Current Reading - Books best thread

[Sam]

Current Reading - Books best thread

I finished the al-Qa'ida book yesterday, and today I needed something paperback that I could take into the garden and sit in the sun with (a fair amount of my unread fiction is now in the form of nice Folio Society editions, which I'm buggered if I'm taking outdoors with me), so I grabbed my Spanish dictionary as well and am slowly working my way through Seis problemas para Don Isidro Parodi by H. Bustos Domecq, otherwise known as Jorge Luis Borges and Adolfo Bioy Casares. I've heard a lot about their collaborations, but never read any before - as far as I'm aware they've not been translated into English - and I'm enjoying this one, so far.

[Sam]

Current Reading - Books best thread

Since taking the Spanish dictionary which accompanies Borges onto the train and the tea room at work would be a bit too much effort (there's always someone who insists on starting a conversation even when you've got a book open in front of you in a tea room, isn't there?), I'm sticking with something in English during the week. To that end yesterday morning I started On Liberty by John Stuart Mill.

[Anton Gramscescu]

Current Reading - Books best thread

A few lately.

On my continuing quest to finish th sci fi works of Iain Banks, I read Inversions. Like most of his non-Culture novels, you can admire the crafting without actually finding the plot all that interesting. The Algebraist is probably the only one of those I've really enjoyed (and that only because it might as well have been a Culture novel).

Margaret Atwood's Payback. Meh. The first 30-odd pages were quite good and then it sorted of trailed off. The idea that debt (in a broad sense, not just a financial one) is inherently about narrative is an interesting one, but it doesn't really susteain one's interest enough to last through all the diversions about 19th century children's literature.

Then there was The Spirit Level" Why Equal Societies Almost Always Do Better, by Richard Wilkinson and Kate Pickett, which attracted a lot of attention in the UK (but almost none over here) when it was published about three months ago. The book is based on two premises: first, that when you look at a wide variety of outcomes (social, economic, educational, health, etc), countries which have greater equality of income have better average outcomes. And second, that not only are *average* outcomes better, but that outcomes are better across the board, meaning that even the rich have better outcomes when societies are more equal.

I could get social science-nitpicky about the first point...one of the frustrating things about the book is that it is built around a few dozen simple dispersion graphs with "income inequality" as the X-axis, but the manner in which this index is constructed is never explained. But I don't think they are barking up the wrong tree - the mass of evidence they provide is relatively convincing.

But two things sort of stick in the craw. The first is that I think they sometimes get overly impressed about the results of scatterplots with only a couple of dozen observations (which are inherently a bit dodgy). In many cases, the Scandinavian countries are quite clearly tilting the regression line on their own - meaning that if you take Scandinavia out of the equation, the relationship between income inequality and whatever output they happen to be measuring often falls apart. And second, though they often prove correlation between inequality and whatever social income they happen to be looking at, their arguments in favour of *causation* are occasionally goofy. The graph showing the relationship betwen income inequality and the percentage of solid waste that gets recycled is an example where the relationship is so tenuous that you really start thinking that maybe the whole premise is fucked. ("Hmmm...so Norway recyles more than the US...is that because they have a more equal distribution of income? Or could it be that both income distribution and recycling are correlated to some *other*, non-observed factor like 'having sane campaign funding laws and not being governed by assholes most of the time'?")

(As an aside here - early in the book, they reproduce the graph - much discussed in policy circles - which purports to show that happiness and subjective well-being are only loosely related to income after income hits about $5000 US/year. I had never seen the graph before and I must admit I interpreted it somewhat differently; that there was no relationship whatsoever between happiness and income *below* $5000, and that above $5000 there was a relationship though not a very strong one. But perhaps the scale of the graph was the problem)

Anyways, on the second task - proving that the rich are better off in more equal societies - they fail utterly. They show a couple of graphs in health which look only at two countries at a time. They try the same shit in the education field, and frankly they are cherry-picking the data so badly it's nearly a hanging offense. I actually think they deliberately left out evidence that they thought was inconvenient to their thesis. (they keep referencing results from the OECD's Programme for International Student Assessment, but only refer to the data for four countries, when in fact the data is available for over twenty countries...and I know the results for a number of countries don't sustain the point they want to make).

And in much of the last third of the book, where they talk about how to get to an "ideal society", the authors are pretty clearly out of their depth. A decent 150 page book which unfortunately got strung out to 250 pages.

OK, that's probably more than you all wanted to know about that book. And possibly teh whole discussion belongs in world. But I'm too lazy to change it now.

[Anton Gramscescu]

Current Reading - Books best thread

Is nobody reading this summer or are my expositions of statistical chicanery just a nasty thread killer? No matter.

King John of Canada by Scott Gardner, is reasonably amusing if you're very familiar with Canadian politics and utterly pointless if you're not, so I'll move along quickly...

Disrupting Class, by Clayton Christensen (the business guru dude who penned the Innovator's Dilemma a few years ago) is an interesting look at the possibility of radically reshaping the delivery of primary and secondary education. Worth a read if you're interested in education just because there aren't really all that many books that take a truly radical view of the subject. But the author seems a little too taken with the Howard Gardner guff about different types of learning; he posits that eventually, with the aid of computer instruction, we'll be able to deliver more personalised learning based on personal "learning styles". Even Gardner isn't that sure that his types of knowledge actually translate into different learning styles. Let's just say we're a lot further from a radical break point than Christensen believes.

Politicians and the Slump, which apparently was Robert Skidelsky's PhD thesis 40 years ago, is really quite top-notch poltiical history, telling the story of the Labour government of 1929. Some of the parallels with New Labour are quite interesting. What is astonishing is how thin Ramsay Mac's cabinet was on talent, how much they relied on Snowden at the Treasury (who in economic terms was to the right of Churchill, effectively), how little theory they really had about how to operate in a capitalist economy, and how much more radical the Liberals were than Labour in the period 1929-1931. I had always been under the impression that the government broke up over the issue of the Gold Standard, but in fact it was on the issue of unemployent benefit that the cabinet effectively destroyed itself.

Cockroach by Montrealer Rawi Hage. His earlier book, DeNiro's Game, was excellent and so is this one. Probably given a little extra poignancy for me by the timeliness of the plotline's Iraninan connection and the fact that this book takes places in bits of Montreal I used to hang out in, and there's an excellent description of a bar I used to hang out in. Great stuff

Gang Leader for a Day is by sociologist Sudhir Venktash. If you read Freakonomics, you'll remember this guy - he's the one who spent his grad student years at U of Chicago hanging out in the projects with drug dealers and learning about the informal economy of the projects. This book is kind of a harrowing description of his years there. Unlike a lot of these books, the author's description of his own feelings and emotions does not come across as immensely self-serving: this guy is honest about his emotions and owns up to some dumb ethnographic mistakes he made while there. Anyone who enjoyed the Wire will enjoy this book.

I'm half reading about a half-dozen books at the mo, but my little femme furieuse's eatin' and sleepin' schedule is interferin' with my readin'.

[Lucia Lanigan]

Current Reading - Books best thread

Read Brave New World at the weekend and got halfway through Alain Robbe-Grillet's Jealousy. Both as good as their reputations suggest.

Not much of a post, there, but I'm a busy man.

[delicatemoth]

Current Reading - Books best thread

Thanks to recommendations on this board I am reading Roberto Bolano's The Savage Detectives, and greatly enjoying it.

[Sundeporino]

Current Reading - Books best thread

Just finished Manuel Vazquez Montalban's "An Olympic Death". Thats five of his Ive read now and not "liked" one. Why am I doing this to myself?.
Finished it on the tube so perused the "blurbs" for other novels. Daniel Chavarria's "Adios Muchaachos" looks like a good un....anyone read it?

[San Bernardhinault]

Current Reading - Books best thread

Currently reading Alexander Dumas' Three Musketeers for the first time. It's romping good storytelling, but there's a lot that grates, for me. I'm sure it's just of its time, but the description of peoples' character depending on where they come from is something I find hard to stomach.

Before that it was Aravind Adiga's The White Tiger which is also a really enjoyable read, but seemed remarkably shallow for a Booker winner.

[Caramac McCarthy]

Current Reading - Books best thread

Coming towards the end of Lolita, which is my first foray into Nabokov. I'm sure most of the people who post in the Books forum have already read it, but it truly is a fantastic piece of lively, poetic prose, and I am already salivating at the thought of getting stuck into a few more of old Vladimir's creations. Pale Fire and Ada or Ador seem to be the big ones - does anybody recommend an immediate detour towards something else in his estimable portfolio?

Might as well say hello too, seeing as it's my first post after months of lurking!

[Sam]

Current Reading - Books best thread

Welcome Caramac. Someone younger than me at last!

I'm still stuck on Mill by the way, AG. It's always the same thing when I read philosophy - it takes me pigging ages to get through it, however much I'm enjoying it (and God knows Mill isn't exactly difficult to gets one's head around either). What everyone else's excuse is I don't know.

[Anton Gramscescu]

Current Reading - Books best thread

There we go! I knew people hadn't stopped reading.

Welcome Caramac. Hope you stick around.

LLR, I'm a bit surprised that you were so "meh" on the White Tiger. I had that pegged as a kind of ultimate OTF book, what with the politics being more or less right and the depiction of people listening to Sting being cunts and all.

BC, have you tried any of Andrea Camilleri's books? They're better, I think, than Montalban (even though it's a bit confusing since Camilleri's main character is named Montalbano in the latter's honour). Well, actually, they're pretty similar, but Camilleri's are set in Sicily and so the gastronomic scenes are that much better and the characters that much rougher.

Sam, what possessed you to read Mill?

[San Bernardhinault]

Current Reading - Books best thread

Gramsci - I think my problems with The White Tiger were that the politics were just a bit too obvious. The targets felt easy and simple. And there's all the puff on the jacket about how this takes us into the seedy underbelly of India that we never read about, and I kind of get the feeling that every literary India novel I've read recently has been all seedy underbelly. The idea that everyone has a romanticised notion of India as mughal palaces and sugar sweets and the scent of spices is, I think, bollocks these days. Everyone knows it's crowded, smelly and has an immense underclass and huge poverty.

And, on top, I have a bit of a feeling that people award prizes to things about India (see Slumdog, Inheritance of Loss, White Tiger, etc) which wouldn't be close to deserving the prizes if they weren't about the oh-so-enchanting subcontinent. I'd like to say post-imperial guilt, but I don't think it's anything as intelligent as that. I suspect it's because Midnight's Children was good and people are still trying to jump on to the next similar bandwagon.

[Anton Gramscescu]

Current Reading - Books best thread

Mmm. See, I enjoyed it because I thought it was quite different from Q & A (the book slumdog was based on). Th latter was set in the slums but there was still that irritating enchantment thing going on, as in awwww, the romantic naif urchin won a bilion rupees through a weird set of coincidences...how sweet. Whereas in White Tiger the naif romantic urchin becomes, you know, a vicious killer.

[Lucia Lanigan]

Current Reading - Books best thread

Caramac, I'd recommend Nabokov's Collected Short Stories. They're all tremendous pieces of writing, and will give you a good whistle-stop tour through his career.

[Caramac McCarthy]

Current Reading - Books best thread

Thanks for the words of wisdom, Lucia. At the moment that kind of anthology seems to promise hours of pleasure.

[Renart]

Current Reading - Books best thread

Antonio Gramsci wrote:

LLR, I'm a bit surprised that you were so "meh" on the White Tiger. I had that pegged as a kind of ultimate OTF book, what with the politics being more or less right and the depiction of people listening to Sting being cunts and all.

Ha ha, they should put this on the back cover of the book! It's definitely intrigued me and I think I'll have to add White Tiger to the "to read" pile.

Right now I'm reading Infinite Jest after lugging it, unread, from city to city for the past ten years. It's good, though I'm only about a hundred pages in and having a little trouble keeping track of the characters.

I just read a short story in the new Harper's by Deb Olin Unferth called "Wait Till You See Me Dance," which I liked. She has a novel out called Vacation, so I'm going to seek it out next.

[Incandenza]

Current Reading - Books best thread

Yay! Stick with it, Renart!

[Anton Gramscescu]

Current Reading - Books best thread

Two more recently:

White Man's Burden by William Easterly. I should probably write more about this in the Dead aid thread. Easterly was a World Bank dude who wrote a book called The Elusive Quest for Growth about a decade ago in which he basically says no one really has any idea how to make development aid kickstart indigeneous economic growth (a position which got him booted from the WB). This book has a central point, which is that "the rich have markets, the poor have bureaucrats". Basically, foreign aid is just "planning", which doesn't historically have a very good history, and more to the point aid agencies aren't actually responsible for any specific outcomes in the countries theyhelp, which means basically there is no punishment for failure. Interesting and occasionally hysterically funny -though not as rigorous in its analytical style as Paul Collier's Wars, Guns and Votes.

Super-Cannes by JG Ballard. Great premise. Great plot. Disastrous last thirty pages. A real disappointment, because I was all keyed up for a great denouement and it was just kind of a squib, with one of the main characters kind of disappearing at the end for no good reason.

[mafu]

Current Reading - Books best thread

Caramac - i would also try Pnin, which is short but brilliant, but otherwise the two you mention are essential. Speak, Memory is great too.

[Kid A]

Current Reading - Books best thread

I read Super-Cannesa few years ago and remember enjoying it. Can't recall how it ended though, which is possibly a bad sign...

I finally finished Diary of a Nobody. I have no idea why this book is regarded as a comedy classic, it really isn't that funny. It will be despatched to my local charity shop post-haste.

Have started reading Marcus Trescothick's book, Coming Back To Me, which will be a surefire success as I love cricket and his style of play.

After that prob The White Tiger from my pile of unread books. I see a couple of people above have already read it, so interested to see how my experience compares.

[San Bernardhinault]

Current Reading - Books best thread

That, funnily, is exactly my recollection of Super-Cannes. I remember really enjoying it, but have no idea how it finished. I do remember thinking that it wasn't as complete as Cocaine Nights.

[Pants]

Current Reading - Books best thread

Me too on 'Super-Cannes'! I remember listening to the Radio 4 'book of the week' serialisation and being absolutely riveted...but have no memory at all how it ended.

Mind you, the last Ballard I read was 'Millennium People', which had a brilliant set-up, but fell completely and utterly flat halfway through, due to key characters being thinly sketched and totally unbelievable.

I've just started 'The White Tiger' too. I recently read 'Watchmen', which blew my head off. Is there a thread?

[Guest]

Current Reading - Books best thread

I'm reading (almost finished actually) Perdido Street Station by China Mieville, which I was recommended over on the Guardian Book site. It's a fantasy book, through and through, with a real commitment to fleshing out the way science and magic supposedly work in the world of the book.

It's also a really left-leaning book, and Mieville really tries to push the idea of a socialist underground newspaper in it (he used to sell the SW!). That's laudable, but it grates a little in terms of actual prose.

Anyway, it's really, very good actually.

Diary of a Nobody I actually found pretty funny, but I was deep into studying Victorian Literature at the time (4th year uni) and so I probably had an adjusted frame of referencee for the comedy.

If you're interested in the period at all, read New Grub Street by George Gissing, but not if you're prone to depression. A really, really bleak read.

[Third rate Leszno]

Current Reading - Books best thread

Really don't seem to find the time to read these days, but I was able to indulge myself during a recent jaunt across the planet to spend two weeks afloat round the Alaskan coast.

Finally got round to reading The Road - having previously loved the Border Trilogy I kind of knew what to expect, but this was much more gripping than any McCarthy I'd read before. Despite what I felt to be a fairly predictable climax, I was still left feeling that I'd read something exceptional, something that will stay with me for quite some time.

Followed that up with some light, trashy reading.

King Suckerman by George P.Pelecanos, which was bloody and enjoyable, although the setting (70s DC) and language did leave me wanting to call my fellow holidaymakers "sorry-assed mothafuckers" at times.

Fleshmarket Close by Ian Rankin. Previously been a bit snotty about Rankin as I tend to avoid anything on the bestseller list, but the bro-in-law gave me it, so it seemed churlish not to read it (and then leave it in the ships library). Actually quite well put together, rounded characters that I began to warm to, might check another one or two of his out (if I've got a long train journey and I don't want to be too challenged).

Finally, Always Outnumbered, Always Outgunned by Walter Mosley. Not dissimilar from Pelecanos but with an even more morally ambiguous lead character (he's done time for rape and murder). I was never gripped, and I felt some of the characters could have been better moulded - one or two of them just seemed to drop out of the book midway through too, with no explanation.

Next up, I have a choice between Netherland, Child 44 or In Siberia by Per Petterson - or possibly some soldiers tales from the Chechen war if I feel like non-fiction.

[Anton Gramscescu]

Current Reading - Books best thread

The comparison of Super-Cannes to Millennium People is apt - there's a point in the middle when you finally get what this particualr dystopia is about and you think: "cool. This Ballard dude has a seriously misanthropic view on humanity - can't wait to see how this turns out!" And then...

Netherland is worth the effort, in my opinion. A very nice little novel. Someone should buy a copy for Tubby.

Toro, you have been ignoring this thread too long. Come back.