Metal Reviews

I finally got round to starting In Defence of Lost Causes recently; the first thing of his I've read except for the intros to the Mao and Robespierre books. I like the constant pop culture references, although occasionally it feels a bit like a gimmick that he throws in because it's his thing.

Really interesting though; I'm a philosophy noob so it's hard. I also picked up Minima Moralia by Adorno which looks like fun.

And, I got Social THeory: A Historical Introduction by Alex Callinicos to flick through as reference from the library. Think I'm finally starting to understand what people mean when they say "Hegelian"

The movie references are so hardcore and extreme. So Mr. Zizek you really grasped the root of America's superficiality from an episode of Nip/Tuck? When Zizek sticks to Marx, it's easy for me to read but once he goes with the psychoanalysis, I get lost. I'll understand it and then two minutes later I confuse myself about it all. A basic understanding of most of the words he uses is necessary. Lacan.com has some good information on his work and ideas. I hate how he takes for granted phrases like global capitalism and how you can't define what his actual political stance is. It's a lot of criticism with no clear goal.

I have Negative Dialectics by Adorno. It seemed readable but still pretty intense. I hate how I've been studying this for a while and I'm still getting blown away by something as simple as defining "Hegelian". I'm sure I could spout something out but it wouldn't grasp the entirety or the gravitas of the term. I really want to find some stuff by Callinicos. Maybe his work on Althusser I believe.

Oh yeah, all the Lacan stuff is confusing for me too. All the more so because that seems to be the main place he's coming from.

I'm really not much of a philosopher; I'm very interested in political philosophy from the perspective of what it means for political/economic/social life. When it gets more abstract or psychological I find it hard to relate to.

The book I'm reading at the moment was the one I wanted to go for because it's very focused on ideas surrounding totalitarian/anti-liberal politics, and the amount of Lacanian stuff is relatively low.

The Callinicos I'm reading ATM is really good but (as the title suggests) an introduction to the subject. It's really just the story of social theory beginning with the Enlightenment. I'm flicking through the contents pages zooming in on sections I don't know enough about.

I'm reading a book called "Se una notte d'inverno un viaggiatore". It's about a man reading a book called "Se una notte d'inverno un viaggiatore". Each odd chapter is the man's thought, the even chapters are the book itself. Increasingly towards the end the man becomes paranoid about 'the force' pushing him to go on, which is of course, the reader. It's not something I'd reccomend for light reading. :p

That sounds cool. I love meta-stuff in fiction.

read Brave New World

sososososososo good. Really makes you think about individual liberty vs. good of the whole and shizz like that.

Brave New World is awesome. I love how the two rebels are the guy who just wants what the powerful have, and the powerful guy who is bored. (Or maybe he was genuinely compassionate... it was a couple years ago that I read it.)

"The Angel's Game" by Carlos Ruiz Zafon was good, but not as good as "The Shadow of the Wind".

Now reading: "The Road" by Cormac McCarthy. It's very good so far.

Had no idea how cool the 2nd hand Oxfam bookshop near me is. It's close by but in a direction I never go in so I wasn't aware of it before.

Anyway, I got

Gramsci - Selections from the Prison Notebooks
Russell- History of Western Philosophy
Clegg and Dunkerley- Organisation, Class and Control

Three big ass books for about a tenner. It was like being back in Washington DC again where you can't move for awesome dirt cheap books.

About halfway through Portnoy's Complaint. Talk about perpetuating a stereotype, blimey.

finally finished Peter Pan, took me a while as i do most of my reading on the train but due to my injury i haven't travelled in it very often.

actually enjoyed it a lot. tomorrow the girlfriend is lending me The Assassination of Jesse James by the Coward Robert Ford (in Portuguese).

The Odyssey, plus Satires by Horace and Juvenal, the Satyricon, AND some of Pliny's letters. Classics exam on Friday, ulp.

I plan to read that someday. Probably sometime in the Fall, most likely.

I'm now starting on A Brief History Of Time by Stephen Hawking. Very fascinating book, particularly if you're interested in things like Cosmology and Astro-Physics.

Started reading World Without End after having had a month-long break from it. It's just starting to get interesting.

The Russell is pretty solid. Just did a paper on how Gramsci's been widely misread these days with an overemphasis on the superstructure as opposed to the economic. You may want to note that he never wrote as an author, only as someone who likes to write.

Reading some Fredric Jameson selections, Kant's Critique of Pure Reason, soon to begin Naomi Klein's Shock Doctrine, Slavoj Zizek In Defense of Lost Cause. I miss fiction.

I never read much Gramsci myself (yet, am planning to obv.); in terms of economics he wrote a lot about Fordism, Taylorism and governance in industry? All of that is crazy interesting to me.

Enjoying reading the Zizek, although some of the connections he makes seem a bit strained, and he's always going on about Lacan. Good though.

Just read Romain Gary's Your Ticket Is No Longer Valid. Stories about impotence (eg: Satyricon obv.) are usually pretty satirical and this one was no different. The romantic moments were amazingly beautiful yet him describing how his impotence was preventing him from being close to her any longer were bullshit.

Now reading Naomi Klein's Shock Doctrine. Three pages in and I want to castrate Milton Friedman. Fucking neoliberal cunt.

Isabel Allende, The House of the Spirits.

Just one last book in my magical realism binge.

Richard Dawkins: The God Delusion.