Ramnath tells an history of decolonization from an anarchist perpective. Or anarchism from a decolonizationary perspective. Focussing on the history of liberation struggles in South Asia, Ramnath tells the stories of people who believed that liberation meant more than recreating Western-style nation states, and how their struggles resonate sometimes consciously sometimes not with anarchist ideas of liberation from multiple axes of oppression.

Interesting tale of a dystopian future told from the point of view of an artificial intelligence. Its kind of cheesey at points, but it made me feel compassion for a PC I was mending the other day. PDFs and that are available for free online at lifeartificial.com.

This was originally two books. Its like a sort of fucked-up retelling of Narnia. Journalist finds portal into another universe where she is an important member of the ruling class. Slightly silly, but extremely engrossing and great fun despite the unproblematic colonialist overtones of scheming later in the book, where entire world are considered as worthy of being "modernized" and "developed" into profitable industrial capitalist enterprise zones for the benefit of more advanced worlds.

Lanier’s analysis of the tendency of the web to concentrate power in the hands of a few monopol-ish gigantic corporations and thus demonetize the rest of society is spot on. His solution to the problem is not especially new; pervasive micropayments as a way of maintaining a "humanistic" capitalism[sic]. He has a tendency to overgeneralize and to set up straw men (conflating Marxism with Soviet communism for example) and he clearly writes for an American audience (treading on eggshells whenever any thing vaguely socialist sounding crops up). And of course I don’t agree with his vision of a desirable society of ubiquitous payments. Far better to bite the bullet, abolish work as we know it, only make stuff we need, look after each other and the planet and have a nice time while doing so.

I first read Aphra Behn (Oronooko) a long time ago. Behn was pretty amazing, a spy, global traveller and earning her living as an author in the seventeenth century. I’ve not really encountered much else by her, but she writes comedy a bit like some of the Shakespeare stuff. Which is to say not especially funny.