I read this largely out of curiosity about what makes Obama tick. It’s not often that you get an unfiltered look at the mind and life of a man who is running for president, and he holds back very little here. I thought I got a very good sense not necessarily of who Obama is, but of his path to becoming the person he now is, and came away much more impressed than I was going in. You can tell he was young and uncertain when he wrote this, both from the occasional stylistic hiccup or overelaboration, and from the very real soul-searching he’s doing, but for all his uncertainty, he definitely had an unusual degree of purpose and perceptiveness even then.

The book is all about the search for identity and community in the face of fragmentation and alienation, both of which are very real battles for myself and many other young liberals, and thoughtful young Americans in general. This search for some sort of authentic community, and an authentic personal identity within said community was the driving force in his early life, as it has been in mine so far, and it was heartening to see that there is maybe a way to come out on the other side of that as a whole and formidable person with a satisfying role to play in a larger community.

I came away most impressed with his ability to empathize, his fair-mindedness, his pragmatic idealism, and his ability and willingness to grapple with and assimilate the many fractious parts of his identity and experience. The book deals much more frankly and heavily with race than I anticipated. From what I read here, I see that he hasn’t so much transcended race, as figured out a 3rd-way that acknowledges and grows out of his experiences as a black American, but refuses to be wholly defined or constrained by them. A way forward from identity and issue politics to a broader liberal/progressive outlook, in other words.

Something else I was impressed with was his sense of the importance of stories. His ability to tell his stories in a way that allows him to both figure out who he is, and reach out to others is vital. I think Kerry’s inability to or fear of telling his compelling and potentially resonant personal story about his experiences with Vietnam had a lot to do with his loss in ‘04, and I’m excited to see a candidate who can tell us compelling stories about who he is, who we are, and what we can strive to be as a country.

I picked this up because I knew almost nothing about the Reformation, and I felt like I should at least have the basic history straight for events which were so vital to the shaping of the modern world.

And, it mostly covered me for that. He did an excellent job of putting you inside the very alien worldviews and socio-cultural arrangements of the time, and illustrating just how revolutionary and sudden a change the Reformation really was. He gave engaging and detailed sketches of most of the main actors involved in the religious, political, and cultural arenas. He covered enough of the intricate theological problems which developed and were fought out, but not so much as to make my eyes glaze over. And he did an excellent job of taking you down to the level of everyday people and looking at how and why they embraced such a sudden change in such a vital part of their existence, and what the consequences were for their way of life going forward.

Where he fell down just a bit was in connecting the ground-level with the elite, and the religious with the political and especially the military. He did a good job on the elites insofar as they related to religion, but the political history was pretty thin. He also certainly covered all of the major conflicts of the time, but they always seemed like something that happened in the background and only flashed into full view at a few crisis points. I came in with a vague idea of how and why the French Wars of Religion, the English Civil War, and the 30 Years’ War were fought, and left with a not much clearer one.

Of course, any one of those conflicts can and has merited many an extensive history of its own, but I think he could have done a better job of fully describing them and linking them more thoroughly and organically with the political, social, cultural and religious turmoil that caused and sustained them. The 30 Years’ War especially seemed to be elided over. Constraints of space were probably a big concern, as the book still came in at over 700 pages, but I would have rather read another 100 or so and been left with a more complete picture.

Still, pretty minor quibbles for a book that taught me lot about a subject I came in with little background on, and that had plenty of major strengths to outweigh that one notable weakness. Definitely read if you want a solid social, cultural, religious, and basic political history of the Reformation from a modern point of view. If you’re more interested in the military history or in any of the specific conflicts, pick up a more specialized history of the case in question.

This book addresses globalization almost exclusively from an economic standpoint. Viewed within those bounds, it seems pretty good, though I had a hard time telling how much to take at face value since I didn’t feel like I had enough of a grasp of macroeconomics, trade, and finance to really engage and argue with it. He seemed to be making every effort to be even-handed, in that sober British-empiricist sort of way, but it’s hard to tell if that’s genuine or just a rhetorical strategy.

But, I’ve also not had much doubt that globalization has been an economic boon, if a somewhat fraught and unstable one, for most people and countries involved, or that the lack of integration with global markets is what’s really killing the poorest of the poor countries, which is the best and most compelling argument he makes. The problem is that he refuses to engage the argument that there might be other values that aren’t strictly economic but are nonetheless requirements for human health and happiness. Economic growth is of course incredibly important, but it’s necessary-but-not-sufficient, and economists can never seem to grasp that simple fact. He also blatantly caricatures those who would make arguments against a solely economic valuation of human happiness, almost always picking his putative opponents from the dumbest and most flamboyant 5% of people who question the costs of globalization, etc. The old “dirty hippies” kneejerk thing, which I would have thought he was above based on the soberness of much of his argument. Whenever he argues against fellow economists, he’s always evenhanded and fair, but anytime a non-economic concern comes up, he quickly gets dismissive and petulant.

So, if you want a look at globalization as an economic phenomenon from a market fundamentalist who at least seems fairly even-handed and willing to acknowledge and critique the errors and injustices that have happened in a strictly economic context, this is your book. If you want a broad-based argument for or critical examination of globalization that really addresses environmental, social, cultural, and the myriad other associated concerns, you’ll have to look elsewhere. Definitely worth reading as part of a broad survey, which is sort of what I’m gradually doing on the topic, but I wouldn’t read it as a sole source.

My second Marquez, after reading and loving 100 Years of Solitude. Reading a second book by him, the whole Magical Realism, ever-so-slight-warping-of-reality thing starts to feel like a schtick after awhile, but damn, it’s a really excellent and well-executed schtick and it keeps me coming back. This one is a lot more personal and character-based than 100 Years, with several very well-drawn and complex characters, who are more than just avatars for other things. And of course, more of Marquez’s slightly askew world-building genius too. However, in the end, the ambiguity over whether the protagonist and his obsessive love are admirable or monstrous is what really interested me the most. I love me a novel where you end up unsure whether you even like the protagonist or not after you’ve just spent several hundred pages immersed in their world and worldview. Challenging and interesting stuff, though maybe not for everybody because of that.

An interesting look into a world that’s all around us, but that we rarely know how to see. Thorough, at times even bordering on the obsessive, but it works for the topic. Suffers a bit when he tries to get all high-flown and Thoreuavian. You can imitate Thoreau without “imitating Thoreau” if you know what I mean. But those parts are ignorable, and the substance of the book and the entertainingness of the stories it tells carry it through.

I hate to harsh on Gandhi, but this is just interminable. 200 pages in, and most of it has been details of his dietary regimen. I guess this was all integral to the way he lived and how he managed to have the discipline and strength to do what he did, but it’s not very widely applicable or interesting to read. And he skips right over the very stuff I most wanted to learn about, like the story of the Satyagraha movement in South Africa.

There is good and wise and interesting stuff interspersed, but I’m having a hard time slogging through the minutia to get to it. Of course, he would probably say the minutia is the point and that concentrating on it is the way to live well, but that doesn’t make reading the endless details of his particular case any less mind-numbing. I’ll probably keep going because it’s freaking Gandhi, but I think I would have been better off reading a biography of him by someone else.

There’s lots of good stuff going on here… great atmosphere, compelling characters, epic plot, interesting ideas being explored. I’m a sucker for anything involving WWII, comics, escape artists, magic tricks, old New York, the World’s Fair, and on and on. Certainly worth the read just for all that, but it feels like he didn’t know what to do with all of this after he had built it up, and the second half of the novel goes downhill to an abrupt and rather deflating end. Maybe that’s supposed to be the point, but it was dissatisying nonetheless after the great set up.

This was really good. History told as an adventure story, and broken down episodically in a way that flows well as narrative. Good use of historical figures as protagonists without straying too far over the line of objectivity. Still manages to step back and give a good view of the overall picture at appropriate intervals as well. All in all, a good way to learn a lot of history about a region and an era I knew little about before.

Interesting as a period piece, and comes off as charmingly dated to someone who has grown up in and with the internet world that was gestating when it was written. Continues Coupland’s preoccupation with the confusing role/neglect of bodies in an increasingly virtual and disembodied existence, which is interesting to me as I’ve noticed this in my own life and behavior too, but sadly, his ideas about this are not fleshed out enough to be really satisfying. He’s good at pointing out novel cultural and lifestyle trends and building stories around them, but not so good at having anything much innovative to say about them in the end.

I finally got around to reading some Harry Potter, way late to the party as usual. I blew through this in one weekend. It was pretty good, though it felt a bit disjointed in terms of pacing. The plot progressed in fits and starts. Felt like it was wrapped up way too quickly at the end as compared to how the rest of the book moved, almost like the conflict/action was an afterthought. It was still plenty good to keep me reading and to make me want to read the next one though. Good characterization, detail, and world-building that definitely sucked me right in.