Book Thread

Roughing It - Mark Twain

Twain's account of his post-steamboat days, when he set off with his brother for Mormon Utah, then migrated to the silver mines of Nevada, then to San Francisco and onwards to Hawaii. Along the lines of Life on the Mississippi and Innocents Abroad, the book is a combination autobiography, travel report, and collection of yarns. Combined with Twain's raw enthusiasm for the societies and natural wonders he tells about, it's a great read. It is the first time I've seen evidence of Twain being racist against Indians. I read the imageless Gutenberg version, which I recommend because it looks like there might be a tarantula illustration in the "full" edition.


The Club of Queer Trades - G.K. Chesterton

A bit of overlap with the Chesterton collection I read last year. These short stories revolve around Chesterton's detective figure, Basil Grant, a former judge who went a little nutty. The premise is that each story involves someone who has invented a genuinely new trade to make a living by. These stories are less atmospheric than the previous collection, but also more story-ish and less cold demonstration, and still written very sharply with the occasional philosophical observation thrown in for spice.

Storm Front by Jim Butcher

This book is the beginning of a series known as the Dresden Files an introduces us to a world, not unlike our own, but with wizards. And faries. And demons. And bigfoot. All of it is terrifying. Our protagonist is a wizard named Harry, very original, who is the only wizard in the Chicago yellow pages. He's hounded by the wizard version of a cop names Morgan who's looking for an excuse to kill him, because Harry's on probation, and someone is using magic to create murder storms. The Dresden files are a series of detective novels with heavy magic and fantasy elements. The world is fairly rich and consistent, and does a good job integrating the fantasy elements with the way the real world works. The whole series is definitely worth the read.

Shut Up and Eat Your Snowshoes - Jack Douglas, 1970

"Where do you find these?" - KJ

Douglas, a Hollywood humorist, relocates from Connecticut to a lake deep in the middle of Nowhere, Ontario to get away from civilization. He takes his soon-to-be-pregnant Japanese wife, their son, two dogs, a cougar, and five wolves with them. As you can expect, there are a lot of close encounters with death in the form of blizzards, undrivable roads, adventurous biplane pilots, escapees from a prison farm, and wizened strippers. And the traditional caretaker who largely takes care of himself. The struggle to adjust to their new life is entertaining, but one feels sympathy for the wife and son. Douglas seems to have a little too much of the traditional "I am the head of the family and that settles it" mindset, to the point that it takes the edge off the humor at times. What can I say, it's hard coming down from Mark Twain. Douglas also works a little bluer than I would like and throws in plenty of entertainment industry names to make sure the book is good and dated. Overall though, it is entertaining.

My dad was always on me to read these. He was a huge fan.

The Storied Life of A. J. Fikry - Gabrielle Zevin

This is a novel about a closed-minded, unpleasant widower who runs a bookstore on a small island off the eastern U.S. coast. Into his life come an optimistic, open-minded publisher's rep and a precocious orphan left in his store (leading him to search the web for 'how does a father clean his daughter's private parts without looking like a pervert'). This could have been painted in bright Hallmark movie primaries and concluded with a wedding or two, but it does neither. It's a fairly fast read with some substance and unpleasantness to keep it grounded, with the prose remaining neutral and well-paced (and present tense) to balance all the Hallmark story elements. There's talking about books and living with books and even a dash of detective novel, all of which are very welcome.

It's a story about our relationship to books and about finding what matters in life and making the best of it, without ever coming out and saying so until the very end. Each chapter is prefaced with a short commentary on a book, which on first glance mirrors the protagonist's worldview at that point of the story, but has further meaning as the story progresses.

Thought-provoking, warm in spite of the tragedic elements, and very enjoyable. It's going to stick with me. If only because I'm not sure how "The Celebrated Jumping Frog" qualifies as "proto-post-modern".

Gardens of the Moon by Steven Erikson

This is the first book in a well-regarded epic fantasy series about the Malazan Empire. It concerns an attempt by the Empire to conquer the city of Darujhistan, and the attempts of various other powers - including those within the city, various gods and other non-human races to thwart it. It's a challenging read, opening in the middle of the action and giving the reader little opportunity to grasp what is going on in terms of either the motiviations of the very large cast of characters or in terms of the complicated magical world that they exist in. Results are mixed - in one sense you identify with the characters themselves who often have limited knowledge of their situation. In another it's frustrating to be halfway through before you have a remotely clear picture of what's going on. By the impressive ending - Anomander Rake has got to be one of the coolest characters I've encountered in some time - I felt that I could do with a re-read.
At over 700 pages, I don't think I'm going to do that right now, but it probably would be quite rewarding. And since Gardens of the Moon sets things up very well for the rest of the series, I suspect that subsequent books will be more so.

The Word Detective: Searching for the Meaning of It All at the Oxford English Dictionary - John Simpson

Simpson takes us through his career at the Dictionary, starting back in the 70s during a supplemental update. He starts his job by combing books for new quotations and words, moves on to writing entries, and is gradually given more power until he winds up as a chief editor during the computerization, internetization, and eventual total revamp of the dictionary during the '80s - '10s. I came away feeling that I understood the life of a lexicographer (past and present) well. Simpson scatters etymologies of quite a few words of interest throughout the narrative, such as AIDS (written and re-written as usage changed during the '80s), balderdash, or crowdsourcing, which helps there. In the background of the book, but certainly not his life, is a daughter who has never mentally developed beyond a pre-verbal toddler.

Apparently there have been a lot of books written about the OED. This is a good one, very accessible without being shallow.

Jurassic Park by Michael Crighton

I'm honestly surprised that it's taken me so long to read this, I was 9 when the movie came out and it's one of my favorites. The movie is fairly close to the book, for the most part. The book starts off with the fact that dinosaurs have made it off the island, with a girl attacked and several babies eaten. Ian Malcom is a hipster that wears all black and goes on anti-science tirades because his cynical mathematical theory "proves" that everything is doomed to fail.
Hammond is much more malicuous and greedy. He brings the kids in out of spite to his lawyer/investor Genero. After the t-rex gets loose, it chases Dr. Grant and the kids across the island like it was fucking Jaws. I won't go into spoilers, but the raptors in the movie weren't as intelligent as the book raptors.

Embattled Dreams: California in War and Peace, 1940 - 1950 - Kevin Starr

A moderately scholarly work that divides into chapters by year, with each chapter generally focusing on one or two topics prevalent in that year. It starts with America's deliberate attempt to ignore the War during 1940 and ends with Californians (the University in particular) under investigation for Communist ties. In between one finds the fifty-year war California carried on against Japan (and, when the Japanese were decamped, the war against immigrant Mexicans and blacks), the bustling wartime industry that swelled California's population and economy, Hollywood using the war to become an American institution, the influence of Hearst newspapers, and many individuals such as Earl Warren and Richard Nixon. There's also a lot of examination of the sociopolitical underpinnings of movies and books.

The author has an apparent liberal bias, but it mainly comes out as a bit of a preoccupation with "democratic socialistic" policies (such as those implemented by the wartime aircraft industry). I wouldn't notice it otherwise. The book seems even-handed overall and well-researched, with the author investigating accused individuals' Communist histories, innocent or up to their necks, even as it's implicitly understood that much of the Red Scare was damaging for America. A very colorful decade for one of the nation's most influential states. The book's main shortcoming is the lack of semicolons.

The Year of Lear: Shakespeare in 1606 - James Shapiro

I expected an overview of the minutiae of early 17th century London society, but no. This book is largely about major events surrounding the year 1606, and their effects on the plays Shakespeare wrote that year: King Lear, Macbeth, and Antony and Cleopatra. The Gunpowder Plot and its fallout receive especial attention. Shapiro traces themes and ideas, as well as lines of dialogue, back to the events, earlier plays, and King James's humors that Shakespeare drew upon for inspiration. There's a lot more "current events" going on in Shakespeare's plays than I had imagined to suspect. That random drunken porter in Macbeth, for example, is alluding to the then-recent discovery that Jesuits were teaching English Catholics how to "equivocate" in order to hide priests from the authorities. Antony and Cleopatra turns the then-unquestioned "Cleopatra was a hussy who made a fool out of Antony" narrative on its head to draw on the rising sense of nostalgia for Elizabeth's reign. Some idea of the overall performance culture of the time is also given. It's good.

The Lost Plot - Genevieve Cogman

Irene Winters is a Librarian in the Library, which is a giant library that exists outside the multiverse. The multiverse is ruled partly by Dragons, who like order, and partly by Fae, who like chaos (this is simplistic). They don't particularly like each other. The Library needs to stay absolutely neutral while it goes about its mission of acquiring books from all those multiverses. Irene goes about this task aided by her Librarian powers and her handsome assistant librarian.

So that's the (hopefully) spoiler-free background for this, the fourth book in a series. In this installment, Irene finds out that a fellow Librarian on another world may be interfering in Dragon politics, which could set all the Fae and many of the Dragons to war against the Library. Her desperate task is to get in there (she lands in a 1920s America where the mob is very powerful), find out what's going on, and get any shenanigans snuffed out without a hint getting out to taint the Library's perceived neutrality. And if captured, the Library will deny everything.

It's a smart book about smart people in conflict with each other with desperate stakes for everyone involved, with quick thinking and plot twists to get in and out of danger. I really enjoyed it thoroughly and will be reading the first three books as I come across them. A few spoilers for previous books, so start at the beginning.

The Invisible Library -- Genevieve Cogman

Just as entertaining as the first book I read, which is technically the fourth in the series. This one takes place in an alternate, semi-magical London with dirigibles, a Holmesian detective, and most of the backstory I mentioned above. No tedious backstory or "early installment weirdness" here, but plenty of action and intrigue and villainous villains. And plot twists, most of which I didn't see coming because the story was moving too thick and fast for me to move beyond living in the moment. Which is how I like my plot twists. Really looking forward to #s 2 and 3. I would not be surprised if these books got picked up for, say, a movie or a streaming series.

Crucible of Faith: The Ancient Revolution That Made our Modern Religious World by Philip Jenkins

Histories of Christianity and of the historical Jesus I've done - this is an attempt to get a more-rounded understanding of the background to all of that. Jenkins' work concerns the history and development of of Judaism mainly in the "intertestamental period", that is the period in between the writing of the books of the Old Testament and those of the new, a span of three centuries before the Common Era.
He presents this period as one of tremendous development, in which the influence of Hellenistic and Platonic thought helped give rise to important new currents within theology - including apocalypticism, dualism, and Messianism, dramatically altering the henotheistic tribal cult that had existed previously. Works such as Daniel, Enoch, and the Qumran scrolls demonstrate that the types of beliefs that early Christians held had been - if not mainstream - then fairly widespread for a long time before they crystallised in that format. It certainly clarifies that the whole thing was a lot less original than one might be inclined to think.
Overall it's an immersive read, impressively researched and recommended if you're interested in this topic.

This seems like one I'd like to read.

I seem to recall in one of Ehrman's books that the concept of "the Son of Man"--a divine being sent by God to sort things out in the world--dates from this period. Christians would later identify Jesus with this being, but in Mark 14:62 when Jesus tells the Sanhedrin that he is the messiah and that they will see the Son of Man, it doesn't seem like he's saying that he is that being. It's more like "Yes, I am the messiah, and you will soon see the Son of Man coming to judge you." In one sentence, Jesus makes a political claim and a religious threat.

One of Our Thursdays Is Missing -- Jasper Fforde

Another book-about-books, this one from a series I had vaguely realized existed. Usually I can get away with not picking out the first in the series, but this one kept me confused for a while. It was worth the read though.

There is a "BookWorld", which exists of metaphysical books and characters who act out the books for readers. These characters have their own lives too? So if you were to visit there, you wouldn't actually meet David Copperfield, you'd meet the character currently playing David Copperfield. Anyway, at the start of the book you get hit with a lot of cleverness that is confusing if you've been silly enough to pick this book up without reading previous books, then there's a funny bit about Crime and Punishment, and then the BookWorld is reformed by its governing body into an actual world, with actual geography, with books sorted into various genres. After that, the actual plot really starts.

The main character is called Thursday Next. She's not the original, and this is where I was confused for half the book. I guess the original Thursday Next was a character who went out into the real world and then wrote about her BookWorld adventures there? Anyway, she had the main character take over acting out her books because she (the original) wanted her books less racy and violent. And that's one of the main character's problems, is she wants to follow the original's wishes, but that means the books are less read, and that means less money and prestige for the characters playing the books, which means her co-actors are perpetually mad at her. And the other problem is that the original Thursday is missing just before a major peace talk between the Racy Novel, Women's Lit, and Dogma genres, and the main character needs to find her. This leads to humor, cleverness-that's-not-necessarily-funny, zaniness, poignancy, and a robot butler as the main character explores her world and the real world, with the secret police always on her trail.

It's hard to describe, and as you can imagine the moods don't always cohere elegantly, but it's quite entertaining, and this is certainly another series to which I will return.

Godel, Escher, Bach: An Eternal Golden Braid by Douglas Hofstadter

Another epic, this time of the non-fiction variety.
By means of chapters alternating between technical exposition and dialogues, the author walks us through many of the principles of computation theory, culminating in an explanation of Godel's Incompleteness Theorem, surely one of the most staggering achievements of the human intellect. Throughout he relates this (particularly via the concept of self-reference) to the art of Escher and the music of Bach. He then examines human intelligence - including both how information is stored and replicated by DNA and how our brains might process it. And finally on to what this might mean for the prospect of machine intelligence.
This is something of a minor classic, having been released in the 1970s. Presumably some of the technical detail has evolved or dated since that time, but I noticed it rarely. (Most notably Hofstadter comments on computer chess, predicting that a machine would not beat our best players.)
The authors huge enthusiasm for the subject is evident, and he succeeds in inspiring a sense of awe about the beauty and complexity of the things he's describing. However this one is long and technically demanding. I got a lot of enjoyment from it but I do not recommend it for anyone without a background or deep interest in mathematics and computer science.

Nausea by Jean-Paul Sartre

Written by the prominent French existentialist, this is ostensibly the tale of a semi-vagrant writer who develops feelings of nausea when thinking about the world. Mostly this is a device to allow Sartre to expound upon his philosophical ideas - that there is no purpose to life, that the external world does not define us and that "man is condemned to be free" and so forth.
I've dipped my toe in this pessimistic, absurdist worldview a handful of times now and while I did somewhat enjoy Camus and Kafka, I found this one to be quite boring. I think the principle problem is that this stuff isn't nearly as deep as it likes to think it is.

Visions of Infinity: The Great Mathematical Problems - Ian Stewart

Whilst looking for Rick's golden braid, I saw this title instead and took an interest. I have a book with a similar theme, Journey Through Genius, about distilling great theorems down to proofs that anyone with a bit of high school math can appreciate (with some biography and historical context thrown in for funsies). I really like that book so I picked this one up. This one is much more focused on the math than my book but very readable and, for me, only slightly less accessible. It's a much more flowing book, interested in following the trail from one mathematical discipline through another up to whatever major discovery or unsolved problem the chapter is about, and then often running ahead a bit for good measure. It's from 2013 so pretty current. I recommend both books unless you're past their levels.

Looking at the author's other titles, I see he was a co-writer on the Science of Discworld books. He's also written things called Another Fine Math You've Gotten Me Into and The Mayor of Uglyville's Dilemma. I'm not sure which set of accomplishments is more impressive.

A Few Bloody Noses: The Realities and Mythologies of the American Revolution by Robert Harvey

I'm periodically working my way through some of the important historical events and periods which I feel I should know more about. I chose this having read the same authors history of the Napoleonic Wars.
Harvey is a British historian and former Tory MP. He is open about his biases and his desire to provide an antidote to some of the mythology that has grown up around the American Revolution. I felt him going too far at times, giving little credit to the American side and excusing dubious British actions.
Overall however as a non-expert with only the vaguest knowledge of this history I found it quite informative on the military aspects and the great power maneuvering. I learned that the revolution occurred due to the increasing maturity of colonies that had always been de facto independent, that taxation was the issue chosen to rally around but that more important were things like the refusal of the British to allow further westward expansion. I also learned that despite winning almost every battle, the British lost because they were unable to hold the vast territories, because they were unwilling to commit the resources necessary and because of bungling at key points by their generals. French intervention was also decisive.
But there's some stuff in here about the internal American politics. Harvey seems to be saying that the radicals (Sam Adams being key among these) were betrayed at some point by conservatives led by Washington, Madison and so forth and that the final constitutional settlement was weighted heavily in favour of the latter. I'm not sure that Harvey isn't overstating this (he even refers to it in Marxist terms) and would have liked a little more explanation of the social forces involved. Maybe that's something else to follow up on.

The Rise and Fall of the Dinosaurs: A New History of a Lost World by Steve Brusatte

Brusatte is a relatively young paleontologist who has written a summary of the current state of science as it relates to the dinosaurs. In 349 pages he takes us thru the natural history of the Mesozoic era, beginning with the early Triassic and up thru the end of the Cretaceous with a brief glimpse of the early Paleocene, the start of the age of mammals. Along the way we get a clear, easy to follow description of the evolution of the dinosaurs, how they branched out into countless ecological niches, gave rise to birds, and ultimately died out as a result of the Chicxulub asteroid impact. We also get a good accounting of the history of dinosaur science, from the early days when they were thought of as big dumb lizards to the current state of the field, which views them as spectacularly successful animals. If you're in to dinosaurs at all this book is a great snapshot of the latest paleontological science and where the field currently stands. Fascinating stuff.

Go Tell it on the Mountain by James Baldwin

This one is a semi-autobiographical exploration of what it was like to be black in America in the early 20th century. John is a black teenager growing up in 1930s Harlem, with a fanatically religious father. Using his experience as a framing device, the novel shows the history of his family over the past several decades by telling the stories of his father, mother and aunt.
One deplores the backwardness of this existence in ignorance and poverty. John is (not without guilt) attracted to the promise of something better in the bright city lights. But as the family history proceeds to make clear this is a false choice - he will not be admitted to this white man's world. His options are between the fevered otherworldiness of the Pentocastal church community or a more worldly existence of drink and gangs.
It's emotionally devastating, so much so that I found it difficult to digest in other than small chunks.
Those are some of my thoughts, but I'm barely scratching the surface. Highly recommended.

A Marxist History of the World: From Neanderthals to Neoliberals by Neil Faulkner

This is an overview of all of human history from a Marxist point of view.
It only rarely drills down to the level of dates or individuals, instead preferring to present the big picture of how technological changes and social classes shaped history.
I found the first half to be the most interesting, in particular sections on the class analysis of the Roman Empire (understanding the conflict between Caesar and the Senate in those terms makes it much more striking) and on the development of capitalism in England.
The second half tackles modern history. And while there is a lot of value here, it shouldn't be read uncriticially. Faulkner's take on the Russian Revolution (perhaps predicably in line with Trotskyist dogma) is highly dubious. The effort to present a narrative sympathetic to the oppressed classes is welcome but there are a lot of blind spots when it comes to other events as well.
Certainly a valuable perspective to be aware of but this is best read as a companion or counterpoint to other "big history" works rather than as a main source.

A good book indeed

Ubik by Philip K. Dick

It's been a while since my last contact with the bizarre worlds of Philip K. Dick. Ubik is rated by many as his best. It's delightfully weird. Precogs. Time travel. Alternate universes. Contact with the dead. Talking doors. But it mostly hangs together and is at least internally consistent (though open to interpretation) while maintaining and unsettling atmosphere and raising some interesting philosophical issues.
I'm not sure I was satisfied fully with the ending but that's probably because after 50 years or so this kind of mind-bending stuff has become much more commonplace.

And the Weak Suffer What they Must? by Yanis Varoufakis

I previously rated the former Greek finance ministers memoir about his short time in office as an important and valuable book. This one was written prior to that but still benefits from his experience in office. It gives a run-down of postwar economic history, most notably the creation and later dismantling of the Bretton Woods system and then focuses in on the subsequent struggles in Europe to find a replacement, first via the ERM and eventually the Euro. Finally it recounts the recent disastrous history of the single currency and proposes some remedies to what is clearly an unsustainable situation.
I found it very informative - firstly the sections dealing with how the US designed the financial system first to run off its surpluses and later to run off Wall Street (he has another book on that which I'll probably read shortly). And secondly the sections dealing with the intrigues of the Franco-German rivalry, the machinations of the Bundesbank and the associated incompetence and illegitimacy of European institutions.
If I had a criticism it would be that things get a little technical at times. As such, it's to be recommended only if you have a genuine interest in these issues.

The Americans: The Colonial Experience - Daniel J. Boorstin

Picked this up at a library sale. It's a great example of why we need to keep older books around, even if there may be newer books ostensibly covering the same material. You never know what detail an older work might mention that newer sources don't see fit to include, or what the older work may reveal about its time. From this book, I learned that in 1950s America, self-irony simply did not exist.

The back cover promises stimulating ideas, fresh readings, and controversial points of view . . . so I was a little wary. But the first section of the book is innocuous enough. Boorstin looks at several settlements -- Puritans, Quakers, Virginia, and Georgia -- and describes the founders' intentions, the unique aspects of each in practice, and usually what led to eventual "failure". Even when describing what doomed a settlement, Boorstin typically has a gently positive attitude toward the colonists as he reports objective facts and draws reasonable-looking conclusions. I'm okay with this so far.

The second and third sections are where it gets a little hairy. The main problem with Georgia, doncha know, was that the people running it from far-off Britain had unrealistic expectations for it (a massive silk industry because why not) and never learned different. Well, that pattern is magnified in the middle of the book, where America is just so wonderful and different and Europe is so stodgy. And . . . that's pretty much the repeating theme here. While Europe suffered from guilds, in America everyone had to be the "undifferentiated man", a little bit lawyer, a little bit doctor, a little bit everything. In America those nasty, imposed strata among lawyers and doctors never developed. Colonial America never had great or learned scientists, philosophers, or writers, but that's okay because everyone in America was too busy discovering new species and observing practical human nature to bother with categorization or abstract philosophies. And so on. Most of these contrasts between New World and Old are fine on their own, and stand reasonably well, especially the point that American "medicine" was largely free from the often destructive leechcraft of European doctors. But the theme just gets so repetitive, and Boorstin reiterates individual assertions, to the point that it all comes off as needlessly anti-intellectual. American shortcomings are noted neutrally or in a "admittedly, but" manner, while European ways are a thing to be free of. If there had been just a little sense of wry irony it would have all been tolerable. I actually decided during this section that I would look Boorstin up on the Web to see if he was well-regarded or considered a crackpot.

Possibly the most heated controversy in this book is to be found in Boorstin's urging that European influences traditionally credited for certain American innovations be largely disregarded, because the thing was already happening in America. Boorstin does not look to contemporary Europe or ancient Athens for the inspiration for American democracy, but rather to colonial Virginia, where voting was limited to aristocratic landowners who had to be capable and intelligent to make their fortunes. And so Virginian Founding Fathers trusted republicanism.

The third section, mostly less cheerleadery, deals with American literary culture: varying stresses on religion and practical matters across the board, with pamphlets and newspapers far outnumbering works of fiction. Boorstin also discusses why the colonies never had a single cultural center like London or Paris. It further comes out that printing presses were very rare, so that authorities could squelch uncomfortable opinions quite readily, and in fact several Founding Fathers were strongly in favor of maintaining such a controlled press. (Paper was also very rare, and a British increase of its taxation stirred up the printers against the mother country.)

The last, short section is back to a reasonable objectivity, largely looking at the differences in professionialism between American militia and European professional soldiers. One recognizes much the same attitude that would appear in the Civil War decades later, much stronger here, with soldiers electing their own officers and militiamen tending to show up to fight when they felt like it, and heading home when the fighting seemed over. A strong provincialism kept colonies from helping each other with fighting, which frustrated the British (and Washington) and remained a factor through the Revolutionary War.

Overall a good read, aside from the sense of overbearing rah-rah Americanism and anti-elitism in the middle. Wikipedia says Boorstin was respected enough to win a Pulitzer and head the Library of Congress, and interesting enough to spend several paragraphs talking about his politics and philosophy.

When Google Met Wikileaks by Julian Assange

Almost lost without trace due to difficulty in finding a publisher, this one probably isn't as well-known as it might be. It concerns an interview that occurred between Assange and a handful of the main Google people (including Eric Schmidt) when he was under house arrest in 2011. Ostensibly a friendly exploration of technology trends, the material was used by Schmidt and co. as part of a book they were writing to ingratiate themselves with the US establishment and they ended up misrepresenting and slandering Wikileaks extensively. Assange published this as a corrective, with some additional material giving context and other views.
For the most part it's just a transcript, and it's mostly Assange holding forth on the mission and method of Wikileaks, with some interesting ideas about the future of communications technology, with ideas such as peer-to-peer mobile phone networks and changes to the domain naming system. Certainly interesting to some degree on its own terms though it doesn't much go into the kind of depth that some of the ideas deserve.

Heart of Darkness by Joseph Conrad

Hardly needing a plot summary, Conrad's most famous work relates the tale of Marlow, a steamboat captain in the late 19th century travelling through the Congo to find a rogue ivory trader named Kurtz. It was adapted most famously as Apocalypse Now, though I was struck by just how dissimilar the two actually are.
It's short and the easily digested prose hides quite a lot of complexity. Kurtz is the centre of the book but he never actually says much. What he says "offscreen" and what savagery he have participated in is merely hinted at. Marlow tells the tale and is our main character, yet there is a narrator who introduces his story as a framing device and who cuts in a handful of times. This is intriguing and renders the task of pinning down just what the novel is trying to say (and where if at all it reflects the authors views) very difficult, perhaps why it became such a classic of early modernism.
There has of latter days been some debate as to whether Conrad was racist or glorified colonialism.
While alternate readings are possible, to my eye it is profoundly racist in the way that educated opinion was at the time. Yet it is at the same time anti-colonial. The civilisation affected by the white man is but a thin veneer and he easily reverts to barbarism. As such I'd surmise that is is suggestive of a kind of misanthropy. I'm not sure I like that message, but one cannot doubt the force of its messenger.

The Global Minotaur by Yanis Varoufakis

Essentially a companion to his other book that I'd just read (though written earlier) this focuses on the world economy and particularly the role of the US in organising it after World War 2. The US was in a position of total dominance after WW2 and set up the Bretton Woods arrangement whereby its massive surpluses were recycled to Europe and Japan, who provided markets for its goods. That broke down in 1971 and over the next decade the system was reorganized with the now in-deficit US using its still dominant position as owner of the reserve currency, Wall Street and it's high productivity to reverse the situation with it providing the demand. Varoufakis names this latter system "The Global Minotaur", capturing the way that the hegemon essentially demands "tribute". It worked in the sense that it kept the economy going, although with much worse outcomes in many ways than that of the 50s and 60s, the "global age of capitalism".
Finally, the contention is that even this broke down in 2008 when the system spun out of control. The argument is that with US demand weakened, there is no functioning mechanism to ensure trade imbalances are managed. I'm not sure that this isn't at least somewhat out of date by now, as with US economic recovery demand will now have recovered somewhat. But longer term, the prognosis is probably correct and it is difficult to see how a replacement could arise.
It's a highly incisive work, although somewhat overconfident of its thesis at times. Though written for the general reader with an effort to break down its concepts, it again doesn't always succeed and the plethora of metaphors used can be unhelpful. However as with its companion, highly recommend if this is something that interests you.