I just finished reading the third and final Fitzcarraldo Editions book that I bought in London last year (after The Observable Universe and Drive Your Plow Over the Bones of the Dead). I really like the minimalist cover design and the quality of the paper that they use. The books have heft in my hand, and the pages are sturdy and satisfying to turn. I (and most readers, I’m guessing) don’t normally pay much attention to the physical “style” of a given publisher, so kudos to them for creating such a distinctive ethos.

Fifty Sounds is a memoir by Polly Barton about her experiences as an Englishwoman living in Japan. She’s now known for translating Japanese literature to English, which implies that she’s mastered the language, but as she tells it in this book, there’s a gap that’s essentially impossible to cross for a non-native speaker.

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I don’t feel like I can fairly judge this book because I read it during a difficult time. My dog has been having some medical issues and it’s been an emotional roller-coaster. I found myself unable to really connect with anything I was reading. But even through my own numbness, I admired the author’s work.

All Our Ordinary Stories is a graphic memoir by Chinese-Canadian author Teresa Wong, who attempts to bridge the emotional distance between her and her immigrant parents by exploring their histories. Her parents lived through extreme events, escaping from the Cultural Revolution in China by swimming to Hong Kong. Wong struggles to understand their experiences because they don’t talk about their past. Partly, Chinese culture celebrates stoicism, and encourages them to bottle up their traumas; but also, there’s a language barrier between the generations that makes it hard to have any deep conversations.

I also can’t speak the language of my ancestors very well, but I’m uncomfortable speaking English with my parents because it seems disrespectful somehow. Some scenes in this book capture the communication gap so well that it feels both boring and profound at the same time: boring, because I’ve internalized the experience so much that it’s become run-of-the-mill, ordinary; but profound, because someone else has written it down and aired it out and shown how challenging it really is.

It’s a rare occurrence that a book hits this close to home… I may wish to revisit this book sometime when I’m more able to engage with it, but I’m almost afraid to do so because it may destroy me.

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In Consent, author Jill Ciment reflects on her relationship with her late husband. They got together when she was 17 and he was 47, and stayed together until he passed away in his 90’s.

At the core of the book are the questions:

Does a story’s ending excuse its beginning? […] Can a love that starts with such an asymmetrical balance of power ever right itself?

I don’t think it’s a conflict that can be resolved: her and her husband’s long-lasting love was genuine, but he was her teacher and surrogate father figure when they met, which is indisputably icky. Through her writing, she does a good job of expressing her doubts, while also showing that she is ultimately at peace with the relationship.

My favourite parts of the book involve her revisiting her previous memoir, Half a Life, which she published in the midst of their marriage. In that book, she now sees a sort of self-censorship, where she glossed over the uncomfortable truths of how they first met, and made it seem like she had made all of the advances. I don’t think I’ve ever read anything like this before, a double-layered memoir, showing in such a literal way how our recollections of the past change over time.

See also: the film May December, which covers some of same themes.

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I started last year with an optimistic non-fiction read, and coincidentally, I recently finished another book with a similar tone, in Hannah Ritchie’s Not the End of the World. It feels right to start the year in a hopeful mood, so maybe this will become a quasi-New Year’s Resolution for me going forward.

Ritchie’s book uses a data-driven approach to examine the threats of climate change. She’s the lead researcher for the website Our World in Data, and as summarized by one of the articles published there, the book asks us to hold three truths at the same time: “The world is much better; the world is still awful; the world can do much better.” It’s easy to get gloomy and focus on the latter two parts of that statement, but this book tries to shine a light on the first, and I appreciated the boost of optimism that it gave me.

Part of Ritchie’s goal is to “sort” the issues by the impact that they have, in a quantitative way. Environmentally conscious people like myself tend to worry about many different things, and feel guilty about every action that may harm the planet. But if you look at the data, some things matter more than others.

For example, palm oil and plastic packaging get a bad rap, but their impact is small, and the alternatives may actually be more harmful. (Other oil crops require more land to grow; and not packaging food would lead to more waste.) Conversely, the most impactful actions include: reducing beef and dairy consumption, driving an electric car (or driving less altogether), and of course, transitioning off the burning of fossil fuels for energy.

Ritchie sums up her ideas in a couple of videos online. Definitely bookmark-worthy, and if I’m ever in a hopeless mood, she will serve as a reminder that there is positive change happening, and a path forward.

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I spent a lot of time in museums when I visited London in the fall of last year. The British Museum is a gigantic repository of artifacts, which seems to cover all of human history from all over the world. It was truly overwhelming and awe-inspiring, and I came away feeling ignorant. Our world has so many stories to tell and even if I really tried, I could only hope to learn a small fraction of them.¹

During the same trip, I stumbled across a copy of Andrew Marr’s A History of the World in a used bookstore. Since I was feeling the urge to improve my historical education, I picked it up and started reading as soon as I came home.

It’s quite an ambitious work, to attempt to summarize world history in one book. It’s impossible, of course, but what is here is successful, I think. It reads like a series of articles, around the length that can be tackled in one sitting, each focussing on a specific event. Every once in a while, there’ll be a few pages where Marr attempts to synthesize and draw comparisons between the stories, for example, how both the Vikings and the Mongols shaped Europe via conquest. It’s all pretty readable, but since it has to cover so much ground, it does inevitably have to refer to some names that the reader is assumed to already know. A lot of times, I didn’t get the references, so had to keep Wikipedia handy.

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When I travelled to London, England earlier this year, I visited many bookstores, as I am wont to do whenever I explore an unfamiliar city. On many of the shelves, something immediately caught my eye: the minimalist white and blue covers of the British publisher Fitzcarraldo Editions. I had only heard of them from a podcast, and their reputation for publishing award-winning books, but I’ve never seen them in North American bookstores, and so I made it a mission to get a few. The Observable Universe was one of my selections.

The author, Heather McCalden, lost both of her parents to AIDS when she was a child, and was raised by her grandmother. Because she was so young, she hardly knew her parents, and they’re defined more by their absence than by the scarce memories that she has of them. This memoir is her attempt to process the loss, and is made up of many “chapters,” many of which are only a few sentences long. Rarely are they more than two pages.

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When I started reading this book, I was surprised by its breezy tone. I had expected it to be more serious, given the grandiose subtitle and premise (not to mention the hyperbolic blurbs on the back cover): the author would tell the stories of ordinary people during a single day in history (December 28, 1986), and these tales would add up to show us the universal truths of human experience. But the way Gene Weingarten tells it in the introduction, the whole project was in fact kind of a fun lark that he and his editor came up with over drinks at the bar.

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Recently, by sheer coincidence, I read a couple of books whose titles both started with the words how to. What’s more, the reading of one informed and influenced my reading of the other.

(My only regret is that I was unable to complete the trifecta by also watching How To with John Wilson at the same time.)

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I picked up this book because I, like many others, feel like I need to reduce my phone usage. It’s a constant distraction and I hate it when I find myself scrolling through some feed, not looking for anything in particular.

Newport does a good job explicitly explaining what I implicitly knew was true: there’s value in solitude and letting your mind think without forcing it to process a constant input of information. The philosophy of digital minimalism aims to reclaim that value by being intentional about technology.

Unfortunately, the book falls short for me when it comes to how to actually achieve this outcome. In its introduction, it states that willpower and superficial lifehacks aren’t enough to break the grip that the attention economy has on us; but, the suggestions given in the book read exactly like superficial lifehacks based on willpower. His biggest idea is the digital declutter, which involves removing all optional technology for 30 days. But how do we do this, if not through willpower?

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I read this on the recommendation of a friend. My wife and I asked about how they manage their personal finances, especially in the context of a couple. Not to get too much into my personal life, but money can sometimes be a minefield in our relationship, and we were looking for suggestions.

The first part of this book didn’t really click with me, because it’s about all the pitfalls that cause people to overspend: pressure from one’s social circle (“keeping up with the Joneses”), the distortions of social media, etc. Overspending is not really a problem for us, so I couldn’t relate.

But, I can say that once the book moved into practical advice on how to manage finances, I found a lot to like. Ultimately, it led me to a new perspective on budgeting. (In the book’s rhetoric, it recommends not budgeting, but really, it’s just budgeting in a different way.) To summarize:

The old way: we allocate a budget for expenses, and whatever’s left over is savings. The trouble is, sometimes expenses are unpredictable, so it feels like we’re taking away from our savings. Also, any sort of “fun” spending feels wrong because it’s also taking away from savings.

The new way: allocate a budget for predictable expenses and savings. Savings are further broken down, so that the intent is clear: e.g., is it for retirement, for an emergency repair, for an upcoming big purchase? Then, whatever’s left over can be spent without worry.

It’s a subtle shift in mindset, but one that I hope will take away some of the stress and anxiety around money. I can’t say if it works yet, but maybe I’ll check back in with another post after putting it into practice.

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