bcj

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JhoiraArtificer
@JhoiraArtificer

inspired by @bcj and @tsiro, here are some books I've read recently and some thoughts on them. I think I want to do this weekly but I didn't spend much time reading last week so this is kinda "July and/or stuff I want to mention edition". I am bald-facedly stealing bcj's post formatting too


-Just Finished-

Zionism Within Early American Fundamentalism 1878-1918: A Convergence of Two Traditions — David A. Rausch

Listen. Despite this being a library book, it took me three months to get through because I kept having to put it down. I chose this book:

  1. by browsing the shelves at the library (shoutout to Library of Congress BT 82), and
  2. because it fits into my ongoing sprawling "so how did we even get here waves at the USA" project. this thing just continues to grow

Unfortunately for me, this book is as much or more an exculpatory exercise of "no really, (proto-) Fundamentalist Christians don't hate the Jews because they're super pro Zionist" (these things being inextricable in the mind of the author as well as so many other people) as it is an actual history of Zionist thought in proto-Fundamentalist circles. I feel like I didn't learn a tremendous amount more on how congruent Zionism is with premillenialist Christianity than I had already learned from Fundamentalism and American Culture: The Shaping of Twentieth-Century Evangelicalism 1870-1925 (George M. Marsden⁠—this one's good although I had to do a lot of internet searches to get my theological terms in order).

The Immortals Quartet — Tamora Pierce

Sometimes you just really want to reread comfort books from when you were a kid, even if the age gap part is uhhhhhhh well moving on

-Now Reading-

Monitoring Nuclear Weapons and Nuclear-Explosive Materials: An Assessment of Methods and Capabilities — National Research Council

Yeah buddy we know how to have fun in this house. Apparently @vogon read part of this one in college and told me about it when I was complaining about none of the libraries I have access to owning copies of Broken Arrow vol. I or II (Michael Maggelet). Might try getting it through ILL from the city library. I am a normal person

Want to read this too? You totally can, the PDF is free to download!

-Continued Works-

aka "books I started reading [time units] ago and recently picked back up"

Theatres of Memory: Past and Present in Contemporary Culture — Raphael Samuel

I picked this up in a Verso ebook sale years ago and have been reading it on and off, but I'm back to "on"! This one is also part of the waves hands project, because what's more relevant to where we are now than the stories we tell ourselves about the past? Pretty much nothing, honestly. I haven't read allll that many books written from a leftist perspective, and I grew up in a very Liberal historical educational regime, so sometimes I really have to stop and think about Samuel's opinion on historical pedagogy and trends in historical research. Definitely worth a read if history and narrative is something you're interested in.

The Protestant Ethic and the Spirit of Capitalism — Max Weber, trans. Stephen Kalberg

New translation my dudes (ok it's from 2002, but the other English translation is from 1930). I bought this copy so I could side-by-side the two English translations, but I'm currently mostly reading this one. I understand that the Talcott Parsons translation (the 1930 one) was produced when college education was different, but I'm afraid I simply do not have the knowledge to translate paragraphs-long Latin and Greek citations in the footnotes. Parsons translated the German, sure, but the rest was left as an exercise to the presumably-educated reader. I have a moderate quantity of education, which does not include reading Latin or Greek, so Kalberg's translations of all the footnotes is immensely helpful.

I kind of don't know what to say about this book. It's a seminal work. You've all heard of it (probably). I read excerpts in college, though not the whole thing. It's definitely making me want to read a bunch of books I picked up on the Leveller Revolution and related Early Modern English (and some Continental) society... up next I guess.

A Dalliance with the Duke — AMarguerite

Yeah buddy did you think I was going to stick with professionally published works? If it's good, I'm recommending it.

Do you like Pride & Prejudice? Do you like soulmate fic? (I do, despite not believing in soulmates.) Do you want a series that complicates the idea of soulmates, set in the P&P universe, with actual queers? I got you (first fic in the series doesn't require an AO3 account, the others do).

This one's fun, because due to an in-universe-logicalish series of events Lizzy ends up being courted by the Duke of Wellington, and it's written like a romance novel. It's super charming and a good cyclical bedtime comfort read.


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in reply to @JhoiraArtificer's post:

Unfortunately for me, this book is as much or more an exculpatory exercise of "no really, (proto-) Fundamentalist Christians don't hate the Jews because they're super pro Zionist"

Ooh, that's too bad. That title sounded promising

The Protestant Ethic and the Spirit of Capitalism

This has been on my to-read list for a while. Really should get around to it