What Are You Reading 2013 - Page 101

almost done with this. it's perfect in every way. in fact, after i finish this, i will probably off myself because nobody will ever again write a book this good.



finished this monster. this is the most comprehensive (if not entirely comprehensible) presentation of zizek's thought, highly recommended. other zizek titles I read recently are Did Somebody Say Totalitarianianism?, Living in the End Times, and First as Tragedy, then as Farce



probably one of the worst books ever written.



probably one of those books you could get away with just reading ABOUT





The Order of Things [les mots et les choses for you francophonicles out there, but we got the original title so HA!]. this is early period foucault, so overwrought and unbearably pretentious. still a great book about the history of paradigm shifts from foucaults "classical" period to the modern, focusing on political economy, biology, and linguistics. The History of Sexuality is a later work, which is much more down-to-earth and lucid. I read the first volume in undergrad.



An awesome book extending marx's famous vampire metaphor in Capital to science fiction criticism. he reads a series of vampires stories in books in movies against the social background of the 80s. great stuff! of course, rob's my advisor (and a super cool dude), so i'm biased.



Emilio Segre is not exactly a great prose stylist but it's an interesting insider's view in to Fermi's life. what an interesting guy.



"Ideology and Ideological State Apparatus" remains a classic essay, but the rest of this book is Althusser being a stupid droning fool who things that Marxism is a Science. what a chump.



A mediocre book by Kim Stanley Robinson is superior to 95 percent of all other published material. This is a mediocre book by Kim Stanley Robinson.



http://roadside-attraction.com/wp-content/uploads/2013/03/Baudrillard-America.jpg

Symbolic Exchange and Death was a work of genius. The Illusion of the End was a bit meh. America was a very nice poem about the desert.




first two volumes of Hobsbawm's four volume history of how the nasty, banal bourgeoisie that we all know and love made the world that we all live in. doesn't go into a ton of detail about any particular thing, so good to read if you've already got some basic grasp on the history.



unbearably awful. avoid.



early pkd realist novel about a typewriter salesman. i lot better than i expected!



really interesting book about the iranian revolution and the ideological struggles within the revolution



it's interesting, but the whole time you think to yourself "this book was written in the 60s, wasn't it?" Also campbell takes prurient pleasure in a particular ritual-copulation-cum-sacrifice thing, it's a bit weird



this book is partly about china, partly about adam smith (who is not, it turns out, a theorist of capitalism). arrighi is always interesting. full of cool charts about "high level equilibrium traps" and other fun economical material.



LUUUUUUUUU-KACS!



a very cool book situating hegel in the context of the contemporary haitian revolution, and arguing that these events were more influential on his thought than previously supposed



bunch of cool fantasy stories, translated by LeGuin



a short little companion to hegel. the highlights are jameson's presentation of the dialectic as a musical structure.



a cool book about jewish heretics (pantheism, gnosticism) in inter-War europe. I attended several of Ben's lectures in my modern european survey course in college, he's a very interesting guy.



Please rise for the national anthem.



naomi klein may very well be the sexiest woman alive



You know nothing of my work.



the only thing that could possibly save capitalism, would be nassim nicholas taleb. what an utter badass. I love this guy. he doesn't apologize for SHIT.



Stanislaw Lem explains the meaning of all technology.



surprisingly good. we might not be as fucked, if we'd had this guy instead of The Usurper.



a good book about confucianism.



a nice gift for the lonely, lonely philosopher in your life... sob...




two histories of the 60s for my upcoming seminar. the Lyttle one was better.



book about a bunch of really old lobsters.



i thought this was very lucid and engaging



graeber talks about the history of the occupy movement and offers some insightful analysis of our current moment. it's a topical book, not a piece of scholarship like his superb Debt, so it's a more casual tone.



a history of SF for my upcoming seminar. it's a fine book, but i already knew most of this so it was kinda boring.



it was okay. some interesting stuff about generals and slave plantations, though.

and some novels:









plus a couple others not worth mentioning