Power to the people

The Independent has a nice feature today in which it lists a number of books whose popularity have risen as the economic downturn has taken its toll: “Socialist fiction, feminist theory, even Marxist tracts – thanks to the recession, the classic left-wing reads of yesteryear are back in vogue. But which titles really deliver power to the people?”

The paper offers an eclectic and international list with works by Marx, Engels, Rosa Luxemburg, Erich Maria Remarque, Mary Wollstonecraft, George Orwell, Franz Fanon and John Steinbeck.

Just for fun, I wonder which Irish books should be made compulsory reading to help us find our way out of our recession, to recast the national intellect into something more critical?

Here goes nothing: James Connolly and Labour in Irish History; Patrick Pearse’s Murder Machine and other essays; Ernie O’Malley and On Another Man’s Wounds; Peadar O’Donnell and Islanders; Hubert Butler and his essays in Independent Spirit; Bernadette Devlin and The Price of My Soul; Mark Patrick Hederman and The Haunted Inkwell; Seosamh Mac Grianna and Pádraic Ó Conaire agus Aistí Eile; Breandán Ó Doibhlin and his three collections of Aistí Critice agus Cultúir and Alan Titley and Chun Doirne.