Reading

Non-fiction

Bartholomäus Grill, Bauernsterben. I’ve just started this, but it is living up to what the newspaper reviews promised: a devastating critique of modern industrial agriculture, from a man who grew up on a traditional farm and watched the “Green Revolution” destroy it. Often tragic, sometimes bitingly funny.

Stefan Zweig, Die Welt von Gestern. Currently reading this in German. I live in Vienna and it’s been very interesting to compare Zweig’s description of the “world of security”, the Vienna in the decades before the first World War at the end of the Habsburg monarchy, with the Vienna of today. Most amusing is Zweig’s description of how the young struggle to be taken seriously: young doctors must grow long beards to get patients, and even a 40-year old man might be looked down on as “too inexperienced”.

David Graeber, Debt: the first 5000 years. This one’s been on my list for years, but I finally got around to it in early 2024, after reading several other things from Graeber in the last couple of years. It’s a tour de force, well worth reading and discussing. At some point I might write a longer review; until then, others are not hard to find.

George Orwell, Homage to Catalonia. Another classic that had been on my list for a while; I read it on vacation in Sweden in 2023. I hear (from Spaniards, though I’m not sure they’ve read it) that Orwell’s account is not to be trusted for historical accuracy, despite his pleading in the book that he is telling the real story (or at least, a real story) that won’t otherwise be found in the approved sources of history, especially the newspapers of the day. I downloaded the text from george-orwell.org and made an EPUB out of it, correcting typos as I went; feel free to send me further corrections.

David Graeber, Bullshit Jobs. Not a particularly encouraging book to read if you’re already feeling burned out in the modern industrial economy, and not, I would say, Graeber’s best work, but it gives a name to an important phenomenon that we all knew was there: white-collar “work” that isn’t doing anything productive, that actually harms those doing it, and that mostly exists because other people feel better when they’re at the top of a hierarchy.

David Graeber and David Wendgrow, The Dawn of Everything. I read this in summer 2022, when it had just been published and was being heavily promoted. The first chapter made a strong impression on me: the idea that the American value of liberty actually arose from a Native American critique of European culture was fascinating and made me want to read the original. (Still haven’t gotten around to that.) The principle of “schismogenesis” also struck a chord with me, the idea that cultures sometimes reject ideas, even when they would be beneficial, in order to define themselves in opposition to others: “that’s how they do it; we do this”. I was reading the book in the US, my first visit after the pandemic, and thought this principle could explain a good deal of the sad political landscape I could see. In general the book, like the earlier Debt, is excellent at illustrating the tremendous variety in human societies, and showing us that other forms of life are possible; there has been more actual variety in human culture than you could possibly imagine.

Fiction

Wolf Haas’ Brenner novels. A zany detective series, set in various places in Austria, which follows the misadventures of former detective Simon Brenner as he gets entangled in one murder after another. I started the series a couple of years ago, and they’ve all provided amusing windows for me onto Austrian culture and language, if from a (very) skewed angle. (“Sehr abgefahren” was my cousin’s description when he introduced me to the series.) Most recently I finished Der Brenner und der liebe Gott and Müll, which as of this writing is the latest one. To give you an idea of what you’re in for, without any spoilers: in the former, Brenner finally meets his maker—in the pit beneath a privy.

James Joyce, Ulysses. I tried reading this many years ago and did not get very far, but after seeing it appear on Standard Ebooks, I decided to try it again. My first impression was: is this supposed to be stream of consciousness? James’ consciousness must be very different from mine. My second was: oh yes, wait, there’s something to this.

Terry Pratchett’s Discworld series. I worked through (almost) the whole series in 2024. I did not expect to enjoy anything featuring wizards and magic and dwarves and trolls and goblins; but after much prodding by a friend, I started with Thud! and couldn’t stop. Pratchett is a devastating satirist and a sharp, if sometimes cyncial, observer of human character and institutions. (Thud! is, incidentally, not a good starting point if you’re considering jumping into the series yourself; it was a random choice on my part, but at least had the virtue of featuring Sam Vimes in his prime. If I’d started with the chronologically-first The Color of Magic I’m not sure I would have continued.) I mostly followed this visual guide, reading two or three storylines in parallel. I enjoyed the City Watch, Death, and Industrial Revolution storylines the most; I’d recommend the Watch storyline if you’re looking for a starting point.

Gabriele Zevin, Tomorrow and tomorrow and tomorrow, a novel about friendship set against the backdrop of 90s computer games. Thus it fell close to my heart. I read it in 2023 in German (Morgen und morgen und wieder morgen), despite it being originally in English, and it still managed to move me to tears at some points.

China Miéville, Die Stadt und die Stadt (orig. The City and the City). A fascinating noir novel that looks at what it would mean for two states to have overlapping territory, an idea that seemed better to me before I read this.

Xi Xi, Meine Stadt. This turned out to be less of a novel than a novel-length poem, translated from the original Chinese into German. Though there are recurring characters, the connections between the chapters are not always apparent, and it was hard for to me follow along, especially in German. I didn’t manage to finish it, though apparently the final chapter explains some of the looser threads.

Neil Stephenson, Snow Crash. Went back to fill in this gap in my Stephenson shelf after finishing Anathem. It was everything I’d heard: zany, hilarious, exciting, and a perfect recording of the techno-dystopian vision at the center of 90s culture in America (which in some ways has come to pass). If you liked The Matrix or anything else from the period, you’ll love it.

Neil Stephenson, Anathem. This novel apparently splits Stephenson’s readership into lovers and haters; I fell into the lovers camp. What appealed to me most of all was the picture of monastic life inside the Concent, the combination of learning and research with agriculture and communal existence and the isolation from the technological and economic ravages outside the walls. It’s a vision of an alternative lifestyle that I would welcome in this world.