Month: December 2020

Vaclav Smil is the super nerd of energy and technology, writer of highly analytical but comprehensible tomes on the real numbers behind our world. “Numbers Don’t Lie: 71 Things You Need to Know About the World” distils a column he ran for general readers and it is a cornucopia of analytical assertions on topics grand and small. Population, tech progress, vaccination, megacities, happiness, Brexit, electric motors, data, gas turbines, batteries, inflatable tires, ammonia, Anthropocene, windows … you get the picture, or rather, it’s difficult to sum his vast interest set. Despite the book’s title, Smil can be opinionated to the point of attracting controversy, but at least his facts are numbers-based and reference-based. He is a vibrant storyteller, in his own way, and rewards rereading. Numbers Don’t Lie is a perfect book for 2020, this year of swirling misinformation.

“Business” is a semi-dark, semi-comic, semi-serious coming-of-age odyssey that reminded me, perhaps inaccurately, of Thomas Pynchon. This debut novel’s malleable hero ditches a no-hope writing job for apprenticeship with a flamboyant wheeler and dealer running “the Business.” Their outrageous edge-of-capitalism projects slide into chaos, and our hero finds himself driving across America on a surreal (but strangely normalised) road trip that brings together a captivating immigrant, fearsome gangsters, and PTSD cultists. What began as a satire on voracious capitalism morphs into a tale of existential yearning and learning. The author’s style is sharp and mordant, the world is drawn starkly, and the dialogue crackles. Business is a dislocating yet brisk journey across one fractured tangent of modern life, and much can be expected of J.P. Meyboom’s future novels.

Richard Powers strides across our literary scene with his own gait, tackling modern-day material with a lyrical yet cerebral immersive style that could be no one else’s. With “The Overstory,” he has at last achieved his due recognition, the Pulitzer Prize being well-deserved for this elegy for the trees of Earth. Told through nine disparate tales of individuals who owe something to trees, or who become affected by trees, or who unite to save trees, The Overstory dives deep again and again. Grand migration tales told over generations interweave with scientific discovery narratives and modern hard luck stories. The bulk of the nine end up as radical protestors willing to cross boundaries in order to save forests. And everywhere throughout the novel are trees, trees, and more trees, beautifully alive and sensate and connected. Trees must survive or we shall not, that’s how I read the message, a message that is never didactic, always rooted in the lives of his absorbing creations. The Overstory is a heady, ideas-rich, yet inventive and sparkling read. Brilliant.

Richard Flanagan writes with rare lyricism and power, and “The Living Sea of Waking Dreams,” a shift in direction back towards his early semi magical realism, flows with standout scenes and paragraphs. Grand themes of loss and disappearance and death are tackled. Three siblings assemble around a dying old woman, bickering over whether to keep her alive or not, and at the same time the daughter notices her limbs are slowly vanishing, all amidst a near-future world of raging fires. As all three developments accelerate, Flanagan riffs and ponders about the modern world of people within the ancient world of nature. I have to say I enjoyed the read chiefly for the power of the prose, but the characters, with the notable exception of the humbler of the two sons, establish themselves as ciphers for the ideas and language, and none of them engaged me. All in all, The Living Sea of Waking Dreams is overburdened by its grand ideas and expressions, but remains an intriguing book within Flanagan’s impressive bibliography.

Two lockdowns meant that my reading oscillated wildly between serious existential material and escapism. So much enjoyment and illumination! At the top of the apex were these (nine of them rated 9/10, one being the best out of the numerous 8/10s):

Mark Jaccard’s The Citizen’s Guide to Climate Success is an expert’s guide to climate change policies that work, written in an inspiring, sparkling style. The more I read about the climate emergency, the more holes in my knowledge became plain, so this year has seen a major focus on such books. Plenty of my reads were well worthwhile but two stood out and this is one of them.

The Reversing Tide by Frank Kennedy is swashbuckling yet complex space opera at its best. Perfect for iso and beyond.

The Man Who Solved the Market by Greg Zuckerman: an intelligent, revelatory look at one of the giants of the “quant” movement in managing money.

Richard Smyth’s flowing prose could render a calendar interesting. An Indifference of Birds offers revelations about avian species amongst the human species. Not to be missed.

Two of the books on this list might seem to have a limited readership but that judgment would be wrong. Twyla Tharp’s Keep It Moving tilts at us older humans but there is so much in it about garnering bodily energy … and it’s characteristically a feisty read that delights.

In the same vein, Baseless by Nicholson Baker is not just for research nerds but also addresses a darkness at the heart of the United States and chronicles a restless mind and heart. Baker is effortlessly stylish.

The unforgettable Isaiah Quintabe, or IQ, is the Sherlock of the L.A. ganglands, and Hi Five by Joe Ide is the customary revved-up ride and stylistic treasure. The mystery at its heart is stunning.

A sci-fi treasure, a dystopian tale of a young boy setting out on an epic journey with unlikely allies … in The Book of Koli (the first instalment in a trilogy). M. R. Carey brilliantly settles into a unique voice.

The other standout climate emergency book of 2020 is Mark Lynas’s Our Final Warning. Is the Earth likely to warm 1 degree or 6 degrees or somewhere in between? What is the evidence? For each degree of warming, what are the human and planetary consequences? Brilliant reporting narrated in an intelligent, passionate voice.

Jenny Offill’s minimalist, acerbic prose splits readers into two camps. I adore her writing and Weather, a story of an idealistic woman coping with her world and the era of Trump, is a triumph.

Honorable mentions go out to: Agency by William Gibson; Shuggie Bain by Douglas Stuart; Where the Crawdads Sing by Delia Owens; Garry Disher’s Peace; Andrew Lowe’s Pray for Rain; The Strange Book of Jacob Bryce by Tom Gillespie; J M Dalgliesh’s Hear No Evil; The Power of Daily Practice by Eric Maisel; Helen McDonald’s Vesper Flights; and The Good Ancestor by Roman Krznaric.