72 trillion theory posts
theory
A community for in-depth discussion of books, posts that are better suited for [email protected] will be removed.
The hexbear rules against sectarian posts or comments will be strictly enforced here.
The death of 72 trillions!
TRILLIONS!
Oh boy, time to end up with even less sleep
Remember: don't fall into the "required reading" trap.
Just read what you want; you'll know what to read and when to read it.
Don't "force" yourself to do "required" reading.
So much to read, there's plenty on the shelf
I'll sleep when I'm dead
If I keep learning theory I'll improve myself
I'll sleep when I'm dead
Version 1.1:
I'll be doing these updates intermittently (every couple weeks, every month, etc) rather than editing fluidly as I get more books.
Added dozens more recommended books, spread out across the list, notably including more books for Japan.
Added an Indigenous Theory section and reorganized some books into it. Added a Science section and added some books to it. Expanded "Philosophy" into "Philosophy and Theology" and added some books to the Theology section. Added a Multi-Region section in the Regional Histories section, due to some odd books that cover multiple continents. Apparently I forgot Finland existed, so that now has a section, and a book.
I have been recommended a few reading lists, some of which will take me a long while to get through. Nonetheless, if you have more books to add, then continue to recommend them!
Cool, another reading list for me to bookmark and forget about. But it's good to see Hexbear have something like this.
Skimming through the list, I don't see a few topics that are common in the news megathread. Since Russia entering The Donbas War spawned the news mega I'd think we'd have some books on that, recent military developments, and the developing new cold war against China to constrain multipolarity. Though we're in those processes right now and it would be hard to have good books on them.
Regardless, very good work.
I have my own reading list (well, one I worked on with 20 or 30 other people).
It's on CryptPad instead of Google Docs or whatever so you won't be tracked.
Hell yeah, I'm excited to have an India reading list. The Irfan Habib volumes may be exactly what I've been looking for.
Some more recommendations:
The Class Struggle in the Ancient Greek World, by G.E.M. de Ste. Croix deserves to be on the list, despite its density. It's the single most important Marxist analysis of the Greeks and the Romans, and is a valuable introduction into how to read pre-capitalist history Marxistly.
Fanshen, by William Hinton, on Chinese land reform.
Comments on the Society of the Spectacle, written by Debord in the '80s, is just as essential as its predecessor.
Culture and Society, by Raymond Williams
We're Here Because You Were There, by Ian Sanjay Patel, on immigration and Britain post-WWII.
Empire of Normality: Neurodiversity and Capitalism, by Robert Chapman
I mean we are mostly all here because we listened to a podcast. A reading list is nice. We need more phamplit sized literature. Podcasts and YouTube essays are too ephemeral make a list of despite them working well on us but there needs to be like an apertif menu.
Pinging @[email protected] if they have any recommendations (their posts are amazing)
Watches intently.
For us ADHD or otherwise low attention-span folk, and in the interest of an economic estimate made before deciding what to read, would it make sense to 1. indicate the length somehow and 2. have essays or shorter works included so if one cant read a book at least they (i mean myself) can get some reading done!
- indicate the length somehow
I did initially have a page count for the first hundred or so books but I found that a) I sometimes couldn't get consistent page counts from various sources (some would say like 250 pages, others would say like 370, and I have no idea why) and b) for more obscure books, which is kind of the whole point of having a very big reading list which includes books about tiny little countries 90% of Westerners haven't even heard of, I couldn't get page counts at all.
So while I gave up on that idea, I think I might go back and add them again where I can. Of course, if anybody reading the thread wants to do some of that for me, I wouldn't argue!
- have essays or shorter works included
You caught me - this is (hopefully) going to be the second stage of the reading list. While going through bibliographies, I found that the sources that authors get information from tended to be a mixture of studies, essays, and articles, and while articles are perhaps a little ephemeral and limited as a pure source of accurate information, I am much more open to posting essays and studies, as I think they're really good at talking about a very specific point without needing to prove every single thing from scratch, or just have lots of good statistics to discuss.
However, right now I'm focussing more on books than those things. But it's something I'm considering in the background, and once again, if anybody reading the thread is like "Oh, I know a few great places which host studies and essays!" then I'd love to hear it!
Nice! Is there a repo? I might be interested in adding stuff like ISBN's or LOC (library of congress) call numbers. I think from that it might be straightforward to query for like page number (on some database...) and maybe use that instead of page counts which may differ from one printing to another.
Oo maybe the folks at prolewiki would be willing to host it? @[email protected] is one of the admins I think!
I am!
Well, there's so many books in it that I feel like it kinda doubles up as our Library haha (no shade on 72 who also is a ProleWiki editor). To that end I would recommend instead we upload the books from the list that are missing in our library.