Waiting for the Barbarians by J.M. Coetzee - Fictionalized account of a magistrate running a small border town on behalf of an empire trying to keep the "barbarians" on its border at bay. The 1st person narrative makes for an intimate account of the philosophical, emotional and psychological conflicts that he grapples with as a late-career colonial functionary disgusted with the state's program of torture and dehumanization. Really good.
The Problem with Work by Kathi Weeks - The jacket blurb: "In The Problem with Work, Kathi Weeks boldly challenges the presupposition that work, or waged labor, is inherently a social and political good. While progressive political movements, including the Marxist and feminist movements, have fought for equal pay, better work conditions, and the recognition of unpaid work as a valued form of labor, even they have tended to accept work as a naturalized or inevitable activity. Weeks argues that in taking work as a given, we have “depoliticized” it, or removed it from the realm of political critique. Employment is now largely privatized, and work-based activism in the United States has atrophied. We have accepted waged work as the primary mechanism for income distribution, as an ethical obligation, and as a means of defining ourselves and others as social and political subjects. Taking up Marxist and feminist critiques, Weeks proposes a postwork society that would allow people to be productive and creative rather than relentlessly bound to the employment relation."
Because, to quote Beavis and Butthead, "Work sucks!"
PCRD would love it ^^^