My desolate year of 2016 was rounded off with ten quiet days of resting, eating, watching TV, good reads and fine dinners (by the way, I like the Village Pub at the Woodside, CA).
With three of his books already made movies, Michael Lewis’ “The Undoing Project” had 46 holds in the library. I read “The Big Short”, published back in 2011 instead. “The Big Short” was a refreshing, character-driven narrative about the crash in the bond and real estate derivative (subprime mortgage) markets in 2008. (Subprime) mortgage was made to borrowers who were almost expected to default when the interest rates went up or the housing market stopped appreciating enough for any refinance. Layers of investment vehicles were manufactured out of these subprime mortgages as they were bundled and repackaged “recursively” in sophisticated ways that few in Wall Street understood. As the story developed, it bred more and more the injustice why in the end people involved still left the table well and rich when US government had to bailout the financial industry using taxpayers’ money. The author displayed exceptional talent and insight in untangling the little understood market meltdown into attention-grabbing stories around the crash which had repercussions to almost everyone. His other “business” books are added to my “to-read list”.
Henry Kissinger is well-known in his pivotal role in the normalization of relations between US and China. I had the fortune to listen to his dialogue with Eric Schmidt around the time when his book “World Order” was just published. “World Order” gave a shrewd summary of the varieties of World Order, its legitimacy and power, the role of United States, in their past, present and their development in the uncertain future. As it repeatedly mention, there is information, knowledge and wisdom. Reading this book injects knowledge and wisdom to better understand the world views of China, Middle-East, Europe and US. This is on my “re-read” list. This book is so content rich that it should be read as a textbook. I am humbled and know that I will learn new things in each read.
My son took the American Literature AP class in his class and he chose the novels of Jhumba Lahiri to write a thesis. Lahiri won the Pulitzer Prize with her debut short story collection “Interpreter of Maladies”. I ended up reading “The Lowland” and “The Namesake” by her. “The Lowland” tells the modest but content-rich story of two brothers and one common wife, a posthumous daughter living their years in Calcutta and Rhode Island, through the Naxalite-Maoist insurgency in India, a short marriage, a death, a remarriage and more. The author uses plain English to articulate the emotional dynamics as the characters progress from youth to their declining years. She kneads numerous life tidbits into a coherent storyline that vividly portrays what life has been in that era and the events around the first generation of Indian immigrants to America. Her novels may need more maturity in the readers and maybe too ambitious for high school kids in Silicon Valley.
oliviatamccue 