2023 By The Books, Q4
Reviews for 2023 conclude with eight additional books, bringing the tally to 56. Starting 2024, I’ll retire the quarterly format and will be sharing reviews each month instead. True to my actual reading habits, the cover image has now also been replaced by an e-book reader.
A Random Walk Down Wall Street by Burton G. Malkiel
Probably the single most famous book on investing, and rightly so? It’s very accessible, down-to-earth and certainly not promising any get-rich-quick schemes that stock market types often try to talk unsuspecting folks into. It’s a very solid intro for anyone unfamiliar with the topic, although certainly a little basic for more experienced investors. Bottom line: Don’t underestimate the efficient market hypothesis.
A Time Of Gifts by Patrick Leigh Fermor
An Englishman decides to walk from Rotterdam to Istanbul on the eve of the Second World War — this should have been an ideal set-up for someone with my interests. Instead, it just drags on and on. Part of that may be that the writing is so far removed from the actual events that took place — Leigh Fermor finished up the book more than forty years after his journey came to an end, and describing a dewy-eyed 18-year old’s experiences through the lense\ of a cosmopolitan 62-year old just made it feel stilted to me. Many smart people disagree, but I couldn’t get myself to finish more than half of it.
Debt — The First 5,000 Years by David Graeber
Graeber, until his untimely death in 2020, has been the media darling of the anti-globalization movement. Despite his caustic personality, his provocative style and skillful storytelling made him an excellent reference for certain high-minded circles: Always entertaining, but never straying too far from commonly held beliefs about the dismal impact of money and markets.
Debt contains a number of fascinating anthropological stories, a fair bit of entertaining theological speculation, and some relevant insights for economic theorizing: it’s probably true that textbook accounts about the origins of money and its roots in barter are incorrect, or at least misleading. Sadly, on the whole, it’s a disaster. Graeber, who set out to show that economists are ignorant about anthropology and human interactions, ends up demonstrating mostly that anthropologists don’t know the first thing about economics. Instead of genuine insights how the discipline of economics could improve, we find page after page of tired old cliches.
Exodus by Paul Collier
Collier is not the world’s most gifted stylist, but once you get past it, Exodus is a very solid book on the (un)desirability of high levels of immigration. Collier, and ex-World Bank economist, argues that immigration restrictions should be driven by the size of the diaspora in the host country: While he believes that immigration has been a net benefit thus far (culturally and economically), he fears that we may be reaching levels of influx that would totally undermine the whole scheme. I do have a lot of sympathy for the open borders movement, but I acknowledge that he has some good points on how successful societies (the places so many wish to emigrate to) depend heavily on high levels of social trust for their seamless functioning — and how too much immigration may undermine this. Forget for a moment the usual high-profile issues such as religion: This is less about the culture in the sense of private beliefs, and more about norms. Do we take advantage of others if we can get away with it? Consider bribes acceptable if they help us personally? Observe laws even if no one is watching? I think Collier is right when he notes that poor societies are often poor for a reason — they rely on dysfunctional social models. And to the extent that they bring these models with them…you get the idea.
Immigration restrictions are often illogical, counterproductive, and cruel. I want to see the world cutting back on them, but I’m worried about the pendulum swinging back in a nasty way. I’m more sanguine than Collier, but I think we shouldn’t dismiss his arguments because a model suggests removing all barriers to migration could double world GDP.
The Food Lab by Kenji Lopez-Alt
I’m sure there are some great recipes in this book, and it sure isn’t the kind of content that lends itself to the audiobook format (which is what I used). It’s also bloody long, and the amount of space plastered with mildly entertaining marital anecdotes is staggering. Judging by the thousands of positive Amazon reviews, most people seem to enjoy that, alongside cheap puns and related stylistic devices meant to suggest that the author is wonderfully affable and self-deprecating. Me, not so much.
The way cooking is taught is somewhat reminiscent of the gilded age — as a craft that has to be mastered, but not understood. So Lopez-Alt is certainly right when he sets out to scrutinize the cherished beliefs of chefs (and nonnas), and shows some of them not to be rooted in facts. But a list of how to properly cook pasta, what really matters for salad dressings, how to make sure your bread comes out just right, which is what I ultimately care about, could have been so much shorter! And I didn’t even listen to any of the many chapters on meat, which I wouldn’t be cooking anyway.
Half Of A Yellow Sun by Chimamanda Ngozi Adichie
I’m a big fan of fictionalized accounts of historical events, especially if they concern episodes I was otherwise unfamiliar with. The Nigerian Civil War that followed the country’s independence in 1960 fits squarely into that category, and prompted me to learn more about the circumstances of the short-lived Republic of Biafra. The narrative is gripping, with interesting characters, although there are quite a few rough edges, stylistically speaking. I don’t regret reading it, but I’m unlikely to pick up another of Ngozi Adichie’s books.
Sea Of Tranquility by Emily St. John Mandel
Sci-Fi isn’t my cup of tea, so maybe it’s unsurprising that Sea of Tranquility (which starts out as a historical novel, only to catapult us into the future later on) didn’t resonate with me much either. I just can’t help thinking of the genre as anything but a neat curiosity, which is really too bad (as I’m sure that I’m missing out on some really good stuff). Some people claim it’s essentially a ripoff of David Mitchell’s Cloud Atlas, which I’m hoping to read soon — curious to see whether my judgment for this will be any different!
When We Cease To Understand The World by Benjamin Labatut
The first chapter is some of the best fiction I’ve read in a long time, and, if the author is to be believed, one hundred percent historically accurate save one detail (I haven’t found out which). The story jumps back and forth in ways that may seem confusing, but it’s one irresistible train of thought, a sprawling , mind-boggling network of associations unlike anything I’ve seen before. Unfortunately, Labatut can’t quite keep up the pace, and as historical facts retreat more and more to the background, so does the quality — although even them, it’s still vastly above average. I also heard many good things about his more recent The Maniac, which I’ll plan to read as well.
