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Things I’ve been reading recently #6

After five of these posts I’m getting slightly bored with the exercise of describing each book. But I’ll continue with the posts as a whole because blogging a list of the books that I’ve finished does seem to be helping with my prior tendency to so rarely finish a book I’d started.

Books:

The Utopia of Rules: On Technology, Stupidity, and the Secret Joys of Bureaucracy by David Graeber is one of the most original and thought-provoking books I’ve read in a long time. I can’t recommend this highly enough, even if it does say “calls to mind Slavoj Zizek at his most accessible” on the blurb.

Honourable Friends? Parliament and the Fight for Change by Caroline Lucas has cemented my embrace of the Green Party that was initially driven by contempt for Labour (or rather a reaction to their seeming contempt for people like me). She’s genuinely inspiring and I’d so rarely say anything close to that about a politician. I doubt I would have agreed to stand for the Greens as a (paper) candidate in the upcoming elections if I hadn’t read this book.

Blair Inc: The Man Behind the Mask by Francis Beckett, David Hencke and Nick Kochan reveals that Tony Blair is actually a lot worse than I thought he was and I already thought he was pretty fucking despicable.

Casino Royale by Ian Fleming is a fabulous read, albeit with occasional interludes of vitriolic misogyny. I can’t believe it took me until close to my 30th birthday to read a James Bond novel.

Graphic Novels:

Avengers: Rage of Ultron by Rick Remender and Jerome Opena (the former redeeming himself after the awe-inspiringly awful AXIS and I’m increasingly convinced the latter is a genius)

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