Welcome to the final reading list of the year!
For this final version of 2023, I’ve got a fun mix of fiction, Marxist theory, and psychology. I hope you enjoy. And, as always, let me know what you’re reading these days.
Margaret Atwood – The Testaments
OK, so yes, I’ve read this one before. I’ve probably even written about it before on this blog. No matter. I wanted to re-read before the new TV show premieres next year.
For anyone who doesn’t already know this story, it’s Atwood’s sequel to The Handmaid’s Tale. She sets it about a decade and a half after the original. The story follows Aunt Lydia and the two children of June, the handmaid central character of the book and main TV show.
As far as sequels go, it’s a solid story. Anyone who read the original book should revisit its characters and universe. It stands reasonably well on its own as a story, though I don’t think anyone should read it before the first book.
Suzanne Collins – The Ballad of Songbirds and Snakes
Here’s another book I’ve already read. But I re-read this prequel to The Hunger Games before watching the new movie.
And I think it’s a pretty decent book! For those who know the basic Hunger Games story, Collins challenges reader expectations in a way that, I think, plays well with sci-fi and its history.
What happens here? In short, a young Coriolanus Snow (the elderly, villainous President of Panem in the originals) struggles as a down on his luck bourgeois teen after the civil war between the Capitol and the Districts. And he meets a young woman from District 12 along the way.
What ensues? The story about how Snow turns from a basically decent young man into the Machiavellian figure we see in the originals.
Hal Draper – The ‘Dictatorship of the Proletariat’ from Marx to Lenin
Draper writes this book as a follow up to the much longer, three volume Karl Marx’s Theory of Revolution. He covers the use of the phrase “dictatorship in the proletariat” over the course of the decades from Marx and Engels through to the time of Lenin (and subsequent debates).
It’s very much worth a read. It’s a clear, well supported discussion of how a phrase drifts over time, serving the interests of different kinds of communist movements.
Draper’s basic thesis is that the term ‘dictatorship,’ in particular, gradually drifted from its Roman sense (an emergency form of government by one person) to a generic term for ‘rule by a proletariat majority’ (Marx and Engels) all the way to the minority authoritarian dictatorship advocated by Lenin.
I think the book serves, especially, as a useful corrective to both Lenin and contemporary critics of the left who saddle all leftists with Lenin’s authoritarian views.
Lane Moore – You Will Find Your People
So, this book continues my theme in recent months of reading books on making friends as an adult.
At least, sort of. Moore presents this book as a guide to making friends. But I’d call it more of a memoir. Moore tells lots of stories about her own friendships and the ways they’ve gone right and wrong. She has a wide variety of friendship experiences, so there are plenty of stories to go along with her various themes.
Moore provides some lessons and summaries, and at times I found those helpful. Some of the stories are also entertaining and worth a read. But, yeah, it’s really more of a memoir than a book about how to make friends. And while Moore’s friendship narrative has its moments, I found myself skimming a fair bit.
