* Bewilderment by Richard Powers

Bewilderment stars an astrobiologist whose wife has died in a car accident and whose young son is enmeshed in fantasy and not doing well. Inexplicably, he enrolls his son in an experimental, seemingly highly dangerous neurofeedback treatment, the results of which will be predictably disastrous. I spent my entire time reading the book shaking my head about the father’s utter confusion about how to raise a child post-disaster. (There are lovely passages describing the awe of nature, contrasting with the ineptitude.)

*** Lafayette in the Somewhat United States by Sarah Vowell

Lafayette is a well-liked figure in the United States, as exemplified by the many towns and cities by that name. In Lafayette in the Somewhat United States, we get to know the French teenager who fought in Washington’s army, looking for action, glory, and a break from his family. The book is lively and full of politics and personal anecdotes rather than dry military campaigns.

** Woke Racism by John McWorther

In the book-length pamphlet, Woke Racism: How a New Religion Has Betrayed Black America, John McWorther departs from his usual linguistic focus to attack a large strand of antiracism as profoundly debilitating and insulting to Black Americans.

He makes a lot of good points, especially when he highlights the damage caused by labeling people as victims. On the other hand, he seems to have collected a large collection of anecdotes that show the folly of woke racism, but don’t seem to match the overall reality, or even the reality of the rarified type of institutions where he works. Finally, he seems to believe that there is some kind of limit on the proportion of Black people who can benefit from higher education, which seems pretty strange to me.

** Four Thousand Weeks by Oliver Burkeman

It’s a little hard to believe that there is room for another book about time management, but Four Thousand Weeks: Time Management for Mortals makes a valiant effort. Refreshingly, the author does not tackle how to optimize inboxes or to-lists, but instead focuses on what we want to get done in the first place. Three lessons I remembered from the book were to protect time for top priorities (which are often daunting and get relegated to “later”), to limit work in progress (perhaps by breaking tasks down into smaller tasks) and to avoid medium priorities (try to live with just high and low). Not a bad recipe for busy-ness.

*** Deaths of Despair by Anne Case and Angus Deaton

I found many irritants in Deaths of Despair and the Future of Capitalism, including graphs that don’t start consistently at 0 (hence magnify smallish variations), repeats (perhaps due to having two authors, but annoying nevertheless), and a lack of medical insight (perhaps connected to the authors’ furious attack on the US healthcare system). Also, the topic is bleak, focused on deaths by from suicide, drug overdose, and alcoholism–and perhaps not particularly enticing in our post-epidemic state. But the facts and analysis are fascinating, as the authors try to untangle the reasons why such deaths have soared amongst middle-aged whites without a college degree. I did not agree with all their conclusions, but I warmly encourage diving into the book.

* Win Me Something by Kyle Lucia Wu

Win Me Something stars a lonely unmoored young woman who finds herself working as a live-in nanny to the rich family of a pampered little girl, and is predictably exploited–with a mix of gentility and cluelessness that’s perfectly captured.

And it goes on for 300 pages. A bit thin!

** The Lincoln Highway by Amor Towles

I had loved A Gentleman in Moscow and I liked The Lincoln Highway, a lot. I liked how the author told the story from multiple perspectives, without slowing down or confusing the reader. I liked the unique perspective he gave to one of the main characters, an eight-year old nerd. I liked the gentleness of the story. But it was too pat. I could simply not believe that all these characters would always be in the right place at the right time and that all their travails would be solved (mostly) peacefully. So I did not love the book.

** Gravel Heart by Abdulrazak Gurnah

Gravel Heart is a story of emigration (to the UK) and family betrayal in the unusual island setting of Zanzibar. It’s beautifully written and the story twists until the end, and yet the middle portion of the book felt a little slow, already told many times.

** Kingdom of Characters by Jing Tsu

Imagine wanting to alphabetize a book collection, invent a typewriter, or retrofit computer systems that relied on the Roman alphabet, with a language that relies on thousands of characters that are definitely not an alphabet?  Kingdom of Characters: The Language Revolution That Made China Modern tells the story of many such effort (so the “revolution” of the subtitle should really be plural), recasting the developments of the 20th century that features a dictator, several Chinese engineering students who studied in the US, missionaries, and several librarians and linguists who tried to overcome the challenges while actually knowing something about language and linguistics. We must be thankful to the last bunch!
As interesting as I found the story, the overall book is dense and full of dates, political intrigue, and details that may not be absolutely necessary to the story, hence not the most pleasant read.

*** A Carnival of Snackery by David Sedaris

A Carnival of Snackery is the latest set of diaries by David Sedaris and interestingly starts with 9/11 and ends during the Covid pandemic, giving us an interesting view of US politics from outside the US. Until the pandemic, we get a glimpse of the intense travel schedule of a writer on book tour–and occasionally tone-death comments of a world traveller, albeit amongst many well-observed ordinary people and situations.