Books read in 2011

by John Pilger

This book contains the best—or most legendary—articles from the best journalists of the 20th century. They range from Martha Gellhorn’s reports on Dachau to Pilger’s own reports from the Killing Fields to Fisk’s peerless reporting from Iraq in the early 21st century. It’s highly recommended for anyone who cares about history—and getting their news from people who got it right when it was happening.

by Kurt Vonnegut

Vonnegut’s second novel, this book is typical of his style: concise yet descriptive, and using science fiction as a backdrop against which to display his philosophy. Also, it was utterly bereft of semicolons. There are also the subtle—and not-so-subtle—barbs against religion and anti-humanists as well. The book is essentially about luck and about the luck of being born in the right place and at the right time and how sometimes that which appears to be luck is actually machination at a completely unknowable higher level and how, though the true meaning of a particular life may perhaps not be very meaningful to the person living it, it has a meaning that is in a grand scheme that, well, also doesn’t seem very meaningful because it’s also a part of an even grander scheme. So it goes.

by Morton Rhue

This is a story of an American high school teacher who decides to teach his class about Nazism in a peculiar way: by letting them relive it. His students had nothing but contempt for the Germans who simply stood by while the Third Reich perpetrated its crimes against humanity. When offered a part in a similar regime, nearly all of them jumped in with both feet and took part in a new party, called “The Wave”. The translation was pretty awful[1] and at times completely ignored what was clearly idiomatic in the original English, but it was worth it for the finale.

by Edward W. Said

One could never accuse Said of failing to provide enough detail for or providing enough formulations of his arguments. As in Orientalism, Said explores what it means to have the culture in power rely for its reconnaissance on other cultures entirely on persons who are themselves either nearly utterly unfamiliar with or so overburdened with preconceptions about said cultures as to render anything they have to say as, if not meaningless, without any rational or scientific usefulness. It’s a marvelously crafted book, but let the prior sentence serve as an example of the kind of elaborate—if well-constructed—prose through which you’ll have to wade if you give this book its due.

by David Sedaris

A fun collection of essays by a wickedly funny and sarcastic American writer. These are all about the the Christmas holiday season and the slim volume is actually just the right size (any more at once would have been too much). I also read a few essays from his longer book of essays, Naked, but had had enough of Sedaris for one weekend. Funny but weird stories written in either an auto- or semi-autobiographical vein about an odd man (or boy, depending on chronology) who thinks he’s normal and the rest of the world is off.

by Albert Camus

Since George Bush was, apparently, able to read it in English, I tackled it in French. It’s not very long and spends most of the first two-thirds describing the life of a middle-class wage-slave in Algeria who spends his weekends on the beach, going to movies and sleeping with girls. His life nearly utterly lacks meaning. His mother dies at the very beginning, which would factor into his trial at the end. The reason he is on trial is nearly overwhelmingly trivial and senseless, though he seems to take it just as in stride as everything else in his life. He bobs along on the stream of consciousness, not paddling very much. The style reminded me at times of Hemingway—the brief phrasing and wording as well as rather cold narration of weighty events—and of Achebe at others—probably just the scenic descriptions and names.

by Stephen Fry

An absolutely masterful command of the English language; a marvelous grasp of comedic timing; a natural-born storyteller’s addiction to detail and prevarication. For anyone who ever liked anything that Douglas Adams ever wrote and wished he’d written more, there’s Stephen Fry. I would say the same of Terry Pratchett, though Fry’s style is nearly utterly unlike Pratchett’s. Be prepared to learn new words and new things about life in an all-boys school in England. Through anti-hero and don, Donald Trefusis, Fry makes an absolutely eloquent plea for the rescue of the English language from the clutches of the banal.

by Amartya Sen

I approached my first book by this Nobel-Prize winner with enthusiasm and was quickly disappointed by the writing style and, quite frankly, the repetitive and somewhat obvious content. It was a bit of a crashing to Earth after the anticipation of reading something by “one of the world’s great thinkers” (as indicated on the cover). His prose is unnecessarily tangled (contrasted with that of Edward Said, who employed necessarily tangled prose), it is mind-numbingly repetitive and exceedingly conciliatory to the ruling class, of which I think he seems to think he is not a part, but to which he quite clearly—at least in part—belongs. Again and again, his language and formulations give nations and the powerful the benefit of the doubt that the predations they visit upon their subjects and the unfairness of the world they rule is purely due to one unfortunate accident after another.

by Niccolò Machiavelli

I read the translation from the original Italian by Harvey C. Mansfield. It’s a relatively compact how-to guide to ruling people and their countries for fun and profit. Mostly profit. The information is laid out in a no-nonsense, some would say ruthless, way. It kind of reminded me of The Art of War by Sun Tzu. Though we can today read it and nod in agreement, we have to also remember that it was written in the early 1500s, so all of those ideas were fresh at the time.

by Upton Sinclair

A fascinating look at early 20th-century America where the oil business serves as a backdrop to a story about the simultaneous rise of plutocracy and plummet of the working class. The book is narrated from the point of view of the son of an oil-man, an oil-man who starts off with some sympathy for his common man but, over the years, sheds it as he ends his days fleeing from a government his business swindled. The rampant anti-Bolshevik, anti-Communist and anti-Socialist attitude in America at the time is frightening with the law cracking down on dissenters with impunity. Almost 100 years later, the enemies have changed but the rhetoric has a familiar ring. As does the stark class disparity and self-aggrandizing reasoning of the few who arrogate the wealth of the nation to themselves—for the good of the people and the nation, of course. Plus ça change, plus c’est la même chose.

by Truman Capote

The story of a rich family’s daughter who didn’t want to travel with her family by boat to Paris. She chooses instead to stay behind in her New York apartment slumming it with the lower classes. Quite nicely written in places but the story of a spoiled rich girl trying to ruin the life she’d gotten on a silver platter didn’t grab me much. That she perhaps wanted something different than comfort and wealth, that she wanted love and something real instead of what she had is a possible interpretation. A story of the idle rich; those who envy them will see this book one way; those who hate them will see it another.

by Steve Martin

An interesting little play by Mr. Martin (yes, that Steve Martin) in which Einstein plays a starring role, as does Picasso. Lots of interesting wordplay as well as the requisite worldly bartender of the Lapin Agile who seems somehow smarter than anyone else.

by Stephen Fry

Another fun, fun book by Mr. Fry (I’d just read The Liar a few months back) that stars Ned, a schoolboy whose life is turned upside down by the cruelty of other schoolboys. Lots of intimation of rampant homosexuality in the British school system. The plot? Think Count of Monte Cristo with almost no deviation, but that’s a good thing because Fry, as I mentioned above, is a helluva entertaining writer.

by Terry Pratchett

This is the first book from Discworld after Pratchett’s announcement that he has Alzheimer’s. The affliction is not yet evident as the book stands up well to the rest of the Discworld corpus. It’s the story of racism and demonization of the other, embodied in the unprepossessing Mr. Nutt. There’s also a good deal about a sport that vaguely resembles football in there. Vimes is not present, but Vetinari plays a supporting role. The wizards are there in their bumbling glory, with Archchancellor Ridley being innocently sly as usual. The fearless Glenda is a strong new character who more than easily carries much of the book.

by Salman Rushdie

An amazing story—or series of tales, all entwined—told by a master storyteller. A traveler skilled in many arts lands in the court of a great king and strikes up a friendship on the basis of a shaky relation from the deep past. Wonderful characters and attention to historical detail that weaves with fantastical elements. A completely unexpected ending. A great novel for anyone looking to get acquainted with the writing of Rushdie.

by Stephen King

A collection of short stories by King, all of which had been published in various magazines over the years. Harvey’s Dream is wonderfully told, as is The Things They Left Behind, a uniquely Kingsian take on the survivors of 9–11. N is a tour-de-force that plays with one of King’s favorite themes: the thinness of the wall between reality and the raving, gibbering madness that lies just beyond. Mute is a tale with a classic twist, told well. A Very Tight Place is also right up King’s alley, with the tale of a nearly inconceivable situation and human endurance and perseverance.

by Noam Chomsky

A great book about the late 80s and early 90s in America, which is all you need to know about the plutocracy of the naughts of the 21th century. A great way of getting into Chomsky and a great way of seeing the roots of the kleptocracy under which America suffers today.

by H.G. Wells

Who knew that this book was about class struggle? The Eloi are the degraded rich who become sheep for the ravaging Morlocks, who are the cannibalistic descendants of the working classes. Less science fiction and more social commentary. I read it in German.

by Thomas Pynchon

As with Gravity’s Rainbow, it took a while to get into it, but then there was no stopping. A fascinating cast of characters from the wild west in the last 19th century to the Europe of the early 20th. Entwined with a story of alternate worlds, time slippages, alternate histories, mathematics and competing theories that break out in war. Tesla makes mysterious appearances, as do other notables of the time. More satisfying than Gravity’s Rainbow—deeper somehow. It’s probably only recommendable to fans of Pynchon or anyone willing to read a complex, 1000-page novel of semi-historical fiction.

by Woody Allen

A series of bizarre stories, many of which are composed almost purely of surrealistic non-sequiturs. Some of the longer stories are quite good, with The Whore of Mensa, Death Knocks, Gossage-Vardebedian Papers and Retribution grabbing my attention in one way or another.

von Thomas Bergmann

Some of the stories of neighbors fighting are decent, but the book got a bit repetitive in the end. All of the stories are from the German civil court system, which seems absolutely inundated with people who are completely unable to talk to one another or compromise in any way. I assume that this is not unique to Germany, though.

by Beck Weathers & Stephen J. Michaud

An awful book about an awful man, awfully written. The family is insufferable, has enough money and connections to make all of their problems go away and yet still manage to fill an entire book with whining, self-loathing and self-pity. Some of the mountain stuff is OK, but it only makes you want to avoid climbers and high-altitude climbing if at all possible.

by Dean Baker

A masterful and concise treatment of the state of the financial world, national governance, corruption and a map of the current oligarchy. A perfect overview for those interested in knowing why things are so broken and how to fix them. Pulls no punches. Baker, as I’ve said many times, is a national treasure. Well-paired with Chomsky’s Profits over People (reviewed above).

by Chris Hedges

A plaintive disparagement of war in all its forms from a journalist who’s been seduced and horrified by it. Hedges considers war as a drug to which all of mankind is addicted. Some of the book is smooth and well-edited philosophy whereas other parts seems to be cobbled from impressions gathered at various points in his career and documented in various essays, so there isn’t one, smooth ethical thread guiding the whole affair. Instead, some parts are written with the voice of a man still deep in the grips of his addiction—when he cheers the intervention in 1998—and other parts represent a more clear-eyed condemnation of any war, so-called humanitarian or otherwise.

by Arthur Machen

Recommended by Stephen King as the inspiration for his story, N, in the collection, After Sunset. Though King raved about it, I found his paean to it, N, much more to my liking. Machen’s version didn’t elicit as much horror of the unknown as King’s but that may be due to its age (over 100 years old) and the style, which goes on even more than King. Worth reading for the ambitious use of flashbacks and discontinuous plotting.

by Stieg Larsson

First off: much, much better than Dan Brown, so people’s tastes seem to be improving. The style, while not bad, is still quite dry and clearly journalistic with its obsessive depiction of inconsequential detail, so it’s still not even close to the effortless style of a Rushdie, for example. Similar to Brown, the plot is quite interesting and draws one further, though Larsson manages to make every revelation anti-climactic somehow (this may be due to his being a particularly heavy-handed foreshadower). In what is undoubtedly typical of such escapist fiction, everyone is rich, sexy, brilliant, successful and healthy (except for some throwaway characters or where unhealthiness is relevant to the plot). No one is boring. Oh, and the book may as well have been titled “Deus Ex Machina Deluxe”. Despite all that, it was a fun read for the genre.

by Noam Chomsky

A short compendium of interviews with Chomsky from throughout the year after the 9–11 attacks. A highly condensed primer to the historical and ideological background to those attacks as well as the U.S. response. An excellent introductory book for anyone new to Chomsky.

by Slavoj Žižek

This is a long, dense and at times nearly impossible-to-read-or-decipher treatise on the state of philosophy, the state of intellectualism, the state of economics and the state of morality. Whatever your attitude toward Žižek, you can deny neither his intelligence nor his immense depth of research. He sees connections everywhere and is at times infuriatingly difficult to follow, though I fear that this is more the reader’s shortcoming than his. His shortcoming is that he is, at times, a poor author, devolving to a style of delivery that is common to the lofty aeries of high philosophy and that is nearly impossible to decipher if one does not spend years steeped in the same jargon. The book is a very timely read as it predicts and supports the Occupy Wall Street protests with a plethora of historical and modern philosophical underpinning. Over 500 pages of dense philosophy is not for the faint of heart, but it was worth it.

by Steve Martin

An elegantly crafted novella about a young woman living on her own in LA. It is a novel about ennui, medically-induced stability, LA culture, the arts scene and, tangentially, about love as a man thinks a woman sees it. It is quite consistently sad, though there are a few fleeting high points. The impression one gets is of a land where the sun shines all the time and no one is truly happy.

by Ana Amalia Guzmán Molina

A somewhat unevenly translated story[2] of a family caught in U.S. immigration hell for a year and a half. The story takes place in 1999-2000, so it was before even the greater depredations of the Bush administration post-9–11 or the even greater ones (as recently reported) of the Obama administration. Overcrowding, inhumane treatment, insufficient nutrition, a near-total lack of medical care: if the U.S. jails are the worst in the first world, the U.S. immigration jails are the worst of those. The facts are interesting, but they are delivered through a miasma of Christian proselytizing that is a bit difficult to swallow at times.

by Naomi Klein

Klein describes the state of branding, transnational corporations and privatized globalization of society in the late 90s, mostly from a Canadian and an American perspective. It’s very well-written and eminently readable considering its content and serves as yet another reminder[3] that the economic problems facing the world are neither new nor were they unpredictable. That the class divide continues to grow is not an accident, but a logical conclusion of policy and planning. The book covers the decline of industry in North America (although Mexico, as part of the third world has acquired some industry) as well as the shape of industry and production in the EPZs (Export Processing Zones) run by the same corporations that are bending first-world society to its own ends, with branding and advertising as a primary weapon. An excellent read that portends the Occupy movement at least as much as Žižek’s In Defense of Lost Causes.

by George Orwell

Orwell’s diary of his time serving in the Catalonian Army fighting Franco’s fascist forces in Spain during the late 30s. Orwell traveled with his wife to Spain to report on the conflict and was so taken with the cause that he joined up immediately. Life at the front is miserable and almost completely futile, with no progress made by either side. Orwell punctuates the account with chapters analyzing the journalistic coverage of the war at the time and contrasting it with his own experience. The laziness of the media and its tendency to simply propagandize that which the ruling class in its home nation wants it to is nothing new or unique to our time. Orwell is a passionate defender of the truth whose prose isn’t dated and still reads very well today.

by Ha-Joon Chang

This book addresses the same issue as one of his previous books, Kicking Away the Ladder, but Mr. Chang’s literary style has improved by leaps and bounds since the relatively dry and academic treatment in that book. The book lays out irrefutable evidence that neoliberal economics is not only wrong, but a deliberate sham promulgated by con-men bent on power and money. That’s not Chang’s conclusion, it’s mine; he wasn’t willing to go that far because he’s an academic, but it’s clear. The first-world countries used massive protectionism to get where they are—as they should have—and are now trying to keep the other countries down with specious arguments that belie their own histories (i.e. they “kick away the ladder”). Another extremely readable and interesting book, especially considering the subject matter.

by Peter Abrahams

This book prominently features an endorsement by Stephen King, who praises Abrahams’s writing. Thankfully, this turns out to be true. The story is quite good and not horribly predictable and the writing was pretty tight. The story is basically of what happens when a marital affair is discovered by a husband who is overwhelmed by his own brilliance. He gets involved with a criminal who is similarly hobbled. Both are quite deluded.

by John Grisham

Grisham ventures into non-fiction in a book that one gets the feeling he was compelled to write: his anger at the injustice, incompetence and lack of empathy of the U.S. justice system, from cops to DAs to judges, is palpable. The story centers on several capital cases in Oklahoma. Evidence is circumstantial at best, confessions are laughable and extorted under extreme duress, legal procedure is ignored, defense is lazy and incompetent, the media is oblivious and bloodthirsty, as are the jurors. Men whose lives were already shitty spend dozens of years of their lives in hellholes that pass for prisons, losing their sanity and their health, if not their ties to to their families and communities. And, when the mistake is finally acknowledged through the selfless efforts of the few remaining defenders of justice, the man walks free with no apology, no job, no training, no compensation for lost years and life, nothing but further ostracization from the community. The book can be a bit repetitive, but the subject matter is riveting and worth everyone’s time. It’s good to see someone of Grisham’s influence taking such a strong stance.