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First Page A Day - 2024 11

2024 11 30    |    etc    no date    2024 +    2025    entries    home

01 As you can see, the TBR pile next to my comfy chair is rather ... robust. (The digital one is just as robust.) In order to help me wade through all this, I've decided to make a game of it. Every day in November (and maybe longer) I'm going to read the first page of a different unread book. The selection for November 1st, 2024: Manufacturing Consent (Edward Herman, Noam Chomsky) "This book centers in what we call a "propaganda model", an analytical framework that attempts to explain the performance of the U.S. media in terms of the basic institutional structures and relationships within which they operate."
02 A Million Miles Away - Tony Patterson "October 1984. "It was a stark and stormy night. Tony Mullins chuckled to himself as he walked across Upper Quad. It was only about 6:00 pm, but between the growing clouds and the end of Daylight Savings Time a couple of weeks early, it was already fully dark."
03 The Jakarta Method - Vincent Bevins "In May 1962, a young girl named Ing Giok Tan got on a rusty old boat in Jakarta, Indonesia. Her country, one of the largest in the world, had been pulled into the global battle between capitalism and communism, and her parents decided to flee the terrible consequences that conflict had wrought for families like hers."
04 The Sheik - E. M. Hull "Are you coming in to watch the dancing, Lady Conway?" "I most decidedly am not. I thoroughly disapprove of the expedition of which this dance is the inauguration."
05 On Palestine - Noam Chomsky, Ilan Pappe "How did you become an activist? Why Palestine? These are the types of questions many activists will be asked at one point or another when talking about their life, work, and motivation with a "non-activist" person."
06 Hopscotch - Julio Cortazar		Click image to read a first page scan.
07 Till Wrong Feels Right, Iggy Pop "These are the words that came to me. They came on foot, horseback, in an Eldorado, by motorcycle; staggering, gun to my head, gun in my belly, needle in my arm, joint in my mouth, pills in my bloodstream, but no matter how they got here, they did the fucking job. Here are prophecy, idiocy, an eye for detail and delusions of grandeur. Their burden is heavy, my brain hurts. But they are my pride and joy, and that is that."
08 Homelessness: How to End the National Crisis - Jack Layton "Like many people, the first thing I often say to a homeless person is "Are yo OK?" It's a rather stupid question because what homeless person is really OK!"
09 Let's Explore Diabetes With Owls - David Sedaris "Over the years I've met quite a few teenagers who participate in what is called "Forensics." It's basically a cross between speech and debate. Students take published short stories and essays, edit them down to a predetermined length, and recite them competitively."
10 Sadi of Shiraz - Sadi		Click image to read a first page scan.
11 Black Against Empire - Joshua Bloom, Waldo Martin Jr. "How do you fight white supremacy in the era of "color blindness?"
12 The Third Pillar - How markets and the state leave the community behind - Raghuran Rajan		Click image to read a first page scan.
13 The Vorrh - B. Catling "The hotel was ponderous, grand, and encrusted with gloom."
14 Light in Gaza - editors: Jehad Abusalim, Jenniver Bing, Mike Merryman-Lotze "Palestinians in Gaza are seldom given voice or asked to speak. Gaza is too often portrayed as a site of destruction or impoverishment. Yet it is so much more than that, as this collection of essays makes clear."
15 The Myth of Normal - Gabor Mate "In the most health-obsessed society ever, all is not well."
16 The Midnight Library - Matt Haig "Nineteen years before she decided to die, Nora Seed sat in the warmth of the small library at Hazeldene School in the town of Bedford. She sat at a low table staring at a chess board."
17 The Man in the High Castle - Philip K. Dick "For a week Mr. R. Childan had been anxiously watching the mail. But the valuable shipment from the Rocky Mountain States had not arrived."
18 Doppelganger - Naomi Klein "In my defense, it was never my intent to write this book. I did not have time. No one asked me to. And several people strongly cautioned it. Not now - not with the literal and figurative fires roiling the planet. And certainly not about this."
19 Not a Ake - Michael Keith		Click image to read a first page scan.
20 The Deficit Myth - Stephanie Kelton		Click image to read a first page scan.
21 The Black Book - Lawrence Durrell "The agon, then. It begins. Today there is a gale blowing up from the Levant. The morning came like a yellow fog along a roll of developing film."
22 Qur'an "Surah 1, Al Fatiah In the name of Allah, the Benificent, the Merciful Praise be to Allah, the Lord of the Worlds, The Benificent, the Merciful. Owner of the Day of Judgement. The (alone) we worship; Thee alone we ask for help. Show us the straight path, The path of those whom Thou hast favoured, Not (the path) of those who earn Thine anger nor of those who astray."
23 Object-Oriented Ontology - Graham Harman "In recent decades, few intellectual topics have captured the public imagination like the search for a so-called 'theory of everything' in physics."
24 The Brief Wonderful Life of Oscar Wao - Junot Diaz "They say it came first from Africa, carried in the screams of the enslaved; that it was the death bane of the Tanos, uttered just as one world perished and another began; that it was a demon drawn into Creation through the nightmare door that was cracked open in the Antilles."
25 Black Disability Politics - Sami Schalk		Click image to read a first page scan.
26 The Essential Avicena (Ibn Sina) - Ibn Sina		Click image to read a first page scan.
27 Freedom is a Constant Struggle - Angela Y. Davis		Click image to read a first page scan.
28 Chrysalis - Anuja Varghese "The first time lightning struck Bhupati's shrine to Goddess Lakshmi, it set her face on fire."
29 The Ministry of the Future - Kim Stanley Robinson "It was getting hotter."
30 Mutual Aid - Dean Spade "Mutual aid projects work to meet survival needs and build shared understanding about why people do not have what they need."