Notable Book of the Year 2016: The Three-Body Problem

One of my favorite Hindi songs is Jo wada kiya woh nibhana padega. You know where I am going with this...

Or also, directly from the book

"But Ye had the mental habits of a scientist, and she refused to forget."

Wrapping up this belabored edition of Notable Books is Cixin Liu's The Three-Body Problem. It's a book that combines the contemporary history of China with a well utilized toolbox of cutting edge science research (with the usual liberties that push the envelope) to send the reader on a suspenseful and melancholic journey.

I have written before on the virtues of Science Fiction; about why it isn't categorized, typically, as Art in the world of literature by more established and conventional cliques.

I refrain from explaining much about the plot. If, by now, you've already checked the book's description somewhere you know but in case you haven't, DON'T DO IT. Buy it in good faith - not my own; the book won the Hugo Award last year.

Read the book and as I noted in Goodreads, experience the feeling of tension as the plot unravels and the individual streams connect to form a grand over-arching narrative.

I've already made this post very late so I'll end here. The Three-Body Problem is a trilogy and yours truly is already in the middle of the second part.

H

(This concludes a series of 5 posts on the best books I read through the year 2016. The last ones dealt with fiction, non-fiction,  comic books/graphic novels and the first one was an Autobiographical work. Follow me at hamstersqueaks.blogspot.in) 

Notable Book of the Year 2016 - The Vegetarian

“There's nothing wrong with keeping quiet, after all, hadn't women traditionally been expected to be demure and restrained?”

I've been meaning to write this review for several months now. I got derailed initially by the gruesome discovery of being allergic to Seltzer water, a discovery that was accompanied by pain and exhaustion for many a day. And just when I thought I was okay again, I realized I had my PhD Certifying Exams on the horizon. Fast approaching.

Anyway, after a nice and relaxing vacation (I cleared the exams; thanks for asking) I am back to finish what I started even if it is August and I should be getting ready a list for 2018. I think I have digressed enough.

So, why The Vegetarian? Arguably, the year saw some great works of fiction such as Zadie Smith's Swing Time or Elizabeth McKenzie's The Portable Veblen. That is true; it's just that my selection is a spectacular achievement on a different plane.

The Vegetarian is a dark, sordid novel. It reads very much like a horror movie. There is an icy feel to it that refuses to leave you. The author's tone immediately makes you believe that just about any bad thing could happen. Split across three parts, the novel touches on the inherent violence in relationships, and how the need to force outliers to conform to societal roles can end up damaging these individuals in the most awful way.

Han Kang is a Korean author who (as I understand it) has often touched on the lack of agency that women have in their lives. The Vegetarian is a gruesome story in the same vein except that its complexity and unpredictability - I struggle to mention any "similar" story - leaves you hooked and in suspense.

It's a short book and it wouldn't do justice to talk about it at great length. Suffice it to say that the main character, Yeong-hye, is introduced as an unremarkable woman who decides to turn vegetarian after seeing a disquieting and mysterious dream. Nothing that follows is quite according to script.

The Vegetarian is grotesque, its invasive imagery only faithfully accentuating the torture Yeong-hye sees through her life with perverse violations of her freedom. If you think you've gained an idea of what the book is about, believe me, you're probably wrong.

It's a story of estrangement with allegory in the class of Kafka. I am disappointed by the Goodreads score on it but then again, I've consistently noticed that the Goodreads community under-rates books that are multi-layered. That's just unfortunate.

Read The Vegetarian to experience a mythical story - it can be lifted from its own context and find resonance - if only through a trying and discomfiting ordeal - anywhere else in the world.

"That shuddering, sordid, gruesome, brutal feeling. Nothing else remains. Murderer or murdererd, experience too vivid to not be real. Determined, disillusioned. Lukewarm, like slightly cooled blood." 

(This is fourth in a series of 5 posts on the best books I read through the year 2016. The last ones were on non-fiction,  comic books/graphic novels and the first one was an Autobiographical work. The final book in this series will be a science fiction novel! Follow me at hamstersqueaks.blogspot.in)

Bogu

The path lay before me,

Resplendent and ready.

An ironic travesty!

That the mist cleared

And the heart sank

Into the mud.

Next Gen in Tennis

It's getting progressively more difficult deciding who to support in the future: Thiem, Kyrgios or Zverev? All three are already poised to win multiple Majors with Kyrgios looking the most invincible when on song, which is sadly still very rare. If he does manage to rein in his head, I figure he can win as many as 8 Slams.

My personal favorite, though, is Thiem. I love his single handed backhand and his forehand packs quite the punch. In the future post-Federer era (2019 on), it would be nice to see some good tennis without the burden of reflexively flinching at every lost point or experiencing a sense of devastation on losing a match that should've been won.

That does seem to be the bright side of supporting a player over a team. Your support has a shelf life.

Notable Book of the Year 2016 - Saving Capitalism

“I believe that if we dispense with mythologies that have distracted us from the reality we find ourselves in, we can make capitalism work for most of us rather than for only a relative handful.”

tl;dr

Repeating what I wrote in my Goodreads review. If you're reading one non-fiction book this year, it should be this one.

Cold winds of change are blowing across the world. One cannot but think gloomily about our future in the midst of revanchist tendencies simultaneously and organically emerging in countries otherwise different in almost every aspect - think of the UK and the Philippines. There is no one grand overarching thesis that I think describes why all these countries are turning to the Dark Side. That would be ambitious or worse, disingenuous.

Being from India though, it is often surprising and a tad chilling to see the very beacons of "progress" and "development" (the quotes offered because their connotations vary wildly) turning their backs against the same ideals they held up to us for over decades now. Globalization is a doctrine that was developed when the benefits of fair trade and free mobility of labor and capital was seen as an essential step towards progress. When emerging countries resisted components of this policy it was the developed world that reminded us of its supposed virtues.

Similarly, despotic or xenophobic regimes were assumed to be signs of immaturity. In a democracy it was hoped that a combination of institutions and experience (and guidance from Paternalistic States) would push these backward tendencies away. There were other lessons that were offered not least of which were the benefits of unfettered markets, of intellectual property rights, of balanced budgets and what not¹. Francis Fukuyama's End of History hypothesis was a symptom of the optimism that liberal democracy would soon take over the world.

It didn't. Clearly.

So what went wrong? Many say that the benefits of trade were oversold - while the economics behind it was solid it was based on giving adequate compensation to the losers (implicitly or explicitly). Some say that a productivity decline and the probable absence of new inventions (of the order of the telephone) imply that growth in the developed world may never be the same. Others talked about a skill mismatch as technology demanded a more skilled workforce and rewarded these workers with higher wages.

Whatever it is, the ground facts are distressing and are routinely reeled off, by Left and Right. To quote one common example, a slow down in median household wages in the US means that, after adjusting for inflation, the levels were lower in 2013 than they were in 1989.

This is where Saving Capitalism comes in. I had ordered the book for the IIM Ahmedabad library last year (I wonder if anyone read it after me). The book arrived late and convocation was around the corner. I could only manage to get through 75% of it and, with a heavy heart, returned it to the library.

That was until I got my PhD admit at Columbia, and to say thank you to friends and professors (the intersection is pretty high), I was back in the institute in June. I finished the rest of the book in under an hour at the KLMDC makeshift library. I've been meaning to review the book ever since.

The fundamental thesis of Saving Capitalism is that capitalism is under threat from the concentration and subsequent abuse of market power. It starts with a simple and persuasive argument that is difficult to deny. Can markets exist without the government? Surely not, the government sets the rules of the game and offers protection to its participants. But that's what people are told. The simple and erroneous dichotomy offered to most people is that it's government versus free markets. That's problematic in several ways.

“Government doesn’t “intrude” on the “free market.” It creates the market. The rules are neither neutral nor universal, and they are not permanent. Different societies at different times have adopted different versions. The rules partly mirror a society’s evolving norms and values but also reflect who in society has the most power to make or influence them.”

Reich, a professor at UC Berkeley, spends chapter after chapter describing how concentration of market power has weakened the better angels of capitalism. It's pretty persuasive and the data he presents is uncomplicated yet revealing.

It is important to note at this point that the intuition offered by the basic economics most of us learn is often not sufficient to understand real life. In other words, it's too simplistic. Consider this example: for years the idea of increasing minimum wages at the Federal or State level was taken to be taboo. The argument, as some of you may say, is that if you artificially increase wages, this price floor will lead to lower overall employment in the labor market - firms will hire less.

But that understanding is dangerously incomplete. In a now seminal paper in 1994 by David Card and Alan Krueger, a natural experiment found that employment does not fall when the minimum wage is hiked. The reason? The leading answer to this is believed to be a monopsony. Buyers of labor are concentrated and therefore they have the market power to artificially push down wages in the labor market. A mandated wage hike therefore, in a sense, remedies this situation².

So that's market power. It distorts the incentives in the market and can lead to a net loss in welfare. Reich argues that this concentration hasn't happened naturally. It is the result of decades of lobbying activities that have ensured that legislation does not curb the excesses of companies - allowing for only two players, for example, in cable; or letting patent laws being ridiculously generous. You can read more on this here. Another interesting discussion is on the argument that you get paid what you deserve.

“Yet the notion that you’re paid what you’re “worth” is by now so deeply ingrained in the public consciousness that many who earn very little assume it’s their own fault.”

It's a smooth read. The last part deals with what Reich calls countervailing forces. In other words, unlike what many of my friends complain about in books like these, he actually offers solutions to remedying the situation. Admittedly, this part reads a bit optimistically; some suggestions ring a bit hollow with the recent election results but others are thought-provoking.

However, this book is your best bet to assess and analyze the state of an important developed nation. It gives you cues to understand and predict what'll transpire in the coming five years. In many ways, Reich was prescient about what came to be...

You'll struggle to find a shorter and crisper book that does that.

Other reviews

I am listing just the one by Paul Krugman which offers a more informed history of the conditions leading to, as he sees it, the mess we are in today. Also, on how Robert Reich changed from writing a book offering optimism and bullishness in the 90s to downright despairing in this book.

^{1. I have disagreements with many of these points but they are nuanced. There is great virtue in having a market for goods and commodities but is it necessary or even desirable to have markets in healthcare or primary education? We need strong contract and property rights but how do you ensure that these rights are not in favor of those who can manipulate them? Expect more rigorous discussions on these topics in the coming months.}

^{2. In case you're wondering about the viability of a 25 year old study, here's a recent one that compares the performance of minimum wage increases in 18 states in the US. The results are the same. By and large, what we do know is that there is no negative effect on employment. Studies over the past two decades have encouraged governments to implement minimum wage laws in over a dozen countries.}

^{(Quiz: So what does NREGA do well and how is it different, not necessarily in a wrong way?)}

(This is third in a series of 5 posts on the best books I read through the year 2016. The last one was on comic books/graphic novels and one before was an Autobiographical work. The next in this series include fiction and science fiction novels! Follow me at hamstersqueaks.blogspot.in)

Notable Book of the Year 2016 - The Saga Series

“Once upon a time, each of us was somebody's kid.
Everyone had a father, even if he never provided anything more than his seed.
Everyone had a mother, even if she had to leave us on a stranger's doorstep.
No matter how we're eventually raised, all of our stories begin the exact same way.
They all end the same, too.”

This edition of Notable Books of 2016 covers Comic Books/Graphic Novels.

(A disclaimer: I will not cover essentials and must haves such as The Watchmen, Maus etc. You should read them as soon as you get the chance)

The best comic book series of the year came to me in late November. In the middle of solving Real Business Cycle Models and finding General Equilibrium Pareto Optima, I was handed the series by a classmate and friend... to whom I am eternally grateful.

Saga is by Brian K Vaughan and Fiona Staples. It's not new - the series started way back in 2012 - but it's still ongoing and is expected to continue for many more years.

To give you a tl;dr summary and at the risk of shameless self-indulgence this is what I wrote in my diary immediately after completing its third volume,

"Damn, it's been a while since I read a good comic book! The Saga series is just about everything you can possibly demand from an awesome comic book series and it's a gift that keeps on giving. A combination of satire and über-cool imagination laced with humor and gripping characters it comes at the top of any must-read book lists I can think of this year."

Two days later and all volumes down my opinion only metamorphosed from calm admiration to crazy addiction. There are six volumes that are out at the moment and the series has been met with wide acclaim from critics and immense love from a growing legion of fans.

By Source, Fair use, https://en.wikipedia.org/w/index.php?curid=35115924

Saga is what you get when you blend a story of war, of love in the time of war (with the lovers from the opposite camps), of robot royalty, of mercenaries, and, in general, of well chiseled characters that are surprisingly relevant in our own modern world.

The backdrop of Saga is a war between Landfall, a large and important planet in the galactic neighborhood, and Wreath, its satellite. The two worlds are vastly different from each other. For instance, people from Wreath routinely use magic in their lives (including as a weapon). Landfall and Wreath went to war a long, long time back and eventually wearied of it so much they decided to outsource the war to other worlds, recruiting or forcing other civilizations to fight on their behalf.

Alana (from the Landfall side) falls in love with her prisoner Marko (a native of Wreath) and that's disastrous for both sides, not least because Alana has given birth to a Landfall-Wreath baby. That's where we begin.

“Never worry what other people think of you, because no one ever thinks of you.”

Alana and Marko form the initial mainstay but they are soon supplemented by an impressive and intriguing set of characters who are slowly fleshed out in detail, their backstories opening up at different points leading inexorably to the impending grand finale. That's the thing that stands out for me in Saga - its medley of characters.

There are robots
A coalition partner of Landfall is Robot Kingdom, led by blue-blood robot royalty. The robots are fascinating analogues to Rorschach - inscrutable and hidden behind a veneer of inhumanity while burying a maelstrom of emotions underneath.

There are mercenaries
A neutral group of mercenaries can be hired by either side to execute more devious and nefarious plans. There are a bunch of them and their paths intersect, in wicked ways.

There's a lot more - a whole lot more

Making a list of all important characters is hopelessly futile - there are just too many - and pretty boring - for the writer and reader alike. The story makes you love them all and this is the moment when I should just ask you to go ahead and procure the series.

Before I conclude, however, let me note another praiseworthy feature of Saga. Through all the action and drama and laughs the series subtly weighs in on gender relations, on race and ethnic relations, and on the collateral damage a war creates. These are complex and multi-layered issues and Saga's magic is to elicit empathy from the reader, an invaluable and rare lesson newspapers and dry debates pathetically fail in achieving. All this without batting an eyelid or dropping pace. Indeed, you can probably finish the series in a day and leave yourself waiting until March 2017 (like me) when the next volume is scheduled for release.

Must Read. A story of war and love and, somewhere in between, a story of a family as it tries to sort itself out.

“All good children's stories are the same: young creature breaks rules, has incredible adventure, then returns home with the knowledge that aforementioned rules are there for a reason.
Of course, the actual message to the careful reader is: break rules as often as you can, because who the hell doesn't want to have an adventure?”

Honorable Mentions
I am late to works by Joe Sacco but I would highly recommend them. Safe Area Gorazde (duh, I can hear the fans saying) must be read. Sydney Padua's The Thrilling Adventures of Lovelace and Babbage was also a smooth read. And the graphic novel I would've covered if I hadn't read Saga? Daniel Clowes' Patience. It's just awesome.

What was your favorite work this year?

(This is second in a series of 5 posts on the best books I read through the year. The last one was an Autobiographical work. The next in this series include non-fiction, fiction and science fiction novels! Follow me at hamstersqueaks.blogspot.in)

Notable Book of the Year 2016 - H is for Hawk

"Prisonface is terrified of life; he is a chameleon, a mirror, existing only through his reflection in the eyes of others."

H is for Hawk is not, by any stretch of the imagination, an obscure book. If you wind the clock back a year and peruse through any best books list from 2015, you'd find its name there, typically at the top.

The first time I attempted to read the book was in early February. I failed. On that balmy day, with the sun dazzling through the oily leaves of the tree in front of dorm 10, I propped the book open on my lap and spent the next ten minutes absorbing its premise. And even in the Ahmedabad sun - the unrelenting, unremitting Ahmedabad sun - I experienced a chill down my spine. I couldn't read it. Another nine months went by till the day I eventually sat down on a blustery morning in New York to read through it, an intensely rewarding experience which prompted me to write this review.

To explain why I couldn't find the courage to proceed in my first attempt, you must understand what the book is all about.

At the core of H is for Hawk is the question of how people make sense of their lives by putting their selves in a symbol that they hope represents everything they were meant to do (or be) in life. The symbol can be anything but it stands untarnished by compromise; unencumbered by bonds of love or pangs of suffering.

H is for Hawk is an autobiographical account of Helen Macdonald as she fights through the grief of losing her father. This is the essence of the story - a gut wrenching journey where the author spins hopelessly away into the void; struggles to stay afloat; closing down the world around her; a magnificent and ancient creature - a goshawk - her only company and Patronus.

To merely say the above, though, is to completely miss the point. H is for Hawk transcends genres - as a story about a young girl who only always desired to fly with majestic birds of prey; as a gorgeous handbook on falcons and the history of falconry; as a commentary on the quintessential English countryside; as a disturbing and piercing biography of a famous writer of the previous century.

By the way, a goshawk looks like this:

Reading H is for Hawk can be difficult. Helen's personal sorrow drips out of every page. It imbues a melancholic strain that lingers, even when you've set the book aside to get back to your own existence. At times, this affects you. There was many a time when I flipped through the pages to the back cover, to find myself staring at Helen's face and her brooding eyes. Eyes that seem heavy with sadness and a weight that looks almost impossible to bear.

The reader will persist. The prose is beautiful and Helen mixes up a story of depression and misery with the magical description of her Goshawk, Mabel. In one of the lighter moments in the book, she talks how giving a "tough" name for a hawk is a sure recipe for disaster.

"There's a superstition among falconers that a hawk's ability is inversely proportional to the ferocity of its name. Call a hawk Tiddles and it will be a formidable hunter; call it Spitfire or Slayer and it will probably refuse to fly at all."

Helen is a practicing falconer herself - becoming one was a childhood passion of hers. Helen teaches you to love what she loves and it all comes so naturally that you hardly notice it, and yet when you close the book you'll never see a bird of prey the same way again. H is for Hawk also has rich and intimate descriptions of the English countryside. Of course, the size of the demographic who enjoys this is understandably fledgling but I put it out there, just in case.

Darkness and despair doesn't merely run through Helen's own story. An important and intriguing element of the author's narration is the parallel account of T H White (author of the famous The Sword in the Stone series). White's life acts as a compelling counterfoil throughout the book, as he narrates a tortured existence and how he desperately attempted to tame his own goshawk, Gos. White, former headmaster of a school, a misfit since childhood carrying many ghosts of his past tries to find refuge in the training of his hawk. The book moves back and forth between these two solitary and anguished narrators as Helen tries to make sense of her own sorrow. It's a moving and powerful literary device.

Customarily, a book review must include perceived shortcomings. Allow me to end with one. Autobiographies by their nature can be one-dimensional and therefore it's a mark of how well Helen has finessed her story that you end up demanding (unfairly) more details about the other characters in her life, who have a fleeting presence, being part participants exiting the stage almost as soon as they enter it. I struggle to find more flaws in this exquisite book.

H is for Hawk is good literature that's accessible to all kinds of readers. It makes you realize, as all good books do, that our smallest and most private tribulations have been expressed by the great artists of language.

"You are exercising what the poet Keats called your chameleon quality, the ability to 'tolerate a loss of self and a loss of rationality by trusting the capacity to recreate oneself in another character or another environment.'"

The book is destined to be a modern classic, a story that leaves you with strength and hope, yes, but also little tidbits of enlightenment. For instance, Helen describes a tragedy as:

"...that it is the story of a figure who, through some moral flaw or personal failing, falls through force of circumstance to his doom."

H is for Hawk is a must read in every sense.

(This is the first in a series of 5 posts on the best books I read through the year. The first one (as you can see) is an Autobiographical work. The next in this series include non-fiction, fiction and comic books/graphic novels! Follow me at hamstersqueaks.blogspot.in)