August 2022 Reading List
Hey friends,
Here’s my long overdue reading list for last month. As I was travelling, I managed to read more books than I normally would. The mammoth biography about Clement Attlee took much longer than I thought it would to finish, as good as it was.
As this is late, I won’t waffle on, so here’s what I read during the month of August:
Uncanny and Improbable Events - The title of this book is perfect considering the topic. It’s a book from the Penguin Green Ideas and looks at the author’s experiences of climate change and how it’s impacted his life. It’s a short read but an interesting one. It’s an apt book today, as these uncanny and improbable events become more and more commonplace.
Citizen Clem - Clement Attlee headed up, arguably, the most reforming government in the history of the UK from 1945 to 1951. His Labour government dealt with the aftermath of the Second World war, set up the welfare state, the NHS and helped bring about NATO. I remember writing an essay when I was at university about how influential that government was. Reading this biography of Attlee brought it all back. The remarkable thing about Attlee is that he was constantly underestimated. There weren’t many people who thought he would be a good PM, yet he’s one of the in the past 100 years in my eyes. It often goes to show that appearances aren’t everything in politics, while substance is what matters. Given the leader of the Labour Party today, Keir Starmer suffers similar retorts, it might be worth reflecting on Attlee’s success.
The Most Dammed Country in the World - Another one from the Penguin Green Ideas series, which looks at China and its role in the climate crisis. I was astounded to read about just how many dams there are in China. The Three Gorges Dam being the most prominent but the scale of the building spree is hard to appreciate until you read this book. It’s a series of speeches and essays by the Chinese environmentalist Dai Qing, and tells you in no uncertain terms just how destructive China’s economic development has been since they opened to the world after the death of Mao.
After The Future - This is a pessimistic book by the Italian philosopher Franco Berardi, that suggests that the future is no more. That any future we might imagine has been consumed by a series of crises, catastrophes and the relentless march of the economic system (neoliberalism) we live in. It’s something I’ve been thinking about myself, and it is hard to imagine what the future will look like other than one of more crises and some attempts to mitigate this. After reading this, I was left thinking; where are the big ideas for the future? It’s hard to point to any, the one that came immediately to mind was Elon Musk’s desire to colonise Mars, which is a pipe dream at best right now. This isn’t the easiest book to read, but it will leave you thinking about it long after you’ve put it down.
I hope you get around to reading a few of these selections. Whether you read them in the next month or year, I’m not bothered. The idea of my reading lists is to encourage you, the reader, to read more.
If more of us read, and read books outside of our comfort zone, the world would be a better place. You don’t know what you don’t know. Reading is one of the best ways to fill in those gaps in your knowledge.
If you have any comments about the books, maybe you’ve read one before. Or if you have some recommendations for me, I’m all ears. I’d love to hear your thoughts!
Until next time,
Tom