#Bibliofiles : 2023 favourites

In many ways, the books I read are my mind’s zeitgeist, and naturally the favourites reflect this. This year, the list is along broad lines of History & Culture, Mind & Philosophy, Systems of the World, and Fiction. And with that little prologue, as per tradition – from 2019, 2020, and 2021, and 2022 – we have this year’s list of ten (plus a few 🙈). From the 65 books I read in 2023…

History & Culture

Status & Culture : “How our desire for social rank creates taste, identity, art, fashion, and constant change” is what the cover promises. As GenX , and a marketer, I have often tried to make sense of the changing nature of culture, especially with the internet. This book is extremely insightful as it navigates what culture is, how it gets fashioned, and how it has changed in the last couple of decades. The premise is that beyond functionality and pleasures, most things we do is for status-seeking. This sparks creativity, which in turn, creates culture. Mixing anthropology, neuroscience, economics, philosophy and meshing them with art history and media studies, David Marx delivers on that promised explanation by decoding why things become popular, why that changes over time, and how it shapes our identity and behaviour. It’s almost like cracking a code for the things and actions we see around us.

Strange Rites: I found this a fascinating exploration of how the (almost) post-religion United States is evolving. Folks who call themselves Christians have been steadily decreasing, and ‘Nones’ who claim no affiliation to any organised religion is the fastest growing group. One-third of millennials (and one fourth of all adults) have no affinity to religion. Tara Isabella Burton tries to find out who (or what) is filling the God-sized hole. The war has been on for a while now – the institutional (centred around Church and society) vs the intuitional (centred around the person). Now, with the absence of wider demographic pressure, the power of consumer capitalism, and the rise of the internet, it seems like the latter is winning. But beyond the small cult audiences for everything from Xena : Warrior Princess to yoga, are there organising thoughts that can take the place of religion? She identifies three – ‘social justice culture’, Silicon Valley libertarian techno-utopia, and the most dangerous – an authoritarian, reactionary, materialist culture that valourises submission to a higher political or biological truth. For the rest, read the book! Highly recommended if you have any interest in modern society and/or religion/ and/or culture.

Wanderers, Kings, Merchants: I have to admit, when I bought this, I had no idea it would end up on this list. Mostly because though words and their commonality across languages is an interest area, linguistics per se isn’t. But it is fascinating to see history play out through the lens of languages. Sanskrit, Prakrit, Hindi, Malayalam, English, Assamese, and more – all have a voice in the book, and by showing how they have evolved over time Peggy Mohan provides an insightful commentary on how society and culture have also changed. For instance, on English in India – ‘What had started as a code to identify the elite snowballed into something set to replace our older languages and cultures as it trickled down, forging a new homogeneity.’ Despite the technicality of the subject, I found it a very accessible read, and one that will indeed broaden the way one thinks of language.

Two books I really liked but didn’t make it to the list – Affluenza by Oliver James and Killers of the Flower Moon by David Grann

Mind & Philosophy

The Master & His Emissary: If I had to choose one book for the year, it would be this one. The book is a result of 20 years of Iain McGilchrist‘s research, and is a fantastic exploration of the differences between the left and right hemispheres of the brain. That in itself is interesting, but he goes on to show how these differences, and the tension caused by it has shaped our history, culture and society. The difference between the right and left brain (the ‘Master and ‘Emissary’ respectively) isn’t about the usual tropes about what they do (left analytical, right creative etc) but in how they do it. Using recent research in neuroscience and psychology, he shows how the left hemisphere is detail oriented, while the right has greater breadth, flexibility, and generosity. They create different worldviews! The left’s utilitarian ability to ‘grasp’ (look at how the metaphor applies to thoughts), its ability to provide simple answers and articulate them well, have all enabled it to grab control at an accelerated pace since the Industrial Revolution, and create a world where it prizes precisely these capabilities in individuals, institutions, and culture at large. This is in many ways opposed to the right, which takes more holistic views, understands ideas and metaphors, perceives emotions better, specialises in non-verbal communication, and is humble about what it knows. The left creates a world, and when it stops communications with the right, will not even accept reality if it counters the ‘truth’ of the world it has created. Its role was to provide a map of reality, it now thinks the map is reality, and if not, it will remake reality to fit the map. The book is quite a tome – over 600 pages, but McGilchrist has tried his best to make it accessible.

The Wisdom of Morrie: Yes, it is the same Morrie. Think of it as the non-fictional version of “Tuesdays with Morrie”, with the same underlying philosophy. Rob Schwartz, son of Morrie Schwartz discovered the manuscript, written during 1988-92, in the early 2000s and with the help of his mother, edited it. While the book is full of insights that are useful at any stage of life, by the author’s own admission, it speaks to the sixty five year old and beyond. But I am glad I read it now. Morrie not only uses the knowledge he has amassed from his work as a psychologist and teacher, but effectively channels the empathy and reassurance of someone who is himself living through it, and knows many others who do. This puts him in perfect position to not just understand the challenges, but also provide ways to overcome them. Not simply in theory, but in actual practice. He delivers this with sensitivity and compassion, using logic as well as anecdotal examples. One of the things that I whine about is the way mid-life almost blindsided me, with the physical, mental, and emotional changes it brought. This book is a great primer for the next stage, and I will most definitely read it again in another 10-15 years.

God Human Animal Machine: A difficult book to slot. Meghan O’Gieblyn sets us off on a thought-provoking exploration of the intersection of faith, technology, and the human experience, and traverses many interesting paths to understanding what makes us human, and our search for meaning. Since the time Descartes ‘separated’ the material world from the soul, we took pride in using scientific temperament and technology to systematically solve nature’s puzzles. And now, when the same toolkit has created machines whose learning and thinking models are increasingly ‘black boxes’, there is fear, uncertainty and probably a bit of ego. Through chapters that are at once seamless and disparate, she navigates philosophy, technology, and theology and our different ways of understanding God, ourselves, and the world we are creating through technology. The book is intensely thought-provoking, and O’Gieblyn manages to balance curiosity and a healthy skepticism, distilling thoughts from various streams and thinkers, to provide a coherent narrative that fuels more thinking.

Three excellent books didn’t make it to the list – Cognitive Fitness by Anil Rajput, From Strength to Strength by Arthur C. Brooks, and The Year of Magical Thinking by Joan Didion

Systems of the World

Scale : I am quite a fan of patterns. It is difficult to look around and not believe that there is some grand order in the scheme of things. But it becomes even more difficult when one does not have the luxury of faith. And thus it is a pleasure when science points to a possible unifying theory that brings some amount of order to what could be mistaken for randomness. Geoffrey West begins with showing how ‘there are scaling relationships that quantitatively describe how almost any measurable characteristic of animals, plants, ecosystems, cities and companies scales with size.’ We are talking of things as varied as metabolic rate, patents, and companies’ income and assets! The simplicity underlying the complexity is what this book is about. On the way we answer interesting questions like ‘why do different animals have different lifespans and yet have the same number of heartbeats in a lifetime?’, or ‘why do cities seem to scale indefinitely while companies more often than not collapse after a while?’. This is a fascinating book in many respects – the underlying laws, their impact on practically everything around us, and the predictability it makes possible. Despite the absolutely complexity of the subject(s), Geoffrey West makes it accessible and interesting. 

The Shock Doctrine: One would think that when a disaster happened, everyone would do their best to help the victims. But it turns out that there are many who seek to profit. And such is the greed that sometimes disasters are created so that profits can be made. Naomi Klein calls it disaster capitalism, and this book is its ‘biography’ to date. From New Orleans after Katrina struck, referring to an an op-ed penned by the high priest of the fundamentalist version of capitalism – Milton Friedman, Klein travels back in time to Augusto Pinochet in Chile in the 1970s, Margaret Thatcher and the Falklands War in 1982, Tiananmen Square in 1989, Boris Yeltsin in 1993, NATO attack on Belgrade in 1999 against Yugoslavia, the ‘War on Terror’ and even a homecoming in America after 9/11. Most of these were charted by Friedman’s disciples – from IMF chiefs and Fed chiefs to Russian oligarchs and the Chinese Communist Party – the Chicago School of thought, who believed that the path to true freedom was free markets. . They got their first chance to implement his ideology of unfettered capitalism in the 70s in Latin America. Klein quotes Eduardo Galeano “The theories of Milton Friedman gave him the Nobel Prize; they gave Chile General Pinochet.” Naomi Klein does a stellar job of unveiling the thinking and execution of disaster capitalism. Thoroughly researched, well documented, and accessible, this book does provide a shock to the reader as well, because it shows how depraved humanity can be. 

A book that I think is important to read is Broad Band: The Untold Story of the Women Who Made the Internet by Claire L Evans.

Fiction

The Covenant of Water: I first thought that my attachment for this book came from the way I was able to relate to it as a Malayali. But then, I realised that it was also in Oprah’s Book Club picks, and that meant that the characters and the storytelling had a universal appeal. Abraham Verghese‘s book is set from 1900 to 1977, across different parts of Kerala, and some occasional excursions to other places in India and beyond. It follows three generations of a family that suffers a peculiar affliction: in every generation, at least one person dies by drowning. The matriarch of the Christian family, called Big Ammachi, is witness to the sea of changes that happen at the macro and micro levels to her and hers. The prose is stellar, and it was impossible for me not to feel for the characters. There is some amazing sensitivity and empathy in the writing, interspersed with humour, all of which contribute to a truly moving novel. Much like the waterways in Kerala that it features, the book flows.

Einstein’s Dreams: I love speculative fiction, and this one is an absolute treat! Alan Lightman‘s book is a collection of 30 stories, set as dreams in the (fictional) mind of a young Albert Einstein as he works in the patent office in 1905, and in parallel, pursues the theory of relativity. The book also has a prelude, interludes and an epilogue featuring his friend Michele Besso. Each story is a theme, an array of what-ifs built around the concept of time. Some of them are definitely connected to relativity but most of them are speculative fantasy. But all of them are concepts one could spend hours thinking over, exploring the nature of time and our individual and collective relationships with it. The joy is as much in the prose as it is in the concepts. It reminded me of the many ways we take time for granted. And got me thinking of the many different ways in which it could have played out. The book is art and science, and as profound as it is relatable. 

The Coincidence Plot by Anil Menon was another favourite, but I could be biased because of the underlying theme of Spinoza’s philosophy. And finally, the book that I finished on the last day of the year – a brilliant, slow burn, mystery by Keigo Higashino – Journey Under the Midnight Sun. 🙂

And that’s how the story ends. Follow me on Goodreads for more frequent updates. Thank you for reading!