Category: Books

1. The Sacred Book of the Werewolf, by Victor Pelevin.  A fun Russian weird novel; here is a good review of it.  It’s one of the few works of fiction I’ve finished lately.

2. The Patron’s Payoff: Conspicuous Commissions in Italian Renaissance Art, by Jonathan K. Nelson and Richard J. Zeckhauser.  Put together a collaborating art historian, a first-rate microeconomist, an interest in signaling and a preface by A. Michael Spence and this is what you get.

3. White Heat: The Friendship Between Emily Dicksinson and Thomas Wentworth Higginson, by Brenda Wineapple.  Yes, this is a very good book.  But it has the same problem that most other Emily Dickinson books have.  Her poems are so short you can fit them into a narrative and they are so strong they tend to overwhelm any non-fiction context they are put in.

4. Geoffrey Heal, When Principles Pay:Corporate Social Responsibility and the Bottom Line.  The main point is that socially responsible behavior is often profitable for business in the long run.  I know that doesn’t sound like such a compelling message right now, but this is a highly intelligent and now a sadly neglected book.

5. Samuel Johnson: A Biography, by Peter Martin.  This is only the third best biography of Johnson (Walter Jackson Bate is #2) and it is still one of the best books of the year.  What does that say?

The subtitle is Warren Buffett and the Business of Life.  Is it massive?  Yes.  Does it contain numerous revelations about his childhood, his "slight obsession" with trains, his love of collecting, and his sex life?  Yes.  Is it well written and well researched?  Yes.  Does it cover many financial episodes (most of all Salomon Brothers) and famous characters?  Yes.  Is it number one on Amazon?  Yes.  Does it contain analytic depth?  No.  Did I like it?  Yes, but for a return which is mostly biographical in nature, it’s a lot of detail to wade through.

Part of this new policing mentality is that publishers are becoming more
  risk-averse – children’s book authors, for example, are being asked to sign
  contracts agreeing to ‘appropriate conduct’ in their private lives.

Here is much more, mostly a discussion of how digitalization is changing the literary world.

Here are a few reviews and a few more and more.  Here is the Amazon listing.  A partial read and a browse put me in (temporary?) agreement with this Amazon review:

The story, when it gets going, is exciting and relatively fast-paced
and all that. But it takes some 600-700 pages to get there, during
which time you are immersed in the world of Arbre and its native
culture. The first few pages are chock-full of in-world jargon à la A
Clockwork Orange, and it will be difficult to read. (Not to worry–
there is a glossary, and selections from the Arbran dictionary appear
throughout the text)…Anathem takes eight thousand years of
fictional history and makes it as relevant and meaningful as anything
from the Cycle.

In case you’ve been living under a rock, Cryptonomicon is the place to start.  It’s one of my favorite popular fictions from the last twenty years and you don’t even need to like "that sort of thing."

1. The Future of the Internet — and How to Stop It, by Jonathan Zittrain.  The main claim is that everything will be sterile, tethered appliances.  The opening up of the iPhone would seem to bely this message plus competition usually works in giving consumers what they want.  A smart book (that is rare for internet books, oddly) but I suspect it will prove to be wrong.

2. Paul Auster, Man in the Dark.  Reviews for this work have a bimodal distribution.  I like most of Auster’s books but I vote no.

3. The Gargoyle, by Andrew Davidson.  So far this is excellent junk reading.

4. Epilogue, by Anne Roiphe.  Ideally this book deserves its own post but it is difficult to excerpt.  It’s about why the author, now a widow, finds it hard to fall in love again.  Definitely recommended.

5. The Boy with Two Belly Buttons, by Stephen Dubner.  It’s a children’s book.  I haven’t read so many of these since Mr. Pines Paints a Purple House — my favorite as a tot — but to me it seemed very good.  Ages 4-8.

In Does Ethics Have a Chance in a World of Consumers? Bauman, a former communist, argues that we would be better off altogether if we could control our need for “stuff”.

The longer book review is of interest.  The longer book is not.  In other words, Bauman has helped me control my need for "stuff."

That’s Ryan Holiday’s query.  This is not about quality, this is about "representing a literary era" or perhaps just representing the era itself.  I’ll cite Bonfire of the Vanities and Fight Club as the obvious picks.  Loyal MR reader Jeff Ritze is thinking of Easton Ellis ("though not American Psycho").  How about you?  Dare I mention John Grisham’s The Firm as embodying the blockbuster trend of King, Steele, Clancy and others?  There’s always Harry Potter and graphic novels.

Upper-class pronunciations are all over the place.  The Cholmondeleys are pronounced the CHUM-leys.  The Earl of Harewood is the Earl of HAR-wood.  The Beaulieux are the BEW-leys.  In accordance with the convention that French words should be pronounced as far away from the actual French style as humanly possible, just to show those French people who’s boss, Beauchamp Place, a street in Knightsbridge, BEACH-um Place.  Jacques, in Shakespeare: JAKE-weeze.  Your valet is your VAL-let.  Madame Tussaud’s wax museum?  To some Brits it’s MA-dam TOO-sod’s).

That is from Sarah Lyall’s not fully analytical but often quite amusing The Anglo Files: A Field Guide to the British.

Here is a picture of Thomas Cholmondeley [CHUM-ley], and with this caption: "The trial has opened in Nairobi of an aristocrat
accused of murdering a black Kenyan man he suspected of poaching on his
family’s 100,000-acre estate."  The case, the second of its kind brought against Thomas, remains pending.  Here is more information.  Here is his girlfriend.

I want you to tell me.  It’s a book that doesn’t currently exist.  It is a work of non-fiction.  The author must be living.  It must be a work the author could plausibly write.  It doesn’t have to be a close cousin of a book the author has already written.

So you could request "Jared Diamond on sexual selection" but not "Joseph Stiglitz on the early history of Ghenghis Khan."

Do please tell us your pick.  Comments are open…

That’s the title of the forthcoming Jeff Madrick book.  "Don’t we already have big government?" was my first reaction.  This book is a good summary of one point of view, but if you’re already familiar with the basic arguments it won’t extend your understanding of the debates.  There’s not much on the public choice arguments (e.g., self-serving special interests and irrational and underinformed voters) against growing state power, only a general sense that we "should" do good things with government.  Nor is there much realization that Americans are skeptical about government, in large part, because of their daily experiences with it.  We’re also told that many of the proposed progressive measures will nearly pay for themselves.

Yana’s reaction was: "Why didn’t he publish it with a government press?"