What are you reading at the moment?

[Herzeleide]

Hopes and Prospects in an excellent book. I highly recommend it.

I'm now on chapter six of this:

[stephen w]

A touching book, by the author of the great book 'The Master'.

[Green Knight]

Bernard Malamud--The Assistant

[stephen w]

The most human and curious of writers, deeply enjoyable.

[Balthazar]

I've decided to give Finnegans Wake another shot, so that I can fulfill my life's dream of having read Joyce's most challenging and radical work. I have the indispensable annotation book by Roland McHugh, but Joyce's Kaleidoscope focuses on the themes and a program for tackling the Wake.

Philip Kitcher is a philosopher who writes about scientific and cultural subjects. Long ago, I read his Abusing Science, a terrific book describing the Creationist parody of scientific inquiry. He's so good at explaining complex matters without dumbing them down that I'm sure he'll be a good guide to FW.

[Philidor]

23 Things They Don't Tell You About Capitalism by Ha-Joon Chang

As a Guardian review says:

23 Things They Don't Tell You About Capitalism assaults economic orthodoxy... Dip into this witty, iconoclastic and uncommonly commonsensical guide to the follies of economics, and, among many other things, you will learn that free market policies rarely make poor countries richer; global companies without national roots belong in the realm of myth; the US does not have the highest living standards in the world; the washing machine changed the world more than the internet; more education does not of itself make countries richer; financial markets need to become less, not more efficient; and – perhaps most shocking to Chang's colleagues – good economic policy does not require good economists.

Ha-Joon Chang is an interesting man and no raving Marxist:

Chang may be our best critic of capitalism, but he is far from being any kind of anti-capitalist. He recognises the failings of centrally planned economies, and rightly describes capitalism as "the worst economic system except for all the others". At the same time he is confident that capitalism can be reformed to prevent crises like the one we have just experienced recurring. Making markets more transparent is not enough. "If we are really serious about preventing another crisis like the 2008 meltdown," Chang writes, "we should simply ban complex financial instruments, unless they can be unambiguously shown to benefit society in the long run." He is aware that he risks sounding extreme, but argues that the ban he proposes is no different from those that have been enforced on other dangerous products. "This is what we do all the time with other products – drugs, cars, electrical products and many others."

Ha-Joon Chang

[Tarantella]

Here's another Marxist (and I'm certainly not one!):

Christopher Lasch, "The Culture of Narcissism: American Life in an Age of Diminishing Expectations".

Wow, this is a devastating critique of not just America but, by now (written in 1979), the west in toto - thanks to American hegemony.

Everything I'd always thought about the way life is going, the disintegration of the family, the rise of the god of materialism, new-age self-help gurus (Dr. Phil) - it's all here. Depressing. Only criticism: these books never offer a solution.

But, to me, the society goes this way when religion is replaced by demagoguery, the cult of the individual and materialism. When I shuffle off this mortal coil I'll be leaving nothing but music and my family!! I agree with a friend of my father who said "the world is getting fuller and fuller of people I like less and less".

A great thinker (name not remembered) once said, "Mankind goes either steeply up or steeply down". No prizes for guessing the direction right now.

[Green Knight]

John Steinbeck--The Grapes Of Wrath and Of Mice And Men

[Green Knight]

James Carroll--House of War

[Green Knight]

H.G. Wells--Complete Short Story Omnibus