My Reading Project

[ladyfiaran22]

I’m an avid reader and a historian with a BA in History, a member of Phi Alpha Theta and I just drank two vodkas, so I decided to start a thread about what we’ve been reading. I got a bolt of inspiration and decided to start reading biographies of famous women, since March is women’s history month. I have many biographies of famous women and I started in chronological order, right now I’m reading a biography of Cleopatra. Among my biographies are queens, actresses, heiresses, noblewomen, and others, I’ve organized the books in chronological order

[damondamore]

I'm also a BA in history but I don't practice. I'm only on one hard cider right now personally. I'm not currently reading anything, well apart from Milan Kundera's The Unbearable Lightness of Being, which I am regularly re-reading.

However, on the subject of women-- which I regrettably do not have binders of-- I have a collection of narratives of soviet women. In the Shadow of Revolution (ed. Translated and edited by Slezline, additional editing by Fitzpatrick, 2000). The preface has something which stood out to me on my first reading, so much so it is something I picked out. "Russian women often write themselves as victims, though not usually on account of their gender: They (and their menfolk) are victims of Communism, Capitalism or simply History." It goes on to explain "They remember their lives and structure their narratives in terms of public events [...] rather than the personal milestones of marriage, childbirth, divorce and womanhood." Anyway, I recommend it to anyone interested in women's history, soviet history or gender studies.

[ladyfiaran22]

Awesome, another historian here 😂 But seriously, I love history and it was my favorite subject in school. Since I work Monday to Friday at a school, I start drinking Friday evening and more on Saturday, sober up Saturday night and go to church on Sunday.

I started off with Cleopatra and I’m going in chronological order, so far I’ve read biographies of Queen Isabella, the six wives of Henry VIII, Catherine Howard, Queen Christina of Sweden and now I’m reading a biography of Elizabeth Stuart, the Winter Queen and her four daughters. That sounds like an interesting book but the Soviet Union isn’t a big appeal to me, reading about totalitarianism makes me angry and depressed. I grew up with parents who loathed Communism and associated anything liberal with Communism and hearing about Communist atrocities, so reading about totalitarianism reminds me of that

[damondamore]

I did more modern history and the book is sometimes depressing, but there's one section that really is just about life going on with all of these horrible things in the background. It's sort of beautiful and inspiring in a way.


Then you have the lady who outright admits to lying about people being traitors to the party because she wants their jobs and sees it as a way to move up socially, so you know.

[ladyfiaran22]

My areas of interest are Ancient Greece and Rome, Medieval and Renaissance Britain, the Old West in the US, and in the 20th century, the 20s, the 1960s, the 1970s and the 1990s, my father grew up in the 60s and my mother in the 70s and myself in the 90s. The only like Imperial Russian history, the Soviet Union was evil and Karl Marx should have been drowned at birth.

I could not betray my friends or family like that, I’d kill myself first. I just can’t do that, period. Astrologically, I’m both a Pisces and a Dog, we’re the Joan of Arcs who defend our families and want to destroy evil and slay dragons, I can’t watch shows where the bad guys win or have criminal protagonists

[damondamore]

Well, I'm a Leo and the year of the sheep so figure that one out! I will say I am very loyal, well until I see that someone isn't worth it. I also don't think that simply being related is a very strong bond. Though, I am much closer to my friends than my family, but also my father has untreated mental illnesses which makes him very difficult to get along with so it might be hard to see where my experiences shaped my personality or where my personality shaped my experiences.


The interesting thing is Karl Marx was looking at his own industrial German society and trying to solve very specific problems he identified in that time and place. I'm not endorsing his solutions. However, even he had some doubts that a county which was largely agricultural and organized very differently to begin with could use his model. While I don't think communism is good, I don't think Marx was Evil, or truly had any ill-intentions-- or truly thought anyone would actually try to implement his plan. As much as I don't like communism, it existed as a response to capitalism which of course has problems. However, no one has dared come up with a new response to capitalism since and I feel like we need that strong criticism if we're going to improve the systems we have, or perhaps move to a better system someday. I also don't blame communism for creating the opportunity for people seeking power to seize it. That could happen under any system in the context of revolution.


Even the books about the soviet union generously call it an 'Experiment'. Gorbachev was still carrying the torch for it until his death, thinking it could have been saved-- of course by him, if they'd only given him the chance! (please read that with some humor.) I'm foremost interested in people and social and intellectual history. How what we call 'free love' in the west was associated with communism for people in the soviet union. How Germany is still somewhat in the shadow of the cultural divide the Berlin wall created. Interestingly, what is considered to be the single longest-running animated show came out of East Germany and is still going to this day (Unser Sandmännchen). I'm also very interested in the Soviet Realist artists, how they would use their realism and training to produce propaganda to rebel within the strict government control. There's a painting (I was an art history minor) which I cannot seem to find online, but it's translated title is something like "Always moving forward" and it shows the soviet leaders marching forward, towards the viewer as statues and signage and then regular soviet people walking the other way, away from the viewer into the background. At face value it's a scene of people walking through a park with propaganda posters and statues casually enjoying the park, but it's believed there's a deliberate choice to show the government and the people only facing opposite directions.

Perhaps I simply never grew out of being an edgy teenage rebel who likes to see people trying to stick it to the man. They said in school I had a problem with authority, and my problem has always been that authority is often not earned based on skill or ability.