The Stranger by Albert Camus

While I did read Albert Camus's The Stranger in high school, I can't say I remember much of anything about it. I was on exchange in Canada and the book was part of my French course, so there was the added difficulty of actually understanding individual words and sentences in the original French. And The Stranger is in no way an easy book, even for adults. It's true that the English translation that I opted for this time wasn't too difficult for choice of words, but it did confound me more than once with its setting and story. However, with my slightly more elevated age (mostly compared to last time), I realized that part of The Stranger's appeal is the way that it makes the reader ask questions about what is actually going on.

Meursault is a Frenchman living in Algiers. His mother has recently passed away but his life is mostly ordinary. A series of events unfolds, and as he is mostly dispassionate to them, his life floats along at the mercy of his neighbor and a lover. It is this dispassion (or coldness or detachment) that is, in fact, the center piece of the novel. Meursault is punished for his unwillingness to take a moral stance or show feelings, even if those feelings were only a ruse to conform to expectations. This unwillingness to conform finally drives him to reject society completely.

The story rolls along inevitably, but the character depiction is nothing if not intriguing. I remember the original French being brilliant and beautiful, and the translation is mostly excellent, from what I can tell. The Stranger isn't something that you should read in high school, though. Young readers might mistake the stylistic choices for blandness or boredom. They may think that Meursault's inability to show emotion is a fault of the writer and not a key thematic point. And, most crucially, they most definitely won't understand the way that the adult world is littered with unrealistic expectations for all of its dreary inhabitants.

Barbarians at the Gate by Bryan Burrough and John Helyar

From what I gather, Barbarians at the Gate is something of a business non-fiction classic, though it wasn't immediately obvious to me why. I bought the Kindle version so I had no idea that it's actually almost five hundred pages long - way longer than most books in the genre. Apparently, it's something of a precursor to Too Big to Fail, which I loved, so I decided to let go of my initial suspicions and gave it a try.

Barbarians at the Gate is slow off the starting line. The background and stories of all involved are given first, and for those not familiar with what actually happened, this can be a chore. The back stories are interesting (and relevant) so you shouldn't skip them either. Luckily, the material is well written and there never seems to be anything completely superfluous in the text. Some of the wording is a bit heavy-handed for my taste, but it doesn't disrupt the experience. It just sounds a bit more 80's.

What I love about Barbarians at the Gate is that there is no preaching tone, no attempts at forcing a point of view. Generally, there is no other agenda than to tell an involving story without leaving out any important details. Readers are allowed to make their own decisions; whether to hate or simply dislike Ross Johnson, a main character. The story is about a corporate takeover, but there are so many other elements that it's difficult to keep score. There is the greed of Wall Street, the punishing competitiveness of the modern white man. The foolhardiness of past corporate America, coming to grips with a new decade.

Barbarians is the type of book, I guess, that gets read in business classrooms across the world. And in a way, I imagine that I would find it tiresome, if it were an assignment. The heft is discouraging, and the dozens of characters are hard to keep track of. But at the end of the day, most classroom staples (Catch-22, Moby Dick and so on) are classics for a reason. It might not be obvious immediately, but their fame is almost always well deserved.

Purity by Jonathan Franzen

Did I mention that I really like Jonathan Franzen? I probably did, didn't I. Maybe he's not my favorite human being in the world, especially when everyone seems to be questioning his motives, but I really love reading his books. It's pretty much that simple. I read Freedom twice and really enjoyed everything about it. I remember liking The Corrections but I have trouble remembering what it was about. As for Purity, I'll probably reread it later on. And tell my friends about it. I just know that they'll love it too.

From what I can tell, Purity has received a lot of press in the months after its release. Critics seem to be in universal disagreement about whether it is a masterpiece or a load of bull. Some criticize Franzen's degrading depiction of women, or white male nostalgia. Maybe it's just a question of perspective. If you thought that Franzen would be the next Steinbeck, you're bound to be disappointed (but not much). If you're just looking for something that is brilliantly written, interesting but a bit plodding, you'll be perfectly happy with Purity.

I have no regrets. Purity does have its problems, but so does every book over 300 pages long. One review hilariously pointed out that "none of the characters are especially likable, but at least one is completely insufferable", or at least something along those lines. And I mostly agree. The middle chapters struggle at times and as a reader I was surprised how much the narrative strays from the supposed main character Pip Tyler and her San Francisco. But everything comes together so neatly in the last to segments that I wholeheartedly forgave Franzen for forcing me to read through a narrative of investigative journalism. And even that wasn't strictly speaking bad. It was just a little on the long side.

All in all, I was secretly hoping that Purity would convince everyone that Franzen is brilliant. Alas, I fear that it's not the book that will raise him to Nobel acceptance status. But it's still one of the more memorable things I've read in the past few years. It's right up there with The Goldfinch as one of my favorite books of the 2010s. And yes, I still believe he has some Steinbeck in him still.

The Maltese Falcon by Dashiell Hammett

When I heard that Jonathan Franzen' new book Purity had been released, I had to drop everything else and pick it up on my Kindle. That meant finishing Dashiell Hammett's (whose name I still have trouble spelling) The Maltese Falcon in more or less one sitting. The Maltese Falcon is apparently better known to some as a Humphrie Bogart movie, but it's a damn fine novel in its own right. I remember enjoying Red Harvest, also by Hammett, and The Maltese Falcon offers more of the same hard-boiled detective action. The prose is pristine, the characters charming but perhaps a bit one dimensional.

It's hard to read The Maltese Falcon and not draw on our almost stereotypical view of the genre. But I guess the storytelling and characterization were innovative in its day. It's just that some parts - the lady in distress, the private eye, the laced scotch - you've already seen somewhere else. Today, bits and pieces from Dashiell Hammett's works have been used in everything from Donald Duck to Stieg Larsson. At times it's like listening to Duke Ellington: you know it's brilliant but you can't shake off the feeling that you've heard it before.

That did not make me love The Maltese Falcon's prose any less. I wish I could write like Hammett and so did Hemingway. "The cheaper the crook, the gaudier the patter", says Sam Spade offhandedly but captures so many emotions in one sentence that I have trouble counting them. It's uncanny how well parts of The Maltese Falcon are written. I wondered if anyone ever again would reach those heights.

I did have one problem with The Maltese Falcon. It whisks the reader through an exhilarating first act that has readers on their toes throughout. Everything is set up neatly, characters are introduced and the tone is set. For some reason, however, Hammett over indulges in explaining every plot point near the end of the second act. It slows down the action but does not provide additional depth. One conversation in particular, regarding the attempt to frame a murder on a young boy, goes on forever without really showing the reader anything new. All in all, it's a minor gripe for what is a brilliant piece of fiction.

Disgrace by J. M. Coetzee

I just finished reading, back-to-back, two books set deep in Africa. While I won't review the other one (The Heart of Darkness by Joseph Conrad) because of not properly understanding it, I will take a jab at Coetzee's Disgrace. Perhaps, I would never have ventured to think that I would read - and even enjoy - two books from Africa's roots, but both took me by surprise and were extremely pleasant reads. Mostly I tend to eschew any and all forms of <exotic topics, Chinese, Indian, South-American or otherwise. So what, if I did not choose the most experimental books for my African venture - The Heart of Darkness is apparently up there with Moby Dick for fame and artful pretense - it's often a good idea to start with the basics.

Disgrace is nothing if not a masterpiece. I wouldn't dream of contradicting both the Nobel prize committee or the Booker prize. It is one of those novels that is not overly complicated, doesn't demand arcane knowledge of the general arts from the reader but is still subtle and beautiful in unpredictable ways. Coetzee's ability to put in only what is necessary shines here brighter than ever. His themes explore apartheid and race in South Africa, but not in a judgmental or awkward way. His words excite experienced readers but lend themselves well to novices.s

The story revolves around David Lurie, a professor of languages in Cape Town. He goes through an ill-advised affair with one of his students and is expelled. He takes up semi-permanent residence with his sister on a farm. I won't discuss the plot more than that (I guess I rarely do) to save the surprises and shocks for future readers. The plot is heavy, without being heavy-handed. The writing, while impeccable, can make you think at times that writing is simply the act of putting words one after the other. Coetzee makes it seem so easy.

At this point in my reviews, I often roll out a few gripes I had with whatever novel I happened to read. Not so today. Coetzee does not give room for gripes. While some may dislike the discussion of racial tensions, none should deny the writer his voice. The characters are not saints, but they are neither completely sinners. None of it is black and white and Coetzee, more than anyone else, is able to describe that world in precious detail.

The Signal and the Noise by Nate Silver

I've written about management fads before, and read about them too. They're often silly yet pernicious, as knowledgeable individuals give themselves to a cycle that they've seen and experienced before. Prior knowledge of the world is thrown out of the window because this time it's different. The Signal and the Noise is a sort of anti-management fad book. Anyone remotely interested in technology has surely heard of Big Data, but I had yet to read a convincing account of what it is and isn't. Analyzing large chunks of data with incredible speed is great, but it can't change a few of the basic facts that surround data analysis.

And Nate Silver is more or less the go-to guy for anything related to data analysis. He runs the website fivethirtyeight, which gained some notoriety for correctly predicting all of the US presidential elections, in all fifty states. He's young, and he definitely isn't an academic. Overall, The signal and the Noise is well researched, well written and insightful. It's sincere (mostly) and doesn't preach; all great qualities for a non-fiction book. Silver guides us through the basics of data analysis and prediction, and goes into detail in a few well-selected areas such as poker, baseball, economics and weather. Baseball might not interest non-Americans as much, and it treads familiar subject material for readers of Michael Lewis's Moneyball, but Silver's prose and insights are valuable all the same.

If there is one thing that I personally learned from this book, it's that in order to accurately predict something you need to both understand the phenomenon in question and possess accurate data. Earthquake data is somewhat plentiful, but earthquakes themselves are poorly understood (relative to the weather, for example). Therefore earthquakes are almost impossible to predict, with any reasonable accuracy. In somewhat the same way, social phenomena are difficult to predict, even with Big Data; the whys and hows need to be understood first. Don't trust forecasters who only use data to support claims, these cases often mistake the noise for the signal.

While, I did mostly enjoy Silver's thoughts, I did sometimes question his commitment to Bayesian statistics. Now, I'm no professor of math, but I've taken my fair share of statistics classes and from what I can tell, these methods do provide accurate insights, when used reasonably well. The Bayesian theorem is useful, but let's not pretend that it is a jack-of-all-trades solution for statistics and, well, life.

Tulitodistaja by Lars Kepler

Tulitodistaja, or "The Fire Witness", is a straightforward detective novel from a pair of Swedes behind the pen-name Lars Kepler. And wow, it's been such a long time since I read a detective novel (in Finnish we call them "dekkari" with some affection), and an even longer time since I read one in English. Tulitodistaja was a brief encounter that evoked some excitement, some disgust, some disbelief and some boredom. Its not a bad book, but the way it plays off of almost all cliches now associated with the Scandinavian thriller. There is the dive into an icy river, the attack on an abandoned train warehouse and the tragic violence of older men on younger girls.

The writing is dense and professional, with short paragraphs and shorter sentences. But Kepler (or the "Keplers") make the cardinal error of thinking that a back story is the same as character development. All of the players here are one dimensional takes on what should feel like a dynamic study of human emotion in a suddenly changed world. Most characters are given peculiar traits that make them distinct from one another, just witness the orphanage girls shout at each other. But none of them are properly grounded at any point in the narrative. Most of these girls have one defining trait each, be it anger, denial or squeamishness. The same is true of the protagonist Joona, who is mostly defined by his background. Apart from losing his family, he has precious little actual personality.

So perhaps Tulitodistaja is gripping, at least for the first 200 pages, but it lacks any true depth. At least it is honest with itself; The Keplers' creation is not an accident and their prose is imbued with all the necessary gut wrenching moments that are needed to create a national (or even international) bestseller. I won't go as far as recommend something different to read, the typical audience for this type of literature is not very familiar. However, if you are like me, pick up something genuinely haunting, perhaps The Goldfinch.

Slaughterhouse-Five by Kurt Vonnegut

Slaughterhouse-Five is one of those rare books for me that I can go back to and always find an old friend. I've read Slaughterhouse-Five three times (including this one) and I've somehow been able to find new meaning and metaphor each time. It's a classic in every measure, but for those who are unfamiliar with Vonnegut, Slaughterhouse-Five will more likely baffle on the first read through. It's short. There are elements of metafiction and sci-fi. The narrator is purportedly Vonnegut himself, but proves to be highly unreliable. Slaughterhouse-Five masquerades as a World War II novel, but is something else entirely.

I can't accurately pinpoint the first time I read Slaughterhouse-Five, but it must have been some five years ago. I didn't know what to expect and was inspired by the first half and dispirited (a little) by the second. The prologue is a master study of metafiction in itself, and if I was a grade school English teacher, I would use it as an example of a great short story. Latter parts of the novel are slightly perplexing. Despite its brevity, Vonnegut packed the novel with different and intersecting plot lines. Billy Pilgrim has come unstuck in time - and Vonnegut bobs around, sometimes switching time lines between paragraphs.

Slaughterhouse-Five is a house divided. On one hand, its the tragic story of the bombing of Dresden, during the closing days of World War II. Vonnegut uses his personal experiences to paint a realistic picture of surviving as a prisoner of war. On the other, it's a jumbled sci-fi story of traveling through time into different moments of your life. Billy Pilgrim's self confessed time travel also works as a metaphor for the struggle to create meaning in a post-war world. Black humor simultaneuously perpetuates and hides the narrator's struggle to understand how people not unlike him could consider the death of innocents - in the Dresden bombing and the ensuing firestorm - a succesful operation.

The Undercover Economist Strikes Back by Tim Harford

Having read The Undercover Economist, I vowed to take some time off from reading the economics equivalent of kitchen psychology. Yet, here I am again. I tried to read some fiction for a change, but for some reason, I haven't been that interested in the usual plot driven novel lately. For the life of me, I can't tell you why. I always promise myself that the next book I pick up will be a classic piece of fiction - I did really enjoy that Steinbeck - but something has kept me back.

So, once again, The Undercover Economist Strikes Back is a fine piece of economics education packed in a neat paperback, buy it at the airport, format. I read it on my Kindle, and I have to say that I won't miss the paper version in any way. I might be interested in scrolling through the reference section later, but that will have to wait. Tim Harford is great at making simple compelling points about complex things and exploring different sides of a difficult topic. He does it here by comparing classical economics and Keynesian economics. And who wins? Nobody in particular because from what I can tell, Harford plays out both sides merits equally.

The narrative is constructed as a dialog, which I though was a little lazy at first. But despite the awkward structure, the dialog between Harford and an imaginary dictator plays out with wit and has some of the best revelations of the story. From a distance, you might not even realize that its a book about macroeconomics. As a friend of mine once said, "It's got graphs that intersect, it must be macroeconomics". You won't find any of that here. The Undercover Economist Strikes Back is text only, even the Phillips curve doesn't get its own little x-and-y plot. Not that I miss any of that. The whole point here is that macroeconomics is difficult. So difficult in fact, that we still have no good ways of thinking about it. So if someone tells you with absolute certainty that monetary stimulus ends recessions, by reading this book you'll know that it's not so simple.

He eivät tiedä mitä tekevät by Jussi Valtonen

I don't usually review books that I haven't actually finished. Sorry Moby Dick, Trainspotting and The Anthology of British Poetry. But I will make an exception this time, for what is essentially a brilliant work by Finnish writer Jussi Valtonen. "He eivät tiedä mitä tekevät" roughly translates to "They don't know what they're doing" and I wouldn't fault you for expecting a narrative doused in post-millennium hubris and technology paranoia. Many have compared it to Jonathan Franzen's Freedom and I can see why. The similarities are mostly in the way that the subject matter is discussed, not so much the actual content. However, there are a few parallels such as both protagonists involvement in environmental issues.

Although I'm fairly certain that there are under 10 people in the world that have read both, I will go ahead and indulge myself in a few further comparisons. The biggest difference, I felt, was that after almost 500 pages into Valtonen's work, I still couldn't identify with any of the main cast. I found myself hoping for any positive developments, anything that could lift the tone of the novel from somber. But Valtonen gives us nothing to work with. I always felt depressed after reading this book, and however well written, I couldn't force myself to continue.

Perhaps these are not faults, at least in the literary criticism sense. There are redeeming factors aplenty, however. Valtonen's work is ambitious and mostly succeeds with displaying the ills of modern society. The topics range from the effect of technology on our lives to the way that we fool ourselves into believing in a certain world view. It's clever, intelligent and exceptionally thought-provoking. Valtonen has an engaging way of looking into the thoughts and emotions of his main characters, however dark or brooding they may be. I imagine one day "He eivät tiedä mitä tekevät" will be translated to English and when that day comes, I hope fans of Jonathan Franzen will look up and smile; they are not alone.

The Management Myth by Matthew Stewart

The subject of The Management Myth came up in friendly conversation over lunch. But the aftermath was anything but passive. The Management Myth happens to be one of those books (summarized brilliantly in an article in The Atlantic) that has readers with similar backgrounds disagreeing on almost every aspect of its story. On one hand, it's the story of Stewart himself and his explosive career in management consulting. On the other, it's about how management came to be in the first place. Students of business schools will love (or hate) The Management Myth, but other disciplines will find themselves without enough to hold on.

Over the course of a two-fold narrative, Stewart gives us the low-down on the management consulting industry. According to some fairly convincing evidence, we should be wary of the suit-touting consultant who whispers into the ear of chief executives and heads of political institutions. Throughout the book, Stewart makes some extremely convincing arguments and shows how the "science" of management is not a science at all. For me, this was definitely the right time to read this book. Its great support for a course on the philosophy of science.

But there is some silliness involved as well. Especially, I barely made it through the first few chapters on the management teachings of Taylor and others. Nobody takes Taylorism seriously, and probably hasn't taken it seriously in 50 years. Let's just forget about him. Also, not all of his argumentation is as convincing. Stewart makes management consulting out to be the absolute worst profession, but I would have loved to hear some discussion of even a few possible merits. His case is so convincing that those few caveats would not have spoiled it, on the contrary.

The Undercover Economist by Tim Harford

I wasn't too keen on reading another non-fiction economics book, especially after Superfreakanomics, Nudge, Thinking Fast and Slow and so on. But I was surprised by how much I enjoyed The Undercover Economist, and how much new insight I got. Overall, it follows more or less the same trajectory as a course on micro-economics that I took in Switzerland last year, but apparently a second time through the basic building blocks of our economy teaches even more than the first.

The Undercover Economist is essentially the story of how the economic and social world around us works. Even if it is not a complete or exhausting look, it offers enough of the basic knowledge to feel like a complete work. I won't be going into a list of things that Harford discusses, but I will say that even pedestrian readers (or social science students, god forbid) will understand the content.

Harford's prose is exacting and full of the type of dry British humor that makes me snicker in public places if I happen to be reading this. In a way, I wish that everyone would read this book, because it is easy to understand, concise and presents a clear-headed look on many things that influence our everyday lives. So many things are said in newspapers that bear little resemblance to fact that most people would benefit greatly from reading The Undercover Economist. And remember, that I'm saying this even though I doubted its value in the first place.

The Spy Who Came in from the Cold by John le Carre

Having watched countless James Bond films, I thought that I had a pretty good idea of what the Cold War was about. The espiongage, the deceit, the double crosses and especially the dark undercurrents that crept over what seemed like a life of glamour, had formed a relatively clear idea in my head of what it was like to live in that era. Now, I'm not the first one to point out that John le Carre does an excellent job of showing a grittier and more realistic side of espionage. But sometimes everyone should be reminded of how things really were.

The Spy Who Came in from the Cold is a brilliant, jarring and especially succint account of a spy's journey from Berlin to Britain and back. The few characters are excellently portrayed in as few words as possible, and le Carre is deliberate in his wording. It made me think of The Bridge over the River Kwai and Dashiell Hammett, a piece of art that has managed to become even more convincing decades after its release. The story is as powerful as ever, but so is the idealogy. In a world once again divided by east and west, The Spy Who Came in from the Cold is a fascinating read.

The Grapes of Wrath by John Steinbeck

I used to read classics on a regular basis. For some reason, however, that has changed in the last few years. Classics are often difficult but rewarding reads that often demand more time than we can afford to throw at them. Last summer, I started Moby Dick and gave up after a few hundred pages. Despite being on vacation then, other activities got the better of me and I still haven't picked it up again. During Christmas vacation I was once again offered a nifty two weeks of time to relax and read something significant.

I chose The Grapes of Wrath partly because I was fascinated with the Dust Bowl of Woodie Guthrie's America, partly because it had been lying around in my book shelf for way too long. I imagine that The Grapes of Wrath would be an unbearable read for someone who is not previously familiar with the history and decade in question. Steinbeck does a brilliant job of interspersing the story with vivid descriptions of life in rural America, but these might lose some of their brilliance if the reader does not understand their context. And you really should consider doing some serious Wikipedia research before reading.

The Grapes of Wrath was an extremely enjoyable experience for me, but I can't really articulate why. In a different state of mind, I might have hated the nitpicky plot points and plodding character arcs. Rose of Sharon was painfully obnoxious in every scene and the realist affiliation made some developments seem obvious. Yet there is something both magical and romantic in the way that Tom Joad drives the family through desperate and dangerous acts. A sort of purity of spirit follows the characters as they act on basic human needs.

For those who can afford the time to truly immerse themselves in the Dust Bowl era and the Great Depression, The Grapes of Wrath is a true masterpiece. It is brilliant to the point of giving me goosebumps and sad as to make me cry. The story of social inequality and injustice is just as relevant today as it was when this seminal work was released.

What the Dog Saw by Malcolm Gladwell

I grabbed What the Dog Saw from my bookshelf just as I was leaving for the airport. Malcolm Gladwell's books typically make for some nice flight reading, and from what I remember from reading What the Dog Saw many years ago, I thought that it would be just as good. Even though my flight was only to Copenhagen, I managed to read this one in one weekend. Granted I did skip some of the more insufferable material, but nobody can blame you for that if its the second time you are reading a Gladwell.

What the Dog Saw is essentially a collection of essays published in The New Yorker, and it definitely reads like it. Chapters are independent pieces, so taking a few minutes to let it all sink in after each story is a good idea. You might feel that you have learned something, if you just hunker it down in a few nights, but you won't remember much afterwards.

Malcolm Gladwell always makes for satisfying reading, but it's not really clear to me how I should approach his work. For pure entertainment value, you can just hop through the books feeling somewhat superior but not really learn anything new. But if you go back and try to meticulously wade through all of the information, you'll always run into some wishful thinking on the authors part and some poorly handled source material. I am not saying that this applies to everything in here, but there is just enough of it to always come out feeling a little bit cheated.

That is not to say that people should avoid reading Gladwell. The stories in What the Dog Saw are great if you always remember that they were first published in a news paper and not in book form. This way you won't feel cheated when you read about Ketchup or Cesar Milan, subjects that should only be acceptable in magazines. I want something more from books, even if it is a paperback, popcorn novel heavy on the kitchen psychology.

Woody Guthrie: A Life by Joe Klein

It might not be easy to explain why I became so fascinated with Woody Guthrie in the first place. He might be Dylan before Bob Dylan, the original hobo musician riding empty cargo trains across the US, but it doesn't really explain why I (and apparently many other people) are drawn to his music and life. One of Guthrie's friends wonders out loud at the end of the biography why people most often ask him about Woody and not the other, even more brilliant, musicians he worked with. Its a small mystery, one that is not completely understood through this otherwise solid piece.

Most people might not have heard the name of Woody Guthrie, but most likely know him by reputation. Remember those cartoons of a ragged traveller hopping trains through rural America? A fiddle or a mandolin strapped around his back and a bag of possessions hung on a stick over his shoulder. That is essentially who Woody Guthrie was at one point in his life and somehow that character has entered the national consciousness of western countries, especially the United States.

In addition to that travelling hillbilly, Woody was many things. An avid reader of just about anything, a brilliant (but not very productive) writer of novels, a painter of storefront signs and a communist. A small man that could charm his way through any situation, but also a capricious and callous man. His family dispersed around the country in the dust bowl era, with only his first wife staying behind in Oklahoma. All of this is a wonderful story not only because Woody is such a fascinating persona, but also because his story is as much the story of the birth of modern day America.

For the most part, Klein does a decent job with the vast amount of material. Woody Guthrie: A Life is somewhere between a facts-only biography and a memoir, but it does sometimes become somewhat tedious to read. Because Klein wants to keep things historically accurate, he is unable to bring enough color to some secondary characters. This is most likely because not that much is known of the many people that entered and promptly exited Woody's life.

Woody's life is as much a history lesson of America as it is of western music. Folk music was not supposed to enter the mainstream. Most of the songs had been sung in churches in the 19th century, or even in the cotton fields of the South. The Dust Bowl and Union activities in the United States are things that I wish I knew more about after reading this account. Pick it up for the description of a legend, but stay for the making of modern society

The Cuckoo's Calling by J. K. Rowling

By the time I read The Cuckoo's Calling, everybody knew that there was no Robert Galbraith and that the actual author of this detective thriller was in fact J. K. Rowling. On one hand, I completely understand Rowling's decision to work under a pen name. The Harry Potter saga is the best known book series of the last 50 years. Publishing The Cuckoo's Calling under her own name would have felt almost silly. Rowling would have been left standing in her own sizable shadow.

On the other hand, The Cuckoo's Calling is so good that there should have been no need to hide her identity. The characters are well developed and the plot is exhilarating and contemporary. The prose is vivid and concise. I have no trouble recommending The Cuckoo's Calling for anyone looking for a nice detective story or just a nice description of modern day London.

Once again, I won't go into plot details, partly because I just don't remember the names of the characters anymore. A supermodel falls off the balcony of her home. A retired soldier is paid to investigate her death for signs of foul play. The elements of the story are fairly standard, but they do not really feel that way at any point of the book. Once again, I will credit Rowling's ability to conjure complex situations in few words with some of the success.

It should be mentioned, though, that The Cuckoo's Calling is not exactly high literature. It is not Great Expectations, and it might not even be Red Harvest. But in it's own category, detective fiction, Rowling does a flawless job of creating a compelling and altogether delightful read. As a bonus, if you don't enjoy the main character, just imagine that it is Harry Potter during a stifling middle age crisis.

The End of Absence by Michael Harris

With the current backlog of books to be reviewed, I'm having trouble remembering the exact order in which I read them. The End of Absence, a perfectly nice book, is one of those that I am unable to accurately pinpoint on my literature timeline. Did it come before or after The Cuckoo's Calling? I really don't remember. This does not mean, however, that The End of Absence is forgettable or poor. I quite enjoyed reading it, with a few minor exceptions, and felt that I genuinely learned something new.

I guess it was perfectly suiting that I decided to buy The End of Absence after reading a positive review of it in The Economist. A few years ago, I would have had to order it from another country. Now I could just download it to my Kindle with a few taps of my thumbs. The End of Absence is, in a way, the story of that change in the way we live our lives.

It is something that has affected almost everyone's life in the western world. We now have access to most of the world's knowledge everywhere we go. Smartphones help us connect with friends, family, experts and professionals at every moment. The titular End of Absence is exactly that. We are never farther than a few feet from devices that consume our attention better than anything before them.

The best thing about The End of Absence is that it is not a cautionary tale. Michael Harris does a wonderful job of not taking a stand. After all, technological progress is something that we can't stop. We can't turn the clock back to a time before Smartphones or Kindles or Facebook. Progress is a one way street.

The subtitle doesn't do the book any real justice, though. There is no "reclaiming" proposed in this book, the closest that Harris gets to suggesting countermeasures is asking the reader to pause for a moment every now and then to remember the different ways that mobile technology has impacted their life. Has it always been for the best? Are you happier than you were before?

SuperFreakonomics by Steven Levitt and Stephen Dubner

Even though I didn't really enjoy Freakonomics (at least when I first read it), I was instantly hooked on the Freakonomics podcast. There is nothing better than sitting on a train listening to well produced podcasts and just relaxing. And because last spring I had plenty of time to sit on Swiss trains, I also ended up listening to most of the Freakonomics podcasts, new and old. This in turn inspired me to read Superfreakonomics, which despite a name that still turns me off, is a fine work. Perhaps even better than its predecessor.

I still consider the podcast to be the best thing that Dubner and Levitt have done, however. For me, the biggest kicks come from the banter between the journalist and the economist, something that is unfortunately absent from the book. Superfreakonomics is by no means devoid of humor, the punch lines are simply better when voiced in turn by the two authors.

I won't be going into the details and stories that make up this work. It continues on the track that Freakonomics set the series on. Therefore, no real surprises to readers of the first entry. And just as before, it really works. I remember Dubner saying in an interview that the book has succeeded if it makes people feel smarter, and that goal has definitely been achieved.

Once again, however, I found the radio equivalent to be more memorable and better paced than Superfreakonomics. The podcasts are so well produced that if you put a camera in front of Dubner and his guests, I am pretty sure it could be shown on TV during Friday prime time (in Finland, at least). Superfreakonomics is great, as I already mentioned, but it probably won't induce heated café conversations between equally unknowleadgable soccer moms in the way that books by Malcolm Gladwell might. And perhaps that is a good thing.

When Genius Failed by Roger Lowenstein

I had to take a long breath when I saw the name of this book in the drafts folder of this blog. It has been almost three months since I finished When Genius Failed and in that time a lot has happened. I did an internship, I volunteered at a start-up event and, finally, took a little vacation. And now, with the title of the book staring at me from behind a monitor, I realize that I remember very little of what happened in this non-fiction finance thriller.

Or perhaps "thriller" is too strong a word. The main characters here are hardly relatable enough to raise feelings of empathy. These are men who have made fortunes through arrogance, guile and occasional backstabbing. They make a series of foolish decisions and are ultimately undone by what amounts to a combination of hubris and bad luck.

When Genius Failed is, apparently, considered a classic of a genre of non-fiction that I might describe as financial failure. So many distinguished books have been published in that category lately - Too Big to Fail by Andrew Sorkin and The Big Short by Michael Lewis to name a few - that I feel Genius barely makes it into the top ten today. This does not mean that it is in any way a bad work, on the contrary. It is only the competition that has upped its game.

When Genius Failed is the story of Long-Term Capital Management, a hedge fund that promptly fails to live up to any of the statements in its name. The highlights of the story include John Merriwether and Myron Scholes, executives of the company who held hallowed positions in finance hall-of-fame. They lost it all in spectacular fashion and Scholes, of Black-Scholes formula fame for those in the know, saw his Noble awarded work in finance greatly devalued. A nice read, but not one I would recommend to anyone off the top of my head.