Books

 Book, sofa, cup of tea, silence.  Those moments have been more frequent this year.  Here are some books I have been reading.

Where's the f-ing milk?! Courtesy someone on Pinterest. I don't know who because Pinterest is so darn impenetrable.

Shuggie Bain by Douglas Stuart

This was given to us by our visitor from Scotland, Lorna the polymath.  Well educated, well read, well spoken and, well, always interesting, a gift from Lorna was bound to be special.  And if that wasn't enough recommendation, Shuggie Bain had won the Booker prize, despite being a debut novel.  Like many Booker winners, it took a while to get into.  But this is an exquisite book.  Exquisitely written, exquisitely painful. Shuggie Bain is a young boy growing up in 1980s Glasgow, cowed by poverty and the collapse of industry in Thatcherite Britain.  Shuggie is the titular character but this story is as much about his mother, Agnes, a vivacious, beautiful soul, wracked by alcoholism and the abuse of her partners.  The rendering of Glasgow's grey and cold propels the narrative on its descent into the blackhole of addiction and dysfunction.  We are allowed one brief period of sunshine, a few chapters during which Agnes finds sobriety and self worth, a job and, fatefully, a new partner. Although a decent man, he naively eases Agnes back into the drink and back onto her path towards hell.  Her cruelty and suffering is mostly acutely felt when it wraps its loving arms around the boy Shuggie, foisting upon him heart wrenching despair as he clings to the object of his devotion.  This a story of loss and survival, the alienation of the time, the pervasive toxicity of masculinity excacerbated by unemployment and social despair.  A fun read, no.  An important book, yes.  A paradoxically life affirming story as well.

Steve Jobs by Walter Isaacson

Oh Steve Jobs.  What have you done?  Have you created the most innovative company ever, introduced life-enhancing products, changed the course of human history?  Or, have you bullied and blustered your way to superstardom, enabled a reliance on technological devices that is simultaneously dissolving the social fabric and pillaging the earth of its precious metals, mined not by Steve but by the desitute of the poorest countries, given no choice but to risk life and limb in daily pursuit of a few hundred calories.  Probably both.  Our capitalist culture is trained to venerate these titans of industrial creativity.  I do think Jobs and Musk, and some others that don't immediately come to mind, stand out for the purity of their innovation.  These are not incrementalists.  But whether they are helping us to leap forward into the world we need, or accelerating our demise, only time will tell.

By the way, the book is very good.  Isaacson strikes a nice balance between an objective assessment of Jobs the person while allowing his own admiration room to breath.  Like it or not, Apple has a big influence in our lives, directly or indirectly.  And I am pleased to have learnt a bit more about how we got here and where we might be going.

Catcher in the Rye by J. D. Salinger

This book has been on my Goodreads to-read list for over ten years.  It was there not so much because I had a burning desire to read it, more because it fell into the category of books I feel I should have read.  I have enjoyed much older classics than this, several Hardy novels, Jane Eyre etc.  I've even tried some Roth.

Apparently most readers of this seminal classic fall into one of two camps: best book ever, or don't get what the fuss is about.  For much of the read I was pretty much in the second group, wondering whether this was an outdated grump-fest.  I think in the end I got it.  Part of the problem is my age.  This is a book that articulates the alienation and disassociation felt my many young adults.  It should be right up my street, full of ascerbic observation of the futility of our pursuit of pleasure, written from the point of view of someone with a disdain for small talk and a restlessness of mind and spirit.  I identified more with the handful of pages in which Holden's former teacher expounds upon Holden his words of wisdom than I did during the other couple of hundred pages of Holden's own stream of consciousness. 

I don't think my life would have been poorer for not having read this, but it was a quick read and now I know the Catcher in the Rye.

Children of Time by Adrian Tchaikovsky

Another Lorna recommendation and a departure from my usual diet, this is a science fiction novel.  I've only just started.  Will let you know how it goes but so far it looks like we are taking a trip into a world of space settling following the demise of Earth.  Arguably that premise only just qualifies as sci-fi.