Thirteen Books On My Reading List

This my is edition #36 of the Thursday Thirteen silliness. Enjoy!

I have something of a book problem. No sooner had I divested myself of the last thousand or so volumes of the library I had built haphazardly over the last decade or so than I began building another one. This one is, so far, a bit more focused, but I am amassing books again, though not at quite the clip I had before.

Here are the thirteen most recent volumes added to the library. I am either currently reading them, or they are next on my “to be read” list.

  1. The Plague: Albert Camus – The classic novel of the collective response to catastrophe, and the most elegant exposition of a philosophy of optimism without hope.
  2. In Praise of Idleness: Bertrand Russell – In this collection of essays Russell examines the latent anarchy of domestic life, the anti-social character of high finance and the folly of working too hard in the machine age. He also demolishes both Communism and Fascism, and a makes convincing case for Socialism.
  3. The Closing of the American Mind: Allan Bloom – One of the most-read modern defenses of Platonic philosophy. Misguided, but worth a VERY close reading.
  4. The Open Society and Its Enemies (Vol 1 & 2): Karl Popper – The other most important philosopher of the 20th century states a defense of participatory democracy that has yet to be rebutted by anyone. Libertarians beware, this will ruin your day!
  5. The Autobiography of Bertrand Russell: Bertrand Russell – Three volumes written with Russell’s renowned wit and vigor. An essential overview of the intellectual currents of the first half of the 20th century.
  6. The Collected Papers of Bertrand Russell (Vol 1): Hard-core philosophy dorks only! This will eventually be 34 volumes, covering all of Russell’s life. This volume is entitled “Cambridge Essays, 1888–99″
  7. Naked Lunch: William Burroughs – His third, and best, novel, and one of the landmark publishing events in modern American history. The last book ever tried for “obscenity” in the US.
  8. The Ego and Its Own: Max Stirner – {Der Einzige und sein Eigentum; also translated as The Individual and His Property; a literal translation would read The Sole One and His Property} The classic text of Individuaist Anarchism (now called propertarianism or libertarianism in the US).
  9. Max Stirner’s Egoism: John P. Clark – A trenchant and focused rebuttal of Stirner, focusing on the speculation concerning ultimate reality, the meaning of moral values and the purposes of social organization.
  10. The Sublime Object of Ideology: Slavoj Žižek – The only readable Lacanians first work combines Lacan and Althusser into a lense through which to deconstruct Marx and rehabilitates Lacan’s thinking against charges of obscurantism while he is at it.
  11. For They Know Not What They Do: Slavoj Žižek – subtitled Enjoyment as a Political Factor. Žižek seeks to understand the status of enjoyment within ideological discourse, from Hegel through Lacan to these political and ideological deadlocks. His own enjoyment of popular culture makes this an engaging and lucid exposition.
  12. Did Someone Say Totalitarianism?: Slavoj Žižek – Subtitled Four Interventions in the (Mis)Use of a Notion (Wo Es War). Totalitarianism, as an ideological notion, has always had a precise strategic function: to guarantee the liberal-democratic hegemony by dismissing the Leftist critique of liberal democracy as the obverse, the twin, of the Rightist Fascist dictatorships. Instead of providing yet another systematic exposition of the history of this notion, Zizek ’s book addresses totalitarianism in a Wittgensteinian way, as a cobweb of family resemblances. He concludes that the devil lies not so much in the detail of what constitutes totalitarianism but in what enables the very designation totalitarian, the liberal-democratic consensus itself.
  13. The Universal Exception: Slavoj Žižek – Collecting together a broad selection of Zizek’s major writings on politics, The Universal Exception showcases his formidable range of interests and his style. The book includes his writings on such right-wing icons as Ayn Rand and Leni Riefenstahl; his take on the logic of capitalism and the condition of contemporary radical politics; and his views on major current global issues and events, including the Iraq war.

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Published:
5.16.07 / 10pm
Category:
Pondering
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