Virus

 Matt Sperlings exceedingly readable wealth and sex and Internet start up book

Misnamed virus as it was from a prepandemic vibe - when going viral was an internet thing. Bubble would have been a better title maybe as in dotcom bubble. Anyway, cool style, some snappyish dialogue, quite sexy sex, if all a bit Jeff Koons. The plot was about making money and somehow I did quite like Ned which was stretch given his attitudes, violence and generally slightly tory / ayn rand vibe.  Maybe it was challenging for me to read the line about it just being better to win. Maybe actually it was just a fun shiny romp about being a cool selfish person.  Not sure what knowing Matt did for it- certainly wasn't making him likeable. I am impressed he wrote it though

Doughnut Economics

 I love this book.  It made me feel confidently eco-socialist. I learnt things like that Adam Smith believed in community and that economic thought is distorting and stupid, especially considering the esteem it is held in. I unlearnt that the standard economic graph of growth going on eternally is reasonable.  The doughnut itself is the sweet spot target with an inner ring of human needs and an outer ring of ecological sustainability into which human progress must aim. I got a tiny bit bored at the end but finished my porridge. Not full of stylistic fireworks but definitely a recommended read. I was grateful to Jo for reminding me of it, and watched Kate Raworth the author in a reading of Dr Seuss The Lorax. A reminder of, among other things, how long we have known that appetite for infinite stuff on a finite planet doesn't work

Olive Ketteridge - Elizabeth Strout

This is a rare pleasure too. Discovering an author seems rare now. I love this book for its acuity and precision and clarity.

The story is of a tough cantankerous horrible in some ways old lady, and her relationship with her maybe slightly wet husband. I feel like their lives are made unbearable by their misfortunate choice to stop at a hospital so that Olive can take a pee, this is the turning point of the book. Olive and her husbane end up held at gunpoint by two addicts breaking into the pharmacy. In this frightening moment, exposed and afraid of being killed the two vocalise the hateful thoughts they had about each other, and this leaves a dark stain on their old, both tough but fragile hearts.

The truth can only be glimpsed in this book and each chapter is almost a short story often only incidentally about Olive - a picture builds of a small Maine town too, and the families and generations around Olive. The throwaway lines in one chapter are shocking because of what else we know (like when the pharmacy that was the whole focus of the Husbands live in chapter one is mentioned in passing to be a chain now) so the book does give us privileged view of a town, but that seems almost the easy bit in this story, the part I love is the insight into Olive herself.

I'm reading more Strout because of this book.

Sapiens - Noah Harari

I love a book that makes me feel learned and this is undergraduatey and accessible and skims over the issues of evolution and the gap in our knowledge that comes from seeing the monkey evolve into a cyclist or whatever on T-shirts. There were more than just Homo Sapiens, there were many and what happened to the others, and how the Homo Sapien went from the hunter gatherer, who sounds quite relaxed into the pressure of growing numbers, growing need for food, so then farming and finally capitalism... well it is all a nice fast paced big picture story and I liked it.

What I learned... was how recent the arrival in New Zealand was, and why the familiarity with landscape is such a pleasure. That led to the Old Ways, a couple of blogs down the line.

Sylvia Leonard Michaels

this is devastating and wonderful.

i come back to this a year later. It is a book full of violence and a sad marriage. The arguing couple. I can't remember now who is guilty and who is mad and violent. There are stressed people living in claustrophobic poverty and all the pain feels real and the author is sympathetic not superior.

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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