January is that month in the year when people make the highest number of promises they wont keep. “I will read more this year” is an all too familiar New Year’s resolution, so before you give up on it and settle into a cushy habit of binge-watching Netflix shows, here’s a list of 11 rebellious recommendations to get you going, so that at least you can’t use the “I didn’t really know where to start” excuse.
While these are interesting books in general this list has ulterior motives, other than getting you to adhere to that reading-oriented personal development goal. It is particularly geared at people with wealth and resources so that they may expand their outlooks on systemic injustice (especially the philanthropic sector), remove some blind-spots and whet their appetitive for social justice giving. Subheadings are pretty self-explanatory, so dive in wherever your fancy gets tickled:
The Code of Capital How the Law Creates Wealth and Inequality (2019)
This Land Is Our Land The Struggle for a New Commonwealth (2019)
Invisible Women Exposing Data Bias in a World Designed for Men (2019)
The Divide A Brief Guide to Global Inequality and Its Solutions (2017)
Winners Take All The Elite Charade of Changing the World (2018)
Decolonizing Wealth Indigenous Wisdom to Heal Divides and Restore Balance (2018)
Pleasure Activism The Politics of Feeling Good (2019)
Occult Features of Anarchism With Attention to the Conspiracy of Kings and the Conspiracy of the Peoples (2018)
The Triumph of Injustice How the Rich Dodge Taxes & How to Make Them Pay (2020)
The Dispossessed An Ambiguous Utopia (1974)
The Human Condition (1958)
“Action, as distinguished from fabrication, is never possible in isolation; to be isolated is to be deprived of the capacity to act” writes Arendt, somewhat prophetically for the pandemic era. For those who are privileged enough to have been afforded extra time in lockdown to stimulate their gray matter through reading, make sure your brain diet is a nutritious one, and feel free to share this list with anyone you know who is currently on a starvation diet. Also, try not to make Jeff Bezos even wealthier in your journey of self-development, so better avoid Amazon, and look for local alternatives depending on where you live and may you relish those rebellious reads.
