A Year of Books
A few months ago, I was meeting up with a friend for coffee, and she asked me if I was working on a dissertation on Marlon James when she saw all the sticky note nubs in the copy of his most recent book that I had with me, pictured here. Surely not evidence of post-grad research, its just the latest method I’ve been trying for a bit to both note things that feel special to me while reading and also be reasonably able to find again later on. Like many readers, I’ve tried lots of different versions of this process: just underlining (too hard to find desired quotes again), dog-ear’d pages (unreliable over time), and even the heavy-lift of writing a highlights citation list on any blank pages at the front of the book (way too disruptive and so easily abandoned). Since I still do most of my book reading analog for now, I figure there’s no perfect solution; and so far I’d say this one works ok, which is just fine. Thinking back through the books I’ve read this year (all of which look like the one above, excepting library books of course) I wanted to see, or am curious to try to open the lid a little on what’s so far been and become a running archive of writing that I find especially special, and that only I see, reread, or think about later on in that context. Just to see if things resonate or react beyond one reader. So one pinky toe in the water towards trying this out, I’d thumbed back through all my sticky note nubs and include one quote below each title that I’d saved as special when I read it. Here goes:
Fiction
Moon Witch, Spider King, Marlon James
No thought is wise just because you have it.
The Inheritors, William Golding
Who would sharpen a point against the darkness of the world?
Klara and the Sun, Kazuo Ishiguro
At the same time, what was becoming clear to me was the extent to which humans, in their wish to escape loneliness, made maneuvers that were very complex and hard to fathom. People often felt the need to prepare a side of themselves to display to passers-by – as they might in a store window – and that such a display needn’t be taken so seriously.
Sea of Tranquility, Emily St John Mandel
and my point is, there’s always something. I think, as a species, we have a desire to believe that we’re living at the climax of the story. It’s a kind of narcissism. We want to believe that we’re uniquely important, that we’re living at the end of history, that now, after all these millennia of false alarms, now is finally the worst that it’s ever been, that finally we have reached the end of the world.
Monkey: The Journey to the West, Wu Cheng’en
Nothing in the world is difficult, it is only our own thoughts that make things seem so.
The People in the Trees, Hanya Yanagihara
I found myself thinking that perhaps there was something inexorable about the way events unfolded, as if my life — which had begun to seem something not my own but rather something into which I found myself blindly toppling — was indeed something living, that existed without my knowledge but that pulled me along in its strong, insistent undertow.
The Summer Book, Tove Jansson
It is still summer, but the summer is no longer alive. It has come to a standstill; nothing withers, and fall is not ready to begin. There are no stars yet, just darkness.
Traveling Light, Tove Jansson
What is constantly changing is superior to what is static.
The Lesser Known Monsters of the 21st Century, Kim Fu
One adult can be lured into pretend, can taste the tea in our toy cup, hear the voice on the toy phone. One adult could have seen what we saw and carried it quietly within her forever. But not four. Four adults have to agree on what happened, agree on the rules. Four adults can talk to each other until reality straightens, until doubt is crushed, until their memories unstitch and reform. Four adults never see a miracle at once.
The Seven Moons of Maali Almeida, Shehan Karunatilaka
Though, as every gambler knows, the biggest killer in this godless universe is the random roll of the dice. Plain stinking jungle variety bad luck. The thing that gets us all.
The Legend of Pradeep Mathew: A Novel, Shehan Karunatilaka
How much love does one need in a lifetime? Is there a quantity of brain space that is allocated to love? And for those of us who have loved less, does this space become occupied by something else? Like cricket, or religion, perhaps.
Illuminations, Alan Moore
I’m just scared because everything feels weird. It’s as if everything’s changed. Not just you: everything!
Tomorrow and Tomorrow and Tomorrow, Gabrielle Zevin
But it is worth noting that to be good at something is not quite the same as loving it.
The Passenger, Cormac McCarthy
Grief is the stuff of life. A life without grief is no life at all. But regret is a prison. Some part of you which you deeply value lies forever impaled at a crossroads you can no longer find and never forget.
Last and First Men, W. Olaf Stapledon
Is the beauty of the Whole really enhanced by our agony? And is the Whole really beautiful? And what is beauty? Throughout all his existence man has been striving to hear the music of the spheres, and has seemed to himself once and again to catch some phrase of it, or even a hint of the whole form of it. Yet he can never be sure that he has truly heard it, nor even that there is any such perfect music at all to be heard. Inevitably so, for if it exists, it is not for him in his littleness. But one thing is certain. Man himself, at the very least, is music, a brave theme that makes music also of its vast accompaniment, its matrix of storms and stars. Man himself in his degree is eternally a beauty in the eternal form of things. And so we may go forward together with laughter in our hearts, and peace, thankful for the past, and for our own courage. For we shall make after all a fair conclusion to this brief music that is us.
Things Fall Apart, Chinua Achebe
Fortunately, among these people a man was judged according to his worth and not according to the worth of his father.
Been Down So Long It Looks Like Up To Me, Richard Fariña
I cool it here, dig? You never knew anybody so cool. I'm Emir Faisal in Constantinople in 1916, dig, that's how cool I am. This whole scene, I keep at thirty-seven degrees Fahrenheit. Average.
Non-Fiction
Thinking, Fast and Slow, Daniel Kahneman
It is the consistency of the information that matters for a good story, not its completeness. Indeed, you will often find that knowing little makes it easier to fit everything you know into a coherent pattern.
Finally, the illusions of validity and skill are supported by a powerful professional culture. We know that people can maintain an unshakable faith in any proposition, however absurd, when they are sustained by a community of like-minded believers. Given the professional culture of the financial community, it is not surprising that large numbers of individuals in that world believe themselves to be among the chosen few who can do what they believe others cannot.
The AI Doesn’t Hate You, Tom Shivers
So the danger isn’t a god-like, Skynet AI, but rather a very smart AI with goals that lead to a range of unintended consequences because of the difference in alignment between the goals we give it, and the way it accomplishes them.
Art Objects: Essays on Ecstasy and Effrontery, Jeanette Winterson
To say exactly what one means, even to one's own private satisfaction, is difficult. To say exactly what one means and to involve another person is harder still. Communication between you and me relies on assumptions, associations, commonalities and a kind of agreed shorthand, which no-one could precisely define but which everyone would admit exists. That is one reason why it is an effort to have a proper conversation in a foreign language. Even if I am quite fluent, even if I understand the dictionary definitions of words and phrases, I cannot rely on a shorthand with the other party, whose habit of mind is subtly different from my own. Nevertheless, all of us know of times when we have not been able to communicate in words a deep emotion and yet we know we have been understood. This can happen in the most foreign of foreign parts and it can happen in our own homes. It would seem that for most of us, most of the time, communication depends on more than words.
Sculpting In Time, Andrey Tarkovsky
Artistic creation, after all, is not subject to absolute laws, valid from age to age; since it is related to the more general aim of mastery of the world, it has an infinite number of facets, the vincula that connect man with his vital activity; and even if the path towards knowledge is unending, no step that takes man nearer to a full understanding of the meaning of his existence can be too small to count.
Make Your Own Damn Movie!: Secrets of a Renegade Director, Lloyd Kaufman
Comedy isn’t commercial; it is risky, because what is funny in one place isn’t always funny somewhere else.
The Kingmakers: Venture Capital and the Money Behind the Net, Karen Southwick
In the moment intoxicating and mildly unnerving — and upon reflection actually sort of terrifying — bravado in the quick and confidence writ large wins the day right now. A charismatic pitch has ever been an ingredient in the entrepreneurial stew, though brash, uncompromising belief seems to have superseded and rendered insignificant any and all other data points in the eyes and wallets of those funding these egos. The money flows.
The River of Doubt: Theodore Roosevelt’s Darkest Journey, Candice Millard
In its intense and remorseless competition for every available nutrient, the Amazon offered little just for the taking. Each time he faced personal tragedy or weakness, he found his strength not in the sympathy of others, but in the harsh ordeal of unfamiliar new challenges and lonely adventure.
River of the Gods: Genius, Courage, and Betrayal in the Search for the Source of the Nile, Candice Millard
“How melancholy a thing is success,” British explorer Richard Francis Burton would later write. “Whilst failure inspires a man, attainment reads the sad prosy lesson that all our glories are shadows, not substantial things.”
Evicted, Matthew Desmond
By and large, the poor do not want some small life. They don't want to game the system or eke out an existence; they want to thrive and contribute.
Down and Out in Paris and London, George Orwell
It is a feeling of relief, almost of pleasure, at knowing yourself at last genuinely down and out. You have talked so often of going to the dogs — and well, here are the dogs, and you have reached them, and you can stand it. It takes off a lot of anxiety.
Jay’s Journal of Anomalies, Ricky Jay
The book says we may be through with the past but the past ain’t through with us.
Eye Marty: The Newly Discovered Autobiography of a Comic Genius, Marty Feldman
The function of my comedy is not to provide answers, but to postulate questions, impertinent questions and therefore finally, pertinent questions. Not to open doors, merely to unlock them. To not invade the boundaries of probability but stab’d a cool guard this side of the boundaries. Somewhere between there's a thesis. To pump up the muscle of dialectic (or in my case Di-Eclectic!) against the brawn of surrealistic solution. My mind is an attic full of crazy dreams that never quit or disappoint me, and I have been blessed with these eyEs to see things differently and have people see me in a different way. I play not Hamlet, but the second gravedigger, not Lear but the fool.
M Train, Patti Smith
In my way of thinking, anything is possible. Life is at the bottom of things and belief at the top, while the creative impulse, dwelling in the center, informs all.
You Can’t Win, Jack Black
There were times when I thought I got a bit more punishment than was coming to me, but I don't regret a minute of it now. Each of us must be tempered in some fire. Nobody had more to do with choosing the fire that tempered me than myself, and instead of finding fault with the fire I give thanks that I had the metal to take the temper and hold it.
Silicon: From The Invention of the Microprocessor to the Science of Consciousness, Federico Faggin
The driver of evolution is the urge of one to know itself. Yet any existing system will forcefully defend the status quo. Thus a paradigm of cooperation must be this future’s hallmark.
Natural History: A Selection, Pliny The Elder
The force of the stars keeps down all terrestrial things which tend towards the heavens. The tide of the next day is never at the same time with that of the preceding.
The Rise and Reign of The Mammals, Steve Brusatte
For many millions of years, oxygen was a toxic pollutant to life on earth. Most of living organisms were anaerobic — metabolizing food without free oxygen. People tend to forget that or not know. Profound is the capacity for dynamic change of this planet’s biogeographic realms. This adaptive nature that’s fundamentally Earth is now realized in the fascinating and beautiful menagerie of mammalian life that now inhabits it.