Required reading

[newrubylane]

Following on from the 1984 thread. I have noted a couple of other books were mentioned on there, which I plan to read. Does anyone have any other good recommendations on the topic - books or blogs etc?

Woman on the Edge of Time by Marge Piercy.

It’s not like 1984 but it’s a very interesting read. I read it in the late 90s and felt some of the dystopia bits were very near the knuckle.

J by Howard Jacobsen.

*Jacobson!

Invisible women

Wild Swans

Gives an insight to how a whole country is brainwashed during the Cultural Revolution. Lots of Parallels and similarities with the woke mob rule dynamics, whipping up resentment, and attacking people in the name of the righteous cause. Label someone as a ‘capitalist’, publically denounce, letters of confessions, the Little Red Guards, Book of Mao s thoughts...and extended twisted interpretations of these, destroying traditions and anything ‘ OLD’ that represented the old order....The irony is that we are so arrogant, we think these sorts of things only happen to other people. But to me, the divisive identity politics is just like the Cultural Revolution.

Connie Willis- some of her short, funny and well observed stories are very on point at the moment, particularly 'Ado' when you think about current speech and purity policing and 'Even the Queen' on biology and menstruation.

Plus The Doomsday book is very Corona topical

I have been advised to read
White Fragility
and
Women Race and Class.
Has anybody read these?

Robin de Angelo
Angela Davis ( authors)

Ah! I was going to ask for a recommendation for a Cultural Revolution suggestion and it looks like 'Wild Swans' is it.

I'll keep on banging the Solzhenitsyn drum and go with 'The Gulag Archipelago'.

The Dispossessed by Ursula K Le Guin

Every word Ursula LeGuin ever wrote.

White Fragility isn't worth anyone's time. DiAngelo is the L. Ron Hubbard of identity politics.

Brave New world would be a good choice, though.

Thanks goosefoot.
I had a feeling that might be the case.

@Freespeecher Yes. Alexander Solzynitsin. Good choice.

journals.sagepub.com/doi/pdf/10.1080/03064220408537357

Short essay Live Not by Lies

Yes I really do need to read The Gulag Archipelago.

I read Cancer Ward when I was 17. Then A Day in the Life of Ivan Denisovitch.
Made a lasting impression on me.
He was never allowed to collect his Pulitzer Prize. ( I think it was Pulitzer Prize).

Nobel Prize, not Pulitzer.

It wasn't that he wasn't allowed to collect it but he feared that if he went to Stockholm he would be denied re-entry to the USSR.

We by Yevgeny Zamyatin

Thanks Dido
I remember listening to a radio documentary about him years ago. I misremembered the details.

www.amazon.co.uk/Nothing-True-Everything-Possible-Adventures/dp/0571338526/ref=sr_1_1?dchild=1&crid=3KR6A9P6FARH5&keywords=nothing+is+true+and+everything+is+possible&sprefix=nothing+is+%2Caps%2C176&tag=mumsnetforu03-21&qid=1592755202&sr=8-1

absolutely essential reading

foreignpolicy.com/2018/04/09/putins-war-on-women/

Pomerantsev describes how in Russia advertisments for secretaries and other administrative jobs include the words "no complexes" which translates as "must be willing to provide sexual favours to your employer".

a little sample

books.google.co.uk/books?id=Nb8pDwAAQBAJ&pg=PT11&lpg=PT11&dq=golddigger+academy+Pomerantsev&source=bl&ots=RM-g18KQlH&sig=ACfU3U1T8BwLH8UTWx9gGBiGkpu9vcN8Iw&hl=en&sa=X&ved=2ahUKEwjivqyhqZPqAhUaUhUIHVLkBDgQ6AEwCXoECAoQAQ#v=onepage&q=golddigger%20academy%20Pomerantsev&f=false

@Freespeecher

Ah! I was going to ask for a recommendation for a Cultural Revolution suggestion and it looks like 'Wild Swans' is it.

I'll keep on banging the Solzhenitsyn drum and go with 'The Gulag Archipelago'.

The abridged or the unabridged edition?

sourdoughismyreligion

Abridged! It's taking me a while to work my way through it, not sure I'd ever finished the unabridged version. Well worth it though.