Book review: TVA Baby
by Terry Bisson ISBN: 978-1-60486-405-2 PP: 192 Publisher: PM Press, 2011 £13.99
Differentiating Bisson’s writing from his political work is hard. In his The Left Left Behind, Bisson states you can’t separate his politics from his writing (101). So maybe it’s normal that whenever I read Bisson, it’s always framed knowing he was involved with anti-imperialism and anti-racist work. I easily read and enjoy short stories like… Continue reading
Book Review: The Traffic Power Structure
by Planka.nu collective ISBN: 978-1-62963-153-0 PP: 96 Publisher: PM Press
This is one of my favorite PM Press books. Compact, loaded, an accessible theoretical dynamite exploding US conceptions of identity and liberty based on automobiles. There are lovely indications of how constructions of liberty and freedom, driving fast on the road, are actually complete systems of domination and control.
Authored by the Planka.nu collective and translated by Gabriel… Continue reading
Book Review: New Taboos
by John Shirley ISBN: 978-1-60486-761-9 PP: 128 Publisher: PM Press
John Shirley is one of the original “Dread Lords” of Cyberpunk who brought a new noir sensibility to science fiction and Fantasy in the ’90s.
The opening piece, “A State of Imprisonment,” sticks with you. It’s brutal without unnecessary graphic details, kind of like a strong female lead in a politicised, short version of “Prison Break.”
The powerful narrative… Continue reading
Book Review: On A Move: The Story of Mumia Abu-Jamal
by Terry Bisson ISBN: 978-0-87486-901-9 9780874869019 PP: 215 Publisher: Litmus Books £9.99
This is terse, efficient prose. There are emotionally evocative presentations of family, friends, suffering, pain, and resistance. There is also an effective visual balance with reading fonts, image reproduction, and chapter titles.
Once you start reading, the current in On a Move is so strong you probably won’t be able to put it down. I read this in… Continue reading
Book Review: The Wild Girls
by Ursula Le Guin ISBN: 978-1-60486-403-8 PP: 112 Publisher: PM Press £9.99
With an epic author like Le Guin, I couldn’t help but go straight to her interview with Bisson. It’s solid. The more interviews I read from Bisson in the Outspoken Author series, the more I want to read. Tangent: I hope he and PM Press put an anthology together, and that they include this interview with… Continue reading
Book Review: Antifascism, Sports, Sobriety
by Julius Deutsch, edited & translated by Gabriel Kuhn ISBN: 978-1-62963-154-7 PP: 128 Publisher: PM Press £11.99
This book is too short. All the content is of high and tight quality. Read Kuhn’s introduction and mini-bio of Deutsch and you’ll want to know much, much more about Red Vienna. It’s a crack incisive introduction to the vital, visceral intersectionality of anti-fascism, sports, and sobriety.
Kuhn’s volume offers a… Continue reading
Book Review: Marge Piercy’s My Life, My Body
Author: Marge Piercy Publisher: PM Press/Outspoken Authors ISBN: 978-1-62963-105-9 Pages: 128
This is a highly enjoyable collection of very readable “essays, poems, memoirs, reviews, rants, and railleries.” Mostly non-fiction, it’s strong and political throughout many of the works. I found it refreshing and energising without tedious polemic or finger pointing — the way good politicised critique ought to be.
Powerful: “Gentrification and Its Discontents.” offers a grounded experience and… Continue reading
Double book analysis: Peter Davison on George Orwell
In this review and analysis piece, Raymond S. Solomon discusses works by George Orwell and annotations by Peter Davison in two of the Orwell expert’s books, exploring the turbulent 1930s including issues around Palestine, the Spanish revolution, and the beating of Oswald Mosely’s British Union of Fascists.
BOOKS REVIEWED
- Davison, Peter (ed.) (2013) George Orwell: A Life In Letters, Selected and Annotated. New York, London. Liveright Publishing… Continue reading
Book Review: Donald Rooum’s Anarchist Wildcat Comics
PM Press, 2016 ISBN: 978-1-62963-127-1 PP: 128 Publisher: PM Press
As it should be, Rooum’s playful illustrations dominate this volume.
Anarchist Wildcat Comics has three parts. The first 40 or so pages are Rooum’s introduction and discussion of his personal history as an anarchist during the middle to late decades of 20th century Britain. Most of the writing centres around the 1960s and his role in exposing police frame-ups of… Continue reading
New guides to a smarter activism
Several new guides to help activists be safer, more effective (and just know your stuff) have been released recently, so below is a brief roundup:
Squatting (Britain)
The Advisory Service for Squatters’ new handbook, brought out over the weekend, which is the first new release since the government made squatting empty residential buildings illegal. The guide is already available from Freedom Bookshop (it will be more widely available soon)… Continue reading
