War and Peace by Leo Tolstoy
The Bell by Iris Murdoch
Multitude by Michael Hardt and Antonio Negri
The Age of Reason by Jean-Paul Sartre
Norwegian Wood by Haruki Murakami
Tar Baby by Toni Morrison
Woman's World by Graham Rawle
Commonwealth by Michael Hardt and Antonio Negri
The Gormenghast Trilogy by Mervyn Peake
Blindsight by Peter Watts
Marx and Foucault by Antonio Negri
Echopraxia by Peter Watts
Liquid Fear by Zygmunt Bauman
Across the River and into the Trees by Ernest Hemingway
After the Quake by Haruki Murakami
Retrotopia by Zygmunt Bauman
Odyssey by Jack McDevitt
Cauldron by Jack McDevitt
Feeding Frenzy by Will Self
Toward a Feminist Theory of the State by Catharine A MacKinnon
Anti-Porn by Julia Long
Zone One by Coulson Whitehead
Gender Trouble by Judith Butler
Amusing Ourselves to Death by Neil Postman
I started the summer with a monster and finished it in good time, by golly. How many people can say that? In truth, War and Peace is one of the finest novels ever written. Try and forget the size of the bloody thing and just enjoy it. The other stand outs from these three months, apart from Hardt and Negri as per loads of posts, were the MacKinnon and Long books. They offered a more nuance and sophisticated argument for radical feminism than I was expecting, proving yet again you should read what people say themselves instead of relying on second and third hand accounts. I also enjoyed the Will Self, and even had a bad try at imitating his style. Disappointing was Bauman's Retrotopia for stating the obvious in a convoluted and pretty slippery style, and weirdly the famous Gender Trouble, probably because I found it much thinner than expected.
That's the lot until after Christmas. What have you been reading recently?
Could the Russian search engine Yandex be the answer?
ReplyDeleteGormenghast! WTF, I've just had a flashback to incense in the air and the Incredible String Band on the hi-fi. ( Not my choice of music except that Dust be Diamonds is a bit of an ear worm.
ReplyDelete