Amy's Reviews > Revolution

Listening to this audiobook in the car was a bit like giving a ride to a hitchhiker at the end of his gap year, his rucksack all weighed down with philosophical tracts he'd read on the beach in Thailand and his eyes aglow with the kind of idealism that goes hand in hand with never having had a job or a mortgage.

I mean that in the nicest way, because unlike much of the commentariat, I like Russell Brand. He's a working class autodidact, which means in this book's particular context that his writing is sometimes overreaching and undisciplined. But it's also funny and smart, and often beautiful or even poetic in the manner of a young John Cooper Clarke (hence it lends itself very well to being read aloud, and he does a great job).

But also, and this is important, it is fun. He said at one point during my car journey "the revolution cannot be boring". I'm pretty apolitical--if you were to hand me a copy of Piketty I'd just end up using it to press my tofu. Revolution might be recycling the same ideas in a half-baked way. But at least it's a way in, and if we are ever going to affect change to this clusterf*ck of a global economy, an awful lot of people are going to need one.