What I've Been Reading #1
I don't just watch moving images all the time; my couch-potato-ness is medium-agnostic
Adulting for me has been a process of changing from someone who used to read a single book cover to cover before starting the next one, to someone who has multiple half-read books at any given time, pausing and resuming books with long gaps, or just outright discontinuing some of them (more than I care to admit). I hate doing this, but now that I have to worry about things like a full-time job, chores, and the million other things that accompany being an adult (including, apparently, a pandemic), that leaves me with inevitably long gaps between reading any particular book. By which time, something else has caught my attention.
That said, I’ll give myself some credit for managing to get some reading done during what’s been nothing short of a hellish year (for many people, who have also been through far worse). As much as I love moving images and sport, ultimately one is a passive consumer of both; your imagination doesn’t have as much of a role to play when the images are ready-made for your brain to process as opposed to reading, where your brain just works a little harder to evoke imagery, process information, etc. This is my favorite hypothesis for explaining why at the end of an exhausting day at work in the middle of a pandemic, I’m more likely to sit through a TV episode or watch a quarter or two of hoops rather than read something.
So cutting to the chase, here’s what I’ve been reading:
Remembrance of Earth’s Past, by Liu Cixin
The great Pauline Kael wrote in her review of The Godfather: “About midway, I began to feel that the film was expanding in my head like a soft bullet.” I’m not sure I felt the same way about the movie, but it very accurately describes what reading this trilogy feels like.
The series starts from the Chinese Cultural Revolution to set up humanity’s war with omniscient aliens and is a truly epic story on a cosmic scale with unimaginable twists and turns. Liu’s usage of game theory to explain the Fermi paradox in The Dark Forest (the second book) is just too brilliant for words; I’m not saying it’s a scientific truth or even a viable hypothesis, but to use a concept from astronomy as the basis for a sprawling epic the way he does is just mind-blowing. It’s something that happens on a regular basis throughout the book. Liu’s world-building skills make me eagerly await the proposed Netflix series. They better not mess this up.
Read this trilogy if you like hard sci-fi, epic sagas, China, or your mind exploding.
The Way of Kings, by Brandon Sanderson
The first in a series of fantasy books in the tradition of JRR Tolkien, this was a bit of a change from the usual George RR Martin fantasy brand of gritty, R-rated, blood-soaked realism. This is a fairly traditional, but extremely well-written book, and I really loved the way that a lot of things are painstakingly built up to pay off at the end. For example, there’s a scene near the end where one character absolutely beats the shit out of another, and the whole thing is incredibly satisfying in a way I, unfortunately, can’t describe without spoilers. I’d say whether you dig the chapter in question or not is the single most important thing that will determine whether you’ll go on to read the sequels.
However, I don’t anticipate doing so myself for quite a while. I really liked the book, but it’s just not quite there yet as a classic for me to prioritize reading further instead of finishing other books first.
Read this if you like LOTR-style fantasy, good character arcs, and good prose.
The Price of Peace, by Zachary Carter
Touted to be the best biography of Keynes by multiple members of EconTwitter. And it’s lived up to the reputation. The FDR portions were my favorite, especially the part where FDR met Keynes and in private, confesses that he thinks JMK is a nerd.
JMK also had a pretty fascinating life and was a witness+occasional influencer on multiple important events in the history of the world (Britain in particular). The book makes him out to be a modern-day Cassandra, whose prescriptions were ignored by politicians to disastrous consequences.
The book doesn’t stop at the death of Keynes but continues to cover the distortion of Keynes’ legacy in the decades leading up to Obama’s presidency. Some say that the master’s ideas are back with the latest round of enormous government spending efforts undertaken by the Biden administration, but one can never be entirely certain.
Read this if you like economics, history, biographies, and romantic intrigues (Keynes and his famous Bloomsbury set were such hedonists).
Why Buffy Matters, by Rhonda Wilcox
I’m not sure entirely as to the exact extent of Buffy’s popularity in India. It’s certainly not as popular as Friends, Seinfeld, Breaking Bad, and the constant assembly line of Netflix and Amazon Originals. It wasn’t broadcast on a network as big as HBO in its first run, nor was it picked up by streaming platforms for India, which is really strange.
Anyway, I watched the series after discovering the writings of Emily Nussbaum, the critic I consider my TV soulmate (I anticipate doing a short post on her writing later). Predictably enough, I became a huge fan. I later discovered that Buffy was one of the most academically studied shows in history, in no small part due to Wilcox. The book (which I haven’t finished yet) is considered to be the seminal work of Buffy criticism, One part (Panorama) is dedicated to an exposition of the broad themes and use of both language and visual imagery on the show, while the other (Tight Focus) does deep dives into 6 of the best episodes on Buffy.
However, reading the introduction, where Wilcox holds forth at length on the synergy invoked by Whedon to harness the creative talents of the entire team of writers, actors, and crew, gave me a really icky feeling especially in the wake of Whedon’s MeToo allegations. The following passage from the book, given the context of revelations of a toxic working environment on Buffy, just hit differently:
Again, however, it is not just the talent of each individual that matters here, but the synergy invoked by the central figure—Joss Whedon….And this creative feeling runs, as Holder noted, throughout the entire crew (even though they called the show “Buffy the Weekend Killer” because of the extra work involved)….Clearly, these were the Scoobies of television production. The success of communal effort so important as a theme in the stories was just as important in the real life of the series’ creation behind the scenes…For here, at least, and with the recognition of Joss Whedon as the creator and catalyst and air traffic controller, I do want to acknowledge the nature of their collaboration as a cause of the art that is Buffy.
Apparently, it wasn’t some joyous and harmonious set. Admittedly, Charisma Carpenter’s pregnancy during her tenure on the spinoff, Angel, not on Buffy, seems to have been what set off Whedon’s best vampire impression. But there have been other reports of toxic behavior against others on the Buffy set and in the writers’ room.
How does this square with the years of actors and writers uniformly praising Whedon’s leadership and creative prowess? My working theory is that this seems to have been something like a Steve Jobs situation combined with harassment of some (not all) crew members, who chose to stay silent because that was the best practice at the time for their careers. There was no equivalent of a MeToo movement or support system back then or even recognition of such forms of workplace harassment. And this silence likely resulted in the ignorance/obliviousness of the others.
Anyway, that dissonance apart, this has been a good read so far (I haven’t finished it), and any Buffy fan should check it out if they can spare the time and don’t mind the sometimes-academic lingo.
The Godfather Legacy, by Harlan Lebo
I haven’t read many behind-the-scenes books; if I did, I’d expect them to be like this one. Lebo paints a grim picture of Hollywood pre-Godfather: theatres with empty parking lots and the industry floating around in the doldrums. And then the Godfather changed everything.
Tying together the broad trends in the industry at the time with remarkable anecdotes of all the major players involved, this was a pretty satisfying read overall. I hope Hollywood has a similar Godfather moment that somehow makes superhero franchises irrelevant while increasing industry profitability at the same time. However, the trends seem to inexorably move in the opposite direction, and Covid has not helped matters.
Read this if you like films, film history, and The Godfather.
Attack on Titan, by Hajime Isayama
Generally, I’m way too impatient to wait for new seasons for various anime to release; those can take years! So I just skip to reading the manga instead. For the uninitiated, most anime shows are generally based on mangas (Japanese comics). The same thing happened with Attack on Titan.
For those who have seen the anime till the latest episode, suffice to say that there are a few plot twists still left. But after a point, where the story was headed became utterly predictable. If I were to guess, the fan reactions might turn out like what happened with the infamous final season as Game of Thrones, but perhaps not to that extent. I certainly didn’t think it was that bad, though it could have been a whole lot better.
Isayama presents two “solutions” to the problem of ethnic conflicts, and neither are actually solutions at all. I will refrain from mentioning them specifically to avoid spoilers. Attack on Titan is not the first or even the best work of art to deal with the population-wide risks of ethnic conflicts. But it has two things going for it: extreme popularity (especially among the youth) and its graphic portrayal of the absolute worst outcomes possible when you combine WMDs with ethnic conflict.
Read this if you’re an anime fan too impatient to wait for the release of all the episodes.
What I plan on reading next:
Doing Capitalism in the Innovation Economy, by Bill Janeway
The Entrepreneurial State, by Mariana Mazzucato
To Serve Them All my Days, by R.F.Delderfield
The Memoirs of Sergeant Bourgogne
The Dispossessed, by Ursula K. Le Guin
Parable of the Sower, by Octavia Butler
Oryx and Crake, by Margaret Atwood
The Dravidian Model: Interpreting the Political Economy of Tamil Nadu, by Kalaiyarasan and Vijayabaskar (to be released this month)
Public accountability, assuming anyone actually reads this blog, hopefully, helps me prioritize reading some of these over doomscrolling all day long.