Rage Against the Machine’s Recommended Reading List

This is Rage Against the Machine’s recommended reading list from the Album cover of “Evil Empire”.

1. “International Terrorism and the CIA” – Mumia Abu-Jamal
2. “Live From Death Row” – Mumia Abu-Jamal
3. “Joe Hill” – Gibbs M. Smith
4. “The Mau Mau War in Perspective” – Frank Furedi
5. “The Aesthetic Dimension” – Herbert Marcuse
6. “The Fire Last Time: 1968 and After ” – Chris Harman
7. “The Media Monopoly” – Ben H. Bagdikian
8. “50 Ways To Fight Censorship” – Dave Marsh
9. “Hegemony and Revolution: A study of Antonio Gramsci’s Political & Cultural Theory” – Walter L. Adamson
10. “The Mismeasure of Man” – Stephen Gould, Che Guevera
11. “A New Society: Reflections for Today’s World” – David Deutschmann, Editor
12. “The Marx-Engels Reader (2nd ed.)” – Robert C. Tucker, Editor
13. “What Uncle Sam Really Wants” – Noam Chomsky
14. “Amazing Grace: The Lives of Children and the Conscience of a Nation” – Jonathan Kozol
15. “Marxism and the New Imperialism” – Alex Callinicos, John Rees, Chris Harman, Mike Haynes
16. “Rules for Radicals” – Saul D. Alinsky
17. “A People’s History of the United States” – Howard Zinn
18. “The Lorax” – Dr. Seuss
19. “East Los Angeles, history of a barrio” – Richard Romo
20. “Killing Hope: U.S. Military and CIA Interventions Since World War II” – William Blum
21. “Race for Justice: Mumia Abu-Jamal’s Fight Against The Death Penalty” – Leonard Weinglass
22. “Guerilla Warfare” – Che Guevera
23. “Zapata of Mexico” – Peter E. Newell
24. “Malcolm X Speaks – Selected Speeches and statements” – George Breitman
25. “Marxism and the Press: Oppression of Women, Toward a Unitary Theory” – Lise Vogel
26. “Inevitable Revolutions: The United States in Central America” – Walter LaFeber
27. “The Chomsky Reader” – James Peck, Editor
28. “Chicano Politics: Reality and Promise 1940-1990″ – Juan Gomez Quinones
29. “The Wretched of the Earth” – Franz Fanon
30. “What is Communist Anarchism?” – Alexander Berkman
31. “Soledad Brother: The Prison Letters of George Jackson” – George Jackson
32. “Fidel and religion: Conversations With Frei Betto” – Frei Betto
33. “Narrative of the Life of Frederick Douglass, An American Slave” – Frederick Douglass
34. “Democracy is in the Streets” – James Miller
35. “Capital, Volume One” – Karl Marx
36. “The Black Panthers Speak” – Philip S. Foner, Editor
37. “Keeping The Rabble in line Interviews with David Barsamian” – Noam Chomsky
38. “Walden” and “Civil Disobedience” – Henry David Thoreau
39. “Darkness at Noon” – Arthur Koester
40. “The Culture of Narcissism: American Life of Diminishing Expectations” – Christopher Lasch
41. “Play it as it lays” – Joan Didion
42. “The State and Revolution” – V.I. Lenin
43. “Soul on Ice” – Eldridge Cleaver
44. “Kwame Nkrumah: The Conarky Years, His Life and Letters” – Compiled by June Milne
45. “Revolutionary Suicide” – Huey P. Newton
46. “The Anarchist Cookbook” – William Powell
47. “Manufacturing Consent: The Political Economy of the Mass Media” – Edward S. Herman and Noam Chomsky
48. “Portrait of the Artist as a Young Man” – James Joyce
49. “Another country” – James Baldwin
50. “The Grapes of Wrath” – John Steinbeck
51. “The Armies of the Night” – Norman Mailer
52. “Invisible Man” – Ralph Ellison
53. “Rebellion from the Roots: Indian uprising in Chiapas” – John Ross
54. “First World Ha! Ha! Ha! – The Zapatista challenge” – Elaine Katzenberger, Editor
55. “The Teachings of Don Juan: A Yaqui Way of Knowledge” – Carlos Castaneda
56. “Tropic of Cancer” – Henry Miller
57. “Johnny Got His Gun” – Dalton Trumbo
58. “Essays in existentialism” – Jean-Paul Sartre
59. “How Real is Real? Confusion, disinformation, communication” – Paul Watzlawick
60. “Ghost of a Chance” – William S.Burroughs
61. “Popism :The Warhol Sixties” – Andy Warhol & Pat Hackett
62. “Chicana falsa and other stories of death, identity, and Oxnard” – Michele M. Serros
63. “Promisory Notes: Women in the Transition to socialism” – Sonia Kruks, Ranya Rapp, Marilyn B. Young, Editors
64. “Gay New York: Gender, Urban Culture, and the making of a gay world” – George Chauncey
65. “This bridge called my back: Writings by radical women of color” – Cherrie Monzaga, Gloria Anzaluda, Editors
66. “Women of Color Subliminal Seduction” – Wilson Bryan Key, Editor
67. “Power at Play: Sports and the Problem of Masculinity” – Michael A. Messner
68. “Backlash: The Undeclared War Against American Women” – Susan Faludi
69. “90 Years of Ford” – George H. Dammann
70. “Illustrated History of Ford” – George H. Damman
71. “The Challenge of Local Feminisms: Women Movements in Global Perspective” – Amrita Basu
72. “Miles, the Autobiography” – Miles Davis
73. “The Sixties Papers: Documents of a Rebellious Decade” – Judith Clavir Albert and Stewart Edward Albert
74. “The Graphic Work” – M. C. Escher
75. “Bob Marley Spirit Dancer” – Bruce W. Talamon
76. “Dali: The Paintings ” – Benedikt Taschen, Robert Taschen, Giles Neret
77. “For Whom The Bell Tolls” – Ernest Hemingway
78. “Eros And Civilization: A Philosophical Inquiry into Freud” – Herbert Marcuse
79. “Cheer Up Book for a Proud American” – Dan Valentine
80. “The Way Things Aren’t” – Steve Rendall, Jim Naureckas, Jeff Cohen
81. “War and an Irish Town” – Eamonn McCann
82. “Moving the Center: The Struggle for Cultural Freedoms” – Ngugi Wa Thiong’o
83. “Interview With Chairman Gonzalo” – El Diario Newspaper
84. “The Dust Rose Like Smoke: The Subjugation of the Zulu and the Sioux” – James O. Gump
85. “The Last Mau Mau Field Marshalls” – David Njagi
86. “God Dies By The Nile” – Naval El Saadawi
87. “You Can’t Win” – Jack Black
88. “Year 501: The Conquest Continues” – Noam Chomsky
89. “Beyond Good and Evil” – Friedrich Nietzche
90. “Deterring Democracy” – Noam Chomsky
91. “Mau Mau Detainee” – Josiah Mwangi Kariuki
92. “In the Spirit of Crazy Horse” – Peter Mathiessen
93. “Marx’s Kapital for Beginners” – David Smith & Phil Evans
94. “How the Other Half Lives” – Jacob A. Riis
95. “The Weatherman” – Steve Thayer
96. “U.S.A.” – John Dos Passos
97. “The Naked and the Dead” – Norman Mailer
98. “My Antonia” – Willa Cather
99. “The Origin of the Family, Private Property, and the State” – Friedrich Engels
100. “Slouching Towards Bethlehem” – Joan Didion
101. “The Gypsy’s Curse” – Harry Crews
102. “Basta! Land and the Zapatista – Rebellion in Chiapas” – George A. Collier
103. “The State of Native America: Genocide, Colonization, Resistance” – Annette James, Editor
104. “SNCC The New Abolitionists” – Howard Zinn

Not on the Cover but on the Recommended Reading List…

1. “Always a Rebel: Ricardo Flores, Magon and the Mexican Revolution” – Ward S. Albro
2. “Go Tell It On a Mountain” – James Baldwin
3. “Uncle Tom’s Cabin” – Harriet Beecher Stowe
4. “Black Boy” – James Baldwin
5. “Animal Farm” – George Orwell
6. “Steal This Book” – Abbie Hoffman
7. “The Quiet American” – Graham Greene
8. “Odes To Opposites” – Pablo Neruda
9. “Giovanni’s Room” – James Baldwin
10. “The Confessions of Nat Turner” – William Styron
11. “O Pioneers” – Willa Cather
12. “The Souls of Black Folk” – W.E.B. DuBois
13. “Rights of Man” – Thomas Paine
14. “The Bluest Eye” – Toni Morrison
15. “Salvador” – Joan Didion
16. “Savage Inequalities” – Jonathan Kozol
17. “Between Hell and Reason” – Albert Camus
18. “Women, Race, and Class” – Angela Y. Davis
19. “Song of Solomon” – Toni Morrison
20. “American Slavery, American Freedom” – Edmund S. Morgan
21. “America’s Reconstruction” – Eric Foner & Olivia Mahoney
22. “Parting the Waters” – Taylor Branch
23. “Native Son” – Richard Wright
24. “Dispatches” – Michael Herr
25. “Ideas & Opinions” – Albert Einstein
26. “Censored: The News that Didn’t Make the Newspapers and Why” – Carl Jensen
27. “The Emperor Wears No Clothes” – Jack Herer

Original List from Everything 2. But I wanted to replicate it for my own sake. I love RATM.

Holy Books

This is spurred from an article I just read about yet another arrest of a Muslim planning to stage yet another attack and kill innocent people. The guy even had my surname! Doesn’t bode well for international travel. *sigh*

This got me thinking about these people’s motivations though, specifically when most of these extremist idiots use books like the Quraan and Bible to justify their crimes. The holy books, from my point of view aren’t any single thing. I’ve studied both, more the Quraan than the bible but it’s occurrd to me that they are more a reflection of the person reading them rather than any one thing you can put your finger on.

Hence, if you’re a retarded extremist idiot with no brain of your own and violent tendencies, it doesn’t matter which book you read, you’re going to end up on an article in the morning Metro. Similarly there are tons of examples of ‘people of faith’ doing extremely good works for humanity spurred on by the same verses from the same books.

It’s who you are, it’s not what you read.

Peace!

What is it with Authors named Murakami and Psycho-Sexual Thrillers?

Up until this point far I’ve read two novels by Haruki Murakami (The Wind-up Bird Chronicle and After Dark) and one by Ryu Murakami (Piercing) and I’m beginning to notice a sinister underlying theme with these Japanese authors.

Firstly, you cannot doubt the dark angle and twist of the stories involved. There is some sick twisted element to all of it which makes it both enticing but revolting at the same time. Secondly, the characters are always normal people with some deep flaw or tortured soul or whatever else it is which makes them 1) act really weird and 2) have some crazy, CRAZY thoughts.

After reading Haruki’s work and all the reviews, etc. I was intrigued and thought the books were ‘cool’ in that underbelly-of-society type of way… but after that, when all the books I’m reading by them tend to be about generally some sort of excessively deviant behaviour and just plain weird shit, I’m starting to question what the point of it all really is.

I do want a point, a moral, a lesson… something I can learn from it apart from being thoroughly freaked out by these crazy motherfuckers these authors seem to come up with.

I think I’ll try one more by Haruki before trying some other sub-cultural authors for different countries. Stieg Larsson (Swedish) also had some crazy elements but at least his work had a golden thread of a story to follow through to the end.

One thing I have to admit is the breadth of imagination these guys seem to have, albeit towards the fringes of darkness and insanity, I’m wondering if a similar movement of authors are available focusing on the more… positive side of life. The search begins.

Something Every Writer Should Know

Writer’s block is the default setting…

A “Creator’s block” sounds like something afflicting a divinity, but writer’s block is my default setting. Its opposite is miraculous. The process of learning to write fiction, for me, was one of learning to almost continually be doing it *through* the block, in spite of the block, the block becoming the accustomed place from which to work. Our traditional cultural models of creativity tend to involve the wrong sort of heroism, for me. “It sprang whole and perfect from my brow” as opposed to “I saw it mispelled, in mauve Krylon, on the side of a dumpster, and it haunted me”. I was much encouraged, when I began to write, by Manny Farber’s idea of “termite art”. – William Gibson

btw… get his new book “Zero History“, the man’s a legend. Those who’ve read Neuromancer and Burning Chrome know what I’m talking about.

Review/Perspective: “Eat, Pray, Love”

Straight off, I was not totally impressed with the book. That is not to say I do not share an empathy with the subject matter. I see a lot of myself in the search Elizabeth goes through.

I am all for being open-minded, we will never know everything and there are many who know much more than we do. We do need to let go of all the petty things we cling to, what is really important? If you haven’t figured it out, what’s important to you right now? Nobody is ever fully right or fully wrong, there’s good and bad in everything and sometimes it’s only a matter of how you are looking at things.

I still can’t figure out why the book did not gel with me very well. I have read many self-help, zen, search/journey for the truth books and this one does not particularly stand out for me as one of the top ten. Maybe it’s only because of relevance, but I also feel there was something in the story which just does not click with me. I imagine it would with women, and especially women living in western societies, a whole lot. There may be oceans of relevance and mirrored reflections of thoughts, feelings and experiences.

Given all that, I love the journey itself. The intent behind it, the search for the truth, for something greater and the realisation that it starts with one’s self. Only one’s self, and it can not begin anywhere else. Outside holds no answers if the inside has not been reconciled. Elizabeth’s journey is just one of those journey’s and I can say it is one of many, by countless citizens of earth with varying resources who will suck up meaning from the greatness of mountains to the simplicity of children playing with marbles on a street corner.

The movie is coming out in the last third of this year , and it looks pretty good. I do think Julia Roberts is a great choice to play Elizabeth in the role and I suspect I will feel better about the movie than the book. Which would be the second time for me ( I always thought the Godfather movie trumped the book).

Above all, I love how the book left me with a feeling of confusion within myself, and that is ALWAYS a great place to start. Never doubt that. Go read the book for yourself, and when it comes out, watch the movie. There is a nugget of something great and personal in all of it.

Why the Concept of Vampires are so Intriguing…

The Twilight Series, Blade, The Vampire Diaries, True Blood and a whole host of other new-age vampire manifestations with varying theories on what vampires are, what they can do and what kills them.  But I don’t care about all that. Why do we find them so interesting that we give it all of our attention and warrant throwing all our money at Hollywood to go see them?

I think the main hook is their immortal nature.  We’re drawn to something that is, in effect, infinite.  Granted in our daily lives or even just by thinking we can not fully grasp the concept of infinity, or eternity.  By nature we are finite beings and hence vampires, by subverting this fundamental aspect of humanity, are made far more intriguing as beings we aspire to.  And we DO aspire to them, what after how glamorous they are made to look in modern literature and cinema.

But still, glamour aside, we subconsciously want the infinite and with most people writing off conventional religion and embracing the religion of atheism, vampires are the only somewhat-infinite idols they can turn their attention to.  For the general religious populace, those who believe in God and the hereafter, vampires give us a glimpse of what we want to be… happy in eternity (without all the bloodsucking and free of any need, ofcourse).

I have written before of how vampires also represent our dark side, but I find the philosophy of the creation of these beings in literature intriguing in itself and required another post with anotehr point of view.

All in all, I find the whole business terribly fascinating.  Maybe there’ll be another post soon form another angle.

Classic Works get ‘Twitterized’ – twitterature

Now this is a nice modernisation… 60 classic works of literature got re-imagined through Twitter. Everyon’es favourite publishing house, Penguin, just bought the rights to Twitterature and it includes some brilliant re-imaginings of literature.  The book won’t be published in the UK till 5 November but the book has been seen by the guys at the Guardian… check these out…

Romeo tweets his dying lament: O, I am fortune’s fool! Maybe just a tool. And so I die. BTW that other woman I was into before Juliet? Would’ve been a safer bet.

Sherlock Holmes says: Continuing investigation. Made brilliant deductions on many snorts and very little evidence. Notice salt deposits on factory owner’s shoes?

Goethe’s Young Werther emotes: Have I noted how upset I am? I am very upset. #pain #angst #suffering #sexdep.

Elizabeth Bennet muses: It’s as if the less he seems to care about me, the more drawn to him I am. This seems the opposite of how it should be? Oh well.

And then there’s Ishmael from Moby-Dick: We set out. Follow @starbuck, @queequeg for long introspective soliloquies on the human soul. Or @tashtego if you like adorable kittens.

Pretty damn cool, right?  Especially if you ever got down to reading any of the books above or at least know the work in some way. Hence the note from the author…

"There has been some misunderstanding about the book in that it’s been said it’s going to educate people, but you couldn’t do an English class with this book. The humour is heightened by having knowledge of the works."

Anyway… All of the Classic works were distilled into 20 tweets or fewer.

Love it.

So I was at the bookstore…

This is interesting…

Technorati Tags: Library, Crime

The “Watchmen” Preview

For all the comic book fans and especially those of Alan Moore’s absolute classic comic/graphic-novel “Watchmen”, the highly anticipated movie version is set to launch in 2009. Directed by Zack Snyder(300), the trailer has already been getting comments across the blogosphere for having extremely cool graphics.

Not all’s good in Watchmen land though, the series creator, Alan Moore, doesn’t support the comic being adapted to the big screen…

“I would rather not know [about the movie],” said Moore. “[Zack Snyder] may very well be [a very nice guy], but the thing is that he’s also the person who made 300. I’ve not seen any recent comic book films, but I didn’t particularly like the book 300. I had a lot of problems with it, and everything I heard or saw about the film tended to increase [those problems] rather than reduce them: that it was racist, it was homophobic, and above all it was sublimely stupid. I know that that’s not what people going in to see a film like 300 are thinking about but… I wasn’t impressed with that… I talked to Terry Gilliam in the ’80s, and he asked me how I would make Watchmen into a film. I said, ”Well actually, Terry, if anybody asked me, I would have said, ‘I wouldn’t.”’ And I think that Terry [who aborted his attempted adaptation of the book] eventually came to agree with me. There are things that we did with Watchmen that could only work in a comic, and were indeed designed to show off things that other media can’t.”

Zack Snyder’s comments on what he thinks of Alan Moore’s reaction to him making the movie…

“We all want to please Alan, and I think that’s a noble thing to want to do. There’s nothing wrong to get the guy who frickin’ created the thing to not hate it, I don’t think that’s an outrageous thing to want,” said Snyder. “I think the approach is to assume that the movie is better, and that’s a mistake. I would never make any assumptions.”

He also has told fans at Comic Con last year that the best he can hope for is that Alan Moore will someday watch the DVD and say, “You know, they didn’t fuck it up that bad.”

In terms of the character line up we have Billy Crudup as Dr. Manhattan, Patrick Wilson as Nite Owl, Matthew Goode as Ozymandias, Jeffrey Dean Morgan as the Comedian, Malin Akerman as Silk Spectre, and — in an inspired bit of news — Jackie Earle Haley as Rorschach.

So far the movie looks to be about 3 hours long, which is pretty long for a super-hero epic, but I can understand the length from just reading the comic book and the mazing amount of detail that went into it. What is interesting is that the “Tales of the Black Freighter”, which is the story-within-a-story in the Watchmen comic, is set to be released as a seperate DVD (obviously to make more money off the fans). either way I’d buy it, I just hope that, as Zack had mentioned, they don’t fuck it up too badly.

From what I’ve seen in the trailer though, at least it looks cool. For everyone reading this, get the comic, I very highly recommend it.

Link
: Watchmen, Comic, Graphic Novel, Alan Moore, Zack Snyder

Online Bookstore Voyeurism – Book Rabbit

What a cool Idea. BookRabbit.com< allows users to upload a picture of their bookshelves so that everybody else can see them in an effort to encourage interaction, comparisons and more shopping!

BookRabbit, which just went through its public launch in May, aims to be an online bookshop that “dynamically connects readers, authors and publishers through the books they own.” It also claims to be cheaper than Amazon on the top 100,000 titles, and offers free delivery within the UK. More interesting, though, are the ways users of the site can share their passion for books, including creating their own personal bookcases and catalogues online and making recommendations to other readers. Each user is invited to upload a photo of his or her bookshelf—along with a user profile—and to tag the individual titles therein. Other users can then view all the bookshelves on the site, compare with their own and make connections with other readers based on the titles they have in common. More than 900 bookshelves have been uploaded so far, and they’re viewable by “latest,” “most connections” or “most discussed.” The winner for most connections so far, for example, is a user named Glynis, who has more than 100 books in common with other readers.

Of course, in the process of viewing and comparing bookshelves, BookRabbit no doubt hopes users might get inspired to buy some new titles and expand their own collections. The site includes an affiliate programme that lets users put links on their sites or e-mails to show off their bookcases and earn a fee if anyone buys anything through them. Link

: Book Rabbit, Entrepreneur, Voyeur, books, Website

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