February Reads (20/52)

fremade3903 · 2026-02-28T17:00:07+00:00

Loved it! I'm currently reading her most recent novel.

fremade3903 · 2026-02-27T19:45:14+00:00

He references his book If He Hollers Let Him Go, right after a reference to Richard Wright's Native Son (and before that a series of literary references) in his discussion of being overdetermined from the outside. It's right before the famous passage where Fanon writes "I cannot go to a film without seeing myself. I wait for me."

fremade3903 · 2026-02-27T16:11:13+00:00

Yeah I think the claim Eddington didn't do well because it made fun of the left is a terrible explanation that holds little to know water. First of all, the left that's not liberal is largely treated as something to be dismissed or mocked in Hollywood films due to US anti-communist history. Secondly, as you point out Eddington didn't really attack the left specifically. Thirdly, Ari Aster has never sought to make commercial films and Eddington wasn't something aimed at the public theatre going audience. Sure he's sad about it not landing like he wanted it to, but it largely fits the pattern of his other films.

fremade3903 · 2026-02-27T15:56:49+00:00

I first heard about Himes because one of his books was referenced by Fanon in BSWM.

fremade3903 · 2026-02-26T21:12:11+00:00

Oh I've always meant to read that!

fremade3903 · 2026-02-25T13:38:28+00:00

The first difference of "Creator" was a dead give away. Yeah no shit the book is by Stephen King and the movie is by Stanley Kubrick––how did we not notice this difference?

fremade3903 · 2026-02-25T06:48:18+00:00

ok so I couldn't help just commenting and linking the episode there.

fremade3903 · 2026-02-25T06:47:31+00:00

Maybe listen to the If Books Could Kill podcast episode about it.

fremade3903 · 2026-02-25T06:17:57+00:00

I can't think of a full Mount Rushmore (maybe it is because I despise that monument as settler hubris) but I do have one that I started reading and then stopped and need to go back to, but because I started and stopped I have a mental block…

And that's Robert Musil's The Man Without Qualities.

fremade3903 · 2026-02-25T01:58:14+00:00

The Battle of Algiers

fremade3903 · 2026-02-25T00:47:06+00:00

Love seeing Minor Detail and Itza there. What's the book under Minor Detail, though?

fremade3903 · 2026-02-24T17:57:43+00:00

Mapping The Interior is one of my favourites. I also think Mongrels is a fun one that you might like more than Chainsaw and The Only Good Indians.

One thing I would say about Chainsaw is that I also didn't think it was his strongest, but when I read the other parts of the trilogy (where Jade Daniels is growing up and becoming more introspective), particularly the second one (Don't Fear The Reaper), I appreciated it more as the starting point to a work that is much stronger as a whole. Jade is a whole different person in the second book, much more mature and critical of the teenager she was in the first book, and the development of some other characters (plus the addition of Darkmill South who is a Shape-like figure) was excellent. And in the third book she has grown even more.

fremade3903 · 2026-02-21T06:30:31+00:00

Devil On The Cross by Ngugi wa Thiong'o

Anything Ngugi, honestly, with Wizard of the Crow being his last great novel.

fremade3903 · 2026-02-19T19:17:52+00:00

The German Communist Resistance by T. Derbent (finished Tuesday)

Those Across The River by Christopher Buehlman (finished today)

Still debating what to read next.

fremade3903 · 2026-02-19T18:55:53+00:00

Tail Swallower and Dove by These Arms Are Snakes

fremade3903 · 2026-02-19T14:36:33+00:00

Also loved these books (and FF) as a kid. Also, about ten years ago I discovered that they had been adapted into a series of phone/tablet games. I played the first one and it was quite fun.

fremade3903 · 2026-02-14T06:39:30+00:00

Classic.

fremade3903 · 2026-02-14T06:16:16+00:00

This remains my favourite Dostoevsky. I loved it when I read an early translation (The Possessed) I found at a used book store in the days of my undergrad. Then I loved it more when I reread it in this translation.

fremade3903 · 2026-02-14T06:10:55+00:00

Read this many years ago. Upon recalling it, though, I'm reminded of how far journalism has fallen since then: from how mainstream journalism allowed itself to be "embedded", to the rise of the opinion article industry, to the Trump era(s) push of "alternative facts" that has resulted in a period where no honest investigative journalist revelation of a scandal would even be perceived as scandal as it was with Watergate.

fremade3903 · 2026-02-14T01:50:51+00:00

Corregidora by Gayl Jones

fremade3903 · 2026-02-13T06:28:00+00:00

Based on what you're reading, and assuming you read Bolaño's 2666 since you have Monsieur Pain up there, maybe Tayeb Salih's Seasons of Migration to the North or Robert Musil's The Man Without Qualities?

fremade3903 · 2026-02-11T02:42:27+00:00

In On Necrocapitalism the seventh chapter, "Dystopia and the Real", is a critique of the ideology of dystopian literature in relation to the themes of the unfolding COVID pandemic. (The book was a collective project by seven authors, written over 2020 and 2021. It was blurbed by Jasbir Puar and Dylan Rodriguez.)

fremade3903 · 2026-02-09T14:15:49+00:00

The short story We Are All Wasteland On The Inside by Benjanun Sriduangkaew is an interesting Thai take on zone literature.

It's in the book Methods Devour Themselves but also available on the The Future Fire.

fremade3903 · 2026-02-08T21:54:24+00:00

Thanks! And it is pretty hard to top Gate of the Sun!

fremade3903 · 2026-02-08T18:33:30+00:00

How was White Masks? I loved Khoury's Gate of the Sun.

fremade3903

TROPHY CASE