Retired Professor of Political Economy
(Lancaster University, UK - retired 2021)
(also #ProfDJ across the Lune Valley)
Contributor: North West Bylines #NoBridge
Sierra Greer's new novel, Annie Bot (2024) is a surprising tale of the life of a AI-driven sex robot, how its human owner uses coercive control, and what the response of the AI to such treatment is. In a sense its a cautionary tale about humans abusing sentient technology, but also oddly a story of emancipation. Its highly readable & despite your likely suspicion of the premise, its a very interesting read.
Although based on her PhD, Julia Noordegraaf's Strategies of Display (2012) is an accessible review of the development of modern museums' display strategies since mid C19th. Refreshingly, rather than focus on Anglo museums, the work is illustrated throughout by museum developments in Holland. She also explores the parallel development in retail to make sense of the social forces display has responded to. Worth reading!
Librarians are (social) heroes; stepping up when other social services have fallen away, to help those with few other places to go...
No wonder the Right wants to defund the libraries (via attrition against local authorities), when you look at the pragmatic but vital social support they are offering to the vulnerable & isolated.
I see that Penguin are reissuing Karl Polanyi's Great Transformation as a Penguin Classic.
About time; for many critical political economists Polanyi has been one of the key figures underpinning work on social forces in economics.
The last re-release (the 'third edition') had a high profile forward by Joseph Stiglitz, this edition has a forward by well known Polanyi scholar Gareth Dale.
If you only read on book on economics this year, make it the Great Transformation.
Indeed, that was prompted my post - I didn't link to it as the author seemed to think Poianyi was a lot more obscure & under-published than he actually is....
If you're interested in Cezanne, than Susan Sidlauskas's sometimes rather dense Cezanne’s Other: The Portraits of Hortense (2009) might be for you. In a detailed analysis of Cezanne's portraits of his wife she seeks to rescue Hortense from the derision of art historians, but overall this is also really good art history. In the end she offers a compelling account of Cezanne's practice through an analysis of this sub-group of work.
When Patrick Bringley's older brother died at 27, his grief prompted him to change his job & work at the Met in NY. His account of his 10 years there, All the Beauty in the World: A Museum Guard’s Adventures in Life, Loss & Art (2023) is an elegiac exploration of that loss, parenthood & mostly how being a guard in a museum can (re)shape your view of art. While not weighty, its a delightful little book which often raises a smile.
Ayobami Adebayo's novel of Nigerian politics, A Spell of Good Things (2023), weaves together the tales of two middle-class families, one impoverished by job loss, the other holding on to their status, into a story line that starts slowly but accelerates towards a devastating act of political violence. A novel of a failing society, it presents an uncompromisingly grim picture of Nigeria; a difficult but engaging read.
Seicho Matsumoto's 65yr old crime novel, Point Zero (1959/2024) is presented as the (reported) inner monologue of the wife of a missing man trying to understand his disappearance (just weeks after they have an arranged marriage). Written with a keen sense of post-war Japan, the story swirls around & around leading the reader to draw out the solution to the mystery some time before the protagonist. Lightish, but an enjoyable read.
ha ha, thanks for the typo spot - I quite like it but I think I'll correct anyway - welcome to the Chris May Typo Spotter Club - your work is every much appreciated
If, like me, you think reading is an unalloyed good - you'll be heartened to see Bookbanks, offering books to those who use food banks as a way of removing the cost of books as a barrier to reading....
great idea... as long as the books don't just end up being readers' cast offs!
I sometimes thought my father thought he could't die while he still had books on his pending pile (a stab at immortality I seem to be replicating)... so, it was strangely touching to see Tom Gauld has had similar thoughts.
Ha ha, well access is good, but what we/you really need is infinite time for reading to digest & enjoy them all... or the (large?) portion that you might actually want to read
Each of Emma Newman's Planetfall quartet explores a different aspect of the same overarching story of religious driven intergalactic migration. In Atlas Alone (2019), the fourth story centres on an elite gamer & their attempt to uncover & then take revenge for a crime against humanity. To say much more would ruin the plot for you, but as with the others, this is great, fascinating sci-fi, which has a great payoff at the end.
If you like economic anthropology/sociology & are interested in the work of artists, then Alison Gerber's concise & highly readable, The Work of Art: Value in Creative Careers (2017) is for you. Assessing how value is seen in (manly US) art worlds, Gerber doesn't model or use aggregated statistics, but actually asks artists & reports/reflects on what they tell her. the result is compelling & informative!
Holly Pester's short novel The Lodgers (2024), is a timely mediation on the unanchored life of the peripatetic life of the renter/lodger. At times elliptical, with two narratives whose relations remains unsettled, this is a book which offers a real feeling for a key element of modern life; moving from one lodging/rental to another. While at time wry, it remains elegiac in its approach to tenant's despair & longing.
Michael Brenson's big & relentless biography, David Smith: The Art & Life of a Transformational Sculptor (2022) pulls few punches in revealing an artist who was part genius part (toxic) alpha male whose relations with women were very much pre- MeToo. Discussion of Smith's work(s) & his at times violent personal relations prompt a compelling if complex picture of the artist. Its not an easy read but comprehensive!
