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Nonfiction reading time!

edited 2012-03-13 14:04:03 in Politics
I clench my fists and yell "anime" towards an uncaring, absent God, and swear solemnly to press my thumbs into Chocolate America's eyeballs until he is blinded, to directly emasculate sporting figures, to beat the shit out of tumblr users with baseball bats, and to quietly appreciate what Waylon Smithers being gay means to me.

I figured that it would be a good thing to have a thread on nonfiction, since we have so many about fiction here. My favorite nonfiction books are:


Das Kapital, Karl Marx


War Is a Force That Gives Us Meaning, Chris Hedges


Griftopia, Matt Taibbi 


The Long Nineteenth Century Series (The Age of Revolution, of Capital, and of Empire) and The Age of Extremes: The Short Twentieth Century, Eric Hobsbawm


Bad Samaritans, Ha-Joon Chang


Manufacturing Consent, Noam Chomsky & Edward Herman


Fear and Loathing in Las Vegas and Fear and Loathing on the Campaign Trail, Hunter S. Thompson


Africa's World War and How Europe Underdeveloped Africa, Walter Rodney


The World Without Us, Alan Weisman


No Logo, Naomi Klein


Killing Hope: U.S. Military and C.I.A. Interventions Since WWII, William Blum


Welcome to the Desert of the Real, Slavoj Žižek


The Shock Doctrine, Naomi Klein 


Debt: The First 5000 Years, David Graeber

Comments

  • I am Dr. Ned who is totally not Dr. Zed in disguise.

    That is a lovely booklist, I'd second nearly all of those for my own booklist.



    Also for me:


     Chavs: The Demonization of the Working Class Owen Jones

  • edited 2012-03-13 14:58:35

    Supergods: Our Life In The Age of the Modern Superhero by Grant Morrison is pretty fantastic.


    Ghengis Khan: Life, Death and Resurrection by John Man


    The Corpse Garden by Colin Wilson

  • I clench my fists and yell "anime" towards an uncaring, absent God, and swear solemnly to press my thumbs into Chocolate America's eyeballs until he is blinded, to directly emasculate sporting figures, to beat the shit out of tumblr users with baseball bats, and to quietly appreciate what Waylon Smithers being gay means to me.

    I love Ghengis Khan, so I'll have to pick that one up.

  • You can change. You can.

    Supergods: Our Life In The Age of the Modern Superhero by Grant Morrison is pretty fantastic.



    I was considering buying this if I ever saw it on the bookshop. Is it really worth my money?

  • edited 2012-03-13 17:01:32
    MORONS! I'VE GOT MORONS ON MY PAYROLL!

    >Das Kapital, Karl Marx


    Or as I like to call it, the nonsensical book liberals put on their shelves to look impressive but never actually read.


    In any case, here are some ones I've liked.


    Under The Black Flag: The Romance and Reality of Life Among The Pirates by David Cordingly


    Violence by Slavoj Zizek


    The Hero With A Thousand Faces by Joseph Campbell


    Sound of The Beast: The Complete Head-banging History of Heavy Metal by Ian Christe


    Being and Nothingness by Jean-Paul Sartre


    ^I dug it, though near the end it gets too autobiographical for my tastes.

  • I clench my fists and yell "anime" towards an uncaring, absent God, and swear solemnly to press my thumbs into Chocolate America's eyeballs until he is blinded, to directly emasculate sporting figures, to beat the shit out of tumblr users with baseball bats, and to quietly appreciate what Waylon Smithers being gay means to me.

    I forgot Democracy in America by Alexis De Torquelville and Empire of Illusion by Chris Hedges.


    Or as I like to call it, the nonsensical book liberals put on their shelves to look impressive but never actually read.


    Hahaha, it's funny because you haven't read the book either!

  • Isn't it supposed to be Atlas Shrugged levels of boring to slog through?

  • edited 2012-03-13 18:03:10
    MORONS! I'VE GOT MORONS ON MY PAYROLL!

    ^^I tried my damndest to.


    ^It at least has the justification of being nonfiction but it is similarly impenetrable.

  • "you duck spawn, refined creature, you try to be cynical, yokel, but all that comes out of it is that you're a dunce!!!!! you duck plug!"

    Heh heh, Americans and that their local definition of "liberal". :)


    Me, I tried to compile such a list once, non-fiction works that inspire me. Aristotle, Edmund Burke, that kind of shit. Then I realised I read none of them. But there's a book on the history of Wendish (Polabian) Slavs that I read and like.

  • BeeBee
    edited 2012-03-14 18:39:25

    ^^ It also has the benefit of at least being an honest political criticism from the beginning instead of bullshitting around for half the book making you wade through a laughably idiotic and hackneyed story before you get to the author's delusions.

  • MORONS! I'VE GOT MORONS ON MY PAYROLL!

    Make no mistake Das Kapital is by no means as bad as Atlas Shrugged, but I doubt 'By no means as bad as Atlas Shrugged' is ever going to become a pullquote for the book.

  • If by whatever circumstance I ever write a book (I won't), I'm totally using that pullquote.

  • You can change. You can.

    but what if it is as bad as atlas shrugged


    have you considered that, bee


    huh?!?!

  • If it's not padded to 1000 pages, the pain will only last an instant.

  • BeeBee
    edited 2012-03-14 21:39:32

    Okay, I'll admit I try to be as neurotically self-effacing as possible about my writing, but I'm pretty sure most of the people on this thread could produce something more enjoyable to read than Atlas Shrugged by wiping their ass and providing a stream-of-consciousness interpretation of the resulting Rorschach smears.


    ^ If for no other reason, that one.

  • One foot in front of the other, every day.

    Oh man I hate to be predictabo, but:


    The Codex Doebringer. It's a pretty fantastic 14th century handbook, obviously written by and for people who held some pretty gnarly secrets -- like the alchemy that goes into making a good blade, or the skilful wielding of a sword. Unfortunately, only the martial arts and alchemy sections are in English, and the rest remains in High Middle German, which is a slog since my modern German is really limited. 


    All the same, it's a fantastic tactical manual on how to fight. Most historical combat manuals are sequences of annotated illustrations showing techniques, whereas this is more like a series of developed admonitions. Medieval folk didn't write essays in the modern sense, but this is pretty much a series of that general kind of thing. While it bears the name of Doebringer in general understanding, there are actually at least four authors -- but who wrote what is a mystery. 


    Even more unfortunately, the section on magic spells remains untranslated. 


    The whole manuscript is like this trip into medieval martial arts, scholasticism and folklore wrapped into one package. There really needs to be a full translation done, and the book released in full. 

  • We Played Some Open Chords and Rejoiced, For the Earth Had Circled the Sun Yet Another Year

    A couple of non-fiction books I like:


    Rip it Up and Start Again: Postpunk 1978–1984 by Simon Reynolds


    Our Band Could Be Your Life by Michael Azerrad


    How to Rap: The Art and Science of the Hip-Hop MC by Paul Edwards


    Guns, Germs, and Steel: The Fates of Human Societies by Jared Diamond

  • "Das Kapital, Karl Marx"


    Tried it. It was too boring, so I read the Communist Manifesto instead.

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