Results for “best fiction” 291 found
Assorted links
1. The favorite books of fifty famous people, though not Ben Affleck.
2. Hong Kong people.
3. Peter Thiel on creativity. And Virginia Postrel on Peter Thiel.
4. Do kids need simplified non-fiction?
5. Captive orcas speak dolphin.
6. It works best if all jurisdictions depenalize marijuana use (pdf), JPE gated version here.
Assorted links
1. Why is the college wage premium robust?
2. John Gray on the “rackety life” of Michael Oakeshott.
3. Seven reasons not to write novels and only one reason to write them, by Javier Marias. Does this apply to non-fiction books as well?
4. Interview with William Vollmann.
5. Finding the most beautiful route across a city.
6. Guardian list of best books of 2014 (not my list).
*Massacre in Malaya*
The author is Christopher Hale and the subtitle is the rather misleading Exposing Britain’s My Lai.
The first fifth of this book is in fact the best short early economic history of Malaysia and Singapore I know, even though the focus of the book as a whole is on one colonial event, namely the 1948 Batang Kali massacre during the post-war Malayan Emergency. The next section is a superb treatment of the Japanese occupation and the political issues leading up to that occupation. This book reflects a common principle, namely that often, to learn a topic, you should read a book on an adjacent but related topic, rather than pursue your preferred topic directly. The book on the adjacent topic often will take less background knowledge for granted and explain the context more clearly for what you actually wish to learn, while getting you interested in other topics along the way.
Just about every page of this book has useful and interesting information, here is one new word I learned:
The history of the ‘Malay World’ in the centuries before the momentous fall of Malacca to the Portuguese in 1511 is predominantly a convoluted narrative of maritime statelets, technically thalassocracies.
This one will make my best non-fiction of the year list.
Assorted links
What I’ve been reading
1. The Great Mirror of Folly: Finance, Culture, and the Crash of 1720, edited by William N. Goetzmann, Catherine Labio, K. Geert Rouwenhorst, and Timothy G. Young, with a foreword by Robert J. Shiller. A beautiful full-size book with amazing plates as well as text. Think of this as a book about a book, focusing on a Dutch publication around the time of the bubble called The Great Mirror of Folly, “a unique and splendid record of the financial crisis and its cultural dimensions.” Recommended to anyone with an interest in the economic history of bubbles.
2. Catherine Hall, Macaulay and Son: Architects of Imperial Britain. An engaging and well written book about Thomas Macaulay’s father Zachary and then Thomas himself, focusing on themes of slavery, cosmopolitanism, liberalism, and empire, not to mention the education of children. A good read on why some strands of liberalism hit such a dead end when confronted with the realities of the British empire.
3. Iain MacDaniel, Adam Ferguson in the Scottish Enlightenment: The Roman Past and Europe’s Future. A clear and conceptually argued account of Ferguson’s thought, which will convince you he is not the lightweight of the Scottish Enlightenment. Starting with a comparison with Montesquieu, MacDaniel emphasizes Ferguson as a critic of the idea of progress and a historical pessimist, focusing on issues of war and martial virtue. This book is also useful for understanding the subtleties of Smith on the ancients vs. the moderns and why he was more sanguine about Britain than about the Romans (no slavery, for one thing).
4. John Eliot Gardiner, Bach: Music in the Castle of Heaven. One of the world’s greatest Bach conductors is also one of the greatest Bach writers, with an emphasis on the vocal music and also what we know about Bach’s life. Especially noteworthy is the lengthy case for the John Passion and the discussion of the B Minor Mass. Definitely worthy of the “best books of the year” list and perhaps in the top tier too. I’m not going to liberate this volume, I am going to keep it.
Assorted links
1. How kids rate and review Pixar movies, and Steven Pinker’s desert island discs.
2. A short essay on measurement and its consequences.
3. Kenneth Minogue has passed away.
4. The political culture that is Sweden (Sörmland).
6. Greg Mankiw on Jason Furman.
7. Kurt Schuler’s monetary economics reading list.
8. What are the best pens of all time? (speculative)
Whose entire body of work is worth reading?
I’d be curious to see Tyler’s “completist” list. In other words, authors whose entire body of work merits reading. If this does get a response, I’m most interested in seeing the list begin with literature.
I’ll repeat my earlier mention of Geza Vermes. And to make the exercise meaningful, let’s rule out people who wrote one or two excellent books and then stopped. Adam Smith is too easy a pick. I won’t start with literature, however, but here are some choices:
1. Fernand Braudel.
2. George Orwell. Plato. Nietzsche and Kierkegaard. Hume. William James.
3. Franz Kafka, he died young.
4. T.J. Clark, historian of art and European thought.
5. J.C. D. Clark, the British historian.
Let’s stop here and take stock. Many historians will make the list, because if they are good they will find it difficult to produce crap. Without research, they cannot put pen to paper, and with research a careful, thoughtful historian is likely to be interesting. With thought you could come up with a few hundred historians who were consistently interesting and never wrote a bad book. Then you have a few extreme geniuses, and J.S. Mill might make the list if not for System of Logic, which by the way Mill himself thought stood among his best works. Timon of Athens hurts Shakespeare but he also comes very close.
Do any producers of “ideas books” make this list? Other than those listed under #2 of course. And are there truly consistent (and excellent) authors of fiction, other than those with a small number of works? I’m not thinking of many. How about Virginia Woolf or John Milton or Jane Austen?
One also could make an “opposite” of this list, namely important authors whose works are mostly not worth reading, and you could start with Conan Doyle, H.G. Wells, and Aldous Huxley. The existence of Kindle makes it easier to discover who these people really are.
Thailand book bleg
From Chris Acree:
I’m planning a trip which will take me through Thailand, Cambodia, and Vietnam. I recently began selecting a few books about each country to read to cover the history, culture, or other interesting aspects of the area. In particular, my favorite books in this vein are Country Driving and China Airborne, both about China.
However, in searching, I’ve found Cambodia has plenty of literature (Cambodia’s Curse by Pulitzer winner Joel Brinkley seems a good starting point), and Vietnam has at least a couple good books (I picked up Vietnam: Rising Dragon at your recommendation), whereas Thailand seems bereft of strong English-language histories or non-guide travel books. Amazon searches return almost exclusively books targeted towards sex tourists, and the Economist article here http://www.economist.com/node/16155881 is mostly over 10 years old. Kindle availability is also unavailable for most of their selections, which, while not a necessity for me, hints at books that aren’t aging well or being actively updated.
Has no reputable author written a great Thai travel book in the last 10 years? If not, why not? What books would you recommend on Thailand?
How about this biography of Bhumibol Adulyadej? Falcon of Siam is historical fiction of note. Thailand — Culture Smart! is good for browsing. You can read a variety of books on Jim Thompson, and speaking of Thompson this cookbook by David Thompson is a must. Uncle Boonmee Who Can Recall His Past Lives is one of the best movies ever made; watch these too, noting that Syndromes and a Century offers insight into the Thai health care system. I am not recommending use of such services, but perhaps the best of the books for sex tourists are interesting too? Siamese Soul is a good retro collection of Thai popular music from the 1960s through 1980s, hard on some ears but I like it.
Here is where Amazon sends you. Here is where Lonely Planet sends you. While you’re at it, why not read about Skyping with elephants in Thailand, in the service of science of course.
People, what else do you recommend?
What I’ve been reading
1. Gianni Toniolo (editor), The Oxford Handbook of The Italian Economy Since Unification. If you want a 742-page, $142.50 volume on the Italian economy, written by highly intelligent and well-informed experts, but with some repetition, this is indeed the place to go. And that was exactly what I wanted.
2. Michael Suk-Young Chwe, Jane Austen, Game Theorist. I remain a Chwe fan, even though I appreciate Jane Austen less than do most other readers of intelligent fiction.
3. Toni Strubell, editor, What Catalans Want: Could Catalonia be Europe’s Next State? I loved this book. First, it is full of information about what Catalans want. Second, no one person is allowed to go on for too long. The book offers fascinating data — in the Hansonian manner — about “the logic of complaint,” namely what many people consider to be legitimate grievances and also about how people frame some of the emotional deficits in their public lives. The photos of the contributors reflect something common, though I can’t quite put my finger on it. I’m going to keep this one and reread many parts of it.
4. Willy Hendriks, Move First, Think Later: Sense and Nonsense in Improving Your Chess. To me, more interesting as behavioral economics and as epistemology than as a chess book. The author claims that most chess advice is bad, and that we figure out positional strategies only by trying concrete moves, not by applying general principles. You do need chess knowledge to profit from the book, but if you can manage it, it is one of the best books on how to think that I know.
5. Rebecca Miller, Jacob’s Folly. Finally a fiction book this year I am truly excited about, lots of fun but deep too. Here is a Bookslut interview with the author.
In the last week, the quality of my reading has been above average. I’ve also been enjoying the Feenstra and Taylor international trade text. This book is very well-written, as are the contributions of Krugman, but overall that field has some of the worst writing in all of economics and also many of the most pointless (yet still well-cited) theory pieces.
What I’ve been reading
1. Jonathan Sperber, Karl Marx: A Nineteenth Century Life. The title is apt. This is an excellent and very readable account of Marx’s life, although it strikes me as superficial on the ideas side.
2. Diane Wood Middlebrook, Anne Sexton: A Biography. I hadn’t known that Sexton once threw her toddler daughter against the wall in a fit of anger. A lot of people still found her fun to hang around with.
3. Diane J Bleyer, A Mother’s Right. A science fiction story based on premises of population decline, highly volatile weather, illegal abortion, and a stolen unborn child.
4. David E. Nye, America’s Assembly Line. A very good history, economic and otherwise, of precisely what the title purports to offer and kudos on the absence of a subtitle.
5. Christopher A. Whatley, Scottish Society, 1707-1830, Beyond Jacobitism, Toward Industrialisation. I am often asked what is a good introduction to the time and writings of Adam Smith. Such a book is oddly hard to come by but this is one of the best candidates.
My favorite things China
1. Novel: Soul Mountain, by Gao Xingjian. Parts of Dream of the Red Chamber are splendid, but it is hard to keep track of the whole thing and also I wonder whether any of the available editions in English are satisfactory.
2. Movie: The Story of Qiu Ju. A real charmer.
3. Comedian: Jackie Chan.
4. Movie, set in, but not a Chinese movie: How about Transsiberian? Shanghai Noon? Are any of those old movies set in China any good?
5. Book, non-fiction: James Fallows, China Airborne. I am also a fan of the book where the guy drives a car around China. The Private Life of Chairman Mao is a stunner, maybe the best book I know on tyranny.
6. Book, set in, fiction (not by Chinese author): Edgar Snow, Red Star Over China. Pearl Buck I find boring.
7. Sculpture: Tang horses, some images are here.
8. Contemporary Chinese artist: Cai Guo-Qiang, images here. His one man show at the Guggenheim is one of the best exhibitions I’ve ever seen. Try this video, apologies for the ad at the beginning.
9. Chinese traditional music: I am interested in Chinese opera, but don’t quite feel I’ve heard the real thing. I once heard an electrified performance, but my sense is the music is all about the timbre and needs to be heard in an nowadays-almost-impossible-to-achieve setting, given that I am not a 17th century Chinese noble. Any advice? By the way, here is a good article on recent developments in Chinese (semi-classical) music.
10. Cookbooks: Fuchsia Dunlop’s two Chinese cookbooks are not only two of the best cookbooks ever they are two of the best books ever.
11. Best book about Chinese fiction: Sabina Knight, Chinese Literature: A Very Short Introduction. This short book is a marvel of economy, substance, and style.
12. Pianist: Yundi Li, try this video of Chopin’s 2nd Scherzo.
13. Architect: I.M. Pei. We have friends who live in a Pei-designed house, and it is splendid.
14. Movie director: John Woo was born in China. The Killer might be his best movie, but Once a Thief is arguably the most underrated. WindTalkers is quite good too and also underrated.
I am not counting either Hong Kong or Taiwan for these categories. I also am not counting American-born, ethnic Chinese, such as Maya Lin. And J.G. Ballard was born in Shanghai, but what category do I put him in?
What views can you hold about Spain?
Choose A or B:
A: Spain is in a recession, which will end. For instance, this story reports: “The OECD on Tuesday predicted more pain for Spain over the next two years when the economy will remain mired in recession with a quarter of the population out of work.”
B: Spain is in a self-cannibalizing downward spiral, as Greece was and is. It will not end until there is, at the bottom, an absolute and total crash.
I choose B, noting that I wrote most of this post a few days ago and already A does not appear to be a serious answer. You add up the required deleveraging, the provincial debts, the shaky state of the banks, the shaky accounting at the banks, the productivity problems, the European-wide political uncertainty, self-defeating fiscal adjustments, the broken real estate lending technology, once-again spiraling yields, broader deflationary pressures, unsatisfactory ngdp performance, the drying up of credit for small and mid-size businesses, disappearance of quality collateral, and the de-europeanisation of the capital markets, and you have B. Oops, I forget to mention the massive proliferation of have-to-pay-them-back-first governmental senior debt claims; why wait in that line?
The fact that you are not used to seeing the credit institutions of an advanced economy unravel before your eyes — “going entropic” — should not blind you to this reality. Nothing new bad has to happen for Spain simply to go “pop,” rather the ticking of the clock will suffice.
Note that a sufficiently large bailout plan, starting with debt forgiveness and reflation, could convert B to A, but right now we are in B.
If you chose A, you think life will be (relatively) easy. I have spoken with numerous intelligent Europeans who believe in A, but because — in my view — they cannot grasp the terribleness of the alternatives, or the magnitude of the error of their previous attachment to the euro, not because they have strong macroeconomic arguments for pending recovery and capital market survival.
If you chose B, there are three more options:
B1: It is a political economy problem. If the Spanish could simply institute the right policies, whatever that might mean, they could convert the destructive spiral into a mere recession.
B2: It is fundamentally a problem of aggregate demand and credit contraction. Without a European-level major bailout and stimulus, Spain will go splat. Yet sufficient stimulus could bring Spain back to its PPF frontier relatively easily.
B3: There is a major problem of aggregate demand and credit contraction, and a political economy problem, and this is paired with multiple equilibria. Investors are judging whether Spain is still a major European economic force, as they had thought for a while, but perhaps had not thought back in 1963. The equilibrium which obtains will depend upon the Spanish response to the crisis, but the best bet is to expect Spain to revert to something, in economic terms, resembling 1999 + Facebook. The institutional quality and level of trust in Spain will receive a semi-permanent downgrade, most of all in the eyes of Spaniards, and it will look very much like an output gap but will not be remediable through traditional macro remedies.
The real euro pessimists are the multiple equilibria people.
Germany and Austria also have multiple equilibria, but those equilibria are not so far apart. For Greece the multiple equilibria are extreme — “Balkans nation,” or “European nation”? Or should I say were extreme?; probably we are down to one of those options at this point.
For Spain, if a truly major bailout does not arrive, the roller coaster ride down will be extreme and terrifying. But still, we must put this in perspective. I was in Spain in 1999 and it was very nice, the large fiction sections of the bookstores most of all, the Basque restaurants too.
I am arriving in Madrid as you read this, perhaps I will have more to say.
The economics of Robert Caro
The two Bobs, Gottlieb and Caro, have an odd editorial relationship, almost as contentious as it is mutually admiring. They still debate, for example, or pretend to, how many words Gottlieb cut from “The Power Broker.” It was 350,000 — or the equivalent of two or three full-size books — and Caro still regrets nearly every one. “There were things cut out of ‘The Power Broker’ that should not have been cut out,” he said to me sadly one day, showing me his personal copy of the book, dog-eared and broken-backed, filled with underlining and corrections written in between the lines. Caro is a little like Balzac, who kept fussing over his books even after they were published.
Can they not publish a “Director’s Cut” eBook? The Power Broker, by the way, is in my view one of the best non-fiction books ever, so read it if you don’t already know it.
The article, from the NYT Sunday Magazine, is interesting throughout. Note I have provided the “Single Page” link, I believe this helps you get through your quota of ten clicks at less expense.
*A Naked Singularity*
Contemporary American fiction faces an ongoing problem of what to write about. Yuppie life in Brooklyn doesn’t have the gravitas, suburban ennui is long since overdone, and so much of American life — mostly for the better — doesn’t face serious moral choices. Sergio de la Pava has solved this problem by writing about the American legal system, set in New York City and with a Colombian immigrant public defender. At first I was skeptical but at page 256 (out of 678) it is still getting better. It is likely to make my “best of the year” list. My five word summary would be “A more approachable William Gaddis.” You will note it is published by University of Chicago press and presumably it is “too serious” to have attracted a major trade contract. It’s not for everyone, but it’s living up to its billing as a sleeper under the radar. You can pre-order it here.
*Fairness and Freedom*
The author is David Hackett Fischer and the subtitle is A History of Two Open Societies: New Zealand and the United States. Excerpt:
They do not all climb mountains, play rugby, raise sheep, and consume large platters of Pavlova for dessert.
So far it is the best non-fiction book of the year, by a clear mark, I will read more of it soon.