Books of the Year 2021

I spent a great deal of my time this year re-reading my favorite comic books (by Joann Sfar, Lewis Trondheim, Christophe Blain), and watching a lot of television series (possibly too many). 

That is why my focus on reading was more directed towards non-fiction, mostly about the situation of our human species, in the universe, in our history, our interactions, our society. 

Two books really stood out for me: Joseph Henrich's "The WEIRDest People In The World", about what historical aspects - including the church's prohibition to marry first cousins - created a drive toward innovation and democracy in Western Europe in the past 700 years. The second is Francesca Stavrakopoulou's "God, An Anatomy", in which she details all the body parts of god based on biblical and other ancient texts, helping us interpret some of the strange sayings in the bible, and to understand its origins from other and earlier religions. Both books show an incredible knowledge of the subject matter, inventive insights and craftfully written. 

I also enjoyed "Metazoa", a book that explores the level of consciousness among living things, from the simplest to the most complex. 

Non-fiction

1. Joseph Henrich - The WEIRDest People In The World (Allan Lane, 2020) ***** 
2. Francesca Stavrakopoulou - God - An Anatomy (Picador, 2021) ***** 
3. Peter Godfrey-Smith - Metazoa - Animal Minds And The Birth Of Consciousness (William Collins, 2020) ****½ 
4. Francis Fukuyama - Identity - Contemporary Identity Politics and the Struggle for Recognition (Profile Books, 2019) **** 
5. Michio Kaku - The God Equation - The Quest For A Theory Of Everything (Allen Lane, 2021) **** 
6. Rebecca Wragg Sykes - Kindred - Neanderthal Live, Love, Death And Art (Bloomsbury, 2020) **** 
7. Martin Amis - Inside Story (Jonathan Cape, 2020) **** 
8. Carlo Rovelli - Helgoland (Allan Lane, 2021) **** 
9. Anil Seth - Being You - A New Science Of Consciousness (Faber & Faber, 2021) **** 
10. Sarah Rose Cavanagh - Hivemind - The New Science Of Tribalism in our Divided World (Orion Spring, 2019) *** 
11. Heidi J. Larson - Stuck  "How Vaccine Rumors Start - And Why They Don't Go Away"(Oxford University Press, 2020) ***½ 
12. Ronald F. Inglehart - Cultural Evolution (Cambridge University Press, 2018) ***½ 
13. Brian Clegg - Dark Matter & Dark Energy (Icon Books, 2019) ***

Fiction

1. Salman Rushdie - Quichotte (Penguin, 2019) **** 
2. Mario Vargas Llosa - Harsh Times (Faber, 2021) ***½ 
3. Fiona Mozley - Elmet (John Murray, 2018) ***½ 
4. Kent Haruf - Plainsong (Picador, 1999) *** 
5. Tim Winton - That Eye The Sky (Penguin, 1986) *** 
6. Yasser Abdel Hafez - The Book Of Safety (Hoopoe, 2013) **½ 
7. Julian Barnes - The Only Story (Penguin, 2018) ** 
8. Ocean Vuong - On Earth We're Briefly Gorgeous (Penguin, 2019) ** 
9. Denis Johnson - The Largesse Of The Sea Maiden (Vintage, 2018) * 

Mario Vargas Llosa - Harsh Times (Faber, 2021) ***½

Last year I almost wrote that it was time for Mario Vargas Llosa (born in 1936) to stop writing, disappointed as I was with "The Neighborhood". 

It's good that he did not stop yet. "Harsh Times" is definitely not among his best novels, but it is much better than most novels being published today. The book describes the first free democratic elections in Guatemala in the early 50s and the machinations by the banana company United Fruit, the big landowners and the United States to topple the regime and to re-install the dictatorship of before. In the full Cold War of the times, the United States and the CIA created the communist presence in Central America (is the subtext in this narrative). Countries and peoples that were opposed to the dictatorship of the big landowners were immediately classified as communist and driven into the hands of the Soviet Union. It shows with lots of details of real historic figures how things happened and with which results. 

Vargas Llosa writes the book from different perspectives, with a strong narrative around 'Miss Guatemala', Marta Borrero, the wife of the President Carlos Castillo Armas, who fled the country after his assasination in 1957. Armas was brought to power in 1954  after an invasion by the "Liberation Army", supported by some neighbouring countries (Honduras, El Salvador, Dominican Republic) and the United States. His democratically elected predecessor President Arbenz, was forced to abdicate, but Castillo Armas brutal regime (that included the exclusion from voting by illiterate people or 2/3 of the population) was also not deliving everything the very rich expected, including his initiative for big companies to pay taxes. 

The other parallel narrative is focused on Johnny Abbes García, the Dominican intelligence officer who sets up the whole murder of Castillo Armas. 

Like in many other novels ("Conversations in the Cathedral"), Vargas Llosa intertwines narrative times and parallel situations, which require attentive reading to keep track of what is happening. The political novel is not new to him, and the novel comes close to "The Feast Of The Goat", which is a real masterpiece. "Harsh Times" does not come close to both these novels, but it is more than worth reading. 

Vargas Llosa gives a different interpretation of what might have happened during the assassination of Castillo Armas. The official viewpoint is that he was shot twice by a leftist guard who committed suicide right after. Vargas Llosa goes for the version that the assassination was orchestrated by the United States and the Dominican Republic. 

The topic of the book is quite timely, because it appears that the foreing policy of the United States has still not learned from the situation, also in recent times, with Afghanistan as the best example. 

Kent Haruf - Plainsong (Picador, 1999) ***

You can only admire the humanity of this book. It describes the lives of several families living in the town of Holt, Colorado. One story is about two boys growing up with their father and increasingly absent mother. The other is about the teenage girl getting pregnant and deciding to keep the baby. 

Haruf tells the story with a lot of compassion, bringing to life the confusion and self-determination of adolescents, not knowing where to go or what to do, but at the same time feeling old enough to make major decisions. 

It is sweet, but not essential. 

Ron Newby - Tribalism - An Existential Threat To Humanity (Lulu, 2020) *

"Tribalism" is a collection of insights on the broad topic of human evolution leading up to today's global challenges. It is bacly written, badly published, possibly not even corrected for mistakes ... and if you want to see the picture that illustrates the text, you get the full URL so you can check yourself on Wikipedia. 

The book goes into a lot of detail on irrelevant facts that have nothing to do with 'tribalism'. I can understand that Newby is shocked in a way by the upcoming nationalism and tribal ingroup behaviour, but his book does not shed light on the problem itself, let alone on the solutions. 

The topic obviously deserves better. 

Salman Rushdie - Quichote (Penguin, 2019) ****

This book by Salman Rushdie is easy to recommend. He takes on the story of Don Quichotte and wonderfully transforms it to the current madness of our world, exemplified (and amplified) by the United States. Apart from the high level of readibility of this novel, there are so many layers in the book that it is also a very intellectual pleasure. Don Quichotte was the first novel in the strictest sense, revealing the stupidity and otherworldly character of medieval chivalric romances. Rushdie takes on this aspect by doing the same with our capitalist world that is dominated by greed and entertainment. 

The main character does not even exist. He is the fictitious character in the book written by one of the other characters in the book: an Indian spy-novel author who is trying to come to terms with his past and family, especially his estranged son and sister. To make matters even more complicated, Quichotte creates his own Sancho Panza as a magic creation of his own imagination, a son that he never had, and amazingly enough, this creation of the imagination starts living his own life in the book, dissociating himself fully from his "father". 

The modern Quichotte is of course no longer influenced by chivalric romances but by trash TV. 

It is a book about everything in our modern world: globalisation, racism, capitalism, religion*, TV, pharmaceuticals and the opioid crisis, nationalism and in the process he shows his credits to world literature: Alice in Wonderland, Moby Dick, Pinocchio, Lolita, ...

The writing is excellent, but even more impressive is the carefully structured fabric of all the different stories gradually unfolding, with situations and dialogues that encourage to keep reading. 

On top of that, the characters are real, rounded characters, with their flaws, their evolution, with challenges to overcome and with gradually new perspectives and emotions on things. Even if the novel is very political and intellectual in its concept, Rushdie also manages to make the emotional connection between characters and reader. 

*"God, Sancho decided, was the Clint Eastwood 'Man With No Name' type. Didn't talk a whole lot, kept his thoughts to himself, and every so often he was the high-plain drifter riding into town chewing on a cigar and sending everybody straight to hell". 

Sarah Rose Cavanagh - Hivemind - The New Science Of Tribalism in our Divided World (Orion Spring, 2019) ***

Sarah Rose Cavanagh is a professor of psychology at the D'Amour Center for Teaching Excellence at Assumption College, Massachusetts. 

"Hivemind" explores the concept of how groups can think and act with a collective consciousness, and she starts with the example of the beehive. She then moves on to see which type of 'neural synchrony' also exist in humans, and apparently close friends and romantic lovers show reaction similarities in fMRI scans. 

She takes a look at how in our current society, the traditional cohesion makes place for new human hives, through the use of social media (and its resulting fragmentation, and often radicalisation of viewpoints) and the increase of nationalism and conflict. She ends her book with seven lessons to be learned from bees and to be transposed to our society: and many of them appear to be obvious: use social media for connection, embrace the power of the collective, but temper it with dissent and innovation, regulate your emotions, build more inclusive ingroups (we are more bonobo than chimp), listen to people's stories, build and support architectures of serendipity. 

She brings an interesting perspective on the big debate about nationalism and group mentality.

Francis Fukuyama - Identity - Contemporary Identity Politics and the Struggle for Recognition (Profile Books, 2019)

World-renowned political scientist Francis Fukuyama became famous with his book "The End Of History". In my quest for understanding nationalism and tribal responses to things happening in society, I have read a number of books on the topic, including this one. 

He starts with the ancient greeks, with Plato and Socrates, coining the term "megalothymia", the desire to be recognised as superior, usually used by the elite in predemocratice societies. The term 'isothymia' would be the desire to be recognised as being equal, which has been a noble goal for democratic societies, even if not yet achieved. But people want to have some pride and dignity. The American declaration of independence asserts that "all men are created equal", but the discussion remain about the qualifier "all men". Does that include women, slaves, workers, immigrants, ...

He gives a big picture of how people need identities, but can be part of different groups. He recommends that basic democratic rights and citizenship are based on a "creedal identity", next to a more cultural, ethnic and religious identity. This "creedal" identity is based on the core values of a liberal democracy in terms of pluralism, voting, justice, respect ... The danger is the upcoming nationalist movements in many countries, which may lead to autocracy, dictatorship and intolerance to minorities. It creates a conflict which makes the opposing parties even more strongly convinced of their own identity. He advocates for a new contract between citizens and the state, and this interestingly also includes the secularisation of education. 

Fukuyama is a sharp analyst, and despite his start with the ancient Greeks, his book is full of modern day examples, too many to mention, but relevant to sharpen our own thinking.