Welcome to Voice of the Proletariat’s Monthly Reads series. At the start of each month, a post like this one will go up, documenting some of my current reads, top reads from the past month, and a shortlist of newly acquired books.
You may notice that this entry is much shorter than that of last month. I've become much more selective about which books appear in this series, and I want to avoid unnecessary and unintentional advertising.1
Currently Reading
Homer’s Odyssey: An Illustrated Retelling (2026) by Barry Powell, illus. Joanna Lisowiec
About half the length of a full translation of Homer’s Odyssey, this has been a very fun retelling. The author writes:
This is not a translation as such of Homer’s Odyssey, but a retelling of the story filtered through my own sense of modern English. I aim to tell the story as Homer would tell it if he were alive today. Homer was an oral poet, so can never know his exact words.
I’d hoped to have finished it this past month, but things kept coming up.
Thank you to Clarkson Potter and NetGalley for the ARC. This book was released this past month, on June 16, 2026.
Marx: Later Political Writings (1995) by Karl Marx, transl. Terrell Carver
I have been reading this collection on-and-off since January and figured I would devote more time to it this past month.2
Propaganda and International Relations (1960) by Urban G. Whitaker, Jr.
Written around the time of the height of the Cold War, this American book has already offered many insights in regard to propaganda/information media studies.
While it is (obviously) favourable toward the American side, it provides a surprisingly fair view of the Soviet Union’s media efforts. When I first skimmed the book before reading, the following line stood out:
No one is exempt from objective criticism in the Soviet Union, whether in high position or low, whether a government minister, high party official, a novelist or plain ordinary worker.
Completed This Month
The Pomegranate is a Grenade (2026) by Maha Hashwi
As I briefly referred to in last month’s entry, I have only recently begun to explore the world of poetry, and this debut collection by an Arab Muslim offered a great introduction into the genre.
Within the collection, I especially liked the works Body Bags, Jannah, The Intention, Mango Pit, Welcome to Dearborn, Faux Patriotism, and The Pomegranate (the final one being the book's namesake).
Many of these poems refer to past or current events, including the self-immolation of American airman and anarchist Aaron Bushnell in 2024 in the case of Faux Patriotism, while some others discuss the displacement of Palestinians by “Israeli” forces more broadly.
Thank you to Central Avenue Publishing and NetGalley for the ARC. This book is set to release August 31, 2026.
To keep up with all my reads rather than just some selected highlights, you can find me on The StoryGraph here. For graphic novels and comics, I can also be found on League of Comic Geeks here.
New Acquisitions
Discourse on the Origin of Inequality (1755) by Jean-Jacques Rousseau, trans. Franklin Philip
The Origin of the Family, Private Property and the State (1884) by Friedrich Engels
This classic work of Engels is one I surprisingly have not yet read.
On the topic of women’s liberation under socialism, I highly recommend Burkinabè revolutionary Thomas Sankara’s Women’s Liberation and the African Freedom Struggle, which I first borrowed and read in March before deciding to buy my own copy.
All reviews are written independently and without compensation. I accept complimentary books and ARCs for review consideration, and the source will be noted and credited in the review itself. Publishers and authors are welcome to email me regarding submissions.
I do not use any affiliate links. For Monthly Reads entries, I currently hyperlink books to the respective entry on The StoryGraph, a Black-owned alternative to Goodreads.
Most of my books are bought through independent bookstores, thrift stores, or directly from the publisher, and I avoid stores marked for boycotts by the Palestinian-led BDS movement.
I am reading the fifth edition, released 2005.
An enviable list. I read a bit of analyses of Marx's later notes.