At the start of the year, I made a resolution not to buy any books for the following 12 months.
This week alone I have bought
Reading Capital Politically, by Harry Cleaver
Blood Relations, by Chris Knight
Shooting History, by Jon Snow
Tell Me No Lies, by John Pilger
Pythons: An Autobiography, by the Pythons
Siege at Jadotville, by Declan Power
After Theory, by Terry Eagleton
and
Debunking Economics, by Steve Keen
Sad, sad bastard.
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15 comments:
Mmm, at a glance it doesn't look like there is any fiction amongst your list.
You are indeed a sad, sad . . . ;-)
"In 1979, Harry Cleaver tossed an incendiary device called Reading Capital Politically into those seminar rooms. Through a close reading of the first chapter, he shows that Das Kapital was written for the workers, not for academics"
This looks interesting. There has, in my humble opinion, been far too much theorising around Marx's ideas by so-called Marxists and certainly not enough organising. That was one reason why my activism waned a few years ago, the other reason is that I'm a lazy fucker.
lazy fuckers make bad Leninists.however, you'd feel right at home in the spgb ;-)
(see, i'm too lazy to even capitalize)
I found this blog surfing.
I read in alternation, fiction and nonfiction.
You could use some Isabel Allende.
Phew: I always knew there were other bookaholics out there who could make the spending of Cloud and myself look good!
BTW have bought "Bleak House" to read as, shame on shame, I have never yet read it (my 6th form pals did it as a play so I think it was always associated with that in my mind - not sure why that put em off reading it...)
PS to Reidski: Cloud thinks Harry Cleaver is brilliant and I am sure could wax lyricalwith encouragement to read his works.
Thanks for your comments guys. And if you have any suggestions on how I might actually curb my spending rather than double it by buying fiction as well as nonfiction, I'd appreciate the help!!
Easy - you can curb your spending by not buying anything!
I asked for that!
Re-reading Bleak House myself at the moment, as I didn't catch the start of the serialisation, and it's marvellous. Read bits aloud to Sam and made her laugh as I broke down into sobs during a death scene--a truly Dickensian moment of pathos.
I would have saved money with the Eagleton, John; it's possibly one of his worst books apart from the daft Oirish one. The politics have become distinctly dodgy, and it's not really clear who he's aiming at. The theoretical stuff is not very astounding and it's fairly low-level.
Hi Bill--
Half-way through the Eagleton book and fed up already. At least the daft Oirish one had a few laughs and targeted a few cultural stereotypes accurately. This one is just woolly and unfocused, like you say. It's very poor. 15 euros I could have spent on Guinness.
Clue to duffness: the words "after theory". Sadly, theory and the desire to escape it get bandied around too much to be helpful to any reader. And if you're trying to escape theory, does that mean you write clearly about practice? Sadly, no to that too. Eaglesworthy's earlier stuff can be okay in parts - though it has dated terribly - but recent works have been rather off the mark...
Hey Lisa--
Yeah, I figured he was trying to tap into the zeitgeist, what with the "Theory's Empire" collection out recently. I liked "Literary Theory" in part because of the clarity of Eagleton's writing, but like Bill says, it isn't clear here just who he's criticizing or why.
John, I could kill no birds with one stone and get you The Guinness Book of Records for Xmas.Just like in days of yore.
Or the Dandy Annual.
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