Oh well, since Gates doesn’t have a monopoly these days, I thought I’ll continue this from last year and the year before. Actually, it’s for a couple of reasons. One, I think there are underlying themes in my reading every year, which will be interesting to examine years later. And two, if someone chances upon these, they will hopefully be able to discover new books and themes for themselves. The shortlisting was tougher this year, because the list was slightly bigger, and the quality of books was also great. My long list from the 50 books I read this year was closer to 20, and I’ll mention them in the relevant places.
Blockchain Chicken Farm: And Other Stories of Tech in China’s Countryside: A lot of the commentary on China is framed either as its rise as a superpower and the brewing conflict with the US, or the sociopolitical machinations of Xi Jinping and the CCP. Xiaowei Wang provides fresh and interesting perspectives by focusing on the impact of technology in rural China, delving into the nuances beyond the binaries or urban/rural, digital/physical, natural/man-made etc, and providing sufficient context to the changes. Yes, there is AI, blockchain, drones, surveillance, open-source ecosystems and so on, but there is also community, inequality, society and identity.
Azadi: Of course I have an Arundhati Roy bias. As a society, we increasingly have a problem with those who speak the inconvenient truth, through words or action. Capitalistic greed, class prejudices, and more recently, the conversion of India from a democracy to a fascist state, are all relevant themes. So are the different ways of the “us vs them” discourse that are used by those who profit from it politically and economically. As always, she holds an uncompromising mirror to those of us whose privilege affords us the luxury of living in bubbles whose walls are impermeable.
This is what the world today might categorise as anarchy, and in my long list of favourites this year, there are more books that fit – How the World Works based on conversations with Noam Chomsky, and The Dawn of Everything by David Graeber & David Wengrow. The latter has been especially influential.
Rules of Civility: Amor Towles was on the list in 2019, and to use a line from the book on itself, this one too was ‘so wonderful, so obviously full of promise — that you wanted to approach it for the rest of your life without ever quite arriving.’ We meet Katey Kontent in 1966, who, in an exhibition, sees the photograph of an old acquaintance Tinker Grey. We then follow her life from 1937 in New York, or specifically Manhattan whose different shades also appear as Katey’s life changes. Amidst the parties, cocktails, flings and high-heels, there are extremely well-etched characters, all different from each other, and all with moments of deep poignancy.
At a very generic level of fiction, and the human insight caught so well, my long list has A Day in the Life by Anjum Hasan (who also continues to be a favourite author).
The Psychology of Money: I have said this on many occasions – this is a book that everyone needs to read, and it doesn’t really matter how much money you have. What makes it really good is that it views money not (only) through the technical lens, or the “get rich” advice, but explores the emotional aspects of personal finance, and then articulates in a way that is relatable. I am biased because I subscribe to Morgan Housel‘s worldview, but I think this book will help you frame your relationship with money, irrespective of where you are in your thinking and understanding of personal finance. Pick it up now!
If I think of this book as a cultivation of mindset, Lives of the Stoics by Ryan Holiday & Stephen Hanselman is in my long list.
Figuring: This should have been on a list many years ago because I have been a huge fan of Maria Popova‘s Brain Pickings forever! I read the title both as exploration and understanding, as well as mathematics being the language of the universe, but I am guessing it’s the first that the author intended. The narrative is guided by the lives of many people, and could be seen as a history of intellectual successors. Some of them easily known, and some others not famous enough, unfortunately and unfairly. The book covers multiple themes – feminism, transcendentalism, queer relationships, the stars in the sky, and the life on the ocean floor – and nudges us to ask the essential and existential questions – what makes a good life, what does it mean to live one that positively impacts humanity?
An odd way to frame this, some might think, but just as Maria Popova framed the history of humanity through a unique lens, Margaret Heffernan does that for the future with Uncharted.
Behave: The Biology of Humans at Our Best and Worst: At any given point in time, we are behaving in one way or another. What influences that? To understand that, Robert M. Sapolsky uses time travel. From the seconds before that behaviour, and the possible neurobiological explanation, to the genes we have inherited, to the early days of our non-human ancestors and the environment that shaped many of their behaviours. Hormones, environment, culture, and events from millennia ago, all offer but clues to understanding how we are today. It isn’t an easy read because you’re thrown into the deep end of the pool – neurotransmitters and hormones – but if you’re able to survive that and move on to environment, culture, decision-making etc, there are some fascinating insights. ‘We are constantly being shaped by seemingly irrelevant stimuli, subliminal information, and internal forces we don’t know a thing about.’ ‘Our worst behaviours, once we condemn and punish are the products of our biology. The same applies to our best behaviours.’
Metaphors we live by: This is another book that is far from an easy read, but even (more than) 40 years after it was first published, George Lakoff & Mark Johnson‘s fantastic insight is still pathbreaking. Metaphorical concepts are so ubiquitous in our thoughts and deeds that we don’t even realise they exist, let alone their effect on how we think about everything from business and ethics to marriage and poetry. The light bulb goes off in the first few pages, when the authors use “Argument is war” as an example. It’s because war is the metaphor we have used at a concept level, that the words we used to describe it are about winning/losing it – “your claims are indefensible” or ‘He demolished my arguments” or “I attacked his weak points” and so on. See! If you remember Lisa Feldman Barrett’s How Emotions Are Made from my 2019 list, you’ll be able to connect – by changing the metaphors we live by, we can change our everyday life, and our future.
The Tyranny of Merit: What’s Become of the Common Good? : Meritocracy began as a remedy, and its earliest proponents probably understood that while it may not be able to bring about equality, it could help create mobility across the levels of society. Unfortunately, it has increasingly moved away from that purpose too, and has now created a system where those are already privileged have a disproportionate advantage over those who do not. And no, education, especially the way it is now, is not a solution. And anyway, mobility can no longer compensate for inequality. Michael J. Sandel does a fantastic job of unpeeling nuances and perceptions and offers a take on how we can attempt to fix this tyranny – in the domains of education and economics. An important read from the perspectives of individual happiness as well as societal well-being, and human dignity.
The related read in my long list is Caste by Isabel Wilkerson – another artificial construct of human value that results in tyranny.
Watchmen: I know, I know. On one hand, comic book aficionados would wonder about the address of my cave, and at the other end of the spectrum, there are those who’d wonder why this is even here. But this blog has been host to many posts about morality, some of them featuring Watchmen too, and therefore this was kind of inevitable. What Alan Moore, Dave Gibbons & John Higgins have created is a fantastic mix of social commentary, the deconstruction of what makes a superhero and the power dynamics involved, and most interestingly, the moral dilemmas of the protagonists. Rorschach’s moral absolutism is something that continues to provide material for reflection.
Klara and the Sun: Kazuo Ishiguro has a way with profound sadness! Klara, an “artificial friend” serves as the narrator in a dystopian future where children are “lifted” for enhancing their intelligence. The world at large seems to have a fair share of tribes and movements, as technology has caused a division of classes in which many are “post employed”. As always, I was hooked by the layered narrative and wonderful insights that make us human. It made me think of the scenario when AI becomes sentient/ develops consciousness – would humans be able to understand them, what would be the kind of loneliness the AI would face, how would it handle its obsolescence, would it also show different kinds of love (the selfish and the selfless), and yes, can it have a heart – “I don’t simply mean the organ, obviously. I’m speaking in the poetic sense”.
There were three other works of fiction that left me with this level of poignancy for different reasons – Eleanor Oliphant Is Completely Fine by Gail Honeyman, The Cyberiad by Stanislaw Lem, The Devotion of Suspect X by Keigo Higashino and Station Eleven by Emily St. John Mandel.
A couple of books that don’t fit into any of the themes above, but are great reads if you’re interested in Indian history – Early Indians by Tony Joseph and The Great Game by Peter Hopkirk.
Alright, nothing more to read here. Follow me on Goodreads for more frequent updates.
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