2012 reading

What are you planning to read this year? Will you bother your arse doing it?

Submitted by Choccy on January 9, 2012

It's clear from the 'what are you reading?' thread that people here a lot, no surprise.

I'm more interested in those books you've always meant to read or maybe are 'supposed' to read but have never got around to it or been intimidated, either by volume or technical nature.

I read all the time, not as much as Finchy off The Office, but a fair bit. But I usually stick to manageable books, as books longer than 400 pages seem to take a disproportionate amount of time to read, for me at least.

There's a few books I've been putting off reading for years, I'd like to read at least one of them this year, fuck knows whether I will:

The Structure of Evolutionary Theory - Stephen Jay Gould

A big bastard at 1,400 pages. I've read a bunch of his books, lots of his essays and a few chapters of this. But it's such a big fucker I find it hard to just sit down and read. It's just too massive! It's split into two parts; a history of evolutionary theory, and then his revised and expanded ideas about evolution.

[b]Das Kapital volume 1 - Marx[/b]

I'm sure lots of people have pretended to read this. I picked up a copy, tried to read it and went 'fuck this'. Some day, SOME DAY, I would like to actually bother reading it, close to 1,000 bastarding pages. I plan to read it with the David Harvey lectures like others have done. I seriously doubt I'll even get close to trying this any time soon. Should I bother?

Chomsky's linguistic stuff

I'd read a lot about the sociobiology debate since I was an undergrad. I came across a brief description of the encounter between Chomsky and Richard Lewontin in the late 70s and wanted to write about it. Then I realised I knew fuck all beyond a really basic grasp of Chomsky's linguistics (universal grammar, i-language, Language Acquisition Device etc), acquired entirely from introductions or others writers' summaries. The problem is, when I do read it, it's really dry, and he never made as much of an effort to make his linguistic work as approachable as his political stuff, which is consistent with how he separates them.

The Better Angels Of Our Nature - Steven Pinker

I got this for crimbo and have said before I'd like to read it, despite knowing it will piss me off. Early reviews and the plethora of interviews he's done suggest it's a whig history claiming that EVERYTHING IS GETTING BETTER, and that those two big world wars were just a blip on the way to THE BEST OF ALL WORLDS. Then again this man was a tE3nAge AN@Rky!1!111!!!

Comments

Arbeiten

12 years 2 months ago

In reply to by libcom.org

Submitted by Arbeiten on January 9, 2012

I think there is two typos here. 1. you say books over 400 words are long, and 2. you say the Gould book is 1400 words. These are both funny though and i suggest you don't change it.

On Capital, I would say get together as a reading group, makes the whole experience more bearable.

Choccy

12 years 2 months ago

In reply to by libcom.org

Submitted by Choccy on January 9, 2012

Huh nothing funny there. Books over 400 pages are long for me, which is why 1400 pages is cripplingly long! I can barely hold it on my lap!

God, not sure I could be arsed with a reading group! Hmmm maybe I'll just never read it ;)

Arbeiten

12 years 2 months ago

In reply to by libcom.org

Submitted by Arbeiten on January 9, 2012

huh, you say words instead of pages over there? I will never understand linguistic hybridity :roll: .

i think it is sacrilegious to not read Capital. That said, it is well boring. Just read the Harvey book!

Choccy

12 years 2 months ago

In reply to by libcom.org

Submitted by Choccy on January 9, 2012

oh fuck, cheers Arbeiten, now edited
Note to self, don't write shit at midnight when you've work in the morning!

Serge Forward

12 years 2 months ago

In reply to by libcom.org

Submitted by Serge Forward on January 9, 2012

On Capital, get the abridged version.

At 544 pages, it's more manageable. Mind you, it's been my bedtime reading for a couple of years now and I'm still only a quarter way through it as it makes me nod off after a couple of pages.

Choccy

12 years 2 months ago

In reply to by libcom.org

Submitted by Choccy on January 9, 2012

might have a look at that then

Ramona

12 years 2 months ago

In reply to by libcom.org

Submitted by Ramona on January 9, 2012

So much reading. Currently on my self waiting to be read are:

Ethics by Badiou and The Ticklish Subject by Zizek both on loan from Revol68

Debt because I'm an anthropologist and really ought to

Postmodernism by Frederick Jameson which was a Christmas present

Spaces of Hope and A Brief History of Neoliberalism by David Harvey both of which I started reading for my dissertation and am half way through

Simulations by Baudrillard, also a present

Zapatista Spring which I am meant to be reviewing and am half way through

Weaponizing Anthropology ditto

Hollow Land by Eyal Weizman

Capitalist Realism by Mark Fisher

The Empire of Trauma and Humanitarian Reason by Didier Fassin (medical anthropology geek out)

and hopefully some fiction at some point!

Choccy

12 years 2 months ago

In reply to by libcom.org

Submitted by Choccy on January 9, 2012

oh these books aren't even the ones on my shelf waiting, they're the ones I hide because they're too big! (well, not the Pinker/Chomsky)

I'd pretty much refuse to read anything Revol likes, as a point of principle.

Fall Back

12 years 2 months ago

In reply to by libcom.org

Submitted by Fall Back on January 9, 2012

"The Better Angles of our Nature"

Ethos

12 years 2 months ago

In reply to by libcom.org

Submitted by Ethos on January 9, 2012

Choccy,

Regarding the abridged version of Capital, I own both versions and that abridged one is just as good as the original. I read a review of the abridged one (on amazon I believe) in which the reviewer said that this version lost some of Marx's elegance or something, to me it does no such thing. Also, if I remember correctly (I'm too lazy to get up and check), they write in the intro that this one is very similar to the first version of Capital released to the American public.

Harrison

12 years 2 months ago

In reply to by libcom.org

Submitted by Harrison on January 9, 2012

it's easier to just watch the Capital video lectures.... it's all on Vimeo. I found him to be an engaging lecturer
http://vimeo.com/davidharvey/videos

I tend to watch a lot of streamed tv anyway, so i just replaced my consumption of crap sitcoms with watching these instead...

EDIT:
Serge Forward

Mind you, it's been my bedtime reading for a couple of years now and I'm still only a quarter way through it as it makes me nod off after a couple of pages.

non-fiction does this to me as well. unless it's something like a history of a workers uprising / or makhnovists or durruti column, in which case i'll gladly forgo any sleep

Spassmaschine

12 years 2 months ago

In reply to by libcom.org

Submitted by Spassmaschine on January 9, 2012

Poseur books that have been lying motionless on the shelf, taunting me for the last couple of years include:

*Marx - Capital v. 2 & 3 & Grundrisse
*Pashukanis - Law & Marxism
*Bloch - The principle of hope v. 1
*4 shiny issues of Radical Anthropology
*various Aufhebens from early-mid 2000s

Mostly I think the problem is that whenever I start to get into reading any of these, something newer and more exciting-looking will arrive in the mail and all else will be forgotten. Plus with the Marx stuff I think I'll need to go back and read v. 1 again as it has been a good 5 years or so and the initial reading was not exactly close and largely forgotten now.

Nate

12 years 2 months ago

In reply to by libcom.org

Submitted by Nate on January 14, 2012

Choccy, on Capital v1, read chapters 26-28 then see what you think. They're way different and it doesn't wreck the book or anyhting to read it that way. That's how I managed to read it, I gave up several times on the first bits, then someone told me to read the ending first starting from chapter 26.

Anyway, my list of books like this...

Marx, Grundrisse (still want to read)
John Dos Passos, USA Trilogy (still want to read)
Deleuze, 1000 Plateaus (mostly given up, just want to try because I don't like to feel defeated)
Badiou, Logic of Worlds
Adam Smith,. Wealth of Nations
the various communization writings on libcom
Aufheben's articles series on the USSR
bunch of stuff by Lenin
bunch of Marx biographies

Arbeiten

12 years 2 months ago

In reply to by libcom.org

Submitted by Arbeiten on January 14, 2012

Fuck Badiou's work. Waste of time. Also, don't read 1000 plateaus, read difference and repetition.

Nate

12 years 2 months ago

In reply to by libcom.org

Submitted by Nate on January 14, 2012

Being and Event's a good book. Deleuze is basically unreadable. I read his book on hume, that's the only one I've managed to finish. I think I've started like 5 or 6 of his books.

Juan Conatz

12 years 2 months ago

In reply to by libcom.org

Submitted by Juan Conatz on January 14, 2012

Reading Debt right now.

-Autonomia
-Capital: Volume 1
-Communization and Its Discontents
-The Philosophy of Antonio Negri
-The Housing Monster
-Single Jack Solidarity
-Class, race and worker insurgency
-Revolutionary Suicide
-Capitalist Patriarchy and the Case for Socialist Feminism
-Endnotes 2
-The Young Lords: A Reader

Most of these I've already started at some point in the last year and never finished.

batswill

12 years 2 months ago

In reply to by libcom.org

Submitted by batswill on January 14, 2012

Nate

Being and Event's a good book. Deleuze is basically unreadable. I read his book on hume, that's the only one I've managed to finish. I think I've started like 5 or 6 of his books.

It helps to be stoned reading Deleuze, then he's disturbing and can really cause serious mental sickness. which is why I read him, I like encountering abstract and desolate assumptions and interpretations of reality, and then hypothesize about being in that space. I just go to random essays in Thousand Plateaus, like 1914:One or Several Wolves? Wild stuff, in small doses though.

Nate

12 years 2 months ago

In reply to by libcom.org

Submitted by Nate on January 14, 2012

Yeah a buddy of mine was like "it's like beat poetry, man, you gotta groove with it, then it totally works" and I was like "that sums up why I just can't do this stuff."

flaneur

12 years 2 months ago

In reply to by libcom.org

Submitted by flaneur on January 14, 2012

I've been stuck half way on Durruti's biography by Abel Paz for about two years now. I should really finish it.

Arbeiten

12 years 2 months ago

In reply to by libcom.org

Submitted by Arbeiten on January 15, 2012

Nate

Yeah a buddy of mine was like "it's like beat poetry, man, you gotta groove with it, then it totally works" and I was like "that sums up why I just can't do this stuff."

Hmmm, I think your friend might have been talking about Deleuze and Guattari rather than the single authored stuff. Which is very different (it is a lot clearer and has fuck all to do with a beat poetry mentality).

Really saying you have to smoke drugs to read a work is not a compliment. Do so by all means, but it is just as good (probably better) sober....

batswill

12 years 2 months ago

In reply to by libcom.org

Submitted by batswill on January 16, 2012

Arbeiten

Nate

Yeah a buddy of mine was like "it's like beat poetry, man, you gotta groove with it, then it totally works" and I was like "that sums up why I just can't do this stuff."

Hmmm, I think your friend might have been talking about Deleuze and Guattari rather than the single authored stuff. Which is very different (it is a lot clearer and has fuck all to do with a beat poetry mentality).

Really saying you have to smoke drugs to read a work is not a compliment. Do so by all means, but it is just as good (probably better) sober....

Some friend hands me a spliff very occasionally, I engage, to be polite and to be an accomplice in a forbidden act. Nothing more, nothing less, but definitely not to lose myself in hedonistic Kerowackian "beat poetry, MAN"
I have eclectic pragmatic tastes, I take what I can use, then burn the remainder.

the button

12 years 2 months ago

In reply to by libcom.org

Submitted by the button on January 16, 2012

Reading "The coming insurrection" at the moment, which is good knockabout stuff. :D

Also on the list: -

The story of the Iron Column
Autonomia
For workers' power (Brinton thing, still not read it)
Introduction to civil war
Why it's kicking off everywhere (read the intro & part of chapter 1; gave up, will try again later)
Durruti in the Spanish civil war (too hefty for a commute book, therefore still on the pile)
Beating the fascists (bought at anarchy bookfair 2010, still not read it since I flicked through it with some of the cast in the pub after)

flaneur

12 years 2 months ago

In reply to by libcom.org

Submitted by flaneur on January 19, 2012

revol68

he dies.

No, it's Durruti that gets deaded.

Choccy

12 years 2 months ago

In reply to by libcom.org

Submitted by Choccy on January 19, 2012

Currently READING THE BALLICKS OUT OF Free Radicals: the secret anarchy of science by Michael Brooks. Nothing to do with political anarchy, but how 'great discoveries' were made often by deviating from accepted scientififc methods and rules.