Books

cross-posted from: https://hexbear.net/post/2433316

Hey, everyone.

You can start listening here.

Good ole' Jon.

I prefer him in A Dance With Dragons.

cross-posted from: https://hexbear.net/post/2412579

Get this book here.

That, and Strategy for a Black Agenda by Gerald Horne.

cross-posted from: https://hexbear.net/post/2388856

Start here.

Read along while you're listening, using perhaps a copy from your library or a PDF version of A Game of Thrones from Z Library or Anna's archive; best way to read this series.

Who is your favorite character from the books? (Not the dumb show.)

Better than Roy Dotrice's version (which is the official audiobook version).

This is the unofficial audiobook version.

cross-posted from: https://hexbear.net/post/2388667

Start here.

And read a book PDF of the first book (A Game of Thrones) from Z Library or Anna's archive.

cross-posted from: https://hexbear.net/post/2354122

Start listening here.

cross-posted from: https://hexbear.net/post/2319702

Davos best character, imho.

Start here to begin reading the books (while you listen to this, of course).

Grab a PDF of A Game of Thrones and start. Move on to A Clash of Kings and so on and so forth.

See my other posts here and then here.

Ciao!

@[email protected]

cross-posted from: https://hexbear.net/post/2319326

The best audiobook version of A Song of Ice and Fire.

Better than Roy Dotrice's version, imho.

You can start here.

I suggest reading along with the actual book.

cross-posted from: https://hexbear.net/post/2252319

From the article:

Despite the fact that librarians are among the most trusted professionals, per data acquired in several studies of parents on the perceptions of the profession, lawmakers across the country continue to infantilize and criminalize library workers. The 2024 legislative session has been particularly eager to capitalize on the rhetoric from the far right on libraries, as seen through several bills aimed at not only limiting the types of books allowed in school and public libraries but also in how the profession itself may operate.

We’ve seen Utah pass a bill that would pull books off shelves in school libraries if the title is pulled in other districts in the state, a blatant removal of the local control the very anti-library advocates themselves demand. Idaho attempted to push through similar legislation, despite clear links of the rhetoric around “pornography in libraries” to QAnon conspiracy. Georgia attempted, but narrowly failed, to pass a bill this session that would ban the American Library Association from school and public libraries statewide (and the respective funding from the nation’s largest professional association for library workers).

Louisiana continues these efforts in an ongoing move by politicians in the state to damage public libraries with House Bill 777. HB 777 was introduced March 25 by Representative Kellee Dickerson, who helped fund the Louisiana Freedom Caucus. The bill would criminalize library workers and libraries for joining the American Library Association.

The American Library Association (ALA) is the largest and oldest professional organization for library workers in the nation. It was founded in 1876, and this Twitter thread is a fantastic resource on the history and purpose of the organization.

The HB 777 text reads:

A. No public official or employee shall appropriate, allocate, reimburse, or otherwise or in any way expend public funds to or with the American Library Association or its successor.

B. No public employee shall request or receive reimbursement or remuneration in any form for continuing education or for attending a conference if the continuing education or conference was sponsored or conducted, in whole or in part, by the American Library Association or its successor.

C. Whoever violates this Section shall be fined not more than one thousand dollars or be imprisoned, with or without hard labor, for not more than two years, or both.

This partisan bill undermines the profession on several levels.

Since the rise of book banning in early 2021, the ALA has been at the receiving end of criticism from right-wing politicians and organizations, despite no such similar pushback toward similar organizations for other professionals. Indeed, such attacks have served to not only skewer the profession and all it stands for, but they’ve also been one of several ways that certain groups have attempted to undermine the trust in these institutions.

By creating a villain of the biggest professional organization for library workers, book banners pound away at the institutions that establish and uphold librarianship as a profession. Librarians lose their place as experts in their field, with the skills, knowledge, and passion for helping connect people to vetted, accurate, verifiable information. To real facts and not those crafted by so-called “alternative” library organizations developed by long-time library antagonists and sympathizers who themselves have worked hard to dismantle these democratic institutions.

More, though, by criminalizing the library’s use of taxpayer money to be members of the ALA, HB 777 ends up harming those very same taxpayers by removing access to grants, funds, and educational opportunities that benefit them via their libraries. There are grants offered annually to help libraries increase specific collections or categories of material. There are opportunities for library workers to be part of the process in selecting the best books annually–important to note here because of how much noise there is around these books “not representing” certain communities and yet by barring library workers from engaging in these committees, they purposefully undermine their own purported lack of representation. Membership in the ALA means that individuals and institutions have the chance to take a variety of professional development courses to ensure their work is aligned with the standards of the profession more broadly, including ensuring that it remains a space of democracy, inquiry, and access.

Of course, those are the very reasons why bills like HB 777 arise. Dickerson and her ilk are eager to destroy and dismantle public and school libraries. By attempting to fine libraries and library workers, they make keeping Louisiana libraries aligned with the best of the best impossible and instead, create these institutions in their own image.

That image is one where the library doesn’t exist to serve an entire community but to serve specific demographics that may or may not live in those communities.

HB 777 not only would fine libraries and librarians, but it would possibly require hard labor by those found guilty. Read that again: librarians would be sentenced to hard labor for daring to join their largest professional organization.

The bill would also potentially kill one of the largest graduate school programs in the state of Louisiana, Louisiana State University’s Masters of Library and Information Science program. Like all Master of Library and Information Science programs, it is accredited by the ALA and goes through a rigorous process to ensure that the curriculum is up-to-date and aligned with best practices in libraries.

Even if the bill is limited “only” to the use of tax money to support membership or attendance/enrollment in ALA-sponsored professional development, take a moment to look into whether or not police, fire, or other public entities are subject to similar legislation in Louisiana or elsewhere. You probably know the answer–and you probably won’t be surprised that one of the few institutional benefits offered to library workers is such membership.

If you haven’t been paying attention until now or you’ve thought these fears when laid out over the last several years were hyperbole and this is your wakeup call, there’s no time like the present to get to work advocating on behalf of your library. If you live in Louisiana, contact your representatives as soon as possible (here’s a very easy way to do that!). You can also reach out to Kellee Dickerson by phone at (225) 380-4232 and email [email protected].

Then, reach out to your own libraries and offer your support, either by showing up at board meetings and/or running for those board positions when vacancies occur. Go borrow books from the library and get your writing hands going with letters to your local papers.

EveryLibrary also has a petition you can sign related to HB777.

ALA deserves criticism as an organization for many reasons, both from those within it and those outside it. But making it illegal to join the largest professional organization for librarians and punishing those who join with steep fines and potentially hard labor is not criticism.

It’s fascism and it’s unconstitutional.

cross-posted from: https://hexbear.net/post/2205934

Reek, reek, it rhymes with freak...

cross-posted from: https://hexbear.net/post/2191647

Anyone else keep up with BookTok or BookTube?

cross-posted from: https://hexbear.net/post/2190427

Starting this up right now.

Also, you can start listening from A Game Of Thrones onward right over here.

@[email protected]

Don't forget to read Dunk & Egg.

I don't know whether or not I should watch House of the Dragon. I hated the Game of Thrones TV show (much prefer the books) and I'm afraid that it will be just as bad (and just as overrated).

Also:

DavidReadsAsoiaf (unofficial narrator) > Roy Detroyce (official narrator for A Song of Ice and Fire)

cross-posted from: https://lemmygrad.ml/post/4150047

Just helping someone out.

cross-posted from: https://hexbear.net/post/2156473

The Widlings bend the knee to Stannis Baratheon.

I'm reading a copy of Che's Bolivian Diary printed by Pathfinder. It's got a lot of really great supplemental information in it.

cross-posted from: https://hexbear.net/post/1757367

Here's what I'm reading:

I'm going to stop reading A Dance with Dragons and the two Star Wars books for now and wrap up Empire, Incorporated and Determined while I continue on with Das Kapital.

Bonus question:

What do you PLAN to read later on?

Enjoy!

cross-posted from: https://hexbear.net/post/1752885

From the article:

1. There are a lot of stories already out there, but there can never be too many of YOUR stories out there.

2. Being unique isn’t about telling a story that has never been told, it is about telling a story from a perspective people can both relate to and learn from.

3. No one writes like you write. You may have a style inspired by other writers and stories you love, but there is only one you, and only one voice through which the stories you write are told.

4. If you are thinking about giving up because of something someone else did or said (or didn’t say or didn’t do), take some time to consider your choice. No one technically has the right to tell you which dream you can and cannot follow, and anyone who tries is just not nice.

5. One bad day is not enough of a reason to give up. Not two bad days or two bad weeks or two bad years, either. Life is rough, and it’s tough to handle. But that does not mean you have to stop writing — or that, if you do, your hiatus has to last forever.

6. Just because multiple people aren’t constantly praising you for your work does not mean you aren’t doing good work. Much of the work you will do as a writer will go unnoticed by the masses. This is the way of things. Keep doing good work.

---

(More of the article in the link up-top.)

My thoughts:

Tbh, I might give my writing a backseat.

I'm doing too many things as it is and I want to do less and just focus on what I want to do (and not what I feel I have to do).

Plus, what I excel at so far will pay dividends down the road; I don't know if I'm ready to write a novel or not.

I would recommend this to anyone who is interested in learning about the Soviet Union, their trade unions, their working conditions, their technology, or what life was like for visitors.

The best way I could describe Uruguayan Journalist Eduardo Galeano's book is that it's a poetical obituary of the art of soccer. As the author writes in the first lines, “the history of soccer is a sad voyage from beauty to duty. When the sport became an industry, the beauty that blossoms from the joy of play got torn out by its very roots. In this fin de siècle world, professional soccer condemns all that is useless, and useless means not profitable.”

Galeano recounts the development of the sport from its ancient roots, its bourgeois upbringings in the modern age, through its proletarisation and to its eventual commercialisation by the global market. The history of soccer is one of those few instances whose origins are less grim than their present actuality.

The fact is that professional players offer their labor power to the factories of spectacle in exchange for a wage. The price depends on performance, and the more they get paid the more they are expected to produce. Trained to win or to win, squeezed to the last calorie, they are treated worse than racehorses.

Soccer in the chaotic 20th century turned from an innocent sport into a profitable and equally shady industry milked to its last bit by bureaucrats, merchants and corporations. Players are owned and sold and disposed of like slaves in plantations. The profession being shaped by the entertainment industry, the common man fails to regard the soccer player (or of any other mainstream sport for that matter) as a worker with labour rights, and the international bureaucracy tries its best to maintain the status quo.

The machinery of spectacle grinds up everything in its path, nothing lasts very long, and the manager is as disposable as any other product of consumer society.

But, despite the chronological narration, this is no history book, far from it. The passion and vividness in which the author describes some of most iconic plays from around the world, old amd new, capture a beaty that no camera or TV screen can ever catch.

To Galeano, soccer is an art; the players are performers; and the stadium is a theatre. He denounces the mechanical vocabulary employed by the critics and commentators: the players of the Argentine club River Plate couldn't be a "Machine" when they had so much fun they'd forget to shoot at the goal; the 1974 world cup Dutch team nicknamed "Clockwork Orange" was more of a jazz band.

The reader throughout the book ceases to be simply a spectator. No, he is now bonding with the fatigued striker, the goalkeeper criminalised by the fans, the distressed referee, the suicidal star and so on.

Galeano remains very much aware that sport cannot be detached from the politics of our age. To some fans, especially in South America,

The club is the only identity card [they] believe in. And in many cases the shirt, the anthem, and the flag embody deeply felt traditions that may find expression on the playing field but spring from the depths of a community’s history.

”Soccer and fatherland are always connected, and politicians and dictators frequently exploit those links of identity.” The championship is a national pride, countries host the world cup to bleach the regime's record of oppression, wins are offrances to the monarch or the tyrant.

Being a Uruguayan, the author shifts the spectacle of soccer from the European pitches to the South American turf, breaking the mythological narrative of European dominance and superiority in a sport that had no meaning before the Brazilian Mulattoes Friedenrich and Pelé, the Argentine Di Stéfano, the grandsons of slaves Gradín and Delgado, all dabbled with the ball.

The game of soccer was and still is the source of happiness and glimmer of hope for the youth of the world. As for the professional sport, we must mourn its beautiful past and cry on the cold body that is shamelessly called “soccer.”

I recently finished the Epic of Gilgamesh, and I'm starting a collection of poems by Rumi.

I've previously read Cold Mountain by Han Shan.

Are there any other ancient poets/poems with published work that you'd recommend?

I'm looking for things that are:

• Basically as old as possible
• Poetic/mystic
• Not Christian (or Western, Greek, or Roman).

Thanks!

It was a really good read. The main character is a such a breathtakingly massive hater.

I have made what I believe to be the first reflowable version of "This Soviet World" by Anna Louise Strong.

This book is incredibly fucking good. READ IT. (please)

Download my EPUB version: https://comlib.encryptionin.space (or https://archive.org/details/this-soviet-world-anna-louise-strong)

"For us who are determined to break the back of colonialism, our historic mission is to authorize every revolt, every desperate act, and every attack aborted or drowned in blood."

I just finished it today. It was very interesting to read of the lives and traditions of the Ibo people, and it was very sad to see them begin to be destroyed by the colonial machine.

cross-posted from: https://hexbear.net/post/1009590

The book is antiquated but interesting.

Zionism is opposed to socialism and is a reactionary bourgeous movement.

cross-posted from: https://hexbear.net/post/972256

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