#David Halberstam

[deadpresidents]

Could you recommend books on North Korea?

Sure, here are a few about North Korea and the Kim Dynasty that I have read and would definitely suggest:

•The Two Koreas: A Contemporary History by Don Oberdorfer and Robert Carlin (BOOK | KINDLE) This book is a history of the entire Korean Peninsula since World War II, and it's excellent.

•Nothing to Envy: Ordinary Lives in North Korea by Barbara Demick (BOOK | KINDLE | AUDIO)

•The Impossible State: North Korea, Past and Future by Victor Cha (BOOK | KINDLE)

•See You Again In Pyongyang: A Journey Into Kim Jong Un's North Korea by Travis Jeppesen (BOOK | KINDLE | AUDIO)

•Under the Loving Care of the Fatherly Leader: North Korea and the Kim Dynasty by Bradley K. Martin (BOOK | KINDLE) In my opinion, this is probably the best book about North Korea that I've read, but it was published in 2006 when Kim Jong Il was still alive and in charge, so it could use an updated edition.

•The Hermit King: The Dangerous Game of Kim Jong Un by Chung Min Lee (BOOK | KINDLE | AUDIO)

•The Great Successor: The Divinely Perfect Destiny of Brilliant Comrade Kim Jong Un by Anna Fifield (BOOK | KINDLE | AUDIO) This is the best book written so far about North Korea's current leader, Kim Jong Un. Also, the dust jacket design is top-notch.

•Act of War: Lyndon Johnson, North Korea, and the Capture of the Spy Ship Pueblo by Jack Cheevers (BOOK | KINDLE | AUDIO) The thrilling and vastly overlooked story of the USS Pueblo, a U.S. Navy ship that was attacked and captured by North Korea in 1968 while it was spying...I mean, "conducting research"...off the coast of North Korea. The North Koreans held over 80 American sailors as POWs and tortured many of them for nearly a year until the United States finally admitted violating North Korean territorial waters and apologized in return for their release. The United States immediately retracted the admission of wrongdoing and apology as soon as the POWs were released by North Korea. The USS Pueblo is still in North Korea's possession and moored as a museum ship and propaganda tool in Pyongyang.

Here are two really good books on the Korean War that are also worth checking out:

•The Coldest Winter: America and the Korean War by David Halberstam (BOOK | KINDLE | AUDIO) The last book written by the legendary David Halberstam.

•On Desperate Ground: The Epic Story of Chosin Reservoir -- the Greatest Battle of the Korean War by Hampton Sides (BOOK | KINDLE | AUDIO) Every book that Hampton Sides has ever written is impossible to put down, so this could be about anything and probably still be incredible. The fact that On Desperate Ground is about one of the most grueling battles in American military history just takes things to another level.

[veryslowreader]

The Powers That Be by David Halberstam

Rushmore

[famousdeaths]

David Halberstam was an American writer, journalist, and historian, known for his work on the Vietnam War, politics, history, the Civil Rights Movement, busines...

Link: David Halberstam

[thedalatribune]

© Paolo Dala

Goat Debates

...But this final chapter James is putting together, this curtain call for the ages that is ravaging the record books, is enough to convince me that the age-old GOAT debate is over. Not because James is the winner, though, but because their stories have become so different that the endless comparisons are becoming more pointless with every passing year.

Jordan’s two retirements - the first coming after his father, James, was killed in July 1993, and the second after he won his sixth title in 1998 - meant that he missed four seasons in all during the 19-year span of his career. We can play the what-if game from here until eternity, but it won’t change the fact that Jordan’s body of work is vastly different from James’ when it comes to staying power and longevity.

James, meanwhile, has somehow managed to live up to all of that “Chosen One” hype while surviving the increased scrutiny that came with the internet age along the way - for two straight decades. He took a far different path than Jordan, becoming one of just four players to win titles with three different franchises in the Cavs, Heat and Lakers (and none of the others - John Salley, Robert Horry and Danny Green - were leading men, so to speak).

What’s more, the GOAT construct is tired and flawed in ways that do a disservice to them both. Contrary to popular belief, it’s OK to appreciate Picasso and Da Vinci at the same time and just leave it at that. There are enough flowers to go around.

Alas, even with these differences that should silence this discussion, the debate that typically inspires two distinctly different camps will rage on. On one side, there are the people who focus purely on championships when comparing these two. Jordan’s six eclipses James’ four, and he has the best playoff scoring average of all time (33.45 points per game; James is sixth at 28.45), so that’s that.

On the other side, there are those who look at the totality of James’ résumé and finally relent to the truth he is making it so impossible to ignore. No one - not Air Jordan, Kareem, Wilt, Russell, Kobe or anyone else - has ever played the game at this level for this long. Just take a quick glance at this season as the latest proof...

Sam Amick As LeBron James Hits 40,000-point Threshold, the Age-old GOAT Debate has Shifted The Athletic

[alovelywaytospendanevening]

Based on the book of the same name, David Halberstam's The Fifties is a great docuseries about the said decade, presenting an American overview of the period's political and cultural landscape.

It's currently available on Youtube.

[commonplace9]

[variousqueerthings]

reblogging this once more for 2023 with more texts!

The Care We Dream Of: Liberatory & Transformative Approaches to LGBTQ+ Health by Zena Sharman

What if you could trust in getting the health care you need in ways that felt good and helped you thrive? What if the health system honoured and valued queer and trans people's lives, bodies, and expertise? What if LGBTQ+ communities led and organized our own health care as a form of mutual aid? What if every aspect of our health care was rooted in a commitment to our healing, pleasure, and liberation?

Trans Care by Hil Malatino (2020)

What does it mean for trans people to show up for one another, to care deeply for one another? How have failures of care shaped trans lives? What care practices have trans subjects and communities cultivated in the wake of widespread transphobia and systemic forms of trans exclusion? 

Including this online talk and this online talk about the book

Mutual Aid by Dean Spade (2020)

This book is about mutual aid: why it is so important, what it looks like, and how to do it. It provides a grassroots theory of mutual aid, describes how mutual aid has been a part of all larger, powerful social movements, and offers concrete tools for organizing, such as how to work in groups, decision-making process, how to prevent and address conflict, and how to deal with burnout.

Debt: The First 5000 Years by David Graeber (2011) <- internet archive copy

a fascinating chronicle of this little known history—as well as how it has defined human history, and what it means for the credit crisis of the present day and the future of our economy.

Countersexual manifesto: subverting gender identities by Paul Beatriz Preciado, Jack Halberstam (2018) <- anna's archive copy

Countersexual Manifesto is an outrageous yet rigorous work of trans theory, a performative literary text, and an insistent call to action. Seeking to overthrow all constraints on what can be done with and to the body, Paul B. Preciado offers a provocative challenge to even the most radical claims about gender, sexuality, and desire.

and another bell hooks conference: Are You Still A Slave? Liberating The Black Female Body with author Marci Blackman (Tradition), film director Shola Lynch (Free Angela and All Political Prisoners), and author and activist Janet Mock (Redefining Realness)

generally: check out internet archive, anna's archive, and register with your local library! and if you have a queer and/or independent bookshop in your area, check it out and give it support

and here are two film lists -- documentaries about queer subjects and queer cultural imagery both organised by release year

happy pride reccing some anti-assimilationist, anti-capitalist, and abolitionist books and texts

BOOKS

Why Are Faggots So Afraid of Faggots? edited by Matilda Bernstein Sycamore (2012)

"Whatever happened to sexual flamboyance and gender liberation, an end to marriage, the military, and the nuclear family? As backrooms are shut down to make way for wedding vows, and gay sexual culture morphs into "straight-acting dudes hangin' out," what are the possibilities for a defiant faggotry that challenges the assimilationist norms of a corporate-cozy lifestyle?"

Transgender Liberation: A Movement Whose Time Has Come by Leslie Feinberg (1992)

This pamphlet is an attempt to trace the historic rise of an oppression that, as yet, has no commonly agreed name. We are talking here about people who defy the ‘man’-made boundaries of gender.

Transgender Warriors: Making history from Joan of Arc to Dennis Rodman by Leslie Feinberg (1996)

[Leslie Feinberg's] book celebrated the resistance to transphobia and a vision of trans liberation articulated from the perspective of class struggle. It understood that no liberation from transphobia or any of the divisive and violent oppressions in class society is possible without the transformation of capitalism into socialism.

The Faggots & Their Friends Between Revolutions by Larry Mitchell (1977)

Stories told of these times make the faggots and their friends weep. The second revolutions made many of the people less poor and a small group of men without color very rich. With craftiness and wit the faggots and their friends are able to live in this time, some in comfort and some in defiance.

Also this interview

Gender Outlaws: The Next Generation edited by Kate Bornstein, and S. Bear Bergman (2010)

Today's transgenders and other sex/gender radicals are writing a drastically new world into being.

Made In India: Decolonizations, Queer Sexualities, Trans/National Projects by Suparna Bhaskaran (2004)

Made In India explores the making of "queer" and "heterosexual" consciousness and identities in light of economic privatization, global condom enterprises, sexuality-focused NGOs, the Bollywood-ization of beauty contests, and trans/national activism.

That's Revolting: Queer Strategies For Resisting Assimilation edited by Matilda Bernstein Sycamore (2008)

As the growing gay mainstream prioritises the attainment of straight privilege over all else, it drains queer identity of any meaning, relevance or cultural value.

How To Blow Up A Pipeline by Andreas Malm (2021)

Malm argues that sabotage is a logical form of climate activism, and criticizes both pacifism within the climate movement and "climate fatalism" outside it.

On Connection by Kae Tempest (2020)

On Connection is medicine for these wounded times.

Are Prisons Obsolete by Angela Y. Davies (2003)

If you know anything about Angela Davis—anti-racist activist, Marxist-feminist scholar—you know that her answer to the question posed in the title is "Yes." This is a short primer on the prison abolition movement

Becoming Abolitionists: Police, Protests, and the Pursuit of Freedom by Derecka Purnell

This profound, urgent, beautiful, and necessary book is an invitation to imagine and organize for a less violent and more liberatory world.

Black Marxism by Cedric Johnson (1983)

Influenced by many African American and Black economists and radical thinkers of the 19th century, Robinson creates a historical-critical analysis of Marxism and the Eurocentric tradition from which it evolved. The book does not build from nor reiterate Marxist thought, but rather introduces racial analysis to the Marxist tradition.

The Transgender Issue: An Argument For Justice by Shon Faye (2021)

[Shon Faye] provides a compelling, wide-ranging analysis of trans lives from youth to old age, exploring work, family, housing, healthcare, the prison system and trans participation in the LGBTQ+ and feminist communities, in contemporary Britain and beyond.

Burn The Binary: selected writings on the politics of being trans, genderqueer, and non-binary by Riki Wilchins (2017)

This single volume offers a selection of Riki’s most penetrating and insightful pieces, as well as the best of two decades of Riki’s online columns for The Advocate never before collected, from "Where Have All the Butches Gone," to "Attack of the 6-Foot Intersex People"

ARTICLES

Assuming The Perspective Of The Ancestor by Claire Schwartz (2022)

Philosopher Olúfẹ́mi O. Táíwò on building constructive, future-oriented politics, at scale.

The Gender Binary Is A Tool For White Supremacy by Kravitz M (2020)

A brief history of gender expansiveness - and how colonialism slaughtered it

Meet Chris Smalls, the man who organized Amazon workers in New York By Anna Betts, Greg Jaffe, and Rachel Lerman (2022)

The fired worker and former rapper did what nobody else has done in the U.S.

The Nuclear Family Was A Mistake by David Brooks (2020)

The family structure we’ve held up as the cultural ideal for the past half century has been a catastrophe for many. It’s time to figure out better ways to live together.

Universal basic income seems to improve employment and well-being by Donna Lu (2020)

Extinction Isn’t the Worst That Can Happen by Kai Heron (2021)

"This brings us to the third problem with eschatological framings of the climate crisis: they overlook the fact that for many, the end of the world has already happened. In October last year, Nemonte Nenquimo, a Waorani woman, mother and leader, wrote a desperate letter to the western world reminding us that for Indigenous peoples, “the fires are raging still”."

MISC

Manifesto: An Aromantic Manifesto by yingchen and yingtong

free to read

their tumblr (with further resources)

Essay: I Dream Of Canteens by Rebecca May Johnson (2019)

There is a space for everyone. A space, a glass of water, and a plug socket.* Chairs and tables and cleaned toilets. So many chairs so that no one is without one.

Acceptance Speech (video and text): The National Book Foundation Medal for Distinguished Contribution to American Letters speech by Ursula Le Guin

Hard times are coming, when we’ll be wanting the voices of writers who can see alternatives to how we live now, can see through our fear-stricken society and its obsessive technologies to other ways of being, and even imagine real grounds for hope.

And here's a video to cleanse the soul: bell hooks: Transgression

bell hooks & Gloria Steinem at Eugene Lang College

[counttwinkula]

hi i have been obsessed with your “the monster’s body is a cultural body etc” post since i saw it like a month ago. do you have any book recs where i can read more about this, like, forever. (I’m aware of your podcast I’m checking it out too) <3

i'm glad you liked it, it's an honor to introduce the people of tumblr to cohen's seven theses

first and foremost i would recommend The Monster Theory Reader, ed. Jeffrey Andrew Weinstock, which includes several seminal essays including:

"The Uncanny" by Sigmund Freud

"The Uncanny Valley" by Masahiro Mori

"Approaching Abjection" by Julia Kristeva

"Horror and the Monstrous-Feminine: An Imaginary Abjection" by Barbara Creed

"The Monster and the Homosexual" by Harry M. Benshoff

i would also recommend the book in which Cohen first published his seven theses, Monster Theory: Reading Culture, ed. Jeffrey Jerome Cohen

(i must admit that i haven't gotten around to reading either of these books in full yet)

aside from the essays mentioned above, here are some foundational texts for monster theory but not specifically about monster theory:

The Uses of Enchantment by Bruno Bettelheim

Mythography: The Study of Myths and Rituals by William Doty

Vested Interests: Cross-Dressing and Cultural Anxiety by Marjorie Garber

monster theory/horror criticism texts i've read:

Monsters in the Closet by Harry M. Benshoff

Skin Shows by Jack Halberstam

Murder Most Queer by Jordan Schildcrout

It Came from the Closet, ed. Joe Vallese

Horror by Brigid Cherry

Men, Women, and Chain Saws by Carol Clover

Dark Places by Barry Curtis

The Dread of Difference, ed. Barry Keith Grant

The Monster Show by David J. Skal (SEE NOTE BELOW)

Darkly: Black History and America's Gothic Soul by Leila Taylor

The Ghost: A Cultural History by Susan Owens

and some others i own but haven't read yet:

Dark Carnivals by W. Scott Poole

Phantom Past, Indigenous Presence: Native Ghosts in North American Culture and History by Colleen E. Boyd and Coll Thrush

Queer for Fear: Horror Film and the Queer Spectator by Heather O. Petrocelli

Pretend We're Dead: Capitalist Monsters in American Pop Culture by Annalee Newitz (just started this, already love it)

Theatre and the Macabre, ed. Meredith Conti and Kevin J. Wetmore, Jr.

and i can't neglect to mention The Monster in Theatre History: This Thing of Darkness by Michael Chemers

before i say anything further i want to give one warning. my particular interest is on monstrosity and queerness (probably evident based on some of my recommendations). monster theory and horror criticism have generally been rooted in psychoanalytic theory, particularly as it has been interpreted through a feminist lens. unfortunately, this leads to a lot of arguments and interpretations that are sex essentialist and fail to address gender with the necessary nuance. this is particularly true in Men, Women, and Chain Saws and The Dread of Difference.

(Vested Interests is… complicated. it's not monster theory exactly but cohen cites it. garber is generally better than the others mentioned here in her consideration of trans people but her work can still be uncomfortable.)

i have a lot of reservations about recommending The Monster Show. i loved reading it and i think skal has great analysis. somehow, however, in the middle of his discussion of how marginalized people have been historically monsterized in american culture, he has the audacity to cite The Transsexual Empire by Janice Raymond, the ur-text of TERF ideology, and skal uses this text to monsterize trans women. it's disgusting and reprehensible, and if the rest of the book wasn't so strong i wouldn't recommend it

the best medicine i have are texts by trans people. It Came from the Closet is an anthology with several essays by trans people, i adore it. i am forever obsessed with Gender Outlaw by Kate Bornstein, which isn't exactly monster theory, but i would say it's monster theory adjacent and i wish everyone would read it

and if you haven't, you must read "My Words to Victor Frankenstein Above the Village of Chamounix: Performing Transgender Rage" by Susan Stryker. (see i even put a link to that one. drop everything and read it now)

alright if you're still with me i have a couple other things to put out there:

the docuseries Queer for Fear, available on Shudder, is incredible and i'm obsessed with it

she seems to be inactive these days but @draculasdaughter has a lot of posts quoting texts and articles on monster theory/horror criticism that i highly recommend

i've only seen the jacob geller videos on this list but i mean to watch this youtube playlist of video essays about horror, fear, and dread

and i also keep a #monster theory tag on my blog that has various posts on the subject, some funny and some earnest

[palmviolet]

Thank you so much for your incredible response to my ask, seriously above and beyond what i could've asked for, the extra references too! So grateful :')

Ordered a copy of outriders yay! That being said though, and obviously you don't have to answer after your generous fist answer, but I've been meaning to get into critical theory and have no idea how. You mentioned “E Unibus Pluram” by David Foster Wallace, (never apologize for a DFW rec btw) so I will definitely be starting with that, but do you have any other helpful reads for getting into critical theory? Some favourites? Anything would be useful, its such a big overwhelming subject lol.

Again thank you for your answer, and no pressure to answer this one! Excited to read your new fics whenever they come also :) I'm in love with your style and intellect! Cheers.

absolutely no worries — honoured you're coming to me for recs!

honestly 'theory' is such a broad topic it can get overwhelming, as you've noticed lol. i started in all this very much from a narrowed literary perspective, so looking at the basics of the different schools of thought — new historicism, structuralism etc — and then tossing it all out of the window to develop my own views (i was taught in the loose 'teach yourself' tradition of prestigious education lmao). which means my knowledge of the basics is fairly scattergun, but i can tell you what i started with, which was beginning theory: an introduction to literary and cultural theory by peter barry. as i recall, it was a good basis. i'm copying from my undergraduate reading list now but David Lodge, ed.: Modern Criticism and Theory: A Reader and Twentieth Century Literary Criticism: A Reader were also pretty good.

i can also absolutely recommend the a very short introduction series. they are indeed very short but they're great if you're just getting into a subject and really don't take very long to read.

from there it's really a matter of finding a) what subjects interest you and b) which voices/perspectives you accord with best. and it's best to draw from a mix. ie. my general approach is a blend of marxist/queer/postmodern criticism but i'm not going to brand myself that way because theory is really much more mutable than all the names suggest and in my experience it's kind of vibes-based anyway. so don't be intimidated, is the upshot. i've read a lot of criticism but not a massive amount of raw theory because i was always more text-focused, literary rather than philosophical, which has definitely contributed to my 'making it up as i go along' approach but also means i can confront texts on their own terms without necessarily the burden of theoretical preconceptions. that being said, i couldn't do what i do without a grounding in the central ideas of postmodern semiotics and queer theory. it's more useful context than anything else sometimes, if that makes sense?

i'm not sure exactly what i read to get a grasp of postmodern theory — it just sort of happened. going through my old downloads on my laptop i've got From Modernism to Postmodernism: Concepts and Strategies of Postmodern American Fiction by Gerhard Hoffman, which was pretty good i think. also in the vein of the DFW essay, New Sincerity: American Fiction in the Neoliberal Age by Adam Kelly is solid. and while we're on the subject of recentish fiction, i'll toss you Partial Faiths: Postsecular Fiction in the Age of Pynchon and Morrison by John McClure and The Program Era: Postwar Fiction and the Rise of Creative Writing by Mark McGurl.

re: queer theory texts:

No Future: Queer Theory and the Death Drive — Lee Edelman

Cruising Utopia: The Then and There of Queer Futurity — José Esteban Muñoz

Time Binds: Queer Temporalities, Queer Histories — Elizabeth Freeman

The Celluloid Closet — Vito Russo

Between Men — Eve Kosofsky Sedgwick

the former two are definitely the most influential in my practice. also have to mention jack halberstam and judith butler, but then of course you're getting into some pretty intense abstract gender theory that might be beyond the scope of what you're looking to begin with. anyway. sorry for the intensely rambling answer i have had a glass of wine and a long day. i probably have more in the tank so feel free to shoot me another ask and we'll see what i come up with next time lol

[eretzyisrael]

The outrage was quick to follow. However, according to the IDF, the two were not intrepid war correspondents in the Ernie Pyle or David Halberstam mold; rather, they were in the service of Hamas and Palestinian Islamic Jihad.US Secretary of State Antony Blinken said Al-Dahdouh’s death was “an unimaginable tragedy” and that “far too many innocent Palestinian men, women, and children” have died in the war.

CNN’s Christiane Amanpour posted on X that “the number of journalists killed during Israel’s war on Hamas is appalling and unprecedented... Journalists in Gaza are our eyes and ears for the truth.”

“Eyes and ears for the truth?” Is that what the two men were? According to the IDF spokesman, whom this newspaper believes more than Hamas or the Hamas-backed Al-Jazeera, they were operating a drone that endangered Israeli forces in Khan Yunis.

They worked for news operations – so what? It was not their only role.

According to the IDF, basing its conclusion on documents captured inside Gaza, Al-Dahdouh was a member of PIJ’s electric engineering unit, and Thuria was the deputy head of a Hamas terror battalion.

“That cannot be,” the willing-to-be-fooled will argue, aghast. It cannot be that terrorists moonlight as “journalists.” Hamas would not do that. They would not place journalists in danger by doing such a thing.

Right. And Hamas would never use ambulances to ferry around terrorists, place its central headquarters underneath a hospital, or hide missiles in preschools and mosques.

Beyond the gullibility of the world and its willingness to take at face value what a terrorist organization says, including taking as gospel the casualty figures that it provides, equally disturbing is the willingness to believe the absolute worst about Israel.

[jurassicworldtieindrpepper]

Reading List

to be updated constantly

Articles:

"Why Women Online Can’t Stop Reading Fairy Porn" by C.T. Jones for Rolling Stone

"They Called 911 for Help. Police and Prosecutors Used a New Junk Science to Decide They Were Liars." by Brett Murphy for ProPublica

"‘I Think My Husband Is Trashing My Novel on Goodreads!’" by Emily Gould for The Cut

"Woman in Retrograde" by Isabel Cristo for The Cut

"The unwanted Spanish soccer kiss is textbook male chauvinism. Don’t excuse it" by Moira Donegan for the Guardian

"I Started the Media Men List" by Moira Donegan for The Cut

"What Moira Donegan Did for Young Women Writers" by Jordana Rosenfeld for The Nation

"The Key Detail Missing From the Narrative About O.J. and Race" by Joel Anderson for Slate

"The Coiled Ferocity of Zendaya" by Matt Zoller Seitz for Vulture

"OJ Simpson died the comfortable death in old age that Nicole Brown should have had" by Moira Donegan for The Guardian

"Norm Macdonald Was the Hater O.J. Simpson Could Never Outrun" by Miles Klee for Rolling Stone

"Trans Stylists and Makeup Artists Are Reshaping Red Carpet Looks. Will They Get the Credit They’re Due?" by James Factora

"The ‘perfect Aryan’ child used in Nazi propaganda was actually Jewish" by Terrence McCoy for The Washington Post

"There Are Too Many Books; Or, Publishing Shouldn’t Be All About Quantity" by Maris Kreizman for Literary Hub

"An O.J. Juror on What The People v. O.J. Simpson Got Right and Wrong" by Ashley Reese for Vulture

"Super Cute Please Like" by Nicole Lipman for N + 1 Magazine

Essays:

Not That Bad: Dispatches from Rape Culture edited by Roxanne Gay

Creep: Accusations and Confessions by Myriam Gurba

"On Chappell Roan and Gen Z Pop" by Miranda Reinert

"In Memory of Nicole Brown Simpson" by Andrea Dworkin

"My Gender Is Dyke" by Alexandria Juarez for Autostraddle

"Columnists and Their Lives of Quiet Desperation" by Hamilton Nolan

Nonfiction:

Belabored: A Vindication of the Rights of Pregnant Women by Lyz Lenz

The Feminine Mystique by Betty Friedan

This American Ex-Wife: How I Ended My Marriage and Started My Life by Lyz Lenz

The Gentrification of the Mind: Witness to a Lost Imagination by Sarah Schulman

Savage Appetites: Four True Stories of Women, Crime, and Obsession by Rachel Monroe

The Sexual Politics of Meat: A Feminist-Vegetarian Critical Theory by Carol J. Adams

Eros the Bittersweet by Anne Carson

Who Owns This Sentence? A History of Copyrights and Wrongs by David Bellos & Alexandre Montagu

The Once and Future Sex: Going Medieval on Women's Roles in Society by Eleanor Janega

Moby Dyke: An Obsessive Quest to Track Down the Last Remaining Lesbian Bars in America by Krista Burton

University of Nike: How Corporate Cash Bought American Higher Education by Joshua Hunt

What it Feels Like for a Girl by Paris Lees

Female Masculinity by J. Jack Halberstam

The Theory of Everything Else: A Voyage Into the World of the Weird by Dan Schreiber

Stiff: The Curious Lives of Human Cadavers by Mary Roach

Better Living Through Birding: Notes from a Black Man in the Natural World by Christian Cooper

Rivermouth: A Chronicle of Language, Faith, and Migration by Alejandra Oliva

Unlikeable Female Characters: The Women Pop Culture Wants You to Hate by Anna Bogutskaya

Born a Crime: Stories From a South African Childhood by Trevor Noah

Caste: The Origins of Our Discontents by Isabel Wilkerson

The Lady from the Black Lagoon: Hollywood Monsters and the Lost Legacy of Milicent Patrick by Mallory O'Meara

Being Mortal: Medicine and What Matters in the End by Atul Gawande

Stone Butch Blues by Leslie Feinberg

Eyeliner: A Cultural History by Zahra Hankir

Against Technoableism: Rethinking Who Needs Improvement by Ashley Shew

The Wager: A Tale of Shipwreck, Mutiny and Murder by David Grann

Know My Name by Chanel Miller

Empire of Pain: The Secret History of the Sackler Dynasty by Patrick Radden Keefe

Novelist as a Vocation by Haruki Murakami

Rape-Revenge Films: A Critical Study by Alexandra Heller-Nicholas

Fiction:

To the Lighthouse by Virginia Woolf

Middlemarch by George Eliot

Just as You Are by Camille Kellogg

Just Happy to Be Here by Naomi Kanakia

The Misadventures of an Amateur Naturalist by Ceinwen Langley

Family Meal by Bryan Washington

Jurassic Park by Michael Crichton

The Mountain in the Sea by Ray Nayler

Ring Shout by P. Djèlí Clark

My Heart Is a Chainsaw by Stephen Graham Jones

An Island Princess Starts a Scandal by Adriana Herrera

Blackouts by Justin Torres

We Do What We Do in the Dark by Michelle Hart

Never Let Me Go by Kazuo Ishiguro

Less Is Lost by Andrew Sean Greer

The Faithless by C.L. Clark

Project Hail Mary by Andy Weir

The Poppy War by R.F. Kuang

The Disenchantments by Nina LaCour

Everything Leads to You by Nina LaCour

Bliss Montage by Ling Ma

Pachinko by Min Jin Lee

The Institute by Stephen King

Jonathan Strange & Mr Norrell by Susanna Clarke

Frankenstein: Junji Ito Story Collection by Junji Ito

Her Body and Other Parties: Stories by Carmen Maria Machado

Young Mungo by Douglas Stuart

The Dark Forest by Liu Cixin

Snuff by Terry Pratchett

Travelers Along the Way: A Robin Hood Remix by Aminah Mae Safi

Only a Monster by Vanessa Len

[punkcaligula]

2023 READING LOG

JANUARY

-> Books:

HURSTON, Zora Neale; Their Eyes Were Watching God

WILLIAMS, Tennessee; A Streetcar Named Desire

-> Essays & articles:

CHRISTENSEN, Joel; How do chatbots dream of electric Greek heroes?

DYHOUSE, Carol; Why Are We So Afraid of Female Desire?

EDWARDS, Stassa; A Little Madly: Hysteria at the Moulin Rouge

HOOKS, bell; Romance: Sweet Love

LAING, Olivia; NYC blue: what the pain of loneliness tells us

LIEBERMAN, Jeffrey A.; “The Miracle Cure”: A Brief History of Lobotomies

LORDE, Audre; The Uses of the Erotic: The Erotic as Power

SHUSHAN, Gregory; Near-death experiences have long inspired after life beliefs

STADONILK, Joe; We’ve always been distracted

TÁÌWÒ, Olúfémi; The idea of ‘precolonial Africa’ is vacuous and wrong

WYPIJEWSKI, JoAnn; How Capitalism Created Sexual Dysfunction

FEBRUARY

-> Books:

DOUGLASS, Frederick; Narrative of the life of Frederick Douglass

WINTERSON, Jeanette; 12 Bytes: How We Got Here, Where We Might Go Next

-> Essays & articles:

BLACK, Bob; The Abolition of Work

BURDEN-STELLY, Charisse; How Black Communist Women Remade Class Struggle

COBB, Michael; Bigmouth Strikes Again

GOODLAD, Lauren M.E.; Now The Humanities Can Disrupt “AI”

HALBERSTAM, Jack; Towards a Trans* Feminism

HARVEY, Katherine; Medieval babycare

ROTHFIELD, Becca; A Body of One’s Own

RUKES, Frederic; The Disruption of Normativity: Queer Desire and Negativity in Morrisey and The Smiths

STRINGER, Julian; The Smiths: Repressed (But Remarkably Dressed)

VENKATARAMAN, Vivek V.; Lessons from the foragers

MARCH

-> Books:

AMADO, Jorge; Gabriela, Clove & Cinnamon

-> Essays & articles:

ALEXANDER, Amanda; Making Communities Safe, Without the Police

BOURDÉ, Guy; The philosophies of history

ELLIOTT, John H.; An Europe of composite monarchies

ERNAUX, Annie; A Community of Desires

HARCOUT, Bernard E.; Policing Disorder

JABBARI, Alexander; After the mother tongues: what we lost with Persianate modernity

MANTEL, Hilary; Anne Boleyn: witch, bitch, temptress, feminist

MANTEL, Hilary; Holy disorders

MANTEL, Hilary; Night visions

MANTEL, Hilary; No passport required

MANTEL, Hilary; The shape we’re in

MINER, Horace; Body Ritual among the Nacirema

RUSSEL, Francey; What It Means to Watch

WEBB, Claire Isabel; Cosmic vision

APRIL

-> Books:

MISHIMA, Yukio; Sun and Steel

OLADE, Yves; Bloodsport

-> Essays & articles:

BATESON, Gregory; A Theory of Play and Fantasy

CÉSAIRE, Suzanne; The Great Camouflage

CHARALAMBOUS, Demetrio; The Enigma of the Isle of Gold

DAVID, Kathryn; How Stalin enlisted the Orthodox Church to help control Ukraine

SINGLER, Beth; Existential Hope and Existential Despair in AI Apocalypticism and Transhumanism

WYATT, Justin; The Smiths, Pop Culture Referencing and Marginalized Stardom

-> Short stories:

ELLISON, Harlan; The Man Who Rowed Christopher Colombus Ashore

SAYLOR, Steven; The Eagle and the Rabbit

MAY

-> Books:

PLUTARCH; Life of Sulla

-> Essays & articles:

BRAUDEL, Fernand; Clothes and fashion

CHAMPLIN, Edward; Nero Reconsidered

GARTON, Charles; Sulla and the Theatre

HAY, Mark; The Colonization of the Ayahuasca Experience

HSU, Hua; Varieties of Ether: Toward a history of creativity and beef

PROBYN, Elspeth; Cannibal Hunger, Restraint in Excess

STAR, Christopher; How the ancient philosophers imagined the end of the world

TELUSHKIN, Shira; Meet Eva Frank: The First Jewish Female Messiah

[munecademetal]

Obsessed rn with a good reads review of Didion’s The Year of Magical Thinking that gives her one star for name dropping David Halberstam

[tmbgareok]

hi jf, just wondering what you and linnell are reading on the road (or before the road) recently? thank you 😸

JF: I am reading questions left on the Tumblr from a few months back! --but to answer your question more seriously--I just finished The Fifties by David Halberstam, and Lunch Poems by Frank O'Hara. I just started Burr by Gore Vidal, but I am not really sure I like it...

[nerice]

the big unread shelf readening of 2023

aka elia reads every single bought-but-unread book before being allowed to get into gtn/tlt

a conservation of shadows by yoon ha lee

american originality by louise glück

black leopard, red wolf by marlon james

breaking legacies by zoe reed

chinese folk tales anthology

chokepoint capitalism by rebecca giblin & cory doctorow

devotions: selected poems of mary oliver

divine felines: the cat in japanese art by rhiannon paget

epistemology of the closet by eve kosofsky sedgwick

female masculinity by jack halberstam

heikemonogatari

if not, winter (fragments of sappho)

korean folktales anthology

making sense of japanese by jay rubin

moby dick by herman melville

his dark materials by philip pullman

paradise lost by john milton

queer games avant-garde by bonnie ruberg

representation in steven universe (anthology)

revision by david michael kaplan

routledge handbook of japanese media (anthology)

russian folktales anthology

seven blades in black by sam sykes

sissies and tomboys (anthology)

the bear and the nightingale by kathryn arden (3 books)

the book of disquiet by fernando pessoa

the copyeditor's handbook by amy einsohn

the fifth season by n.k. jemison (3 books)

the grace of kings by ken liu

the promise of happiness by sara ahmed

the invisible library by genevieve cogman (8 books)

the japanese language by haruhiko kindaichi

the locked tomb by tamsyn muir

the queer art of failure by jack halberstam

the queer child by kathryn bond stockton

time is a mother by ocean vuong

turtles all the way down by john green

undoing gender by judith butler

welcome to night vale (the novel)

what if by randall munroe

wonderbook by jeff vandermeer

[atundratoadstool]

Hi, I know you're more of an expert on the book, but do you happen to know what that pendant Lugosi's Dracula is wearing meant to be, or know anyone who can answer? I've been wondering about this one for years.

Most of what I know about the medallion is Judith Halberstam's commentary on it as Star of David shaped and how that figures into ongoing issues of vampires and coded antisemitism (and how it fed into the subsequent controversy over the original Count Chocula box design). Doing some DuckDuckGoing into the opinions of film buffs, it appears that the original prop may have been some manner of Ottoman medal of honor, which may have been modified before becoming a film prop.