This is offered in the tradition of list-making cultural commentary and inspired both by some recent comments on my own bedtime reading and by my good friend Richard Kelly.
1. Defeat: Napoleon’s Russian Campaign – Philippe-Paul de Segur
The title kind of says it all.
2. Gender Trouble – Judith Butler
Difficult prose, complex arguments leading to a clear-sighted, almost playful, deconstruction of sexual identity. The conclusion: heterosexuality is basically impossible.
3. Moby Dick
It’s just intimidating – whichever way you want to look at it.
4. The Origin of the Family, Private Property and the State – Frederic Engels
The subtitle could be: I’ve thought a lot about this stuff and anything even vaguely romantic that happens between you and me is a) a socio-economic construct and b) is not going to lead to anything good for either of us or for the future of socialism
5. On War – General Karl Von Clausewitz
It’s like Les Liaisons Dangereuses without the sex. This book shows a commitment to military strategy and ultimately victory without any of the bodice-ripping erotic relief.
6. The Sex Lives of the Great Dictators – Nigel Cawthorne
Can power ever be fetishized enough? I think the answer might be yes. This book might just as well be a manual for alienated, narcissistic, paranoid (and possibly even murderous) relationships
7. The Rise of Modern Japan – W.G. Beasley
A modern classic since 1963. This book screams serious, boring… and impenetrable.
8. Any weighty biography (over 900 pages) of the following: The Duke of Wellington, Mao Tse Tung, Martin McGuiness
Not to be confused with biographies of Alexander the Great, Napoleon, Che Guevera or Michael Collins – who can be comfortably accommodated into Romantic revolutionary and/or military heroes.
Subscribe to:
Posts (Atom)
