Ragtime EL Doctorow

I got off on the wrong foot with this book- the rich details about New York felt a bit too researched and I felt like the author was teaching me history... It riled the anti-didactic in me for some reason. By the end I forgave this more, I got a buzz from the final paragraphs as every question left hanging at the end of each chapter was answered rapidly and the family story came together with the rich and blacks and the socialists and the jews and the forces of history into a neat summary.

Summary is maybe part of the problem though - the section on Houdini felt like a summary of the thinking about the meaning of escapology and being Houdini I had read elsewhere. I thought Houdini is rich enough to warrant a book of his own, not a few short stories within this novel... And the crowbarring in of Franz Ferdinand and even Henry Ford was maybe a bit forced.

The language was quite stretched... when I think about it I can hear a lot of the final chapter lines like "whose breath up floated and was lost in the mist." ie lines that sound poetic, but Im not sure there were that many striking observations in there really. I didn't recognise a real artists eye.

The narrative of Coalhouse and the fight for justice over his motor car was really gripping. THis was my favourite element.

Maybe the most interesting thing about this book was that my dad gave it to me, and so part of what I thought of it was related to thinking that he liked it, and I wanted to know better than him!
As with parents in general, really I should appreciate the gift.
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Capital in the 21st Century - Thomas Piketty

This brick filled my holidays a bit more than it should have. Not wanting to talk to anyone I lay on the bed Mireille had as a teenager and read about the injustices inherent in capitalism that come about from the fact that the return on capital, particularly large amounts of capital, grows faster than the growth of the economy in general. Meaning the wealthy get wealthier and hold more and more of the wealth in society.

The breadth of the research was great and the writing clear, and it made me proud to understand the numbers of business which might be how I tie my accounting thing into a social justice job.
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When we were grown ups - Anne Tyler

I loved this book, about the Davitces, a big extended family in ... I can't even remember where... in a someplace USA small town, but big enough for race and class to play a part, and the widowed woman at the centre of the family in various ways. There are comments on the back about the unnoticeable elegance on the writing and I agree, the style is understated comic, the clarity of language reflects something more important - that Anne Tyler's heart is clear and with a worldview like Tove Jansson maybe, where there are social expectations and family symbolic gestures which are at once minor and deep. In bald terms the story is about a middle aged woman wondering what she has done with her life. The miscommunication within the family echoed with my situation when I read the book as I was surrounded by people not talking or talking across each other in mireille's family.

There was no mawkishness or reliance on misery here, there was an old man with alzheimers turning 100 who threw his party and a hint of new love at the end when Rebecca the central female character saw a man she might like better than both her dead husband and her remembered first love. All hopes were reasonable, the meaning given to events gave a weight to the lives that made me care about the characters, and that the characters lives could bear.