Nicking this idea off Mark Carrigan, here's what I've read these last few months.
The Enigma of Capital by David Harvey
The Cornish Trilogy by Robertson Davies
Talcott Parsons: Theorist of Modernity by Roland Robertson and Bryan S Turner (eds)
Sperm Wars by Robin Baker
On the Steel Breeze by Alastair Reynolds
Prostitution and Feminism: Toward a Politics of Feeling by Maggie O'Neill
The Illuminatus! Trilogy by Robert Shea and Robert Anton Wilson
Joining Political Organisations by Laura Morales
Voters and Voting by Jocelyn Evans
Look Who's Back by Timur Vermes
Krushchev's Russia by Edward Crankshaw
Poseidon's Wake by Alastair Reynolds
The Cambridge Companion to Marx by Terrell Carver (ed.)
American Pastoral by Philip Roth
Cranford by Elizabeth Gaskell
Preparing for Power by the Revolutionary Communist Party
8 comments:
Is that RCP publication from the LM RCP or the 1940s one?
It's the LM one - their programmatic pamphlet from 1983. It's probably the worst transitional programme-inspired document I've ever read.
Sounds like the laughs never stop :)
For my own part, I've been reading a book about Mr Gladstone, the (almost) complete works of Arnold Bennett, and naturally this:
http://www.theguardian.com/books/2014/dec/31/heirs-to-forgotten-kingdoms-gerald-russell-william-dalrymple
Unfortunately I gave my copy of the above away to someone I met at my brother's wedding and can't afford to buy any more books now, so it looks like the library for me until the next Bernard Cornwell is out.
During my trip to the library I will naturally be calling in at the museum's new exhibition.
If it hadn't been the RCP I'd have considered 'Preparing for Power' to be a joke.
Hah, perhaps I'll see you up at the library. I'm a regular :)
People usually fall out with me when I say Prostitutes have agency and prostitution be examined at a macro/individual level, what's a)O'Neills' take. b) What's your take. Recently did a bit of reading on Chinese prostitutes, they work the Chinese cities until mid twenties top, then Europe and by their thirties they work Africa. Now there is another class of Chinese prostitutes in Africa, those employed in the Company brothels that provide for the Chinese workforce. Never read any of this in the thoughts of Chairman Mao.
Hi Jim,
Maggie's argument tries to walk around that trap. She always recognises that the women she interviewed had agency, but in the overwhelming majority of cases that agency was a response to the awful circumstances they found themselves in. She was not interested in seeing the women as victims but recognised the role of the authorities was to be there and help them out rather than criminalise them. That said, she certainly wasn't for the decriminalisation/legalisation of the buying and selling of sex and was working toward a politics that was less tolerant, albeit not in an authoritarian/moralising way.
Love The Cornish Trilogy. Wish someone good would paint the picture.
Post a Comment