2011 Reading Archives
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December 2011 Reading
Another Christmas gift from me old man, this is a 2005 novel which was made into a film last year. I've not seen the film. But the book is wonderful, a dystopian sci-fi, by turns tender and twisted. Ishiguro riffs on the fragility and isolation of childhood — the way that the outside world seems stange and incoherent and inevitable — and he extrapolates from that. Anarchist that I am, I also saw a lot of truth in its portrayal of adults unprepared to fight back against the system, who insist on asking the permission of others to escape their destiny.
2011-12-31 by Charlie Harvey How to Think About Algorithms, by Jeff Edmonds
A third year uni text book covering a fair bit of familiar territory for anyone who has done a bit of computer science. The edge that this book had was its lucid explanations not of the maths so much but of the process of building an algorithm. I found it rather bemusing at points — my grip on even fundamental set theory being somewhat tenuous — nonetheless it'd clearly be helpful to someone studying computer science. Read More …- 2011-12-31 10:16:45
- Published: 2011-12-31 10:16:45
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November 2011 Reading
The original Pragmatic Programmer book was pretyy influential on me when it came out and I've really enjoyed a few other books in the series. This book is no exception to that. There's a lot of sensible advice for people who make their living writing code in it. The style and focus can smetimes feel a little like one of those "business self-help" books, but its saved by the writers's gentle humour and lots of real life examples. I think it'd be better to read after the original pragmatic programmer book before this, but there is still plenty to learn.
2011-11-30 by Charlie Harvey History of the Makhnovist Movement, by Peter Arshinov
I'm really glad I read this. Makhno is often dismissed as marginal or counter-revolutionary or antisemitic or nationalist or [insert ad himinem] by lefties (especially Trots, for obvious reasons). This history tells the story, albeit in overly partisan, romantiscized words of a truly remrkable guy. He basically helped the Ukranian peasentry to fight off the Austro-Germans, their own bourgeoisie and the statist socialists, whilst at the same time supporting the people in building an anti-authoritarian socialism that they themselves ran without the need of bosses and leaders. Obviously having peasants and workers running their own lives and fighting pretty effective wars is not something that goes down well with the authoritarian socialists in Moscow and the Red Army eventually betrays and destroys Makhno's insurgent rebels, but for a few years there there was a glimpse of how the world could be. Read More …- 2011-11-30 19:19:05
- Published: 2011-11-30 19:19:05
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October 2011 Reading
This is a difficult read at times, putting the lie to the myth of the British Empire being a benign, democratic or civilising project. Rebellion was never far from the surface and was put down by genocide, torture, extermination and crimes against humanity. The subject people's who Britain systematically oppressed fought back as best they could. The breadth and scope of the book are stunning, and Gott doesn't flinch from drawing the parallels between the Empire's appalling behaviour and that of 20th century dictators. It should be read by every smug apologist for the brutal, exploitative, murderous institution that the Empire was.
2011-10-02 by Charlie Harvey Seize The Time, the story of the Black Panther Party, By Bobby Seale
I first read this back in the early nineties and remember being bowled over by the bravery and militancy and strategic insight that the panthers bought to bear on the systematically racist state. And this is still a book that packs a punch. There's some anachronisms in there, particularly when talking about gender I guess its of its time in that way, which is a shame because the way that the Panthers linked class and race as major axes of oppression anticipates to a great extent the kinds of social analysis that the anarchist and anticapitalist activists of today talk about. Read More …- 2011-10-23 17:48:23
- Published: 2011-10-23 17:48:23
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September 2011 Reading
The anticiv folks are a really good read for anyone who wants to do serious political campaigning anticiv or not. This book tries to be a how-to guide for establishing and effective guerilla resistence to ecological destruction. The book is in 4 parts, a sort of overview of why action needs taking, a look at organizing, an introduction to strategy and tactics and a look at the possible future. I must admit that I started with the strategy and tactics section and noodled around the book in a non-linear stylee. I found what I read insightful, and certainly helpful for strategists of resistence (trick number one: have an objective, for example is all too often forgotten).
2011-09-03 by Charlie Harvey
Wilderness Evasion, by Michael Chesbro
Don't worry, I haven't gone all anarcho-primitivist, this had been left in my house at some point, it was a very basic intro to some outdoor skills. My impression was that Chesbro was a bit of a radio geek – he devotes 16 pages to comms but only 4 to water. He is also quite US focussed (to be fair they do actually have wilderness in the States!) I'd say that the book was probably too basic but might be a good starting point for exploring outdoor adventuring. Read More …- 2011-09-11 17:22:14
- Published: 2011-09-11 17:22:14
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August 2011 Reading
A really intriguing glimpse of Eldridge Cleaver's political development, focussing on the black panthers and other revolutionary black power struggles in the US in the 60s and 70s. Deeply poetic, passionate, angry and inspiring words. It also made me think I should read Franz Fanon again.
2011-08-04 by Charlie Harvey
Rule 34, by Charles Stross
Rule 34 states that if it exists there is porn of it. Stross uses that as the jumping off point into a tech/crime thriller comedy. Christopher Brookmyre calls it "cracking near-future crime laced with humour that's exquisitely wrong" on the cover. Which I think just about sums it up really. There is a wonderful review by Damien G Walter in the Guardian, which apes the second-person writing style that Stross has adopted. Complex, dark, funny, cyberpunk meets comedy meets hardboiled. Read More …- 2011-09-03 10:42:52
- Published: 2011-09-03 10:42:52
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July 2011 Reading
Parecon is an interesting and thoughtful answer to the "but what do you want" question that anticapitalists are always asked. I got occasionally annoyed at its often rather simplistic, homespun style. It kind of reminded me of Berkman's ABC of Anarchism in that way. Which is a shame because there's some great and insightful contributions in there and Albert has one of the most coherent and pragmatic visions of a post capitalist world of any thinkers working today. Here's a video of Michael Albert talking about the concepts behind parecon, courtesy of London Indymedia.
2011-06-22 by Charlie Harvey
Invisible Cities, by Italo Calvino
I've been meaning to read some of Calvino's work for a while, and I'd actually bought Invisible cities some months back, but not read it. I was blown away by the mysterious beauty of his writing, which is a lyrical piece, partly about cities but more about age and memory and experience and perception. Well a bit of everything really. Stunning. Read More …- 2011-09-03 10:33:06
- Published: 2011-09-03 10:33:06
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June 2011 Reading
I am not a designer. But I do often end up doing design. That's why I was interested in this title. Now the PDF ended up on a machine I control, so I grabbed a copy to see what it was like. I thought it was very straightforward, not too corporate or wanky. So I bought the paper book and am now making my way through that. Very accessible, it covers the general principles of graphic design. The "mini art school" chapter is especially useful for someone like me with very little exposure to the theoretical side of graphic design. They manage to balance that theory with a lighthearted touch and straightforward style that is both accessible and useful for a design n00b like me.
2011-06-22 by Charlie Harvey
Version Control with Git, Jon Loeliger
I've used Git a fair bit for cloning from github and such, but I normally use Subversion for my day to day version control. Recently lots of people are talking about Git, for example it came up more than once at Barncamp 2011. I thought it might be a good time to have a read about it. Loeliger does a solid job of taking you through the various features with plenty of examples. This is a good solid O'Reilly book and has encouraged me to have more of a play with Git. Read More …- 2011-06-22 19:45:13
- Published: 2011-06-22 19:45:13
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May 2011 Reading
My pal penguin recommended that I read this one. Its a lovely "pop maths" (if that is even a genre) investigation, taking in everything from the anthropology of number and counting to the history of maths to why the 50p coin is heptagonal. Thoroughly readable and wonderfully entertaining.
2011-05-29 by Charlie Harvey
Hardboiled Web Design By Andy Clarke
Andy is a bit of a dood. He did the redesign of the New Internationalist website a while back (he mentions it in the book). Hardboiled is a thorough and passionate call to arms for the HTML5 generation. He covers HTML5 and CSS3. There's plenty of case studies and pictures and Andy takes the time to break down how they achieved the effect (sometimes its lovely not to have to wade through all the code yourself). I'm often disconcerted when books try and have a theme (like "hardboiled") but Andy does it with such humour and panache that it becomes rather enjoyable. I can wholeheartedly recommend it. Read More …- 2011-05-29 15:53:10
- Published: 2011-05-29 15:53:10
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April 2011 Reading
I like a challenge, learning seven programming languages in seven weeks seemed like a challenge. I'm blogging about it. I doubt I'll finish in seven weeks; at least not seven consecutive ones!
2011-04-13 by Charlie Harvey
The Enforcement of Morals, Patrick Devlin
I saw this at an Oxfam bookfair, read the introduction and laughed out loud at how old-fashioned it sounded and how disturbingly homophobic Britain was in the mid to late sixties. The woman who took my money had a look at the book, laughed and said she studied under Devlin. Apparently he was a dreadful little man. Only in Oxford. Read More …- 2011-04-27 15:35:50
- Published: 2011-04-27 15:35:50
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March 2011 Reading
Let me first just mention that prepending the word "post" to any body of thought – post-anthropology, say – doesn't magically result in a rejuvination of that thought as some theorists are wont to believe. However, I think that Saul Newman's book in its attempt to integrate poststructuralist insights into the framework of anarchist thought is fruitful and actually quite exciting. Newman identifies the central insights of (classical) anarchism and seperates these insights from their problematic roots in enlightenment humanism to bring them into dialogue with the political challenges of contemporary discourse. Newman is a great writer, clear and straightforward, something that lacks in much of the poststructuralist writing.
2011-03-23 by Charlie Harvey
Getting Things Done, David Allen
Having devoured Proust I'm going to have a bit of a multi book phase. I first read Getting Things Done a couple of years back. I hate the "busy executive knowledge worker" self help positivity style of the writing but the insights that David Allen has about processing stuff have saved my sanity on a number of occasions. It mostly boils down to making sure that you don't use your head to store things you need to do ("open loops"), identifying what stuff actually is (action, project, etc) and processing it accordingly. There's a great summary of the practices Getting Things Done at Mark Volkmann's site. Read More …- 2011-03-24 09:26:44
- Published: 2011-03-24 09:26:44