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Underground > Books, Criticism & Writing >

Non-fiction?

15:57 / 22.10.04

Ok, so I've recently noticed that there has been a bit of a shift in my reading habits away from fiction onto non-fiction - I know Kit-kat has been reading lots of history books but I was wondering if its just us or do other people read lots of non-fiction?

FYI I'm currently halfway through Seymour Hersh's recent book Chain of Command which I picked up on recommendation of Celibate Mink - I was hoping to become more infomed about the failures that lead up to Recent Iraqi prison scandal...

08:52 / 25.10.04

I fear enthusiasm for this thread may have been dampened by Lekvar's similarly themed one from last week (link).

My post in that thread is near identical to the one I'd plan on putting here anyhow, so may as well cut and paste..

09:49 / 26.10.04

I've been reading Francis Wheen's How Mumbo Jumbo Conquered the World. It's a middle-weight polemic against the forces of unreason (or anti-reason) in the modern world - seems quite appropriate, given the recent revelations about the current US administration's scorn for the 'reality-based' community. Wheen is quite and old-school chap, and writes in defence of the Enlightenment and its values.

It is an entertaining read, and I agree with a lot of what he says - I find many of the same things pernicious. But he does lump everything in together - often things which don't necessarily follow on from each other - and he has an (I believe) unwarranted hate on for post-structuralist theory, and doesn't want to try to understand theorists like Baudrillard, so they get a slagging along with everything else. I found that a bit annoying. I don't think it's told me very much that I didn't already know or guess at, but it is nonetheless interesting, and I'd recommend it to interested parties who fancy a reasonably light read with slight irritation as an extra...

15:45 / 27.10.04

Damn - that didn't turn up in the search i did before i posted this thread...

11:13 / 21.12.04

I'm reading Authenticity, by David Boyle, about how the more removed from 'reality' (the source of production, nature) the things become the more people want them to be 'authentic'. It's very conversational, which I like (he admits quite freely where the argument is flawed), but it seems to be quite disorganised as well, which is probably a downside of that style. The chapter I've just read on food held together quite well, but some of them seem to meander away from the topic somewhat. It is interesting, though, and worth a look -it's far less polemical than it could have been (and possibly sounds).

pointless and uncalled for

12:34 / 22.12.04

Freedom of Information by Kelvin Smith which is basically a fairly comprehensive guide to the Freedom of Information Act 2000 in its current form and the implications for the government when it comes into full effect on 1-1-5. Whilst I am primarily reading it in order to be able to do my job properly (Freedom of Information Advisor - DfT) it makes for fairly interesting reading as a stand alone document. Whilst only passively, it does debunk the current circle of myths that are exists about the act and also give some insight into the model of thinking that has gone into the formation of the act.

ONLY NICE THINGS

13:05 / 22.12.04

"Why do People Hate America", by Ziauddin Sardar and Merryl Wyn Davies. It's interesting to see the attempt to combine Chomskyite political analysis with cultural critique, and also to look at the "bottom-up" picture more - why an individual might hate America. Flawed, though, and so partial that it is unlikely to win anyone over, which maybe isn't the purpose of the book, but might be a more necessary task...

The Prince of All Lies

16:04 / 22.12.04

well.. I've been treading through different philosophers in the last few months (for school assignments but also for pleasure), Foucault and Deleuze mostly, but also Arendt and Habermas.

But besides philosophy, the last non-fiction I read was The Selfish Gene by Richard Dawkins, in which he explains quite simply how genes influence behaviour. It helped me understand evolutionary theories and it's easy to read.

Oh, and another non-fiction I read was The Tao of Physics, by Fritjof Capra, in which the author compares modern quantum theories with eastern mysticism (zen buddhism and hinduism). It's very interesting and doesn't require any knowledge of particle physics.

STOATIE LIEKS CHOCOLATE MILK

19:13 / 22.12.04

Impetuous wee scamp that I am (and also knowing in advance what it was) I couldn't resist opening my Christmas present from my mum today. John Humphrys's "Lost For Words- The Mangling and Manipulating of the English Language". Should appeal to my inner pedant. And it's by my favourite grumpy Welshman, too.

15:58 / 23.12.04

Well, I have not posted on Barbelith really, so might as well make my debut here. I am reading: a ton of Deleuze and things related to him, of particular interest is book on Nietzsche. I am getting into "The Practice of Everyday Life," by Michel de Certeau for fun. There, and hello... Yule-tide greetings to all.

STOATIE LIEKS CHOCOLATE MILK

07:19 / 24.12.04

Welcome!

09:18 / 24.12.04

I’ve been reading “The Great Unravelling” by Paul Krugman, NY Times columnist and thorn-in-the-side (well, obviously not very effective thorn) of the Bush admin... Much shaking of the head sadly from time-to-time

09:32 / 24.12.04

Donald Kagan The Pelopponesian War A bit dry for a popular history, but Kagan does bring stuff to the fore that I hadn't noticed in more classical treatments. I had intended to read it alongside the Thucidydes so I could see elision at work, but I am just not that focused.

Howard Zinn A People's History of the United States Makes you want to run around hacking the arms off anyone reading the New York Post, but I've caught him in one half-truth already and I just started the thing. But it's very well-written & convincing, and much honester than, you know, anything not written by Chomsky.

Briane Greene The Elegant Universe I haven't formed an opinion yet

Augusten Burroughs Running with Scissors An intriguing story, but not very well-written. Actually, it's fear of this sort of result that keeps me from writing my own memoirs--if I'm going to be mediocre, I'd rather stay home.

09:43 / 24.12.04

Ha ha! The Back Burner:

Sebastian De Grazia Machiavelli In Hell An interestingly conversational approach to biography, but terribly aimless. I haven't picked it up in a while.

Thomas Ayres That's Not In My American History Book !!!!! [exlamation mine] A nice little read in spite of its silly title, with lots of interesting tidbits, such as: women disguised as men in the Union and Confederate army; a comprehensive list of presidential nicknames; the pharmacological origin of the Salem witch trials; and more!

Barbara W. Tuchman A Distant Mirror Sort-of-biography of Enguerrand de Coucy, a prominent 14th century French nobleman. I like this book a lot, not least for Tuchman's approach to history in general (eg, "None of this is necessarily true"), but it's bulky and has been slowed down by more carriable reads.

Scrambled Password Bogus Email

12:14 / 24.12.04

Al - Qaeda by Jason Burke, which is absolutely fascinating. I'd highly recommend it, particularly to the Bush administration and Tony Blair, who clearly have very little grasp on the information it contains.

01:44 / 14.02.05

Equilibrium, by John Ralston Saul. A discussion of the economy that doesn't conveniently ignore the dissonant. Something that sticks in my mind is the description of CEO's as employees in drag, (pretending to be capitalists.) Interesting stuff, lots of business boondoggles and the like. Aside from these anecdotes there are references from Jung to Voltaire. It's all about perverting common sense and divorcing people from their ability to discern reality without the aid of middlemen/translators.
Fun stuff. Same goes for Voltaire's Bastards.

11:08 / 16.02.05

Just read "Engines of Creation" by K. Eric Drexler which I picked up cheap and secondhand, it's all about nanotechnology and the possibilities that it will bring. It's not bad, though I get the feeling it's impact has been greatly reduced by his ideas being adopted by science fiction writers and therefore little of what he was saying seemed new or exciting to me. Drexler also sounds too much like an advocate of the technology which irritated me a little and some of his ideas were too "blue-sky" for my liking.

14:25 / 16.02.05

I'm reading Free Culture: How Big Media Uses Technology and the Law to Lock Down Culture and Control Creativity by Lawrence Lessig. The Free Software Foundation sent me a gratis copy a while back and I've just got round to it. It's a surprisingly pleasant read, perhaps a little lightweight but entertaining and thought provoking.

unheimlich manoeuvre

13:00 / 18.02.05

i'm about third of the way through Late Victorian Holocausts, El Nino Famines and the Making of the Third World.
Now having read Guns, Germs and Steel by Jared Diamond quite recently I thought I had quite a good idea about nineteenth century European colonialism. How wrong I was! Rarely has a book made me feel this physically sick. How much shit have I given the Germans for the Holocaust ... well the British colonial administration in India is responsible for many times those deaths.

quote from Monthly Review Dec 2004 Empire of Barbarism
In his later writings, Marx became ever more critical of British imperialism in India as he became aware of what Mike Davis has recently labeled “Victorian holocausts”: the coincidence of the imperialistic expropriation of the surplus of Indian society with vast famines and the imposition of starvation wages on Indian workers. (The Temple wage that the British provided for workers engaged in hard labor in Madras in India in 1877 had a caloric value that was less than what the Nazis were later to provide to workers forced to do hard labor in the Buchenwald concentration camp in 1944.) Marx noted that British expansion was devastating India’s industry, spreading misery and degradation, while turning the country into simply a producer of agricultural raw materials for Britain. In fact, British imperialism served as a force of destruction, demolishing India’s productive forces and causing underdevelopment even as it introduced the forces of modern industry into Indian society.

Like the Irish potato famine before it. I hate being British.

21:59 / 25.02.05

'The Autobiography of Malcom X' because it's black history month silly!

11:06 / 19.03.05

The Surgeon of Crowthorne by Simon Winchester. The sets about chronicaling the production of the first Oxford English Dictionary. It's an interesting story and I've always had a lot love of dictionaries (well who doesn't? And if you don't ur beyond my snowglobe).

18:31 / 20.03.05

I'm currently reading The Illustrated book of Guns from Chrysalis... for, um, research, honest. Jane's identification book of guns in use today missed out on a lot of 19th century landmark weapons like the early model Colts, although scarily enough there are still a fair few 19th century weapons still in regular use...

17:42 / 28.03.05

I'm currently reading Sorrows of Empire by Chalmers Johnson which lays out the not so secret history of the US governments of the post-war years and their efforts to build an empire.

Unlike past global powers, however, America has built an empire of bases rather than colonies, creating in the process a government that is obsessed with maintaining absolute military dominance over the world, Johnson claims.

He makes a very compelling case.

Waltzing Ganainm

22:24 / 28.03.05

I'm dipping in and out of a couple of books at the moment. Fashion & Fetishism - Corsets, Tight-Lacing & Other Forms of Body-Sculpture by David Kunzle, partly as research for my own forays into corset building. It's got some fantastic pictorial references including all kinds of caricatures and historical cartoons, and also some quite disturbing photos of modern tight-lacers. It's also a well written social history as much as a record of the changing shape of womens waistlines, and I keep getting sucked into the text. Corsets and Crinolines by Norah Waugh is the other, and probably one of the definitive practical reference books for anyone trying to recreate period undergarments from the fifteenth to the early twentieth centuries. It's a study of the shapes of the corsetted body, how they were produced and the evolution of materials used to create them, and it includes structural drawings and patterns from historical specimins which is essentially why I bought it. However it's also packed full of quotations from contemporary sources, including journalists accounts and satirical poetry, which makes for some amusing reading.