Results for “best fiction” 318 found
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.
What I’ve been reading
1. Dave Prager, Delirious Delhi: Inside India’s Incredible Capital. An excellent book on India, an excellent book on a city, and an excellent book on Delhi, all rolled into one. Unlike many travel books, it tells you a lot about the city. Here is a short excerpt. I believe it does not yet have full availability in the United States; order it from the first link above, the author tells me that the current Amazon link is actually a fraud.
2. Katerina Clark, Moscow, The Fourth Rome: Stalinism, Cosmopolitanism, and the Evolution of Soviet Culture, 1931-1941. A detailed and insightful revisionist look at Soviet culture during that period, asking whether it really can all be boiled down to communism or if there was more behind it and it turns out there was.
3. David Roodman, Due Diligence: An Impertinent Inquiry into Microfinance. Puts microfinance into a broader historical perspective, balanced and insightful throughout, informationally dense, recommended. A good model for many other non-fiction books.
4. Michael Erard, Babel No More: The Search for the World’s Most Extraordinary Language Learners. A fun and useful book, you can take the subtitle literally. You need to ignore the very weak material on neurodevelopmental issues.
5. John Cowper Powys, Wolf Solent. Unlike George Steiner’s claim, this is not comparable to Tolstoy. Still, it is an excellent if uneven 1920s novel that ought to be read more widely. The best passages are frequent and striking. The bottom line is that I can imagine someday reading it again. If you are tempted, give it a try.
There is also the self-explanatory Emrys Westacott, The Virtues of Our Vices: A Modest Defense of Gossip, Rudeness, and Other Bad Habits.
Assorted links
1. Excellent fictional saga of a ZMP worker.
2. Model this, I call it the best and deepest game of hockey ever. Seriously.
3. Smallest frogs, tinier than a penny, newly discovered.
Are we stagnating aesthetically?
Some of you have been emailing, asking for my opinion of this recent Kurt Andersen Vanity Fair article. Here is the summary introductory paragraph:
For most of the last century, America’s cultural landscape—its fashion, art, music, design, entertainment—changed dramatically every 20 years or so. But these days, even as technological and scientific leaps have continued to revolutionize life, popular style has been stuck on repeat, consuming the past instead of creating the new.
There is plenty more at the link. A serious response would require a book or more, so let me offer a few conclusions, noting that it’s not possible in blog space to defend these judgments at any length. This is all about aesthetics, and it is distinct from the TGS technology argument, though one might believe that technical breakthroughs are needed to usher in aesthetic innovations, and that slowness in the one area would lead to slowness in the other. That’s not a claim I’ve ever made, but it’s worth considering even if it can’t be settled very easily. In any case, here’s my view of the evidence:
1. Movies: The Hollywood product has regressed, though one can cite advances in 3-D and CGI as innovations in the medium if not always the aesthetics. The foreign product is robust in quality, though European films are not nearly as innovative as during the 1960s and 70s. Still, I don’t see a slowdown in global cinema as a whole.
2. TV: We just finished a major upswing in quality for the best shows, though I fear it is over, as no-episode-stands-alone series no longer seem to be supported by the economics.
3. Books/fiction: It’s wrong to call graphic novels “new,” but they have seen lots of innovation. If we look at writing more broadly, the internet has led to plenty of innovation, including of course blogs. The traditional novel is doing well in terms of quality even if this is not a high innovation era comparable to say the 1920s (Mann, Kafka, Proust, others).
4. Computer and video games: This major area of innovation is usually completely overlooked by such discussions.
5. Music: Popular music has been in a Retromania sludge since the digital innovations of the early 90s, but classical contemporary music continues to show vitality and it is even establishing some foothold in the concert hall and in nightclubs too. Jazz has plenty of niche innovation, but it’s not moving forward with new, central ideas which command the attention of the field.
6. Painting and sculpture: Lots of good material, no breakthrough central movements comparable to Pop Art or Abstract Expressionism. Photography has seen lots of innovation.
7. Your personal stream: This is arguably the biggest innovation in recent times, and it is almost completely overlooked. It’s about how you use modern information technology to create your own running blend of sources, influences, distractions, and diversions, usually taken from a blend of the genres and fields mentioned above. It’s really fun and most of us find it extremely compelling. See chapter three of Create Your Own Economy/The Age of the Infovore.
8. Architecture: Slows down after 2008, but there were numerous innovative blockbuster buildings prior to the crash.
Today the areas of major breakthrough innovation are writing, computer games, television, photography (less restricted to the last decade exclusively) and the personal stream. Let’s hope TV can keep it up, and architecture counts partially. For one decade, namely the last decade, that’s quite a bit, though I can see how it might escape the attention of a more traditional survey. Some other areas, such as the novel, global cinema, and the visual arts are holding their own and producing plenty of small and mid-size innovations.
Although that is a relatively optimistic take on the aesthetics of the last decade, it nonetheless supports the view that aesthetic innovation relies on technological innovation. Most (not all) of the major areas of progress have relied on digitalization, and indeed that is the one field where the contemporary world has brought a lot of technological progress as well.
What I’ve been reading
1. David Stevenson, With Our Backs to the Wall: Victory and Defeat in 1918. Thorough, readable, never thrilling but consistently satisfying. It is a good follow-up to Niall Ferguson’s splendid The Pity of War.
2. Daniel Yergin, The Quest: Energy, Security, and the Remaking of the Modern World. No surprises, good, perhaps best on the evolution of the natural gas market.
3. Colm Tóibín, Brooklyn. Never bad, it becomes excellent by the end.
4. Roger Ebert, Life Itself: A Memoir. One-fifth or so of this book is interesting, so some small number of you should wade through it. I liked the discussion of black and white cinema best, but most of it is rambling and insufferable.
5. Steve Sem-Samberg, The Emperor of Lies, A Novel. “I don’t want to read any more about the Holocaust” is not good enough reason to neglect this stunning Swedish novel. A fictionalized account of the Lodz Ghetto, it looks at the lives of the ghetto rulers and whether they were heroes or collaborators. I found it tough to read more than one hundred pages of this at a time; by focusing on the suicides rather than the murder victims, it is especially brutal. Definitely recommended, I urge you to get up the gumption.
6. Jo Nesbo, Nemesis: A Novel. Highly entertaining, indeed gripping, but by the end I was wondering whether I had wasted my time. It turns out not to be conceptual after all. A good plane read, which is for me what it was.
I didn’t “get” the new Stephen Greenblatt book; was Poggio so important? I still find myself unable to enjoy Hollinghurst, though in the abstract I admire the writing. Bellow’s The Victim is beautifully written but seemed to me dated.
What I’ve been reading
1. Jo Nesbø, The Redbreast. These days it’s odd to read a fictional book about neo-Nazi cults in Norway, including a murderous villain who leaves behind a manuscript explaining his ideas and purpose. I didn’t love it, but I liked it and I never considered putting it down; I will likely try another book by Nesbø. The author, by the way, graduated from the Norwegian School of Economics.
2. Félix J. Palma, The Map of Time. Spanish speculative fiction, now in English. It never feels deep, but finally we have a time travel novel chock full of new (and good) ideas. Recommended to all those who find that sufficient, but not for those who don’t.
3. Tim Congdon, Money in a Free Society. Neo-monetarist tract! With plenty on all the different notions of the liquidity trap out there, which are often confused.
4. Kate Christensen, The Astral: A Novel. About marriage, self-deception, and general decay and destruction. Her best book so far.
5. Isaac Asimov, Franchise. Only a short story, but available in stand-alone form. Asimov considers a future world where AI is so advanced that elections can be settled by asking a few questions to a computer-identified “typical” voter and adding that input to the calculations of the computer. One of his deepest works, recommended for all students of public choice.
Assorted links
Assorted links
Star Children: Return to Home
DARPA, believe it or not, has a request for information on what they call the 100 YEAR STARSHIP™ STUDY.
Neither the vagaries of the modern fiscal cycle, nor net-present-value calculations over reasonably foreseeable futures, have lent themselves to the kinds of century-long patronage and persistence needed to definitively transform mankind into a space-faring species.
The 100 Year Starship™ Study is a project seeded by DARPA to develop a viable and sustainable model for persistent, long-term, private-sector investment into the myriad of disciplines needed to make long-distance space travel practicable and feasible….
We are seeking ideas for an organization, business model and approach appropriate for a self-sustaining investment vehicle. The respondent must focus on flexible yet robust mechanisms by which an endowment can be created and sustained, wholly devoid of government subsidy or control, and by which worthwhile undertakings—in the sciences, engineering, humanities, or the arts—may be awarded in pursuit of the vision of interstellar flight….
Responses should describe the:
• Organizational structure;
• Governance mechanism;
• Investment strategy and criteria; and
• Business model for long-term self-sustainment.
The best model we have of such an organization is a religion. Business organizations such as the Hudson’s Bay Company have occasionally lasted hundreds of years but more by accident than by design. Universities have lasted hundreds of years, although often with government support and vague missions. A few foundations have lasted for a long period of time but often with big mission changes.
Many religions, however, have maintained themselves more or less intact for over a thousand years. Even in the modern age, new religions appear to be quite capable of forming and maintaining themselves for long periods of time. Mormonism has been on-going for nearly two centuries, the Unification Church and Scientology (n.b. started by a science-fiction writer) have been on-going for over half a century. A religion with a million or so adherents can easily last for hundreds of years while generating substantial revenues and while maintaining focus.
Humanity was born of the stars, our very atoms forged in the heart of a million suns. It is in the stars that we lost travelers will find our true home and our true destiny. The twinkling lights of the yawning sky gently call to us each night to return to the place of our birth. We must answer that call. Star-children, return to home.
(See what I mean? This could work. )
Hat tip: Daniel Kuehn.