WHAT have you finished reading recently? The Day of Battle, a girthy history of the Anglo-American invasion of Sicily and Italy in World War 2.
WHAT are you reading now? Against the Machine, Paul Kingsnorth. I’m also looking through Starry Messenger, which I picked up a few months back but have yet to dive into.
This, then, is the Machine. It is not simply the sum total of various individual technologies we have cleverly managed to rustle up—cars, laptops, robot mowers and the rest. In fact, such ‘technics’, as Mumford calls them, are the product of the Machine, not its essence. The Machine is, rather, a tendency within us, made concrete by power and circumstance, which coalesces in a huge agglomeration of power, control and ambition. The Machine manifests today as an intersection of money power, state power and increasingly coercive and manipulative technologies, which constitute an ongoing war against roots and against limits. Its momentum is always forward, and it will not stop until it has conquered and transformed the world.
WHAT are you reading next? I’m trying to knock out my remaining Science Survey entries. Biology should be a doddle (historically, it’s one of the fields that monopolized my science reading and led to me CREATING the Survey to keep things more broad), but chemistry and cosmology are always harder.
Reading Freely 
I too tend to default to Biology… Its just SO easy to get into plus there’s a LOT of it about. I’m always on the look out for other scientific subjects though – especially subjects I know little to nothing about. Of course books on the HISTORY of Science helps to scratch *both* my itches!
True! I greatly enjoyed that Spangenburg and Moser series I read back in 2007 – 2009.
I read ‘Atom’ by Piers Bizony earlier in the year and recently ‘discovered’ that its part of a science series by that publisher. Hopefully I can pick up more of them from my Indie bookstore (where I picked up ‘Atom’) when I’m back there in November.
Looks like he’s done one on building one’s own spaceship!
I meant to listen to the live conference today, about Against the Machine, with Paul Kingsnorth. But it was technically so bad. Will try later, when they post the recording, which is supposed to be working better
I’ll be looking out for them!
Last #book I finished: Orwell’s Roses by #RebeccaSolnit
Amreading: Greek Lessons, by #HanKang
Amlistening to: Tout ce qui est sur terre doit périr, by #MichelBussi
TBR Reading next: The Hopkins Manuscript, by #RCSherriff
Will look forward to your thoughts on the Orwell collection!