Hey y'all – it's Cait. It is a Friday night and
I am coming to you with a quick TBR for
Dewey's 24 Hour Readathon, which starts
tomorrow, Saturday. In my time zone
Dewey's starts Saturday morning and then
goes for 24 hours until Sunday morning.
Tonight I am drinking a Moscow Mule made
with ginger-infused vodka, which is very
easy to make at home. You just slice up a
bit of ginger root, put it in a mason jar
or similar, fill it up with vodka and let
it set for a couple of days, and then
you'll have vodka that tastes very gingery.
If you like your Moscow Mules with lots
of ginger flavor, it is a great addition
to that cocktail. Traditionally, of
course, Moscow Mules go in a copper mug.
I don't have any of those, so I put it in a
mason jar – which reflects my Southern
roots. Now, some folks try to read for as
much as they can during the entire 24
hours of the readathon, which is amazing.
I do not have that kind of time tomorrow;
I have to write part of my dissertation, I
need to get done with some grading, and
I'm going to the ballet with my partner.
That said, I do have two books that I
would like to make good progress on
tomorrow. The first of those I mentioned
in my previous video – it's There Are More
Beautiful Things than Beyoncé, by Morgan
Parker. I read a few more poems out of
this collection this evening and I'm
really enjoying it so far. One of those
is Another Another Autumn in New York,
which starts by saying: 'When I drink
anything / out of a martini glass /
I feel untouched by / professional and
sexual / rejection. I am a dreamer / with
empty hands and / I like the chill. / I will
not be attending the party / tonight
because I am / microwaving multiple Lean
Cuisines /
and watching Wife Swap.' It's a really
vibrant and interesting collection; it's
a lot of fun to read. It's grappling with
sexuality and femininity and pop culture
and stardom and race, and I'm really
enjoying it. The other book that I'm
hoping to make some progress on is The
Anatomy of Fascism, by Robert Paxton.
Some of the observant among you will notice
that this is not one of the books that
was in my currently reading pile in the
video that I put up literally yesterday.
So here's the fun thing to know about me
as a reader: I am a
total dilettante, and I have dozens of
books in this apartment that I have read
the first 20 pages of and fully intend
to get back to. So at any given time the
books that are in my TBR might not
actually reflect the books that I'm most
likely to get to next. Anyway, I read the
first chapter of The Anatomy of Fascism
today and I'm really liking it. It's got
a lot of really interesting insights
about fascism. It starts by talking about
some of the origins of the fascist
movement in Mussolini's Italy and then
goes on to talk about fascist movements
in broad strokes in the mid-1900s and
what we can learn about them, both from
their similarities and from their
differences. The chapter has some really
interesting insights so far. For example,
one of the parts of the first chapter is
talking about how there's a lot of
anti-capitalist rhetoric that gets built
into a lot of fascist platforms, and yet
(quote) 'Even at its most radical, however,
fascists' anti-capitalist rhetoric was
selective. While they denounced
speculative international finance (along
with all other forms of internationalism,
cosmopolitanism, or globalization—
capitalist as well as socialist), they
respected the property of national
producers, who were to form the social
base of the reinvigorated nation.' This
first chapter also talks about how
fascism is distinct from other political
movements like liberalism or like
socialism in that it doesn't have this
sort of core system of belief that
defines it, but rather (quote) 'Fascism does
not rest explicitly upon an elaborated
philosophical system, but rather upon
popular feelings about master races,
their unjust lot, and their rightful
predominance over inferior peoples. It
has not been given intellectual
underpinning by any system builder, like
Marx, or by any major critical
intelligence like Mill, Burke, or
Tocqueville.' And Paxton is really
emphasizing sort of the sensory
experience, and how people got swept
away in fascist movements – this idea that
(quote) 'Fascism's deliberate replacement of
reasoned debate with immediate
sensual experience
transformed politics' in this era that
Paxton is writing about. All right, so
realistically I'm not going to be able
to finish either of those books tomorrow
'cause I've got a lot of other stuff on the
to-do list, but it's fun to participate
in a little bit of the readathon anyway.
If you're participating in Dewey's 24
Hour Readathon, I would love to know
what you're reading and especially if
you've made a TBR video. Or comment down
below and let me know what you're
getting into this weekend, even if you're
not participating in the readathon. Okay,
and that's it for me tonight – I'll see
y'all next time. Cheers!
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