01.01.08
Favorite Books of 2007
(See also podcasts and TV shows)
While podcasts are great for the daily commute, books work pretty well, too. That 2+ hour daily commute translates into a huge number of pages. Most of these are books I read in the latter half of the year.
I’m too lazy to include images this time, but I included two bonus faves at the end to make up for it.
The Omnivore’s Dilemma
Michael Pollan
This book really opened my eyes to how agriculture and the food industry in the United States work. Pollan follows four “food chains” from bottom to top: garden-variety industrial, organic, local and “hunter-gathered”, meeting unforgettable characters along the way. I’ve been reminded many times this year just how much I learned from this book.
Great Expectations
Charles Dickens
It’s almost impossible to believe that I read this book in High School, given how little (i.e. major plot points) I remembered a second time around. I enjoyed the book much more this time around. This is mostly because I’ve had more experiences in my life now than I’d had ten years ago. Having had relationships and having moved from home into the unknown, I found it easy to relate to Pip’s changing fortunes. Estella is the most memorable character. “He calls the knaves Jacks, he does!”
King Leopold’s Ghost
Adam Hochschild
I’d heard “the race for Africa” referenced before reading this book, but never fully understood why it was such a catastrophe. This is an in-depth look at one aspect of it, the exploitation of the Congo by King Leopold’s Belgium for ivory and rubber. This was an extremely educational book for me. It’s a great look into how the world worked in the Guilded Age, as it helped me understand some of Africa’s problems today. One nit, though: Hochschild is inconsistent in whether he judges people by the norms of their own day versus our own. He finds the racism of many of his heroes understandable for its time, but Leopold is always presented as a modern man scheming to exploit the Congolese.
A Moveable Feast
Ernest Hemingway
I heard about this at a Hemingway-themed party and greatly enjoyed it. Though it was published after his death, it recounts Hemingway’s time in Paris in the 1920′s. He has great stories to tell about all the famous writers and groups of the time, and his style works perfectly for this short read.
The Autobiography of Malcolm X
Malcolm X, Alex Haley
Malcolm X lived one of the seminal lives of the 20th century: his father was murdered by the KKK (it was ruled a suicide), he led a colorful life of crime during the Harlem Renaissance, became an influential leader of the Nation of Islam and was assassinated. If you’re not up for reading the book, the Spike Lee movieis fantastic.
OK, now the bonuses! Here are two articles I’ve enjoyed this year that you can read online:
- Regardless of whether you enjoy watching tennis, you’ll enjoy this New York Times piece by David Foster Wallace:
“Roger Federer as Religious Experience”. - If you have a commute, you’ll really enjoy this article from the New Yorker: “There and Back Again” by Nick Paumgarten
Ryan said,
January 1, 2008 at 9:00 pm
What Hochschild condemns Leopold for the most I think is his duplicity. When slave owners thought of their relationship to their slaves as paternalistic they sometimes believed their own fiction, and I think that’s the key difference. Leopold did not and could not himself have believed that the genocide he brought about in the Congo was a humanitarian enterprise as he portrayed it to the rest of the world. He was cognizant that what he was doing was reprehensible even by the popular standards at the time. The extent of the destruction, the extra-legal status of the colony, and his political maneuverings to hide it from the public eye are what make him really exceptional among colonial rulers. I think Hochschild is pretty even-handed about that, considering.