CLR Book Club – Week 1 August 30, 2016
Posted by WorldbyStorm in Uncategorized.trackback
It’s here, by popular demand. The CLR Book Club. But what are we to start reading?If we can gain a consensus below let’s give it a go. And is it a chapter a week, or what? I’ve never been a member of book club before so I don’t know. I’m going to post this thread up every Tuesday so we can use it to get things up and running, ideas, etc. Ivorthorne had some ideas, and Pasionario as well IIRC. I’ve one chapter of a book on right anarchism by Nozick which tries to engage with socialism and equality, and I’m sure there’s a heap of other ideas.
And just to say, can we have two books running concurrently or is that too much?
The Cedar Lounge Revolution 
One would be as much as I could manage.
BTW – because I haven’t got time to find what you want to say (permalink?) – in the ‘you couldn’t make it up’ department:
The Irish government is about to voluntarily forego a potential windfall of €19 billion in back taxes from Apple. That’s a significant chunk of what they gave away to other parasites in the banking sector.
Imagine what could be done with 19 billion for public services!
LikeLike
Fair point
LikeLike
Sorry I’m out.
What about a knitting club?
LikeLike
Online? ;). BTW knitting is kind of cool, my gran taught me how to do it and its well relaxing.
LikeLike
Sure, I’ll get ye started. Here’s the first stitch 😉
႖
LikeLike
Knitting is for sissies. Everyone knows real men cross stitch.
LikeLike
Oh and to try to stay on topic after already getting diverted. I would throw out
Spies, Informers and the ‘Anti-Sinn Fein Society’: The Intelligence War in Cork City, 1919-1921 Paperback
Pricey as fuck but going through the link that MC threw out there I think it looks interesting.
There’s also
The First Socialist schism
Some interesting new books on the Iran/Iraq war are out.
I know these are all fairly dry texts, but at least it’s an effort.
LikeLike
That’s a cracking book – I mean “The First Socialist Schism” – from one of the people at the Anarchist Archive / Library here.
Can be found here:
https://libcom.org/history/first-socialist-schism-bakunin-vs-marx-international-working-mens-association-wolfgang-e
Although if you can afford it you should buy a copy.
If it’s tea and crumpets (See LATC below) I can’t take part. For some reason Michael O’Leary has rescinded my free travel permit.
LikeLike
Don’t get me started on embroidery once did a six week block in that. Good but not as relaxing and more chance of bloodstains
LikeLike
My grandma was old school Volga Deutsch. She would sew her kids clothes and what not. So when she would watch us grandkids one of the activities during winter would be sewing. Four rough and tumble boys all sitting around her sewing room doing cross stitched tea towels and other designs. As we got older and improved she would incorporate our works into the quilts that she did for each of us. There is nothing germane to this thread at all other than to say that my 94 year old grandma is badass. And that once my brother and I got into punk in our teens our hoodies always had well sewn on patches (no iron ons for us).
LikeLike
Old school Volga Deutsch? I propose Menonite in a Little Black Dress for the Book Club. Read it a while back. A memoir by a college lecturer in the States of her Menonite upbringing and her marriage break-up and so forth. Funny a lot of the time especially on the oddness of Menonites in ‘modern’ America. And interesting on the history and origin of the Menonites.
LikeLike
Run one longer book a chapter at a time and one pamphlet length piece (Communist Manifesto length say) in parallel?
LikeLike
Surely the point of a book club is to get together face to face and have the discussion laced with vino / beer / tea / coffee? The actual text is secondary. This is Book Club 101 stuff comrades, I’m shocked that you’re failing at this so early.
LikeLiked by 1 person
In fairness number of opinions did exceed N+2, indicating a well oiled and practiced group of lefties for sure.
LikeLike
I am also reading Peter Frankopan’s The Silk Roads. (One of the blurbs inside the front cover is from a review on the Irish left Review.)
I’m more than half way through the book, and at this stage, I think the ‘silk road’ reference in the title is over-stating the case. While it does shift the “centre of gravity” east from Europe for many of the chapters, it isn’t centred on the silk roads and matters related. (Only one entry for the Fenghara Valley in the index?)
LikeLike
(So, that’s two books I’ve posted about on CLR in the last week, both with grumbles. Feckin’ grouch, I am.)
LikeLike
If you want a Book Club which discusses agreed texts (nonfiction and fiction) then it may be useful to set up a monthly CLR cafe society meeting, probably in Dublin where most participants come from. I know it would by-pass other contributors living on the continent and elsewhere, but a physical, as opposed to virtual reality CLR would initially have to meet where there are viable numbers. And those numbers could be asked, face to face, if they’d care to fundraise once or twice a year to pay for the website.
LikeLike
Just to add to gendjinn’s N + x – the Dubs could post which chapter they’re reading and and those (a long way) out of Dublin could chip in on line. Kind of second class citizens though – I dunno.
What about Geoff Eley’s “Forging Democracy: The History of the Left in Europe, 1850-2000”?
LikeLike