What I’ve been reading

1. Lavinia Greenlaw, A Double Sorrow.  A deeply sad but very affecting poem, based loosely on Chaucer’s Troilus and Cressida.  Here is a useful review of the work, and unlike many poems it is very easy to read.

2. Gillen D’Arcy Wood, Tambora: The Eruption that Changed the World.  This 1815 volcanic eruption in Indonesia had a bigger impact on global history than you might think.  Be afraid, be very afraid.

3. Lillian Faderman, The Gay Revolution: The Story of the Struggle.  A good, readable, even-tempered treatment of what the title promises.  I learned a good deal about the 1940s and 50s most of all, recommended.  It is 816 pp. but never a drag.  I am surprised it is not being reviewed more prominently.

4. Andrew Wender Cohen, Contraband: Smuggling and the Birth of the American Century.  A good look at how America really ran its nineteenth century trade policies, full of good anecdotes and examples.

5. Peter Frankopan, The Silk Roads: A New History of the World, it is out already in the UK, which was my source.  My main objection to this book is the overselling in the subtitle.  It is a nice, readable account of Silk Road history and the importance of Eastern land transport for global economic history.  I liked it, but didn’t feel it revised my worldview in any big way or even tried to.  The material on the twentieth century struck me as too familiar.  Here is one useful review.

I read about thirty pages of the new Salman Rushdie.  While it was better than expected, I didn’t feel compelled to continue; it is odd to tell a rationalist story through magical realist means.  Hanya Yanagihara’s A Little Life is turning out to be one of the year’s sensations.  I’ve read about one hundred pages and seems to be of high quality but its themes don’t grab me (New York City, child abuse), and it is taking too long to become conceptual.  And for another recent novel on child abuse themes, don’t forget the new Rafael Yglesias.