Blog
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The JFK Assassination Sixty Years Later
On Wednesday, November 22nd, 2023, it will be sixty years since they shot Jack K! Kennedy is one of my reading obsessions, and I surround myself with many piles of books on the topic.
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Gator Thieves, Parasocial Tendencies, and the Disturbing Influence of The Gates Foundation
Welcome back to Piles. How are my homies in the northern hemisphere adjusting to the 5pm sunset? Cold days and long nights are better when you have piles of books to read.
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Kidnap Your Idols! Fandom, Exploitation, and Parasocial
In Parasocial, a fan kidnaps her idol, and in the process, we consider the exploitative nature of fandom.
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Parole, Bookstore Orcs, and Ghostships
To start November, we are considering some new releases: a cozy fantasy sequel, an expose into the parole system, and a pile of the week toward the future.
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Haunted Houses and Stoned Monsters
Tsundoku is a Japanese word for acquiring reading materials and letting them pile up without reading them. Welcome to my weekly reading blog, Halloween Edition. OooOOoooOOOoooOoooOOo!!!! [said like ghost] Happy Halloween! Best holiday ever! Long live the dead! This week, we consider my favorite horror novel from 2023, some great Halloween-y medium pieces, a perverted stoner…
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Blood, Oil, and Deceit: Unraveling the Conspiracy in Killers of the Flower Moon
Scorsese’s film is another brutally honest look at how white supremacy won the American West. Not cowboys, but cowards. Powerful psychopaths who cheat, lie, and steal. David Grann’s 2017 book of the same title is a comprehensive look at the Osage massacre. It also takes a more critical perspective on the FBI and the federal government.
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Kafka, Manga, and Abstract Dehumanization
Reviewing Nishioka Kyodai’s Kafka: A Manga Adaptation I’m a Kafkahead, or a monstrous vermin, as we Kafkaheads call each other. Pushkin Press released a collection of eleven Kafka stories adapted to manga by the artist Nishioka Kyodai. This book marks Nishioka Kyodai’s first English translation, and I hope more English translations come out someday. Kyodai is…
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Hippies, Paranoia and Piles
Two books about 1970s paranoia, Agents of Chaos by Sean Howe and Inherent Vice by Thomas Pynchon
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Why Private Equity Paid $50,000,000 for Letterboxd
Databasing Feels Good In A Place Like This I love movies. I just watched my 104th movie this year. How do I know that? Because I track my movies on Letterboxd! I’m not the only one who sees value. Private equity firm Tiny just paid $50 million for the app. And if I could, I would…
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Shadow Selves, Lurking Fascism and Radical Compassion: Reviewing Naomi Klein’s Doppelgänger
Many confuse leftist writer Naomi Klein with right-wing writer Naomi Wolf. It’s the framing story for Klein’s new book. Naomi Klein sees Namoi Wolf as her doppelgänger, a German word for an uncanny evil twin. When Wolf became one of America’s biggest sources of COVID-19 disinformation, Klein went on a personal research journey across health,…