Wednesday, September 16, 2009

Introducing The Notes Taken

To begin: The Notes Taken is a blog dedicated to the review of important books in philosophy, politics, history or fiction. We would like it to present an informal venue to discuss and debate recent, and sometimes not so recent, literature in these fields. I, like many of the other writers, have written reviews for academic journals, and are otherwise avid readers in many areas that do not fall into our ‘fields of expertise.’ But that doesn’t mean that we have no ability to think critically about what we read, and argue about which books, out of the many thousands published, deserve to be read. The reviews published in The Notes Taken, I imagine, will run from a few hundred words to much more extensive critiques, probably depending on reviewer. I had mulled the idea of this blog for some time, mainly due to what I think is the inadequacy of large, established reviews, to discuss many independent books, or books that do not fall in the mainstream of political opinion. The internet has transformed the way that people read the news, and report the news, and there is no reason that it should not transform the way we read books, or discuss books.


Coming Soon: My review of Paul Mason, Meltdown: The End of the Age of Greed. London: Verso, 2009.

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