Reading suggestions

[queenofknives]

We're going to start by reading The Coddling of the American Mind. All welcome.

Other current suggestions include:
Cynical Theories, by James Lindsay and Helen Joyce
The Intellectual Life of the British Working Classes, by Jonathan Rose
On Liberty, by JS Mill
Why You Should Read the Classics, by Italo Calvino
The Madness of Crowds, by Douglas Murray

Add your suggested reads below.

As well as books, we could also listen to related podcasts and discuss them, if anyone wants to recommend any.

Some suggestions of feminist writers on this topic:

One Dimensional Woman by Nina Power
Kill All Normies by Angel Nagle
Pornland by Gail Dines
The Whole Woman, Germaine Greer (older but pertinent)

I was just looking at the Whole Woman last night and thinking of ordering it. I might get book on women and ageing as well.

The Righteous Mind by Haidt?
The Change by Germaine Greer?

That is the one! The Change.

I'm personally not massively interested in reading feminist theory but wouldn't mind reading Irreversible Damage or The End of Gender. I'm quite keen to read contemporary books that are analysing where we're at now. But I guess people will join the discussions on the books they're most interested in. There's no reason why we can't have more than one book discussion going at a time either.

The books I suggested are analysing where we're at now. They are just by feminists. It's ok to not be interested in feminists but I do find this an odd place to hold your book club in that case. I don't want to start a fight or anything but I must say it seems a bit odd to do a feminist book club if you only want to read books by men and no feminist theory.

*mainly, not only.

It's not my book club, and I'm not responsible for what gets picked. I'm just expressing my own interests. Every book noted here is on the list. I might tentatively suggest that if there's a lot of people wanting to focus on feminist theory rather than the suggestions generated by previous discussion, that they start a separate discussion so everyone gets to talk about what they want, or people can join in two discussions.

There's definitely room for everyone! My idea is to make more room, not to cut anyone/anything out. I'm sure it can work however people want to do it.

By discussion, I mean book club thread. E.g. if there are few people interested in discussing The Whole Woman, it might be good to start a thread for that rather than wait for it to come around after the Haidt discussion.

If a number of people want to read a particular book, it would be great if they set it up and did a thread about that book. After all, there hasn’t been a book club on here for years.

Queen of Knives’ list has come from a thread where a group of us were interested in talking about why people are struggling to think, debate, communicate and understand the world. So there’s a group of posters who want to look at some books on that topic as a starting point. That came about on the feminist board because the feminist board is pretty good at letting people from disparate perspectives talk to each other.

I would read the Whole Woman in a few weeks time if someone wants to start up a thread on the topic, because I’m happy to read more than one book.

But I’d assume that the people reading the Coddling of the American Mind will go on to read whatever book follows on from our shared interests after reading that, because we want to keep having that kind of discussion.

Sorry that was a bit convoluted!

I wrote all that and still don’t think it is clear! What I mean is, the group reading Coddling are probably going to move on to reading Cynical Theories or similar.

So if lots of other people want to read Greer, maybe have another group? There’s no need to wait.

Like I said -- the other books I suggested were actually on your topic.

They are just by women.

Anyway, never mind.

The books on the original list at the top are mostly not contemporary (apart from Cynical Theories and The Madness of Crowds) - not necessarily a bad thing, of course.

@lojoko

Like I said -- the other books I suggested were actually on your topic.

They are just by women.

Anyway, never mind.

They're on the list! I've read The Whole Woman (though a while ago) and don't think it does really fit with the others on our theme, though definitely still worth talking about. The others you suggested I haven't read so I don't know. Anyway, they're all on the list so all up for discussion if people want to. I think it takes a bit of drumming up interest, so if you've read them, might be worth saying a bit about them to inspire others or to show how they are relevant to the themes we've been wanting to look at.

The feminist bookclub has been quite neglected so rather than trying to fit all topics and themes into one thread, my suggestion would be to diversify and open other book threads as soon as you've got a few people interested in a particular book. I'm sure some people will want to join more than one thread, as well.

@Stripesgalore

I wrote all that and still don’t think it is clear! What I mean is, the group reading Coddling are probably going to move on to reading Cynical Theories or similar.

So if lots of other people want to read Greer, maybe have another group? There’s no need to wait.

That's how I was thinking about it - seems like a great idea to get more than one book discussion off the ground.

Adding this podcast to the suggestions.

Not a book or podcast, but I would be interested in discussing one or both of the following articles if anyone else would like to do so:

unherd.com/2021/01/thank-god-for-liberalism/

unherd.com/2020/08/the-end-of-secularism-is-nigh/

They are both very interesting and given me a lot to think about. I am very much in the secular school of thought, and deeply value the liberal notion of all human beings being equal, we are individuals first etc. As explained in the articles these are very unique and strange ideas.

I am seeing the gradual demise of secularist, liberal values within Western countries as well as elsewhere. I am in my late thirties and I sometimes wonder how the world will be 20-30 years from now.

From a women's rights perspective, many of the successes gained on an international level depended on this universalist, liberal approach. If secularism is slowly being discarded, will we see women's rights diminish worldwide as each country moves towards its own version of human rights? Didn't China, Russia and Pakistan recently become part of the UN Human Rights Council? I think China and Russia have already been part of the Council since 2016. It's..... Mind blowing...

Sorry I'm feeling pensive and rambling.

Let me know if anyone is interested and I'll create a thread.

I'm also up for reading Irreversible Damage.