Brilliant. This book took me some time to finish: many times I found myself re-reading sentences just because they were so clever and funny. I had several chuckles on each page, to the amusement of my family.
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The Night of All Souls – Philippa Swan
Several different narratives, two interwoven tales of deception and intrigue, and a few good tips on landscape architecture. Maybe overcooked in parts but overall a fun read.
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A Mathematician Plays the Market – John Allen Paulos
Back in the dot-com bubble of 20-odd years ago, WorldCom was one of the many companies that crashed and burned, taking investors’ money with it. John Allen Paulos was one of these investors, obsessively throwing good money after bad, long after the point when he should have cut and run. In this book he tries to explain why he succumbed to the madness of crowds like that, and in the process explains a lot about how the stock market works. He also discusses lots of interesting mathematical details, and also the benefits and pitfalls of various investment approaches.
Continue readingHuman Croquet – Kate Atkinson
This story has a dizzying start: it takes “begin at the beginning” to the extreme, and starts off at the Big Bang with an apparently omniscient narrator. Soon it settles down into a family saga where the narrative moves between a present and various times in the past. The characters are lively and well-drawn but mostly pretty stereotyped. And there is a good amount of mysterious goings-on and dramatic irony.
Continue readingAngrynomics – Lonergan and Blyth
People are always angry about something. These days they are either angry about vaccination, or angry about people who are angry about vaccination. But until recently, they were angry about things like worsening financial inequality, immigration, and lack of action on climate change. These things are affected by economic policies and events, and this book puts forth analyses and ideas to address some of the anger.
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Pond – Claire-Louise Bennett
Continue reading“I only wish you could just spend five minutes beneath my skin and feel what it’s like. Feel the savage swarming magic I feel.”
Aunt Julia and the Scriptwriter — Mario Vargas Llosa
Continue readingLa Habanera dances in the streets
And like every night
Pedro Comacho sells peanuts
Outside the Tropicana Club
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No One Is Talking About This — Patricia Lockwood
The first half of the book is dizzying — stupid — hilarious — it’s a series of seemingly random impressions, vignettes, observations and ideas of a narrator who is an Internet celebrity and is steeped in Internet culture.
Continue readingX + Y — Eugenia Cheng
It seems to me that the world is set up in such a way as to give men an unfair advantage. (Lucky me.) And not just because they are men — more because the world is set up so that certain kinds of behaviour are favoured, and those behaviours are more common in men than in women. There are behaviours that are thought of as typically masculine or feminine, but talking about them in those terms just reinforces the stereotypes that we should try to abolish. As soon as we say “men are like this”, someone else will reasonably say “not all men!” and we end up with an argument instead of progress.
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At the Existentialist Cafe — Susan Bakewell
This is an excellent and wide-ranging description of the genesis of existentialism. It includes descriptions of all the major figures you have heard of, like Sartre, de Beauvoir and Camus, and further back to the likes of Heidegger and Nietzsche and many many more. After reading this I feel I have a much better idea of these people as people, rather than abstract ideas or buzzwords. Although mostly, I would rather just know their ideas since it seems they weren’t all the nicest people. It’s interesting to read about the long and fraught relationships that (maybe) helped shape their thought.
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