2019 in review

As today is the last day of 2019, I'd like to take the opportunity to commemorate some of my favorite new¹ things this year!

Books

Favorite fiction: "Station Eleven" for its captivating portrayal of the people and relationships surviving a global pandemic.

Favorite nonfiction: "The Second Mountain" for painting a picture of a meaningful life outside of the usual meritocratic/self-improvement lens.

Runner-up: "Cat's Cradle" for teaching me about granfalloons.

"Fallen Leaves"

Not to be confused with
"Autumn Leaves" (Prévert)

I actually learned about "Fallen Leaves" from a 2015 NYT obituary about the owner of a Pakistani bookstore. It begins as follows:

ISLAMABAD, Pakistan — After his father died, Ahmad Saeed took over the office on the ground floor of the family's storied bookstore here, Saeed Book Bank. Then the elderly men started visiting, seeking to settle old debts.

"They all apologized and said they had tried to see my father while he was alive but his office was always too crowded and they were embarrassed," Mr. Saeed said.

Five times such men arrived, hat in hand, not just to pay their respects to the son and family, but also to say they wanted to pay for books they had shoplifted as children. Mr. Saeed said his father, Saeed Jan Qureshi, who died of heart failure in September, would have been amused: He had always regarded book theft by children as an investment in a future where people still read, and thus become his customers.

In the article, it becomes apparent that "Fallen Leaves" was one of Saeed's favorite works. Since a recommendation from such a wise-seeming person carries extra weight, I put the book on my list and finally read it earlier this year.

"The Alchemist"

"To realize one's destiny is a
person's only obligation."

"The Alchemist" is a story about Santiago, a Spanish shepherd boy who travels the world in search of his personal legend, or purpose in life. The book was a birthday gift a couple years ago and is currently a top bestseller¹ on Amazon. Having finished it, I understand why – it gently pokes at the ideas of meaning and purpose many people begin pondering in young adulthood.

A few minor plot details below.

"Travels with Charley"

An early example of the Great
American Roadtrip genre

"Travels with Charley" would be John Steinbeck's Great American Roadtrip novel, except that it's nonfiction. It recounts Steinbeck's adventures driving Rocinante, a pick-up-truck-camper-van hybrid named after Don Quixote's horse, around the country with his poodle Charley. His objective was simply to observe people living their lives and ruminate on what makes America tick.

I've included a few passages that struck me below.

"Angela's Ashes"

Ireland but sepia

It took me about four months to read "Angela's Ashes" – averaging perhaps two chapters a week – not because it was incredibly long or I found it boring, but because parts of the book were so poignant or heart-wrenching I had to put it down for the day. A few details and thoughts below.

"Station Eleven"

Just a scenic Great Lakes camping trip

(First, an editorial aside. I've read many books since my "Bobos in Paradise" review and I don't think I'll ever get caught up if I keep expecting myself to write longer compositions, so I'm switching to a shorter format. If I'm really feeling it I may still put up an essay, but the length of a review does not reflect my enjoyment of a book.)

"Station Eleven" is one of my favorite works of fiction in years. It's quite an understated novel, following a troupe of actors as they travel down the shore of Lake Michigan years after a flu-pocalypse caused the collapse of modern civilization. A few chapter one plot details below.

Algorithms and the attention economy

Last week FiveThirtyEight published Where The Algorithms Can't Find You, an article about how the modern internet's cookies and web analytics funnel everyone toward the same content with "algorithms that think you only want to watch beauty tutorials, Avengers outtakes or product unboxings."

Presumably in response to this state of affairs, a few people have started websites that specifically serve up videos that other people aren't watching. Here's one of the author's favorites from Default Filename TV, a website that finds and plays random YouTube videos with names like DSC 3307:

The algorithms will never recommend a video like this because it doesn't look like anything people in general or the current viewer in particular already watch, and I think that's a problem.

"Bobos in Paradise"

Bobos = Bourgeois bohemians

I've been reading David Brooks's op-eds in the New York Times for years. He typically writes about society and politics and I find that his columns are sometimes insightful, sometimes scathing, sometimes on-point, and often thought-provoking. A couple of his books have been on my reading list for a while, and "Bobos in Paradise" is both the first he wrote and the first I finished.

The central premise of "Bobos" is that today's ruling elite consists of bourgeois bohemians who have synthesized the corporate culture of the 80s with the rebellious counter-culture of the 60s. Brooks walks us through some of the strange and amusing contradictions this has caused, and argues that many of today's mainstream values, such as the meritocratic ideal and self-expression, arose from this synthesis.

Some flavor quotes and my take below.

"Rashomon"

Several years back, I watched Kurosawa's "Seven Samurai" and it made such an impression on me that I immediately looked up his entire filmography. Though I saw that his work is nearly universally acclaimed, I somehow didn't get around to watching anything else he's directed until last week.

I decided to start with "Rashomon" because its synopsis had stuck in my head and sounded very relevant for this moment in history.

Minor spoilers below.