Voice of the Fire / Middlemarch
Well I finished The Shock Doctrine and it's truly one of the most chilling books I've ever read, it's so scary it makes running away to Sweden seem like a good idea.
The argument and ideas within it are very well spaced and expressed, it started with an idea of what a shock is and how to enforce one to an individual (and included links to CIA interrogation manuals, just have a wiki or google for Kubark and see where you end up.)
The book then progresses to explain how economic shock theory was praticed in reality starting with Chile and other southern American countries in the 1970's, progressing through to Britain in the 1980's, stopping of by China, Poland, USSR / Russia and finishing off in Iraq. I found it more informative then the Chomsky book I read earlier in the year as it was more incisive, though as teh Chomsky was a series of short essays and this a whole book that is to be understandable.
If you're of a left wing disposition I'd highly recomend reading 'The Shock Doctrine'. It just shocked me how people can do so much damage for money and then be have the front to say that they're doing the right thing.
I still want to follow it up with more economic theory and history as one thing I also realised when reading it is that certain phrases and words are bandied about so much that I only think I know what they mean, phrases such as free market etc.
Naomi Klein seems to be of similar economic vein as Keynes and Galbraith and opposing Friedman and the Chicago School, all of which I'd like to look into more, partly as said before to get a grasp of the history and also to see the other side of the argument.
Voice of the Fire, by Alan Moore
I saw this on my library shelf and was intrigued, I'm a fan of Alan's comics and having grown up on 2000ad in the 80's am also aware of work of his that hasn't made it into film, stories such as Halo Jones, Skizz, D.R. and Quinch etc. So having an opportunity to read some of his prose was too good to miss.
The premise of the book is a collection of stories centred on his home town of Northampton, it starts in about 4000 B.C. and ends with himself just finishing the novel. The first story was incredibly hard to read as it's written in first person narrative and from a cave man point of view so the use of language although limited is hard to penetrate, which made me think about the use of language itself, if there's fewer words and less vocabulary why is it harder to read and understand?
Once I'd finally broken through the first story I did enjoy the rest of teh book and like all his work it seemd well researched. There were lots of repeated themes and patterns through the stories which reminded me of some his future shocks (short 4 - 5 page strips in 2000ad) and to a certain extent the book came across as an exercise in writing, I have the feeling he wanted to push himself to prove he could do it. I did enjoy it and would have loved to have know Northampton more as he did a wonderful job in making the place and it's growth an intgral part of teh collection. I thinks fans of Moore and would enjoy it and it doesn't have to be read linearly.
Middlemarch by George Eliot
Took a while to get the beat of the book, but once done so have been flying along and hope to be done soon. I'm not sure what to make of it, it seems to be more of a look into provincial life in the 1830's (it was published in the 1870's? I think) and the chracters are quite believable but to a certain extent 'flat' in that they're not satirical like some of Dicken's characters or there's no melodrama i.e. Hardy. I'm curious to see how it ends and what happens to the good people of Middlemarch
The argument and ideas within it are very well spaced and expressed, it started with an idea of what a shock is and how to enforce one to an individual (and included links to CIA interrogation manuals, just have a wiki or google for Kubark and see where you end up.)
The book then progresses to explain how economic shock theory was praticed in reality starting with Chile and other southern American countries in the 1970's, progressing through to Britain in the 1980's, stopping of by China, Poland, USSR / Russia and finishing off in Iraq. I found it more informative then the Chomsky book I read earlier in the year as it was more incisive, though as teh Chomsky was a series of short essays and this a whole book that is to be understandable.
If you're of a left wing disposition I'd highly recomend reading 'The Shock Doctrine'. It just shocked me how people can do so much damage for money and then be have the front to say that they're doing the right thing.
I still want to follow it up with more economic theory and history as one thing I also realised when reading it is that certain phrases and words are bandied about so much that I only think I know what they mean, phrases such as free market etc.
Naomi Klein seems to be of similar economic vein as Keynes and Galbraith and opposing Friedman and the Chicago School, all of which I'd like to look into more, partly as said before to get a grasp of the history and also to see the other side of the argument.
Voice of the Fire, by Alan Moore
I saw this on my library shelf and was intrigued, I'm a fan of Alan's comics and having grown up on 2000ad in the 80's am also aware of work of his that hasn't made it into film, stories such as Halo Jones, Skizz, D.R. and Quinch etc. So having an opportunity to read some of his prose was too good to miss.
The premise of the book is a collection of stories centred on his home town of Northampton, it starts in about 4000 B.C. and ends with himself just finishing the novel. The first story was incredibly hard to read as it's written in first person narrative and from a cave man point of view so the use of language although limited is hard to penetrate, which made me think about the use of language itself, if there's fewer words and less vocabulary why is it harder to read and understand?
Once I'd finally broken through the first story I did enjoy the rest of teh book and like all his work it seemd well researched. There were lots of repeated themes and patterns through the stories which reminded me of some his future shocks (short 4 - 5 page strips in 2000ad) and to a certain extent the book came across as an exercise in writing, I have the feeling he wanted to push himself to prove he could do it. I did enjoy it and would have loved to have know Northampton more as he did a wonderful job in making the place and it's growth an intgral part of teh collection. I thinks fans of Moore and would enjoy it and it doesn't have to be read linearly.
Middlemarch by George Eliot
Took a while to get the beat of the book, but once done so have been flying along and hope to be done soon. I'm not sure what to make of it, it seems to be more of a look into provincial life in the 1830's (it was published in the 1870's? I think) and the chracters are quite believable but to a certain extent 'flat' in that they're not satirical like some of Dicken's characters or there's no melodrama i.e. Hardy. I'm curious to see how it ends and what happens to the good people of Middlemarch