Eva
China is building infrastructure all over the world, under the mantle of its One Belt One Road initiative. The roads, rails, bridges, ports and airports it builds are mainly to facility transport and commerce, to strengthen trading relationships between China and the world. But, as most of its ambitious building happens in poverty-ridden, corruption-prone Asian countries, China also fits the bill. Heavily indebted to China, countries like Laos, Malaysia, Thailand then have to hand back large ownership of the investments to China. And China's influence grows, while Chinese citizens flood towards the business opportunities and fancy condos that shoot up in these new special economic zones.
This book is mainly about getting the Pan-Asia Railway underway, but it also hints at the bigger picture. I'm starting to like the Columbia Global Reports series, they are short and very informative.
We like future predictions to be presented to us as absolutes: this stock will rise, it will rain, this team will win. Our brains have a hard time making sense of uncertainty and margins of error. We like our realities to be oversimplified, have clear incentives for taking actions. Plus, we don't like to get wet when we leave our umbrellas at home despite being told there's a minimal chance of rain (this goes so far that the weather channels deliberately tweak what their models predicted, to avoid angry rained-on viewers, see Wet Bias).
This book is from 2012, post Moneyball and post 2008 financial crisis. Predictions and the rise of big data was on everyone's mind. Who predicted the housing bubble and who made money of it? Silver goes through different domains where predictions and probabilistic thinking play a major role: the weather, baseball, poker, chess, the stock market, the climate. He starts on how we fail at predicting the occurrence of earthquakes, despite knowing the likely frequency of their occurrences. And he ends on the statistics of terrorist attacks, whose ratio of frequency and impact (their ‘power laws') are not unlike earthquakes.
In hindsight, after the occurrence of an event, it's always easy to look back and see the signal that hinted at it. Yet, while we're in it, it's incredibly hard to distinguish which part of the data is a signal (clear indicator) and which is noise (irrelevant fluctuations, irrelevant other signals). Which part of a baseball player's results are skill and which are luck? Statistical analysis and the accumulation of large amounts of data have helped with isolating signals in some domains, but not all. We're also living in a world that's increasing its volume of information exponentially, tied together in complex systems, making it increasingly important to develop probabilistic thinking. Bayesian logic is the use of knowledge of prior events to predict future events, while continuously updating your hypothesis about the future, when new data comes in. (So far, every morning the sun has risen from the east, therefore I assume it will rise from the east tomorrow morning as well).
Great book, still highly relevant of course. The climate chapter felt a bit messy, and there potentially was a bit too much content from the author's old poker-days, but else this was a highly informative and interesting read. Good to get comfortable with the ‘known unknowns' before having to deal with ‘unknown unknowns'.
How economic surplus jumpstarted the economy and inequality, how the labor market was created, how we evolved from societies with markets to market societies, how debt is what fuels profit seeking, how banks profit from bubbles and never pay for their faults, how increased automation would trip on less purchasing power, all the way up to the great debate if commodification of everything or democratization of everything (money, the environment) would solve all our worries.
Varoufakis addresses this engaging tour of the history of the economy and capitalism at his then-adolescent daughter. It's lucid, yet not oversimplified, I've learned a lot, and still think, I should probably revisit it again.
L'histoire multigenerationnel d'une famille francaise qui transforme une pauvre petite ferme au debut de 20ieme ciecle a une grande ferme porcine a la fin du ciecle.
La premiere section du livre se concentre sur Eleonore, qui grandit comme une enfant unique avec des parents durs et taciturnes dans des conditions economique difficile. Malgre tout elle persevere. Elle aime son cousin aine Marcel qui vient aider a la ferme, mais son experience de la WWI le laisse devaste, corps et ame.
Dans la deucieme section on rencontre la famille trois generation plus tard. Il semble que la douleur psychologique etait transmise de generation en generation. Maintenant la ferme est dirigee par le patriarche mourant qui l'a transformee en machine de production de viande de porc. Alors que le betail est lentement envahi par un virus, la famille et l'entreprise elle-meme s'effondrent en raison de ses nombreux secrets et afflictions.
A travers tout cela est un portrait de la relation des humains aux animaux et a la nature. Si vous grandissez dans une ferme d'animaux, vous developpez naturellement une immunite contre les cruautes de votre travail. Del Amo's ecriture est tres beaux, viscerale, natureliste et brutale. Les representations des mecanisms d'une ferme porcine moderne (~annees 80) sont revoltantes.
Le symbolisme du verrat echappe etait merveilleux. J'ai adore que le livre se termine sur la perspective du “la bete”.
I've read this 1 year after Fang Fang started her Wuhan Diary in February 2020, documenting Wuhan's journey through quarantine while battling the outbreak of the Coronavirus. Occasionally it felt like I was reading this either too early (because we're still very much in the middle of it and lack distance) or too late (as some of her gravitas now feels off, as we know how high the worldwide victim counts have risen).
The beginning is especially haunting, as it reads like the beginning of an dystopian novel where a diary from before an apocalypse is recovered, with ominous counting of days and “the virus” looming large as the mysterious enemy. Then it becomes a study of quarantine life, a portrait of a country and culture that refuses to acknowledge mistakes, and a tale of online trolls and internet censorship.
Fang Fang posts her diary entries each day on her Chinese social media account. As she acts as a national conscience and demands accountability, her diary collects more and more fans, and subsequently the the government starts to take down her posts.
Slim, precise and haunting. Two narrations that focus on elements of the Israel/Palestina conflict. The past features an Israeli officer tasked with clearing a desert area from “intruders” (the resident bedouins), which culminates in the rape and murder of a young bedouin woman. The present features an Palestinian woman, who tries to learn more about this incident, while having to navigate the heavily restricted and dangerous zone. Both characters's narrations are detail oriented, detached and have a repetitive nature. The soldier's life is filled with a repetition of mundane tasks, while the other protagonist is slightly on the autism spectrum and pursuits her quest in a slightly obsessive way. Yet, despite this setup, this is not a true-crime investigation, instead the story meanders, and then barely perceptibly ties the two stories together with ephemeral moments, sensations, unfortunes.
This worked really well. But had it been any longer, it probably would have dragged.
Wonderfully dynamic, fun, dark, full of memorable characters. I enjoyed how important the rough unpolished character of Montenegro's people, landscapes and cultures are to the novel and also its protagonists. A family story, a story of women, of resilience, of forgiving, of second and third lives, of a country going through war and transforming. There's a ladies' grave that doesn't fill in the right order, there's a love story that keeps you guessing. In the center of it all is Catherine, our heroine, who's the rock for those around her.
A portrait of real-life French heroine Anne Beaumanoir and what it means to have the natural instinct to help the oppressed and to fight against the oppressors. We follow her path into the resistance, first against the German occupation in WWII, and then in support of Algeria's fight for independence from colonial France. The narration moves in the style of a epic, tracking her actions, interactions, locations without ever lingering in a moment. I quite enjoyed it at the beginning, and I think it works quite well, but towards the end it felt a bit too much like spooling-off an exhaustive list of events, people and connections. Still, quite the life.
Uncomfortable, yes, but memorable. There's a dreaminess, yet also clarity, a lack of pomp and manipulation, to all the cruelties, obscenities, darknesses in this novel about a girl's world and family that crumbles after a brother's death. The children, who've grown up in church and around the animals at their cow farm, are left to themselves while the parents succumb to grief. They build their own rituals of violence and sexual awakening, to process and make sense of their brother's death. Everything slightly feels on the border to reality. The ending is rather gothic.
3.5
Like the author's predecessor [b:All the Birds, Singing 18142324 All the Birds, Singing Evie Wyld https://i.gr-assets.com/images/S/compressed.photo.goodreads.com/books/1374000570l/18142324.SY75.jpg 23901637] this is also beautifully written, atmospheric and haunting, showing us the protagonists' inner lives and the rough and uncompromising nature that surrounds them. The strand through it all is the misogyny that's ever present in society no matter the year. Some of it is quite jarring and leaves you with rage and an inability to scream. So all of that worked quite well, yet I didn't like it as much as the author's debut novel. I felt myself torn and distracted by trying to trace the connections between the characters and the three timelines. I likes all the stories individually though.
This might be one of those books, that doesn't teach much new if you're already in the field of design, but that nevertheless sparks inspiration through the way he muses about the field and its players, contemplates designs' purpose and minutely lists instructions on how to build sculptures. It's a bit of a relic, which contributes to its charm.
She's a beautiful nature writer. I really loved [b:H is for Hawk 18803640 H is for Hawk Helen Macdonald https://i.gr-assets.com/images/S/compressed.photo.goodreads.com/books/1442151714l/18803640.SY75.jpg 26732095] and now Vesper Flights has more of her thoughtful and captivating musings and observations on fauna and flora. It's a collection of essays, some of them almost vignettes, whisking you off to a fresh and early walk through the woods, to the migration of birds that get trapped by our cities lights, to a painful and personal experience of mercy-killing an ostrich. She talks of how humanity has impacted the world of animals, how wildlife has nearly vanished from our field of vision. And she also portrays those that collect, study, rescue, and care for nature's creatures. Her portrait of Maxwell Knight (the original ‘M') will stick in mind. Because this had so many essays, some of them were a bit hit-or-miss, but I definitely enjoyed most of them. Macdonald has a wonderful audiobook narrator voice. I listened to this while reading [b:Migrations 42121525 Migrations Charlotte McConaghy https://i.gr-assets.com/images/S/compressed.photo.goodreads.com/books/1590447310l/42121525.SY75.jpg 65230718] in parallel, and the two books complemented each other perfectly.
The Arctic terns are the birds with the longest migratory routes. Each year they fly all the way from the Arctic to the Antarctic and back again. In this novel we're in a not-too-distant future that lost most of its wildlife. Our protagonist Franny is an ornithologist who wants to follow one of the last flocks of arctic terns on their arduous journey from pole to pole. Alongside birds and land creatures, most fish have gone extinct as well. Franny manages to secure herself a passage on one of the few leftover fishing boats. While strictly opposing all fishing like the rest of the nature-minded world, the promise of discovering rare fish swarms along the birds feeding route, is her ticket onto the boat.
Of people driven by a cause, an inner wilderness, that they can't shake. A very topical tale juxtaposing the people trying to save the planet, and those that get told they need to completely uproot their life and everything they know. I would have liked a bit more about the birds, and less about Franny's mysterious past and inner demons, but nevertheless, this was a wonderful read.
The fishing boat crew was fun, but felt forced like a perfectly diverse and interesting crew of characters selected for a TV show. Not real.
Sometimes it's a thousand small stones that weigh you down, so it's hard to pinpoint the one that caused the fall. Our protagonist grows up part of the poor working class in an industrial neighborhood in Germany. She's half turkish, her name, her face scream foreigner. Her home is filled with fear of her father's alcoholic escapades, and a lethargy that has grown from disappointment. There's nobody who fosters, encourages or even recognizes her intelligence, neither at home nor at school. She slips lower and lower, as she absorbs the low expectations that are associated with immigrant children.
A portrait of a schooling system that fails students that are different, students that are quiet. The failure of parents to teach their kids to hope. A first-person narrative that makes you feel all the fears, insecurities and inabilities to escape the path that others set out in front of her. Sometimes you're so deep in her head that you want to scream. That's a compliment to the writing.
Thankfully our protagonist is resilient and a fighter, she manages to dig herself out. If that wasn't the case, this would have been a very depressing novel.
3.5
Robert Pollin (economist, and consultant/designer of many Green New Deal projects for countries/organizations) and Noam Chomsky in conversation, outlining a blueprint for a Global Green New Deal. They dig into the politics, policies and the financial side of things, in additional to forecasting the effects of climate change on our planet and societies.
It's good to see actual numbers, printed in black and white. And to realize that what they're proposing is only a fraction of the amount of public money that was spent to bail out the banks after the 2008 crash. I also quite liked the structure. Each of them could have written this book in essay form, but the ping pong interview dynamic, and the conversational tone made it more approachable.
They talk of a ‘global' GND, but obviously there's still a huge focus on the US.
Of the many climate-crisis books out there, this is a more proactive, down-to-business one.
L'histoire des ambitions d'Alienor d'Aquitaine et de son fils Richard Coeur de Lion. Il parle de leur defense vorace de leur patrie Aquitaine contre leurs ennemis, propulse par l'amour et la loyaute, et leurs conquetes du trone d'Angleterre et des villes musulmanes en orient.
J'ai de souvenirs vagues des histoires de livres d'images de Richrad Coeur de Lion, mais j'aime beaucoup apprendre sur Alienor pour la premiere fois, qui etait une personne tres interessante. Une reine du moyen age, puissante et tactique, mariee au roi de France et apres une annulation du roi d'Angleterre. Elle etait farouchement protectant et fier d'Quitaine, et elle suscite une revolte contre son mari avec ses fils apres qu'il a dedaigne l'independance de ses terres.
Racontee du point de vue du Richrad, l'histoire est un portrait d'amour et de loyaute feroce d'un fils pour sa mere. Et c'est aussi le portrait d'une epoque our la violence extreme est signe de pouvoir et d'honneur.
Incredibly propulsive and masterfully crafted, always puts you right into the moment, right into the heads of three people in modern-day India, whose lives are loosely tied together around a tragedy, and who resemble each other in their quest and passion to escape their socioeconomical and cultural circumstances.
A very scary portrait of India with its caste-system, religious discrimination, political corruption, exploitation of dreams, and yet we encounter in it people full of hope. This worked really well as an audiobook.
Some kids just grow up to be monsters, if there's no nurture that contradicts their nature. A very addictive - sometimes sexy, sometimes frustrating - read. It has a lot of characters that you want to shake and scream at, to make them wake up, to be less passive, but then I'm trained to be enthralled by the icy monster as well, hoping he'll reveal those depths that'll make him tortured, and not plain evil.
Very interesting concept, and I love the author's other work, but this one constantly felt like it was on the cusp of something without delivering it. There's colonialism, space travel, climate change, missionary work, alien languages, exploration of cultural differences, religious belief, religious transformation, long-distance communication - so much to grasp onto. There could be a thriller version of this which focuses on uncovering the company's mysterious strategy to secretly create a haven off earth, populated and serviced only by carefully selected emotionally docile and passive personnel. There's the social scifi version which tries to understand how the Oasians history and beliefs and how their world changed through the encounter with the people from Earth. And there's the allegory one where Earth's explorer's are mirrors for biblical characters spreading the word of God. But maybe this is just a story about how to communicate with one's loved ones in order to maintain a healthy relationship.
So this book leaves me slightly confused and disappointed, despite having such an intrigueing setup. I also have to confess that I just really disliked the main character from the moment he stepped onto the planet and revealed that he literally had done zero research into the world and its inhabitants which he set out to indoctrinate.
A current snapshot of our world ravaged by disinformation campaigns. Deepfakes are the threat that looms on the horizon, while our societies and politics are already shaken enough by the power maliciously deployed simple text and images can have. We're not that far from the moment when we won't be able to discern the authenticity of video content anymore, and the tools to create fake videos will be cheap and widely available.
The book is not as deeply researched as hoped and feels like a rush editing job, but it's nonetheless a good and essential wakeup-call to a topic that's rapidly evolving and can only provide a deeply-researched book once we're past it possibly? There's a look at Russia's long history of doctoring media for political reasons, and the conspiracy theories they're creating to feed civil unrest in other democracies. There's slightly too much US election and Trump content, Estonia represents in a short note as the shining example of emerging stronger after a cyber-combat with Russia, and there's even a chapter on the recent Covid infodemic.
It ends on a chapter summarizing current initiatives and resources trying to teach, detect and combat disinformation campaigns and information warfare. It made me sign up to the NewsGuard misinformation Monitor newsletter.
In this speculative near-future fiction animal meat has become poisonous. But humanity is not vegetarian. What first starts as scandalous black market dealings slowly becomes a government sanctioned enterprise: a lower class of humans is raised as “special” meat. The industry simply adapts. The “head” as they are called, are raised in breeding centers, they are processed in processing plants, their skin is treated in tanneries, their meat sold to butcheries. They grow up like animals, and their vocal cords are removed to lighten the load on the people who slaughter them.
Told in a very matter-of-fact voice we're introduced to the cruel yet clinical mechanics of this new world. We learn about the many narratives and labels and laws everyone uses to forget and to justify the fact that they are eating human meat.
The ending was a great extra punch. I didn't know where it could go, considering it started with the worst, and then sort of ambled along explaining it. But, there was more, well done.
We are two centuries into the future, and the world has become a misogynistic nightmare. Women have been stripped of all rights and solely exist to serve the men. The world has also expanded into alien spaces, and capitalism blooms through commerce with the alien races. Crucial for successful trade are native speakers of the alien languages. Human infants are paired with Aliens to acquire difficult non-human languages from birth. The power of languages is evident, and the women are secretly trying to develop one of their own.
I love the field of linguistic relativity, how one's native tongue influences one's worldview. And how the power of language can bring forth change. I fault this book for teasing this perfect setup, and then never getting to the punch, because this is only book 1 in a series. The plot pulls you along, the writing is smooth, and occasionally very wry and clever in how it depicts the gender interactions (Nazareth experiencing first love was such a gut punch).
This naturally all should lead to a heroic revolution, because if not, I'd be a bit annoyed at the overly simplistic binary depiction of the genders. All the women are secretly sly, while all men are clueless and devoid of empathy. Which does not feel like a realistic sustainable scenario.
Deep dive into Chinese history, with a heavy focus on the the tumultous 20th century. It's fascinating to learn how this nation, that was so traditional and mostly inward looking, got unfairly raided and humiliated by the West during the Opium Wars. Understandably that this left deep grudges that grew into competitive spirits, that valued surface images over one's country's underlying health. Communism, revolutions, famines, massacres, corruptions ... ensue.
That was a long and informative listen. It ends around 2009, with an even somewhat positive hopeful outlook on China's future on the world stage. Obviously the last decade of developments countered that somewhat considering China's aggressive economical politics and their genocidal crackdown on ethnic minorities.