mountains. Lovecraft's nightmare at its finest. | ||
| Terrorism and Communism | 9781844671786 | Trotsky | 1x |
| Great | Trotsky lays out a multitude of very poignant answers to Kautsky’s heavy criticisms of the Bolshevik’s so-far tenuous rule. Some criticisms Kautsky laid out have now in the modern day been extended to all forms of anything remotely resembling socialism/communism. In a way this proves Trotsky’s replies in this book correct. Trotsky’s insight into things such as: Red Terror against interloping elements, food security issues, taming an unruly intelligentsia, the suspending of liberal democracy and the idea of the dictatorship of the proletariat, etcetera are all illuminating. Particularly interesting are the sections on compulsory labour, the falsehood of its inefficiencies, and the idea that the advantageous nature of capitalist competition is at its roots rivalry. This rivalry can be utilised in a socialist society to an even greater effect than in capitalism, the betterment of socialist society is the worker’s reward and motivation. To be the best and most clever of those workers gives the individual the drive that capitalism claims sole ownership of. Those of Kautsky’s Menshivist ilk—in antiquity and the newest altered forms in modernity—show such obvious contempt for the proletariat and peasantry and such a blindness towards the reality of power there’s no wonder so many left-leaning groups today have lost the confidence of the workers. Everyone, most of all the working classes, wants a bloodless revolution, but won’t the slave masters rather burn their own estates down before letting go of their chattel? | ||
| Economic Writings I | 9781781687659 | Luxemburg | 1x |
| Great | An intellectual giant whose life was cut far too short. Rosa Luxemburg was truly one of the greats. Need to re-read. | ||
| Meditations | 9780140449334 | Aurelius | 2x |
| Great | Like any usual young teen I devoured this book, sat in my lounge chair in an apartment complex in the sun and tried grafting parts of this book onto my already existing personality, successfully, and unsuccessfully. | ||
| The Forever War | 9780060510862 | Haldeman | Many |
| Great | My favourite scifi book. Bar none. Every time Marley went away and came back to a changed world it tickled me, it mirrored my own life and I loved that. The alienation from friends, family, how do you explain the things you’ve seen, how do you convey that you’re just not the same? It sounds like a tour-of-duty but certain things, even small events can become ‘traumatic’ in a way—the death of your pre-existing notions about the world, and the death of what you were. That’s not easily let go of. | ||
| The Search for Modern China | 9780393307801 | Spence | 1x |
| Great | One of the best overviews on modern Chinese history ever, Ming to the recent past. I found this book looking at what UC Berkeley was teaching their students. Sun Yat-sen was a genius of diplomacy, how different the world would be if his life wasn't cut short. | ||
| Manufacturing Consent | 9780375714498 | Herman & Chomsky | 1x |
| Great | Read the Washington Post or New York Times and tell me they’re not covering for capital. Go read the cowardly media apparatus staffed feckless adult children who wallow in press-room daycare and witness them bend into pretzels to justify whatever neoliberal opinion they’ve spewed out that day. Watch them twist and turn to make Israel look saintly, look as they perform pirouettes, “Democracy Dies in Darkness”. Truly pathetic. Their career with their ‘factual’ articles showing themselves on the ‘right side’ are more important than the truth, more important than morality, and apparently worth the heavy toll on humanity of continuing the dictatorship of the bourgeoisie. | ||
| On China | 9781594202711 | Kissinger | 2x |
| Great | What an astute analysis of China. This book gave me one of the broadest, best views on what exactly China is. For Kissinger...a unique evil can only be made under the right conditions. His analysis of China is second-to-none. | ||
| Ignition!: An Informal History of Liquid Rocket Propellants | 9780813507255 | Clark | 1x |
| Great | 'Lit' my imagination up in regards to liquid propellants; read this in Hong Kong and for whatever reason enhanced the book for me. | ||
| Rendezvous with Rama | 9781857231588 | Clarke | 2x |
| Great | A classic science fiction book—I felt like I was there reading the news about the oblong rock ship. Taking the trip up to it, unlocking its doors finally and seeing the inside of this truly alien object. My imagination was alight with possibility. | ||
| Red Mars | 9780553560732 | Robinson | 1x |
| Great | I looked up hard science fiction books a lifetime ago, and I found this series. I found it ironic, the fruitless exercise of sending the brightest and best alone, them modifying themselves to be even better and to live longer, and for what? While the population of Earth choked to death and bled and suffered? There is no escaping the tendrils of capital, but to see the adapting meta-humans recognise the better world Mars could be was pleasant. After reading it it truly felt like I took the expedition to Mars with the team; what a fun and engrossing series. | ||
| Green Mars | 9780553572391 | Robinson | 1x |
| Great | Somehow just as good as the above. This is where the consequences arrive in the form of ‘immigrants’ or workers to Mars and all the bad (or good depending on your perspective) actors that that entails if I remember this book correctly after a decade and a half. The struggle between wanting the familiar while everything changes around you is a tale as old as time. | ||
| Dune | 9780340839935 | Herbert | 1x |
| Great | Science fiction classic. I enjoyed the Islamic influences in the book—now that the new movies have come out I’m pretty upset they didn’t say the word itself jihad once, it’s literally integral to the book! The mention of a religious JIHAD specifically, crusade is not a strong enough word, don’t wuss out guys. | ||
| A Brief History of Neoliberalism | 9780199283279 | Harvey | 1x |
| Great | Neoliberalism is a cancer on society. A cancer born from a twisting justification of liberalism, wrong, pigheaded and harmful to society. This book shows how this malodorous force has been thrust on us today. | ||
| Human Acts | 9781101906729 | Kang | 1x |
| Great | A very unique book, hard to describe but the writing was very special. I felt like I was in Gwangju and was killed myself. The author winning the Pulitzer (was that the prize?) was well deserved. | ||
| Grant | 9781594204876 | Chernow | 1x |
| Great | A massive book on an unexpectedly interesting president in US history. Who would’ve thought a quiet boy who hated school would turn out to be such a military genius? Not only a genius, but a kind person to boot. To be great is special, but to be kind is a truly rare thing, but to be both? Very improbable. I would've liked to have known him personally. I respected how Grant treated his wife, he seemed like a real gentleman. I’m glad they had such a big parade in New York for him at the end of the war, he deserved it along with the rest of the veterans who fought against the traitorous Confederate horde. Sherman should’ve went all the way. | ||
| Lenin | N/A | Lukes | 1x |
| Great | Great overview on the politics of one of the most heroic men of the 20th century. | ||
| The Holocaust Industry | 9781804297216 | Finklestein | 1x |
| Great | Finklestein is certainly banned from Israel with this book! It boggles the mind how duplicitous Zionists can be, how they can be so conniving towards holocaust victims. Endless disgust for those who tread on Judaic values for personal gain in the name of Zionism while holding Judaism as a shield against criticism. This book also repudiates the majority of anti-Swiss propaganda (aimed at the Swiss bankers but the rest of the country gets rolled up in it too) which is a nice change of pace—like Finklestein states, who thinks Swiss bankers need defending, who wants to cover for them when they have more money than god? But by their pigheadedness Zionists make it possible. | ||
| A Briefer History of Time | 9780553804362 | Hawking | 1x |
| Great | Physics, astronomy, so much beauty in the natural world. Read a very long time ago but the wild world this revealed stuck with me. | ||
| 2001 A Space Odyssey | 9780451457998 | Clarke | 1x |
| Great | The beauty and emptiness of space. Watch the movie and it is, quite literally, identical to this book. Space is truly a deadlier sea. | ||
| From Farm to Factory | 9780691144313 | Allen | 1x |
| Great | An honest and—at the end very intriguing—assessment of what worked during Stalin’s industrialisation efforts; there is a final chapter on the beginning of the collapse of the Soviet Union for good measure. To see how collectivisation by force gave the greatest growth to the Soviet economy was truly remarkable. Peaceful collectivisation being marginally better than NEP yet far below forced collectivisation was counter to what I thought would be the case but the proof is there. All this coming from a man who detests Stalin and collectivisation...this leads me to believe him when he can’t help but prove its economic success. These moments remind me of Trotsky’s fight with Kautsky about the necessity of state terror. This book’s only quibble is the drift into political analysis—there is a nasty habit of prefacing all socialist analyses, good or bad, with fainting spells. Do the ends justify the means in the transition away from capitalism? Author gives a Menshivistic no, and if he set himself to an economic-only analysis it would not matter but alas each chapter is punctuated by the colours of the couch that catches him. | ||
| Heart of Darkness | N/A | Conrad | 1x |
| Great | I remember enjoying this book immensely but it was so long ago it needs to be re-read. | ||
| Violent Entrepreneurs | 9780801487781 | Volkov | 1x |
| Great | The bad old 90’s in Russia, if someone buzzes you with a jet fighter during a mafia meet you’ve already lost your negotiating position! | ||
| The Financial Revolution in England...1688-1756 | N/A | Dickson | 1x |
| Great | Inexplicably never boring. This was, surprisingly, a highly readable and interesting account of the beginning of public credit during the years stated in the title. Learning about the jobbers, Jonathan’s in Exchange Alley and about the speculation as to why the interest rate began to decrease from around 1690 to 1750 was all very intriguing—I didn’t understand much of the book but it felt like the seeds of many ideas were planted in my mind as well as illuminating facts about the state of modern finance. This book is so detailed, that the appendices are upwards of 50(?)+ pages. | ||
| Bitter harvest | 9781903402054 | Ian Smith | 1x |
| Great | Rhodesia is positioned in a unique spot in history and to hear its short existence from the horse’s mouth is invaluable. Even in his vaguely stilted racially standoffish thoughts Ian Smith is surprisingly respectful towards the black population of his former country, albeit overly patriarchal. If this book was widely read I’m sure it would cause quite a bit of confusion as to how Rhodesia managed to collapse so quickly when much worse states such as Israel stand tall. Food for thought indeed… | ||
| Rubicon: The Last Years of the Roman Republic | 9781400078974 | Holland | 1x |
| Great | A really thrilling book, Rome will always be a topic of discussion. Cassius and Cicero seemed so intriguing, ruthless, powerful. There is never a lack of interesting characters in the history of Roman empire. | ||
| The End of Alchemy | 9780393247022 | King | 1x |
| Great | A great overview of the history of money and banking. I’ve recommended this book to so many people. It’s really an accessible overview even for those not terribly interested in its stated topics. | ||
| All the Shah's Men | 9780471678786 | Kinzer | 1x |
| Great | One word: imperialism. What the British and the Americans did to Iran should never be forgotten; Mosaddegh was incredible and his tenure cut far too short. It upsets me greatly that Iran was forced to become theocratic. | ||
| FedAccounts Digital Dollars | N/A | Ricks, Crawford, Menand | 1x |
| Great | Read this paper on release in 2020; really brilliant stuff. It’s been a while since reading but it was illuminating. The idea of a digital currency seems like it can be useful with the right precautions in place. One great idea was the concept of a federal(?) bank account. Every citizen having the option to have a free and automatic bank account to park their liquidity. I think that would help immensely with the destitute and make things more efficient in a true sense of the word—not as in ‘we get to pay poor people less benefits’ way like Cameron in 2011 and his ‘Welfare Reform’ scam. Tangent aside it’s a worthwhile read for anyone interested in the future of money. | ||
| Revolution and survival: The Foreign Policy of Soviet Russia 1917-18 | N/A | K. Debo | 1x |
| Good | A pretty good book if you want to know what an exact year of foreign policy looks like for a fledgling country, and especially a fledgling socialist country—one scratching at the dirt just to survive against all odds. It would’ve been great if not for some onerous repetition in a couple of spots. Reading Lenin deftly navigate the reality of the workers in Germany not being fully ready for a transition was heartbreaking especially. The world revolution was not meant to be in those end years of the 1910s. I felt a rush when Lenin said “World capital itself is now coming for us.” November 1918—imagine that? That kind of pressure? The virus that is capital trying as hard as it can to overwhelm socialism the nascent immune system of humanity. | ||
| The Unknown Cultural Revolution | 9781583671801 | Dongping | 1x |
| Good | A book edging on great because of its honest assessment of the Cultural Revolution. The uplifting of the peasantry by Mao with the Cultural Revolution is something to be deeply admired even at the (temporary) expense of the city-dwelling proletariat. To read about corrupt officials getting their just desserts from the perspective of the peasantry was very satisfying. It is a complicated thing that Deng Xiaoping felt the need to reverse these gains for various political and Dengist reasons. One can only hope that if there is a second cultural revolution it has more permanent gains. I wish this book was longer and given a second researcher to give a deeper insight into how those corrupt landlords and maleficent village clans planned their vengeance. | ||
| Berserk | N/A | Miura | N/A |
| Good | A very dangerous and dark world made alive with vivid imagery and interesting characters; the Golden Age Arc is one of the best examples of creative storytelling in the medium. | ||
| Crossed | N/A | Ennis & Burrows | N/A |
| Good | The most disturbing mainline series of comics I’ve ever had the (dis)pleasure of reading. Truly horrific look into what happens if you answered an emphatic yes to every call of the void. Unlimited malice. | ||
| Selous Scouts | N/A | Baxter | 1x |
| Good | The Selous Scouts were a complicated and lawless group. Their no-rules nearly paramilitary actions are deserving of study and this book doesn’t idolise them unnecessarily. The fights between the rest of Rhodesia’s military structure and the Selous Scouts with their impunity and no-questions-asked nature were entertaining. | ||
| Deng Xiaoping’s Long War | 9781469642345 | Zhang | 1x |
| Good | Written as best as the author could muster. This book delved into a forgotten war, a mistaken adventure, two brothers against each other. I hope this is the kind of mistake—or foolish political misstep—is not made again by the CCP. | ||
| The Comintern | 9781931859523 | Hallas | 1x |
| Good | Detailed account on the third international. Pretty specific slice of history, needs to be re-read as I cannot for the life of me remember much of what went on. | ||
| Toxic: A History of Nerve Agents | 9781787383067 | Kaszeta | 1x |
| Good | Kim Jong Eun's brother was assassinated so close to the release of this book it could’ve been mistaken for a advanced marketing campaign! I learned the rudiments of nerve agents. | ||
| Rogue States: The Rule of Force in World Affairs | 9780896086111 | Chomsky | 1x |
| Good | What is a rogue state? This answers it in the obvious affirmative: any country that goes against the United States, duh! | ||
| The Lessons of October | N/A | Trotsky | 1x |
| Good | Needs to be re-read. | ||
| Animal Farm | 9780452284241 | Orwell | 1x |
| Good | Orwell’s complicated relationship with being an anti-fascist and an anti-communist makes a strong showing here. I enjoyed the book but I never developed any attachment to it aside from the general idea that power is a very corrupting influence. | ||
| Napoleon in Egypt | 9780553806786 | Strathern | 1x |
| Good | A thrilling book on Napoleon's invasion, the Battle of the Nile was vivid; It felt as though I could feel the mood of the world. | ||
| Afgansty | 9781846680540 | Braithwaite | 1x |
| Good | Knew next to nothing about the Soviet-Afghan war and this book enlightened me. Was a straight standard Western book about war that I do not remember including any insightful commentary on the political situation. Most authors would be better off following this example and leaving their odd politics out of it. The raid on the president/warlord's compound was enjoyable. | ||
| The Art of War | N/A | Sun Tzu | 1x |
| Good | A Chinese classic, many good aphorisms. As with many old military strategy ‘guides’, it all seems so simple in our modern day, but we had to start somewhere. We stand on the shoulders of giants. | ||
| Alas Babylon | 9780060741877 | Pat Frank | 1x |
| Good | I don't think I've read many books that felt the way this particular novel felt, that 1950s saccharine optimism. It felt as though the worst conceivable event could take place and as long as you were had gumption things would just...work out! Simply put nuclear holocausts were just things you had to go through with a spade in your hands and determination dripping off your brow. | ||
| Stasi State or Socialist Paradise? | 9780955822865 | Bruni de la Motte | 1x |
| Good | I knew very little about the GDR aside from the movie The Lives of Others (frightening, claustrophobic in its surveillance) and stories from those who were adults during the GDR’s existence, this book seems to depict an extremely different place. The country seemed quite positive in its respect for the worker and for humanity, despite the end-stage paranoia of the state; things like healthcare, community, industry all seemed strong and advanced. The author(s) did not seem to shy away from criticism, the country seemed fine aside from the aforementioned issue with the tension between state and citizen—I’m marginally skeptical of some claims because the way it is written set off an alarm bell, but, I can see the majority of the claims being generally correct. One thing that infuriated me was the Treuhandanstalt, the claims made in this book about the institutional rape of East Germany would be unrealistic if it was not for the fact that the vacuum left by a collapsing socialist country always gets filled with society raiders and the thieves who plunder every asset. What happened to Zeiss alone is a crime against science and against humanity. What was committed against the former citizens of the GDR was shocking. Fascism runs so deep in now-unified Germany, the refusal to address it in a non-superficial way will haunt the country for the rest of its existence. | ||
| World War Z: An Oral History of the Zombie War | 9780307346605 | Brooks | 2x |
| Good | This was the height of zombie-mania in the media back then. People love zombies, slow but inexorable. Now zombies are walkers or infected and they’re fast as hell, they’re not death, they’re malcontents of society! Oh how culture changes. | ||
| A People's Tragedy | 9780140243642 | Figes | 1x |
| Good | A detailed account of the Russian Revolution—I do not remember the book’s political leaning. Read this after reading the Communist Manifesto as I wanted understanding. I wanted to know more about the events leading up to the October Revolution as well as the revolution itself. I do not recall this book delving in the detail I so wanted in regards to anything communistic. I do remember this author mentioning Kerensky many times (transitional govt), along with the Tsar’s incompetence—which, to be frank, this author wrote about him oddly sympathetically. It felt like the book tried not focusing on the Bolsheviks—this very well may be explained by my complete lack of knowledge back then. Who knows! It was a long book. | ||
| The Death and Life of Great American Cities | 9780375508738 | Jacobs | N/A |
| Good | There is a great importance to this book, but I wasn't fully equipped to understand it at the time. Needs to be reread. | ||
| Mass Effect Revelation | 9780345498168 | Karpyshyn | 2.5x |
| Good | It’s rare to have a book that serves as a prequel to a soon-to-be-released game come out and have it enhance the experience. It so engrossed me as a young teen that I read it nearly thrice at the time! | ||
| The Last Question | 9781884214493 | Asimov | 1x |
| Good | Very interesting story, if this is the book I’m remembering correctly the journey throughout the lifespan of humanity in the universe was very vivid. | ||
| The End of Eternity | 9780765319180 | Asimov | 1x |
| Good | Classic science fiction. But, it is evident that Issac Asimov does not know how to write women, at all. | ||
| Annihilation | 9780374104092 | Vandermeer | 1x |
| Good | This entire book felt as though the physical locations were poetry made real, or maybe a dream given form. As time has gone on the visual language of the movie overrides the book, and it’s so strong that the book—despite being good—feels like a prototype for the movie. The descriptions here really lend itself well to a visual medium. | ||
| White Rage | 9781632864123 | Anderson | 1x |
| Good | Great book to read if you want to learn about race relations in the United States. | ||
| Blood for the Blood God | 9781844166084 | Werner | 1x |
| Good | I really enjoy how this type of Warhammer book ends with every peer dead having sacrificed themselves, all the while the main character stands alone in some bizarre dimension consumed by some sort of personality disorder or whatever. I love it. | ||
| Palace of the Plague Lord | 9781844164813 | Werner | 1x |
| Good | Idem Supra | ||
| The Andromeda Strain | 9780060541811 | Crichton | 1x |
| Good | Wish it was longer but it was a tense (positive) read. Biological weapons and alien organisms? What’s not to like. Read for the first time post SARS-2. | ||
| One L | 9780446673785 | Turow | 1x |
| Good | First year at Harvard’s law school is stressful. The movie for this book is also spectacular. | ||
| The Martian | 9780804139021 | Weir | 2x |
| Good | I enjoyed the tight constraints the main character (hereon Matt Damon!) had to deal with. His green thumb and science acumen saved him. The hype before the book’s release made me read it when it came out. The movie winded up being interesting but so many elements of the book aren’t translatable to screen. | ||
| To Kill a Nation: The Attack on Yugoslavia | 9781859843666 | Parenti | 1x |
| Good | The Yugoslavian war was brutal and the West’s failures to understand the conflict made a bad situation worse. The rending of Yugoslavia has produced a jagged and throbbing scar across that part of the world. | ||
| Cambodia, 1975-1982 | 9789747100815 | Vickery | 1x |
| Good | A looking glass inside the truth about the Democratic Kampuchea regime, led by peasant fetishising leadership including the notorious Pol Pot. Unmarxist and delusional as they were, Cambodia was already in the throes of violence and the insistence on throwing the baby out with the bathwater so to speak by ‘starting over’ completely...why? Yes, let’s destroy industry completely...to then have us rebuild industry but this time ‘correctly’…??? The Cambodian people were failed so so badly; peasant revolutions with the wrong cultural characteristics and unfocused and untrained leadership are highly dangerous, unrestrained chaos. | ||
| The Rhodesian War: A Military History | 9780811707251 | Moorcraft & McLaughlin | 1x |
| Good | Very interesting look into a time and place I know little about aside from Danny Archer. | ||
| One Soldier's War | N/A | Babchenko | 1x |
| Good | The Chechen war, predicated on so many lies and confusing circumstances, is the base for this honest book. I can't think of many things worse than being a Russian soldier. | ||
| Crusade | 9780395710838 | Atkinson | 1x |
| Good | A very clinical and detailed overview of the Persian Gulf War from the U.S. perspective. I felt transported back to 1991. It ignited a renewed interest in that period of time for me. I began to read more about what exactly happened at that time, anything possible. I came across The Fire This Time (an audio documentary) and I was blown away by what I didn’t get to read in this book. I cannot believe what happened at the Amiriyah shelter, the horror the US wrought on the Iraqi people should really never be forgotten. On a bit of a lighter note: Schwarzkopf looks a bit like Norm McDonald oddly enough. | ||
| The Founding | 9781844163694 | Abnett | 1x |
| Good | Something about gathering a team of unique individuals being competent and indulging in brutal combat really strikes my fancy. | ||
| Eisenhorn | 9781844161560 | Abnett | 1x |
| Good | A surprisingly good fiction book set in one of my favourite fictional (thank god) universes: Warhammer 40k. | ||
| Ghostmaker | 9780671784102 | Abnett | 1x |
| Good | Is this in the omnibus? Not even sure. | ||
| Horus Rising | 9781844162949 | Abnett | 1x |
| Good | The story of the Horus Heresy is a science fiction classic at this point, no matter what medium the story is told in. | ||
| Storm of Steel | 9780142437902 | Jünger | 1x |
| Good | Harrowing account of the Great War from the perspective of a young and non-politically-minded German soldier. Remarkable that Jünger managed to survive. Enjoyed his prose and his effort to give us a lay of the land so to speak. If it was not for his involvement in some major battles this would just be an ‘Ok’ book. | ||
| Ghost in the Wires | 9780316037709 | Mitnick | 1x |
| Good | My young mind enjoyed the bending and breaking of rules. I did not enjoy innocents being credit card scammed, the immorality was obvious. If you have the skill to commit crimes of these types you must have the wherewithal to target people who either ‘deserve’ it or won’t feel your criminal ‘sting’ so to speak. The part where he gamed the bus system with his fake tickets to get free bus rides reminded me of my own adventures on the opening of the Orange Line. I thought I read this book in the 2000s but apparently not. | ||
| How China Lends | N/A | Gelpern, Horn et al | 1x |
| Good | A paper released in March 2021 on the lending practises of the Chinese government to 3rd world borrowers. It was a sober analysis and didn’t feel too lurid but did make me laugh knowing the history of the World Bank and the West’s own much longer and much more conniving lending practises! Even with knowing that it was still interesting. | ||
| The Origins of Military Thought | N/A | Gat | 1x |
| Good | Perhaps I’m not as well-versed as I’d like to believe on military history. I’m not sure exactly the utility of this book that couldn’t be found in a better book, maybe a future me will find more to like about this. | ||
| Of Mice and Men | N/A | Steinbeck | 1x |
| Good | Another middle-school classic. Traumatised us all! | ||
| African Notebook | 9780815607434 | Schweitzer | 1x |
| Ok | Surprisingly interesting read—he was quite kind to the Africans or ‘savages’ as he called them so frequently. Even with those demeaning words there’s interesting information in this. I read an extremely racist quote attributed to this book and so it piqued my interest, a false quote it turns out. The author seems to respect Africans despite his view on the primitive nature of the cultures that surrounded him. | ||
| History of South Africa | 9780300189353 | Thompson | 1x |
| Ok | What a long and storied history the tip of Africa has had. Pre-colonisation Africa would’ve been a harsh but beautiful land. There were tinges of normalisation I was getting from the author regarding behaviour of some of the tribes, was South Africa really better with these groups running around in their huts killing and committing anthropophagy or wars where they slaughtered each other until there was a ‘balance’ between the groups, seemingly in perpetuity with no advancement ever? There is no justifying colonialism but Africa was never anything but brutal. It was hellish before the Dutch, hell with colonialism, and back to hellish until now where the country as a functioning state just barely exists. South Africa never deserved all this. Are its problems compounded by the resource curse, or is it just plain capitalism exacerbating long-standing issues? The author also wrote this very delicately, the tension could be felt in every sentence. | ||
| Democracy in Chains | 9781101980965 | MacLean | 1x |
| Ok | I respect the book for outlining Buchanan and the Libertarian project to revert to some twisted form of corporate feudalism. Fertiliser is always in demand. But, the book provides no alternative/solution that I can remember other than milquetoast liberal resistance. | ||
| The Enemy Within | 9781781683422 | Milne | 1/2x |
| Ok | There was tidbits of decent information in it, but this book is for the reader in 1998. It has become redundant due to the course of time, the facts that get revealed as Sad Island (United Kingdom) becomes sadder switching between Tories and Labour as if there’s a difference after Corbyn. Also unfortunately written in a gossipy way which is unable to be skipped so it’s even more of a slog—otherwise this book would be good. Also, watching Thatcher unintentionally try and destroy the UK through her Reaganistic actions to destroy labour power is useful but depressing. | ||
| Tombstone: The Great Chinese Famine | 9780374277932 | Jisheng | 1x |
| Ok | A harsh time for the Chinese peasantry during these long years. I hope the ones that survived it got to live happier lives in the modern, bustling, and safe China. And that everyone in their families who died didn’t suffer needlessly. | ||
| The Gulag Archipelago | 9780060007768 | Solzhenitsyn | 1x |
| Ok | I do not fully believe him but prison is harsh; rapes, murders in prison are dreadful and happen frequently. What awful places to be, places of incarceration | ||
| Do Androids Dream of Electric Sheep | 9780345404473 | Dick | 1x |
| Ok | Didn't really resonate with me. I enjoyed Blade Runner much more for whatever reason. | ||
| The Tcheka | N/A | Popoff | 1x |
| Ok | An absurdly funny quarter-truthful account of the Tcheka. Essentially a 1925 long-form article expounding how incredulous that he, the witty and neutral George Popoff could ever be accused of being in league with any enemies of these heathen ‘asiatic’ Bolsheviks. | ||
| Spillover | 9780393346619 | Quammen | 1x |
| Ok | A lightly interesting book that turns into a bizarre hypothetical tale of a jungle kid in its last quarter—an exercise in word-count padding. Read long before SARS-2. | ||
| Command and Control | 9781594202278 | Schlosser | 1x |
| Ok | Made me want to hunt for hidden buried nuclear weapons off the coast of Spain! A fun book on ‘broken arrows’, I found it interesting. Still waiting on the promised movie deal! | ||
| Genome | 9780060894085 | Ridley | 1x |
| Ok | A journey through all the chromosomes. Only marred really by this dullard’s obvious Thatcherism; a true Brexiteer he turned out to be too, what a surprise. | ||
| Chinese Industrial Espionage | 9780415821414 | Hannas & Mulvenon & Puglisi | 1x |
| Ok | Written in an almost paranoid way; odd book written to convince people that China stealing secrets—an action every country does and has forever done and will forever do—is somehow a unique never-before-seen plot against humanity (the West). This book is also written in a way to appeal to people who like to organise tic-tacs in their spare time. | ||
| Tampa | 9780062280541 | Nutting | 1x |
| Ok | One of the few things I’ve read that made me nauseous, especially at its beginning. If heaping disgust on the reader was the main objective—which it seemed to be—it succeeded in spades. What’s odd is that the book was actually funny in a few parts, but it was a nasty trip to get there. I feel conflicted not giving it a good rating but only a very few times it nearly felt fetishistic and not intentionally like Lolita. Perhaps I don’t have a deeper comprehension of the perspective of literary female pedophile characters? | ||
| On Tyranny | 9780804190114 | Snyder | 1x |
| Ok | Maybe useful for someone who never read anything but teenage literature in their lives. There was nothing to learn that couldn’t be gleaned from the combined knowledge of better books. | ||
| World Order | 9781594206146 | Kissinger | 1x |
| Ok | Found it pretty pointless compared to On China. A complete afterthought book. | ||
| Freud And Beyond: A History Of Modern Psychoanalytic Thought | 9780465014040 | Mitchell & Black | 4/5x |
| Ok | Aside from the revelations laid out by a part of Freud’s work, Erick Erickson and one or two other psychoanalysts seem just barely ok—this whole branch of ‘science’ is anything but rigourous and to watch grown adults taking any stock in the majority of this is depressing. Smart men and women falling down the rabbit hole of unfalsifiable ‘experiments’ and analyses and then claiming they are a soft science is foolish. It was hard to finish as when it got to the most modern of the analysts the absurdity became too much. Especially when the ‘magic’ countertransference crossed from historical curio to dangerous patient-harming navel-gazing. | ||
| The Righteous Mind | 9780307377906 | Haidt | 1x |
| Ok | Today an almost entirely useless book. Belonged to a specific period of US political turmoil where Americans were trying to figure out why everyone including themselves were acting like TBI patients. | ||
| Weapons of Math Destruction | 9780553418811 | O'neil | 1x |
| Bad | Very early 2010s type of “Heck Yea Science!” but negative book. Nothing could be learned from this even on release that couldn’t be gleaned from learning about monopoly and applied to the modern tech industries. Since we are now in the hellish future, in the modern algorithmic day, this book as a result has become wholly useless. Read the news for a week about the ‘tech’ world and see the horror we’re in. | ||
| Capitalist Realism: Is There No Alternative? | 9781846943171 | Fisher | 1x |
| Bad | I understand the utility of this book and its importance, but I very much did not like the way it was written to the point where I thought it severely distracted from its message. I’m sorry Mark Fisher and I’m sorry to his fans. | ||
| Capitalism and Freedom | 9780226264219 | Friedman | 1x |
| Bad | There was a moment in this book where I could see the false beauty of what ‘perfect’ capitalism is. I have a very negative opinion of Milton Friedman after reading in this book what he considers a good society, good politics. He is unfortunately intellectually strong but with no regard for humanity. It is obvious he has deluded himself into thinking he's helping right the ship of society, he's so certain that anything to the contrary is an obvious folly. Milton Friedman's legacy will be death and destruction, good riddance. | ||
| Braiding Sweetgrass | N/A | Kimmerer | 1x |
| Bad | This borders on ok for the few pieces of wisdom it holds, but it was a slog. The repetition was outrageous, no editorial oversight. Indigenous culture deserves respect and careful study but this was not careful study. Also, the editor didn’t have the stones to call this author out on page-count padding and in that way felt like a case of liberal tip-toeing. | ||
| Mein Kampf | N/A | Adolf Hitler | 2/3x |
| Bad | In between his long list of grievances against society and democracy are the meandering opinions gained from interpretations of antisemitic and racist propaganda—both pamphlets which were Hitler’s entertainment while he lived in a flop-house in Vienna in his youth, along with influence from his favourite teacher in his childhood. He took these opinions and worked backwards from them to produce his ‘policies’ for a united Germany to be great after Anschluss and then further expansion; there was not a single policy scientific nor sensible. These ideas were the ramblings of irrational and hysterically emotional person. Hitler never moved passed his teenage angst and never gained the intellect he so obviously coveted as he passed into adulthood. Adolf Hitler, incidentally revealed through his own writing(!), was a nuisance to all normal people around him, that was until people even more pathetic than himself found political salvation in his aggressive oration. Based on how poor this book is industrialists pretty obviously hoisted Hitler and his newly adopted party into a position of power to squash who and what was left from the 1918 revolution...and subsequently lost control of their new pet. This often boring book served as a sleep-aid for many nights, and this was the abridged version! | ||
| Five Days at Memorial | 9780307718983 | Sheri Fink | 1/2x |
| Bad | New Orleans shafted by politics and beaten down yearly by the weather. It’s a shame this book was so boring, Katrina and all the events and people surrounding it as a whole is a very interesting topic—like the alleged horror stories that came out of the Superdome. Some imagery in this book, i.e. of the flooded hospital and whatnot was interesting but I had to skip large parts of this novel because it was really that dull. Here’s hoping for a ‘Katrina Revival’ in the form of a TV series or good book as a form of reflection perhaps. | ||
| Necropolis | 9781844163045 | Abnett | 1/5x |
| Bad | I remember being incredibly put off by the beginning of this book, the way some of the characters were written were so poor it wasn’t worth reading the rest. | ||
| Ashfall | 9781933718552 | Mullin | 1x |
| Bad | This book was a maelstrom of reawakened teenage fantasies. For an adult, senseless, and for a teenager a lurid wet dream. It’s not rare to see an author self-insert as the greatest human to ever live: smart, handsome, athletic. I can see the self-pleasure he indulged in while writing some of these scenes. Him as a young teen meeting his sixteen year-old muse. I only wonder why didn't I put it down, that is precisely when I realised I was reading the rest of this book to see the main character get maimed or die. By the time they got to the FEMA camp near the end I realised the author didn’t have the stones to kill himself in this book, but of course not, he has sequels to vomit out! To a preteen who is not well-read this book would probably be pretty fun though. | ||
| I Paid Hitler | N/A | Thyssen | 1/10x |
| Very Bad | Essentially a book whose only value might come from the entertainment of watching a pathetic industrialist cover his own tracks. There is no political insight, personal reflection, nor financial insight. If I was in the 1940s and read this wastepaper I would send a strongly-worded letter to the publisher with some choice words while wagging my finger in disappointment. | ||
| The Making of an Atlantic Ruling Class | N/A | Dutch Guy | 1/100x |
| Very Bad | The most unnecessarily dense and complicated book about an interesting subject. Written to make the Babylonian’s bureaucracy look trite, this book, this nearly-encrypted lockbox, wants to be as complex as Phenomenology of Spirit in syntax. All the while the only utility that could’ve been derived from it would’ve been the introduction of bourgeois conspiracy towards the general population, a shame. It’s a wonder the editor didn’t end their own life after trying to decipher this mumbo-jumbo. | ||
| The 2020 Commission Report on the NK Nuclear Attacks Against the US | 9781328573919 | Lewis | 1x |
| Very Bad | Someone spent time, energy, and effort to produce this book...and that is shocking. I think I disliked Command and Control more after seeing Schlosser give this praise. The reason for this book’s existence is to boost the author’s Twitter account and it shows. This book is kindling, just look at the upper-right hand corner of the cover—it's already trying to self-immolate. This is a wholly useless book. | ||
| Hitler's American Model | 9780691172422 | Whitman | 1x |
| Very Bad | Who tricked this poor man into spinning an Atlantic article into this book? This winded up being a wasteful and ill-conceived splotch of ink. There is nothing in this that wouldn’t already be known by virtue of being interested in this book. Those who were forced to publish this clearly saw the writing on the proverbial wall released it with no fanfare—it felt as though they dropped copies by parachute in the night. My time was wasted and as a result became an angrier person after reading this book. | ||
| Unabomber Manifesto | N/A | Kaczynski | 1/2x |
| Very Bad | Possibly the worst thing I’ve ever read in my life in comparison to the amount of undue attention it receives, complete pablum. Baby’s first introduction to anarcho-primitivism that doesn’t even culminate in a cohesive strategy to ‘return to monkey’, so even if you did agree with these ideas it does nothing to help you—anarcho-primitivism is the equivalent of reversing gravity, a very useless endeavour. This book’s diversions into relations between sexes made me realise that Kaczynski very well may be the arch-prototype involuntary celibate. What’s most embarrassing is the modern ‘reaction’ to it, whose adherents are obviously simply Christian theocrats, doomsday crypto-fascists, or confused college boys with very large intellectual egos, the first two using it to grasp at anything that harms their enemies and provides any kind of programme to dismantle the government so they can play crusader...and the latter uses it to simply reinforce their nihilistic worldview. It is no wonder this manifesto is popular among young men—this world they live in, a world where they’re too scared to ask a girl out over imagined accusations, of course so many of them would cower in the comforting shadow of senseless terroristic psychopathy. Cowards seek the comfort of other cowards. A shame on anyone who can read this and come away with anything helpful, life-changing, or revelatory, seek help. | ||
| Protocols of the Elders of Zion | N/A | Unknown | 7/8x |
| Very Bad | Nigh unreadable. The world’s clumsiest attempt by a still unknown failson of aristocracy (or perhaps some delusional monarchists) somewhere in Imperial Russia to orient the general population against the external enemies including communists (especially Bolsheviks) by way of antisemitism. These enemies, or ‘lodestones of anti-life’ are all under the ‘control’ of an evil super secret Jewish cabal—all the while this dreck of a book ‘reveals’ the truth: that the aristocracy and its religion were actually there to save the poor proletariat, but now thanks to our dastardly Jewish plans they will be nothing but a memory (cue evil laughter)! Only the most feeble of minds could fall for this very sorry excuse of a pamphlet, its reasoning so weak, its content so empty, its facts so absent. At the end of this edition they try to refute the claim that the Tsar had his minions write these ‘facts’ as a way to incite pogroms, this book’s recognition of its real authorship and subsequent refutation makes me believe there may be some truth to these claims of authorship by the Tsar’s scribes. | ||
| Home Building and Woodworking in Colonial America | 9781564400192 | Wilbur | 1x |
| REF | Fascinating look into the building techniques of colonial America. | ||
| On War | N/A | von Clausewitz | 3/5x |
| REF | “War is the continuation of policy by other means”. A legendary strategy book (but really a collection of extensive notes) that lives up to its name. From outlining the idea that friction is the anathema to success in military matters, to expounding on the brilliance of Frederick the Great, the clarity presented within are to be admired. Its lessons vast and insightful, its ego nonexistent. All critical traits for understanding the vicissitudes of the chaos of war and the intellect required for leadership lie within. | ||
| A Vocabulary of Criminal Slang | N/A | Louis E. Jackson | 1x |
| REF | A very fun and brief reference of old English-speaking criminal—or as Jackson so hilariously states: professional violators—slang circa 1915. The origin of the American shiv as ‘chiv’, the legend of Detective ‘Hep’ in Cincinnati, and often-thought-of-as-modern female archetype—existent even back then, one-hundred years ago!—the ‘meal-ticket’: “...female of the open market who supports a lover”. | ||
| The Power of Ritual in Prehistory | 9781108572071 | Hayden | N/A |
| REF | Ritualistic child beheadings, three infants buried under a door-frame to bless a new home, anthropophagy, initiation rituals for secret societies that involve handing your spouse over for sexual gratification. If there was any inkling of the myth of the noble savage in the mind then it is destroyed by this archaeological reference book. The author pierces the veil and shows how prehistoric societies had aggrandisers—sociopaths—in their midst who would resort to terrorising others through secret societies, going as far as to practise universal taboos such as cannibalism to obtain and keep power. Secret societies may very well be the missing stepping stone for human development. | ||
| Id, Ego, Superego | N/A | Sigmund Freud | 1x |
| Interesting historical curio; I think most of the oedipal stuff—not all mind you but much of this paper—is a bunch of hooey…I don’t fully understand psychoanalysis but I enjoyed the battle the ego has against the superego, id and the outside world, all these tensions and Freud’s explanations for things when they vaguely made sense. | |||
| Superforecasting | 9780804136693 | Tetlock & Gardner | 1x |
| A very interesting way of thinking about prediction; a very useful read. | |||
| A Short History of Nearly Everything | 9780767908184 | Bryson | 1x |
| REF | A great stroll through many concepts presented in a breezy way. The one with pictures makes it even better. | ||
| Structures: Or Why Things Don't Fall Down | 9780306812835 | Gordon | 1x |
| REF | Fantastic book on engineering's core ideas. | ||
| The Giver | 9780385732550 | Lowry | 1x |
| Middle-school classic that I remember is about killing old people but not much else. | |||
| The Zombie Survival Guide | 9781400049622 | Brooks | Many |
| A teenage favourite of mine. | |||
| 101 Things I Learned in Architecture School | 9780262062664 | Frederick | 1x |
| REF | A fun, light book to read to get an overview on some design topics. | ||
| Why Information Grows | 9780465096848 | Hidalgo | 1x |
| This book occupies an empty space in my head honestly, not sure what to make of it. | |||
| Universal Principles of Art | 9781631590306 | Parks | 1x |
| REF | Says it on the cover. I tried absorbing as much as I could from this book. | ||
| Universal Principles of Design | N/A | Lidwell & Holden & Butler | 1x |
| REF | Idem Supra | ||
| How to Use Type | 9781856698979 | Marshall & Meachem | 1x |
| REF | Made me fall in love with Typography. | ||
| How to Think Straight About Psychology | 9780205485130 | Stanovich | 1x |
| REF | Book on psych. Not much to say. | ||
| Neuroethics | 9780262514606 | Farah | 1x |
| REF | A medical ethics book. | ||
| Design for Hackers | 9781119998952 | Kadavy | 1x |
| REF | A decent intro on design for people who think design is secondary to consuming tech-baubles, but a decent intro nonetheless | ||
| In Pursuit of the Unknown: 17 Equations That Changed the World | 9780465029730 | Stewart | 1x |
| Fun math history read. | |||
| Neuroplasticity | 9780262529334 | Costandi | 1x |
| The brain is an extremely complex organ. This book only reinforced my belief that anyone can change into who they want to become. | |||
| The Obstacle is the Way | 9781591846352 | Holiday | 1x |
| Meditations-lite. | |||
| Ego is the Enemy | 9781591847816 | Holiday | 1x |
| Meditations-lite-deux. Did make me want to experience ego-death. | |||
I'M FREE!