Reading List

So we near the end of our outrageously long holiday. Time to inform you of just what can be done in such a period of time, given peace and quiet and a general disposition towards doing fuck all in a city devoted to calm, engaging in that absenteeism which is so unpopular with the bureaucrats perhaps precisely because it gives you time to think (and thinking unnerves them). So here comes the 'Paul Davies Radical August 2010 Reading List'.

1. Alain Badiou The Century (Tough)

2. Sajov Zizek Living At The End of Times (bits of- then I gave it away)

3. Robert Harris The Ghost (Fabulous- I'm in it)

4. Philip Roth The Human Stain (Fabulous in another way)

5. Richard Hornsey The Spiv and the Architect (Bonkers but still smart)

6. Freud for Beginners (Better read it again)

7. Alain Badiou The Communist Hypothesis (Excellent and readable 'Little Red Book')

8. John Le Carre A Most Wanted Man

9. Hans Fallada The Drinker (Bloody funny without being funny)

10. Harry Crews Body (Neat and tidy tragicomedy)

11. Stefan Aust The Baader Meinhof Complex (Exquisite in it's agony)

There you go. It's been a blast. If you read the sequence, it works, you can walk down the street with your head held high knowing just what a mess we're in without any answers at all- but knowledge is good for it's own sake, even if you fear it will float out of your brain just as fast as you've shoved it in. I will say one thing, the last one (No 11) is absolutely essential, but only as long as you've read the earlier stuff. I promise you will really learn something if you read at least 7 and 11.