The Ten Best Books

• A not completely serious list of ten books you might want to read
• Add you own favorites and bump some of these down the list

1. Ursula K. Le Guin, The Dispossessed: An Ambiguous Utopia (Harper and Row, 1974). Everyone's favorite science fiction anarchist society. Full of fascinating detail (how do schools work) and conflict among anarchists.
2. Edward Abbey, The Fool's Progress: An Honest Novel (Avon Books, 1988). By the author of The Monkey Wrench Gang. This one's about the history of the USA from the point of view of a very incorrect rebel.
3. Elena Poniatowska, Tinisima (Farrar, Strauss & Giroux, 1996). A beautiful and realistic political novel from Mexico. Tells the story of photographer Tina Modotti and the inside scoop on the Communist Party.
4. Shane Mac Gowan and Victoria Mary Clarke, A Drink with Shane Mac Gowan (Grove Press, 2001). Singer of the Irish band The Pogues and original punk in London in honest conversations with his partner journalist Victoria Clarke. Talks about growing up in Ireland, punk, The Pogues, going crazy, literature and (surprisingly) the Tao and drawing mandalas.
5. Pierre Bourdieu and others, The Weight of the World: Social Suffering in Contemporary Society (Stanford University Press, 1999). In depth interviews with people in France and the USA about the effects of neoliberalism on their lives. Everybody from immigrant kids to the janitors who fix the broken windows.
6. George Orwell, Homage to Catalonia (Penguin Books, 1962). Originally published in 1938 the story about that Spanish Civil War that nobody wanted to hear. Stalin's Communist Party turns on Anarchists and Trotskyists. But the core of this book is Orwell's amazing experience on a sleepy front facing Franco's fascist army.
7. Assia Djebar, Fantasia: An Algerian Cavalcade (Heinemann, 1993). Algeria invaded by France, struggles for freedom. Told from a woman's point of view (in every second chapter).
8. Paul Bowles, The Spider's House Black Sparrow Press, 1955. A novel about the cultural differences between visiting Americans and the Muslim society of Morocco. An American couple seen through the eyes of a Muslim boy. Set at the time of Morocco's struggle for independence from France.
9. Paco Ignacio Taibo II, Just Passing Through (Cinco Puntos Press, 2000). A mysterious Spanish anarchist in Mexico. Told through police files, letters, fragments. Anything by this Mexican anarchist mystery writer is worth searching out.
10. Anonymous, Evasion (Crimethinc, 2001). No money? If you're not having fun you're not doing it right.

-- AnarchistU - 03 Feb 2006