I’m back in good health and should start posting serious theory discussions instead of talking about football all the time.
Post ideas here. Upbearing comments will be interprebeared as an expression of interest.
It would be good etiquette to mention the length of the book, as it’s relevant to choosing.
There’s a number of good books by Ilan Pappé on Palestine/Occupied Palestine but it’s hard to pick between them and I’m not really in a place to commit to a reading club atm so I think I’ll just float the idea if anyone wants to take up the charge.
Read Fanon
Edit: This is a joke based on your name, nothing more, please don’t hurt me
You know, it’s the darnedest thing. I’ve gone to recommend some books to people and Fanon has come up a couple of times but I feel really sheepish about suggesting his stuff under this username because it all feels a bit… gauche.
That really wasn’t the intended outcome when I picked this username lol.
I’m reading his work right now.
It’s stuff you’ve, err, kinda heard before (at least his first book, The Wretched of the Earth).
I think it’s because a lot of people are already familiar with Marxist or decolonization politics that, sometimes at least, books written, say, during the 50s or 60s, like the book I mentioned was, tend to regurgitate stuff we may already know.
But hey, I’ll be sure to move on to Fanon’s next two books that I have in queue.
Okay, but in all seriousness (in contrast to my previous reply to you), Ilan Pappe is sort-of read a lot by MLs and other leftists or socialists.
I would read someone that isn’t often read or at least read a book that isn’t often read a lot.
Unless we’re partly introducing new leftists and socialists?
If so, I’d almost like to do my own book club.
I’m totally with you on that.
I just can’t think of the perfect book on Palestine for this current situation and I’m not in the right headspace to go and skim over the stuff of his that I’ve read to figure out which book I should recommend specifically so I thought I’d make a gentle suggestion about the topic of Palestine with a good first port of call so that if anyone happened to feel enthusiastic enough about it that they might pick one of his books because, as an author, I think he’s a safe choice on this front.
I’m really half-arsing my participation here but that’s about all I’ve got in me at the moment.
I’m glad you agree because whenever I tell people to sometimes pass on “Required Reading,” I always either get “blank stares” or people telling me that it’s just too important or whatever.
But going off the beaten path is how you find new shit.
New info. New theory. New viewpoints.
So I always recommend that people go off the beaten path a few times and read what they want and explore a bit more.
But I totally get what you’re saying and, yeah, that “port of call” for topics on Palestine is, well, a good call, so to speak (sorry for the pun).