Recently Mentioned Books

It doesn’t sound quite righ t to still call it that, does it ?  In any case it is on display at the National Museum of African Art .  At least two-thirds of the collection is lame and maybe a third or somewhat less is wonderful.  Cosby for instance has excellent works by Jacob Lawrence, Horace Pippin , Minnie Evans , Henry Ossawa Tanner , (and here ), Romare Bearden, some amazing quilts and textiles (try here too ), and quality African ethnographic pieces.  The works by lesser-known creators are...

Here is one blog post report on these practices .  Here is one piece of the original research .  I stumbled upon this while reading the new and excellent Hal Whitehead and Luke Rendell The Cultural Lives of Whales and Dolphins , a new book from University of Chicago Press.

5. Pramoedya Ananta Toer, This Earth of Mankind , volume one of the Buru Quartet.  These are the greatest books which most educated people never read, and I am giving them a reread.  So far volume one is as good as I remember it, maybe better.  I think of the set as an extended, four-volume meditation, by an Indonesian political prisoner, on what a life really consists of.  Here is a short essay on the quartet .

3. Paul Vigna and Michael J. Casey, The Age of Cryptocurrency: How Bitcoin and Digital Money are Challenging the Global Economic Order .  A good and useful introduction to the beliefs of those who believe in the subtitle being true.

2. Richard Bernstein, China 1945: Mao’s Revolution and America’s Fateful Choice .  A very good book on how the Americans had a decent relationship with the Chinese Communists in 1945 and how rapidly that fell apart and why.

1. Daniel Schreiber, Susan Sontag: A Biography .  I never tire reading about her, or reading her, for that matter.

The story is here , his book is Age of Ambition: Chasing Fortune, Truth, and Faith in the New China .  Previous MR coverage is here , it was one of my favorite non-fiction books of the year.

Viola , an Argentinean take on Shakespeare’s Twelfth Night , condensed into 65 minutes.

From Chris Taylor’s new How Star Wars Conquered the Universe: The Past, Present, and Future of a Multibillion Dollar Franchise :

This passage is from Gao Wenqian’s Zhou Enlai: The Last Perfect Revolutionary :

That is from the extraordinary new Stephen Kotkin biography of Stalin, titled Stalin .  The first volume of 949 pp. brings the reader up only until 1928.  A lot still happened after that.

That is from Christian Caryl in the 4 December 2014 New York Review of Books, reviewing Gerald Russell’s Heirs to Forgotten Kingdoms: Journeys into the Disappearing Religions of the Middle East .

Michael Hofmann, Where Have You Been?: Selected Essays .  Hofmann is a poet, translator, and essayist and in my view he is one of the finest (and most underrated) thinkers and writers of our day.  The book is due out December 2.  Here are previous MR mentions of Michael Hofmann .

I have yet to start the new Colm Tóibín novel , and I often like his work.  I read some of the new Sarah Waters , which struck me as a little too belabored for the time I had to give to it, but a quality work which will please her fans.  Cesar Aira wrote some more and he continues to be interesting.  I continued a reread of Moby Dick .

I have yet to start the new Colm Tóibín novel , and I often like his work.  I read some of the new Sarah Waters , which struck me as a little too belabored for the time I had to give to it, but a quality work which will please her fans.  Cesar Aira wrote some more and he continues to be interesting.  I continued a reread of Moby Dick .

5. Richard Flanagan, The Narrow Road to the Deep North .  The Booker Prize winner, I thought this was at times too sentimental but an excellent story with some depth too.  It deals with an Australian in a prisoner of war camp in WWII and his escapades surrounding that time in his life.

4. Javier Cercas, Outlaws: A Novel , my earlier remarks are here .

3. Andrés Neuman, Talking to Ourselves , “Women who know what they want never want anything interesting.”

2. Emmanuel Carrère, Limonov, The Outrageous Adventures of the Radical Soviet Poet Who Became a Bum in New York, A Sensation in France, and a Political Antihero in Russia .  This work blends fiction, non-fiction, and occasional social science (was a non-corrupt transformation of the Soviet Union really possible?, Gaidar ultimately decided it wasn’t), but in terms of the subjective experience of the reader it is most like a novel.  In addition to its literary quality, this is a deep book about wh...

1. Michel Faber, The Book of Strange New Things: A Novel .  A missionary visits space aliens, some of whom embrace the Bible eagerly, almost too eagerly.  Meanwhile he and his wife on earth write letters back and forth, showing they are the true aliens to each other.  This is the fiction book this year I enjoyed most, and the one I kept on wanting to pick up after I had put it down.  It is one of the most resonant portraits of space aliens I have read. yet without it being a science fiction nove...

…If you’re not convinced that a declining population is a problem, consider Japan. In terms of real gross domestic product per hour worked, Japan has continued to have good performance , but it has a fundamental problem: The working-age population has been declining since about 1997 . And Japan’s overall population has been growing older, so with fewer workers supporting so many retirees, national savings will dwindle and resources will be diverted from urgent tasks like revitalizing companies a...

3. Andrew Roberts, Napoleon: A Life .  The fact that so many pages still feel so non-comprehensive is a testament to the life being covered here, and to the richness of its historical period.  Still, this is fresh and easy to read throughout, recommended.

2. Michel Faber, The Book of Strange New Things: A Novel .  A missionary visits space aliens, some of whom embrace the Bible eagerly, almost too eagerly.  Meanwhile he and his wife on earth write letters back and forth, showing they are the true aliens to each other.  This is the fiction book this year I enjoyed most, and one I kept on wanting to pick up after I had put it down.  Here is a useful NYT revie w, describing the book as “defiantly unclassifiable.”

1. Denis Johnson, The Laughing Monsters. This one doesn’t seem like it is trying very hard, and yet I like it more than the author’s other books, perhaps for that reason.  It’s about two (ostensible) buddies, set in Africa, then all kinds of secrets unfold.  There is a NYT review here .

Igor Levit, Beethoven late piano sonatas .