1. “Dancing in the Glory of Monsters: The Collapse of the Congo and the Great War of Africa”, Jason Stearns – A history of the Congo Wars; a twenty year conflict that involved a dozen countries and cost six million lives that most people have never heard about. Virtuoso journalism to tackle a conflict this complex and little known in the west and make it digestible to the average reader. Even better, Stearns doesn’t over-reach. His only conclusion is that there are no simple solutions to stabilising this region.  Buy – Borrow – Toss
2. “Revolutionary Road”, Richard Yates – A story of suburban ennui in 1950s America. I know a lot of people loved this book, but I was a bit underwhelmed. I guess I’m just unsympathetic to people complaining about the stultification of middle class life. Honestly, there are more important things to be angst ridden about. Buy – Borrow – Toss
3. “The Jungle Book”, Rudyard Kipling – A collection of short stories of life in Raj era India told through the eyes of animals and children. Reading Kipling, it’s easy to see how the English both achieved and destroyed so much around the world. Buy – Borrow – Toss
4. #“Recollections of a Bleeding Heart 10th Anniversary Edition”, Don Watson – A personal history of life inside the PMO during the Keating Prime Ministership. Elegiac. Naïve. Inspirational. Buy – Borrow – Toss
5. “Psmith Journalist”, P.G.Wodehouse – Psmith moves to the United States and takes up journalism. I’ve largely forgotten this already. It’s Wodehouse, It’s Psmith. For better and for worse. What more do you need to know. Buy – Borrow – Toss
6. “Fifty Orwell Essays”, George Orwell – A collection of Orwell’s best non-fiction. From Colonial Burma to Revolutionary Spain, from the coal mines of Northern England to the literary circles of London, Orwell’s searing insight cuts to the nub of the great political and moral questions of the 20^th Century. The best 99c you’ll ever spend on Amazon. You could teach an ethics course from this collection. Buy – Borrow – Toss
7. “Cannery Row”, John Steinbeck – A novella about the inhabitants of the small Californian coastal community of Monterey. Brilliant. Every time I finish a Steinbeck I feel invigorated and enriched. A New Year Resolution to properly work through his catalogue. Buy – Borrow – Toss
8. “Columbine”, Dave Cullen – A detailed examination of the events leading up to and following the Columbine school massacre informed by the diaries and videos of the killers and thousands of interviews with members of the community. A great piece of journalism. A necessary one too to debunking the many myths that were perpetuated by the media in the aftermath of the shooting. Fascinating. I was surprised to learn that the shooting had nothing to do with bullying or teen alienation, or even for that matter shooting (it was really a failed bombing inspired by Timothy McVeigh).  Buy – Borrow – Toss
9. “A Visit From The Goon Squad”, Jennifer Egan – The stories of a loosely linked set of characters in and around the music business interacting across time. I found the meta-debate around this book difficult to overcome. Jennifer Egan keeps getting thrown up as an example of a major female US literary fiction writer that doesn’t get the same credit as the Franzens’, Eugenidies’, Dellilo’s etc because US literature is a boys club. AVFTGS is cited as a book that doesn’t get the critical acclaim it deserves because female writers are overlooked (which is weird given all the prizes it won!). So I can’t help but compare the book to those guys – and I honestly don’t think it’s anywhere near being in their league. Maybe I am an unconscious misogynist, but I think Franzen’s work is significantly better than hers. My overall feeling is that it’s not substantial enough to be enduring. I can’t imagine as many people reading this book in ten years as are currently reading The Corrections for example.  The thing that worries me the most about the book in retrospect is how little of it I can actually remember just a few months on. I think by jumping between characters and time so frequently, she sacrificed the ability to focus on the substance to a greater extent. I thought most of the characters were only really sketched out rather than really developed in detail. Maybe that was the intention, but at the end of the book I found myself wishing that it was a whole book about Sasha, or maybe only three characters (maybe the guy in the last chapter and Benny as well?). But as it was I found it too fleeting. I don’t know. My feelings on this book are unstable, but I was ultimately unsatisfied. I did love the chapter written in powerpoint though.  Buy – Borrow – Toss
10. “The Spy Who Came in From The Cold”, John LeCarre – Cross, double cross or triple cross? A cold war spy thriller of the first order. Not just a pot boiler either, but a literary work of real substance. Explores an interesting thread about the means and ends of politics and international relations and the consequences for individuals. When I was a teenager I loved Tom Clancy books, I wish I’d found LeCarre earlier instead.  Buy – Borrow – Toss
11. “Hiroshima”, John Hersey – The seminal account of the nuclear attack on Hiroshima, told through the experiences of half a dozen survivors. Originally commissioned by the New Yorker and published shortly after the bombing, it’s brilliantly written with a tone pitched perfectly for the subject matter. Buy – Borrow – Toss
12. “Power Without Glory”, Frank Hardy – Roman à clef of the life of the corrupt Labor power broker, John Wren. Surprisingly good. Genuinely readable, even if it flagged a bit at the end. Insights into the nature of power and its exercise abound. Buy – Borrow – Toss
13. “300”, Frank Miller and Lynn Varley – Graphic novel portrayal of the battle of Thermopylae. After reading The Watchmen, V for Vendetta and 300, it’s pretty clear to me that there’s a crypto-fascist aspect to his world view. It’s a bit creepy.  Buy – Borrow – Toss
14. “Marvels”, Kurt Busiek and Alex Ross – A graphic novel linking the stories of Marvel’s main superheros and filling new comers in on the universe. Supposedly one of the best of the superhero genre, but failed in a narrative sense for mine. Without emotional valence. One for the true fans only. Buy – Borrow – Toss
15. “The Defender”, Jordan Conn – The story of 7’7’ Sudanese basketball oddity Manute Bol. No, he didn’t really kill a lion. Yes, he lived a bizarre, comical and tragic life regardless. A very interesting read. Incidentally, I really love the Kindle Single format (cheap, easily consumable in short bites), but I can’t seem to find much of interest in the Kindle store. I think they need to find a better way of helping people find content. Buy – Borrow – Toss
16. “The Great Stagnation: How America Ate All The Low-Hanging Fruit of Modern History, Got Sick, and Will (Eventually) Feel Better”, Tyler Cowen – Academic economist and Internet polymath Tyler Cowen posits a theory for the stagnation of economic growth in the United States. No more free land to be productively utilised and under-educated people to have their human capital enriched means that the US (and the west more broadly) needs to work harder at the things that drive growth (science, R&D etc). Buy – Borrow – Toss
17. “The Unfinished Revolution: How New Labour Changed British Politics Forever”, Philip Gould – A key Labour strategist from 1987-2010 writes about the modernisation of the UK Labour party and the six UK election campaigns that he advised on. Along with “It’s not what you say, it’s what people hear” by Frank Luntz, this is the book that I would most recommend for anyone interested in a practical handbook on political campaigning. Gould gets the big picture of campaign strategy, but also sets out in detail how to go about operationalising strategy during an election. First class. Buy – Borrow – Toss
18. “Nothing to Envy: Ordinary Lives in North Korea”, Barbara Demick – A US journalist pieces together the details of ordinary life in one city in North Korea through the stories of a exiles living in South Korea. If you have even the slightest curiosity about North Korea (particularly in light of the death of Kim Il Jung, you ought to grab this book. It’s fascinating and insightful. Close to the best book I read this year. Buy – Borrow – Toss
19. “Disgrace”, JM Coetzee – A South African Professors’ liaison with a student leads him to flee Cape Town in disgrace to live with his daughter in rural South Africa. A well told reflection on masculinity, fatherhood, power, repression, hatred and suffering.  Buy – Borrow – Toss
20. “Reluctant Fundamentalist”, Mohsin Hamid – Overachieving Pakistani working in the finance sector in New York has his relationship with the United States turned upside down by the September 11 attacks. I’m not sure that I fully bought the format of this book (it is told in form of a discussion between the protagonist and an unidentified American in a Pakistani city), but I did like the multiple layers of allegory that Hamid played with in this book. Layers upon layers of meaning everywhere you look. Buy – Borrow – Toss
21. “The Light on the Hill: the Australian Labor Party, 1891-1991”, Ross McMullin – The authoritative history of the ALP commissioned for the Party’s 100^th anniversary. A long, but rollicking account of the drama filled history of the Australian Labor Party. Buy – Borrow – Toss
22. “Goodbye Jerusalem: Night Thoughts of a Labor Outsider”, Bob Ellis – Ellis recounts the lead up to the 1998 Federal Election and his surreal independent candidacy in Bronwyn Bishop’s electorate when she was spruiked as a future Liberal leader. Yes, I know he’s an arsehole with some really unpleasant views, but so was Hemmingway etc etc. Fact is, the guy can write and his melancholy but earnest tone is ideally suited to discussions of the Labor party. My copy is pre-defamation pulping J  Buy – Borrow – Toss
23. “Farewell Babylon: Further Journeys in Time and Politics”, Bob Ellis – The same gimmick as Goodbye Jerusalem, but for the 2001 election campaign. Like most sequels, not quite as good despite arguably better material. Buy – Borrow – Toss
24.  “The Naked and the Dead”, Norman Mailer – A company of US soldiers is assigned to a mission on a Pacific Island in World War 2. Over long and overblown in parts, but somehow compelling despite it. I can see why it was a literary sensation when it was published. Holds up well today, 50 years after it was first published.  Buy – Borrow – Toss
25. “The Hunger Games Trilogy”, Susanne Collins – Teen girl forced to fight for survival against other teens on a reality tv show in a fantasy dystopia. I can see why it’s become such a big seller. Entertaining, but ultimately insubstantial. A significant drop off in quality in the second and third books. Buy – Borrow – Toss
26. “Learning to be a Minister: Heroic Expectations, Practical Realities”, Anne Tiernan and Patrick Weller – An academic account of the experience of being a Minister in the incoming Rudd Government informed by anonymous interviews with ministers, staffers and public servants. I picked this up at the Parliament House book store on a business trip when I had run out of reading material. An interesting flashback to what it was like in the early months of the Rudd Government. Fun to play “Guess Who” with the blind quotes. Buy – Borrow – Toss
27. “Barefoot Gen (Barefoot Gen)”, Nakazawa Keiji -  A manga cartoonist who was a ten year old boy in Hiroshima when the atomic bomb hit tells the story of the lead up to and the aftermath of the bombing. I found this book via a recommendation from Maus’ Art Spiegelman. It’s excellent, though not in Maus’ league. Barefoot Gen is more directly aimed at children and has a more explicit didactic purpose. Which means you get a lot of the more extreme manga conventions (over the top fights, children biting off people’s fingers etc) and expository detours explaining events (using Gen’s anti-war father and Kamikaze volunteer brother as foils). Which is fine and important, but just pitched at a different level to Maus. (Graphic Novel) Buy – Borrow – Toss
28. #“The Trial of Henry Kissinger”, Christopher Hitchens – Hitchens reviews the evidence for the trial of Henry Kissinger for crimes against humanity in Vietnam, Cambodia, Laos, Bangladesh, Argentina etc, etc. This really is a shocking read. I’m not adverse to real politik in service of a greater cause, but Hitchens makes a pretty compelling case that Kissinger knowingly and repeatedly commissioned horrific crimes solely to advance his personal power within the US establishment. This was a quickie Hitchens’ read prompted by his sad early death. I read this book some time ago and remembered it as an archetype takedown. It held up on re-reading – authoritative, brutal and erudite. I’m really going to have to get around to reading Hitch 22 next year. Buy - Borrow – Toss

A few reading goals for next year:

• Poetry – I’ve never read poetry at length (other than Wilfred Owen and Siegfried Sassoon who I feel don’t really count for some reason). So next year I want to get through at least “Leaves of Grass”, some Frost and some Ruthven Todd. Is Philip Larkin any good? I’ve heard people I respect speak favourably about him. I really have no background in poetry so it’s tough to know where to start.
• Getting back into Asian literature – You wouldn’t know it from the list above, but I’ve probably read more Chinese and Japanese literary fiction than any other genre. They are distinct oeuvre’s to be clear, but they share an obtuseness and non-linearity that I really like. The core of the story is always submerged and you have to really work to get what’s really going on. I love it. Anyway, it’s tough to get most of what I like for the Kindle which has led me to deprioritise it. I do however I have a bit of a hard cover queue accumulating. I have the new Ha Jin and a few Ma Jian’s backed up in my reading queue. I also want to get around to finishing the Sea of Fertility Tetraology. I loved Spring Snow and Temple of the Golden Pavilion, but ran out of energy for the other two books.

Which meant that while reading was the cultural and intellectual activity that I found most rewarding, I didn’t do as much of it as I wanted. So I decided that I’d approach reading like you would an exercise regime; slogging through the periods of fatigue and lack of motivation with the aim of building enough momentum and a strong enough habit to keep me going in perpetuity. I wouldn’t sacrifice enjoyment or comprehension in the name of achieving this goal, but I’d prioritise my time throughout the week accordingly.

It’s not almost three years later and I’m still going strong. I’m a bit surprised I’ve lasted this long, but very pleased too. It feels great to get through a real volume of (non-work) reading – like getting mentally fit. I bet this is what Buddhists feel like J

Anyway, while I’ve blogged quick book reviews and extracts that I’ve liked for some time (at my tumblr Blogging the Bookshelf), I thought it might be fun to blog my impressions of my year in reading. So here’s part one of what I read this year in a broadly chronological order (my Kindle’s My Clippings file allows me to retrace most of my reading history, but with hard copy books the exact timing is uncertain).

1. “A Single Man”, Christopher Isherwood – A closeted gay man in 1950s America loses his partner in a car crash. Achingly sad and closely observed. Very effectively conveys the smothering nature of grief. I read it to be much more pessimistic than the recent movie adaptation, but a good friend with a better perspective on the issues came to the opposite conclusion so I may be wrong. Buy – Borrow – Toss
2. “The Berlin Stories”, Christopher Isherwood – Writers, artist and bohemians in Weimar Berlin push the boundaries of social norms in the shadow of the rise of Nazism. Tells the story of a homosexual English writer in Berlin without ever conceding the existence of homosexuality. Layered with subtext and obtuseness, so exactly to my taste. Buy – Borrow – Toss
3. “The Picture of Dorian Gray”, Oscar Wilde – English dandy and aristocrat enters into faustian bargain to preserve his youthful good looks. Reading Wilde is like running around a playground of the English language. Witticisms and homilies abound. Buy – Borrow – Toss
4. “Tender is the Night”, F Scott Fitzgerald – A wealthy American couple deal with a wife’s mental illness and a husband’s insecurities while jet setting through 1930s Europe. Ah, Dick Diver – The most unfortunately named protagonist in literature. An interesting on though. The relationship between the two protagonists is beautifully and painfully realistic. Buy – Borrow – Toss
5. “Casino Royale”, Ian Fleming. – You all know what it’s about – spies and poker or something.  Trash. Unreconstructed misogyny and homophobia. Not as mendacious as others in the James Bond series (eg Goldfinger), but still probably a net negative contribution to society. That aside, I still can’t help myself from reading them. A guilty pleasure I guess. The books are darker than the films. Buy – Borrow – Toss
6. “The God Delusion”, Richard Dawkins – God doesn’t exist and if you continue to believe otherwise in spite of overwhelming evidence to the contrary you are either stupid or mentally ill.  You can’t disagree with the logic or the verdict, but the way the case is put makes you wonder what is the point. It’s not the kind of book that’s going to persuade many with religious faith. Overall more irritating than enlightening. Buy – Borrow – Toss
7. “Lust, Caution”, Eileen Chang – A novella of short stories set in WW2 Shanghai. This book makes you feel like you’re listening to middle aged Chinese women gossiping to each other in a tea room. A gossipy and melodramatic feel, but well constructed and ultimately effective. The circumstances of Chang’s personal life adds a layer of intrigue to reading the title story. Buy – Borrow – Toss
8. “The Maltese Falcon”, Dashiell Hammett – Hard bitten private eye juggles competing gangsters and a femme fatale in search of a fabulous antique. Not quite as good as The Thin Man, but still one of the best private eye mysteries. Sam Spade is one of the great characters of American literature. Buy – Borrow – Toss
9. “The Big Sleep”, Raymond Chandler – Private Eye gets caught up in the nefarious affairs of a wealthy patriarch and his amoral daughters. This book comes highly rated in the genre and was certainly enjoyable, but thinking back now, there’s very little of it that I can recall. There witty dialogue, I remember that much. Buy – Borrow – Toss
10. “The Same Man: George Orwell and Evelyn Waugh in Love and War”, David Lebedoff –A dual biography of George Orwell and Evelyn Waugh, with the premise that these contemporaries lives shared more parallels than their very different personas would suggest. An enjoyable read, but ultimately the premise was stretched too far to be entirely satisfying. I found some of the themes enlightening (eg Orwell’s life as an Etonian trying to hide the fact and Waugh’s as a non-Etonian trying to pretend otherwise. Sadly, my strongest memory of this book was the factoid that Evelyn Waugh’s first wife was also named Evelyn! Buy – Borrow – Toss
11. “Why Orwell Matters”, Christopher Hitchens – One of the best essayists of our time riffs off the work of the best essayist of all time providing historical context and modern interpretation. A first class introduction to Orwell’s body of work and its significance for modern politics. All young progressives would do themselves a favour by picking up this book – it will take the blinkers off and dramatically accelerate the evolution of your political thinking. Buy – Borrow – Toss
12. “After the Quake: Stories”, Haruki Murakami – A collection of surrealist short stories loosely linked by the Kobe earthquake. This is the collection with the story about the giant frog. I am a fan of Murakami’s oeuvre, but I find myself feeling a sense of dread every time I come across one of his increasingly lengthy stand alone novels. In my view, his short story collections are invariably much more enjoyable. You get the same feeling of whimsy and disorientation, but in short bursts that don’t feel like a slog into the unknown. This isn’t quite up there with Blind Willow, Sleeping Woman for my mind, but is excellent nonetheless. Buy – Borrow – Toss
13. “Darkly Dreaming Dexter”, Jeff Lindsay – Origin story of serial killer who works as a police forensics analyst by day and kills serial killers by night. I hadn’t seen the Dexter TV series so I picked this up to see what it was all about. It’s trash, but harmlessly so. Buy – Borrow – Toss
14. “Up in the Air”, Walter Kirn – Shallow road warrior businessmen who specialises in facilitating redundancies confronts the emptiness of his existence. Cleverly written, but pretty insubstantial and emotionally unfulfilling. I liked the movie (and George Clooney) better. Buy – Borrow – Toss
15. “An Education”, Lynn Barber – UK journalist recounts her free loving youth and career as a journalist. I’m a bit embarrassed that I read this book for some reason. It’s a bit of a chick’s book right? The opening chapters dealing with her high school romance were engaging, but I lost interest as the book progressed. Buy – Borrow – Toss
16. “The Right Stuff”, Tom Wolfe – A non-fiction account of the lives and culture of the military test pilots who comprised NASA’s first manned space program (the Mercury missions). A tad gung ho and rah rah, but justifiably so. A genuinely awe inspiring story of real life human courage and endeavour. Great fun too. The Chuck Yeager stories in particular are mind blowing. Buy – Borrow – Toss
17. “Battle Hymn of the Tiger Mother”, Amy Chua – Intense first generation immigrant mother outlines her parenting philosophy in the form of a memoir of her experiences raising two over-achieving daughters. Far and away the funniest book I read all year. Chua’s complete lack of perspective or self-awareness produces a series of laugh out loud statements of parenting myopia. It’s amazing to think that just a year after this book was released, the phrase ‘Tiger Mother’ now requires no explanation. A phenomenon. Buy – Borrow – Toss
18. “Parentonomics: An Economist Dad Looks at Parenting”, Joshua Gans – An economics professor tries to apply economic principles to the task of parenting with his own children as guinea pigs. Sadly for Josh, this book didn’t take off in quite the same way as Tiger Mother! But as a new dad with an economics background, I enjoyed it and picked up a few useful tips (Make sure your baby sleeps as far away from mum and dad as possible!). Buy – Borrow – Toss
19. #“Primary Colors: A Novel of Politics”, Joe Klein – Charismatic Southern Governor seeks the Democratic Presidential nomination in the face of scandal and ethical quandaries. Originally published anonymously and hewing very closely to the real life circumstances of Bill Clinton’s 1992 Presidential campaign, this is probably the second best fictional account of US politics (It will take a lot to knock off Robert Penn Warren’s “All the King’s Men” from the number one spot in this regard). Gets at the core of why people become involved in politics and the trade offs they face once they are players. It’s telling that Joe Klein came to sympathise more with politicians than journalists after his experience with the media after he was outed as the book’s author. Buy – Borrow – Toss
20. “Consider the Lobster: And Other Essays”, David Foster Wallace – DFW in his purest form; high quality, high brow, humanist essay writing. If you find him insufferably affected – you’ll hate it. Includes the majority of his most iconic essays eg The Las Vegas Porn Convention, The Maine Lobster Festival and Peta, Robert Federer and Authority and American Usage (AKA his grammar pedantry spray. Buy – Borrow – Toss
21. “The Big Short: Inside the Doomsday Machine”, Michael Lewis – An account of the causes of the 2008 global financial crisis told through the stories of the investors who saw it coming, and bet against the world financial system. Lewis is a seriously talented communicator and story teller. A cogent and comprehensible explanation of the causes of the GFC with real narrative structure. Really quite impressive when you think about it.   Buy – Borrow – Toss
22. “Democracy, an American novel”, Henry Adams – An 1870s New York society woman moves to Washington in search of a political education.  The dialogue was amusing at times and some of the political philosophy was interesting and insightful but I found this book to be a bit of a drag to get through. The novelistic form has evolved for the better since this book was first published in 1880. Buy – Borrow – Toss
23. “In Cold Blood”, Truman Capote – Two drifters murder an upstanding rural American family. The birth of the ‘true crime’ genre. I know the reputation of this book and I don’t necessarily disagree with it, but I wasn’t personally taken by this book. Can’t put my finger on exactly why. Maybe I was just in a funk myself at the time. Buy – Borrow – Toss
24. “Cultural Amnesia: Necessary Memories from History and the Arts”, Clive James – An extraordinarily wide ranging collection of essays about the figures James considers to be most important to the cultural life of the 20^th century. Brilliant, brilliant, brilliant writing. Fascinating, meaty subject matter engaged by a luminescent intellect. At times, reading this felt overpoweringly rich; like eating pigs trotters stuffed with sweetbreads and truffles. I had to give my mind breaks from this book with less enriching fare in order to get through it all. Buy – Borrow – Toss
25. “Maus: A Survivor’s Tale. I. My Father Bleeds History. & II. And Here My Troubles Began”, Art Spiegelman – A cartoonist tells the story of his parent’s experiences in the holocaust and his own experiences in drawing out the tale. You probably know this book’s shtick: the Nazis are drawn as cats, the Jews as mice and a complex and intense multi-generational family story is told in a way that is accessible to all readers. This book isn’t just excellent in it’s genre, it’s excellent for any genre. It deserves to be more widely read. There are a number of books that I’ve bought with the conscious intention of having them sitting invitingly on bookshelves for my children to sneak away to read for themselves. I really hope they grab Maus one day. Buy – Borrow – Toss
26. “Persepolis”, Marjane Satrapi – An Iranian woman tells the story of her childhood in revolutionary Iran and her return to the country as a young woman. Maus put me onto a bit of a graphic novel bender. I was excited to explore a new genre that I’d barely touched before. Persepolis was a bit of a let-down in this context. It’s not bad, but Maus meant my expectations were set too high for me to really love this book.  Buy – Borrow – Toss
27. “Logicomix: An Epic Search for Truth”, Apostolos Doxiadis, Christos H. Papadimitriou, Alecos Papadatos and Annie Di Donna – A graphic novel about Bertrand Russell’s ambition to ‘prove’ the logical foundations of mathematics. I’ve long loved Bertrand Russell’s pop-philosophy and essays, but I’ve never found a way into his own philosophy. It’s really mind bending stuff. How can you ‘prove’ that 1 +1 = 2 from first principles? Russell never worked it out, but this cartoon makes it reasonably straightforward to understand the questions he was posing.  Buy – Borrow – Toss
28. “The Walking Dead: 1 – 85”, Robert Kirkman, Charlie Adlard, Cliff Rathburn and Tony Moore –  (Graphic Novel), The Zombie apocalypse in cartoon form. Harmless fun if you like that sort of thing. Buy – Borrow – Toss
29. #“Anthills of the Savannah”, Chinua Achebe – An allegory of post-colonial politics in a fictional African nation told through the relationship between three childhood friends, a soldier, a journalist and a public servant. One of Achebe’s more underrated books. Lyrically written and very insightful on the nature of power, jealousy, hatred and repression. Buy – Borrow – Toss

# Re-reads.

Part 2 tomorrow (or whenever I get around to it).

A few observations on general patterns looking back on this list:

• 28 Fiction v 30 Non-Fiction books. A pretty good balance. I found myself wanting to read more fiction through the year than I did, but I kept getting way laid by high quality non-fiction. I blame Tyler Cowen.
• When you’re ripping through a book a week, the really big tomes (eg The Naked and The Dead, Cultural Amnesia), feel even longer than they are. I’ve also found myself deferring some very long books I’ve wanted to read because of this feeling (IQ84 & Freedom). I might have to be more disciplined about this. Maybe require one 1000+ pager every six months?
• I finished three essay collections this year (Orwell, Clive James and David Foster Wallace). This isn’t a genre I’d spent much time with before, but I very much enjoyed it.
• A weirdly morbid year in non-fiction; the Holocaust, Hiroshima times two, African Wars, North Korea, AIDS, the Columbine shooting. Very dark and not consciously selected. I may have to contemplate the significance of that.

It is difficult to establish any relationship between the price of books and the value one gets out of them. “Books” includes novels, poetry, text books, works of reference, sociological treatises and much else, and length and price do not correspond to one another, especially if one habitually buys books second-hand. You may spend ten shillings on a poem of 500 lines, and you may spend sixpence on a dictionary which you consult at odd moments over a period of twenty years. There are books that one reads over and over again, books that become part of the furniture of one’s mind and alter one’s whole attitude to life, books that one dips into but never reads through, books that one reads at a single sitting and forgets a week later: and the cost, in terms of money, may be the same in each case.

This just about sums up the point of this blog!

Jung-sang’s favourite was Gone With the Wind. The melodramatic style of the book was not unlike the tone of Korean fiction. He was struck by the parallels between the American Civil War and the Korean War. It was amazing to him how vicious the fighting could be between one people – clearly the Americans were as impassioned as the Koreans. He thought the Americans better off for the fact that they ended up one country, not divided like the Koreans. He admired the heroine, Scarlett O’Hara, for her pluckiness. She reminded him a little of North Korea’s own cinematic heroines who were always in the dirt, fighting for their land, but Scarlett was much more of an individualist – not a quality celebrated in North Korean literature. And North Korean heroines most certainly didn’t have love affairs…

He even read How to Win Friends and Influence People, the 1930s self-help classic by Dale Carnegie. It was his first exposure to Western ideas about business, and it shocked him. He couldn’t believe the advice that Carnegie was giving readers.

“Learn to love, respect, and enjoy other people”.

How could a product of the American Capitalist system write something like this? Jung-sang asked himself. Weren’t all capitalists enemies who lived by the law of the jungle – kill or be killed?

I LOVE this anecdote. A paradigm example of the power of the book to open up another world to someone and to promote understanding.As an end note to this, Jung-sang becomes a devotee of Orwell after he defects to South Korea.