I finished only 5 books in the past two
months, and two of those were books I had read before. It’s been insanely busy here and I got sick at
the beginning of April. Plus, Passover and travel and politics.
I recommend all these books. The first lines are:
Book 1
Ajarry
The first time Caesar approached Cora about
running north, she said no.
Book 2
Supposedly Irrelevant Factors
Early in my teaching career I managed to
inadvertently get most of the students in my microeconomics class mad at me,
and for once, it had nothing to do with anything I said in class. The problem
was caused by a midterm exam.
Book 3
There are various ways of mending a broken
heart, but perhaps going to a learned
conference is one of the more
unusual.
Book 4
To take an interest in the affairs of others
is entirely natural; so natural, in fact, that even a cat, lying cat-napping on
top of a wall, will watch with half an eye the people walking by below. But between such curiosity, which is
permissible, and nosiness, which is not, there lies a dividing line that some
people simply miss – even if it is a line that is painted red and marked by the
very clearest of warning signs.
Book 5
History does not repeat, but it
does instruct. As the Founding Fathers debated our Constitution, they took
instruction from the history they knew. Concerned that the democratic republic
they envisioned would collapse, they contemplated the descent of ancient
democracies and republics into oligarchy and empire. As they knew, Aristotle
warned that inequality brought instability, while Plato believed that
demagogues exploited free speech to install themselves as tyrants. In founding
a democratic republic upon law and establishing a system of checks and
balances, the Founding Fathers sought to avoid the evil that they, like the
ancient philosophers, called tyranny.
Book 6
Major Pettigrew was still upset about the
phone call from his brother’s wife and so he answered the doorbell without
thinking. On the damp bricks of the path stood Mrs. Ali from the village shop.
She gave only the faintest of starts, the merest arch of an eyebrow.
And here are the titles.
Book 1
The Underground Railroad, by Colson
Whitehead. Very good writing , but
brutal topic.
Book 2
Misbehaving: The Making of Behavioral Economics, by Richard Thaler. The author explains behavioral economics by
way of telling us his memoir. I got half
way through. I enjoyed it, but ran out of
time.
Book 3
No Fond Return of Love, by Barbara
Pym. This was my second time reading
this book. I love the two Barbara Pym books
which I have read, but I don’t think the book club shared my thoughts on this
author.
Book 4
The Right Attitude to Rain, by
Alexander McCall Smith. This is the
third in the Isabel Dalhousie series. There
is an element of mystery, but not the traditional outright murder at the start
of the novel. An enjoyable read.
Book 5
On Tyranny: Twenty Lessons from the Twentieth Century, by Timothy Snyder. I read
this book because I thought I should read Hannah Arendt’s The Origins of Totalitarianism (originally published in 1951) but
it is 578 pages long. Snyder’s book is much shorter, at 130 pages.
Timothy Snyder is a Professor of History at
Yale University. He is the author of Bloodlands:
Europe Between Hitler and Stalin and Black
Earth: The Holocaust as History and Warning. Snyder is a member of the
Committee on Conscience of the United States Holocaust Memorial Museum and a
permanent fellow of the Institute for Human Sciences in Vienna.
Book 6.
Major Pettigrew’s Last Stand, by
Helen Simonson. Culture clash, generational clash, economic class clash, with a
splash of British tea-time. I enjoyed it
just as much on this second go-round.
1 comment:
Thank you! Your book reviews are always welcome. I now have at least 3 new-to-me books to add to my list. I've read book #6 (and enjoyed it very much) but the others are all new to me. My book group has begun assigning and discussing one book every two months; the meeting that takes place in the "off" months is for further discussion of the previous book and/or sharing from other readings.
If you haven't yet read Being Mortal, by Atul Gawande, I cannot recommend it highly enough. (And if you have read it, I probably picked it up at least in part due to your recommendation.)
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