5 Shiny Books with Pearson Bolt

Welcome to our new column: Lines of Flight! This is a space for folks to share books that have inspired them, changed them, radicalized them, etc. In some cases the books shared here are not people's most favourite books of all times, but rather 5 SHINY ones to talk about right now! And, there is always a caveat of: this list is in motion and is not exhaustive.

Below is our inaugural post by the always delightful Pearson Bolt, who some of you may know from their legendary podcast, Coffee With Comrades!

Joyful Reading!

“I rebel, therefore I exist.”

Greetings and salutations, friends and comrades. My name is Pearson Bolt. I am a writer, professor, and labor organizer and I live in the Midwestern region of the so-called U.S. in lands that belong to the Miami people. When I heard CAW were soliciting book recommendations, I jumped at the chance to throw my hat into the rink and offer you a few choice selections from our family’s library. If you read any of ’em, I hope they speak to you. To this day, they continue to sing to me. 

Slaughterhouse-Five by Kurt Vonnegut

We’ll start with an easy recommendation: my favorite novel, Slaughterhouse-Five by Kurt Vonnegut. Slaughterhouse-Five was something of a revelation when I first read it my senior year of high school—an unabashedly anti-war novel somehow mixed with a hilarious sci-fi romp. A novel with deep questions about human society, the cosmos, and death, Slaughterhouse-Five remains an enduring classic and one I’ve read and reread at least half-a-dozen times. 

The Rebel: An Essay on Man in Revolt by Albert Camus 

While I reckon many might point to The Myth of Sisyphus or Reflections on the Guillotine as Camus’s seminal work, I maintain that the best non-fiction the famed French philosopher ever penned was The Rebel: An Essay on Man in Revolt. I first discovered The Rebel reading through the liner notes for The Devil Wears Prada’s album Dead Throne and was immediately possessed by an intense desire to get my hands on a copy. When I finally did, The Rebel didn’t rewire my brain. Instead, it gave me language to articulate something I always knew but lacked the words to articulate, “I rebel, therefore I exist.”

Babel, or The Necessity of Violence: An Arcane History of the Oxford Translators’ Revolution by R.F. Kuang 

Babel is a book I wish I wrote. When my partner recommended it to me, I put off reading it for at least six months. What a waste! I should have grabbed ahold of a copy at once. Kuang somehow weaves together anticolonial and revolutionary themes into a dark academia-style novel that follows a magical, queer kid who finds himself swept up in a struggle that would bring an empire to its knees. A book you want to go into with as little foreknowledge as humanly possible. Weep through its climax. Carry its fire in your heart. 

A People’s History of the United States by Howard Zinn 

A classic. A People’s History of the United States is perhaps the single book that did the most to transform my understanding of settler-colonialism, genocide, chattel slavery, borders, and the innumerable harms visited upon the land I now call home. Yet, A People’s History of the United States is also an invitation to remember history from below and is filled with the stories of radical women, former slaves, indigenous resistance, labor organizing, and anarchism. Dense, but still approachable, the sort of book you want to read slowly and intentionally with the perfect cup of coffee.

The Dispossessed: An Ambiguous Utopia by Ursula K. Le Guin 

I would be remiss if I did not recommend The Dispossessed in this list. The mere thought of this novel is enough to get me choked up. This timeless saga of Shevek and his friends’ struggle to connect the cosmos remains one of the best fictional explorations of an anarchist society ever committed to ink. Not a single page of my weatherbeaten copy lacks a neon highlight or marginally scrawled annotation. If you haven’t read The Dispossessed, go to your local library, grab a copy, and lose yourself in its pages. I promise you won’t be disappointed.

the photos of books are by Pearson!