I’ve been out of the habit of reading for the better part of a decade now, I usually read like 1-2 books a year.
I’m looking to ramp it up. What I’ve enjoyed lately was parable of the sower/talents and dawn + the sequels by Octavia Butler.
Additionally I’m like super theory illiterate and history as well.
Looking for:
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Theory/commentary (including newer stuff)
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sci fi
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history
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collapse/eco/survival stuff
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mutual aid & organizing
Any recs? Or links to lists of recs? Also open to things outside of what I listed
Becky Chambers’ sci fi books were sort of filling the Ursula K. LeGuin shaped hole in my heart last year
on the collapse front, I just finished Dark Age America by John Michael Greer and found a lot in there useful to think about
Austerity Ecology and the Collapse Porn Addicts is one of my favs. An exceptional book on ecology, very pro-humanist and actually makes me feel a bit better about the future. The author Leigh Phillips is very well read and it’s meticulously researched.
He and another guy also wrote a book on economic planning called The People’s Republic of Wal-Mart which is also great (minus the one chapter which slags off Stalin, depending on your views on the subject of course, nevertheless worth reading for sure)
I really enjoyed Blood of Spain, it’s an oral history of the Spanish civil war. It’s basically as light to read as a novel, but you get the feeling of learning actually important stuff as well.
Two more sci-if recs:
- Ancillary Justice
- Gideon the Ninth
