The Big Short by Michael Lewis (30)

Aside from This American Life's numerous shows explaining the subprime mortgage crisis, Michael Lewis's The Big Short is the best. Lewis tells the story of our financial armageddon and actually makes it entertaining and mostly understandable. He identifies the main characters of a narrative, makes them heroes, and lets them explain the plot.

Writing about what I learned in The Big Short is much more aggravating than reading it. I now understand the basics of CDOs, credit default swaps, shorting a bond/stock/company, subprime mortgages, hedge funds, and the ratings agencies. And I now have a deeper understanding of the depravity, greed, stupidity and laziness of the human race. Lewis explains that the people in charge of the "too big to fail" firms investing consequential sums of money in the subprime mortgage machine, and most of their employees, had no idea what they were doing with this money. When they finally caught on, they had already failed.

I suppose ignorance is more comforting than evil.

Buyology: Truth and Lies About Why We Buy and the New Science of Desire by Martin Lindstrom (29)

The continuing deluge of books about human decisions based on emotions, stereotypes and snap judgments have been enlightening and disappointing. Martin Lindstrom compiled studies in Buyology that me doubt human capacity for reason and understanding the world and ourselves. Were the Enlightenment philosophers I idolize delusional?

Buyology is a marketing and branding master's study of the real reasons why people buy the products they buy. He examines advertisements that work, advertising methods and myths that just won't die, and why people say one thing and purchase another.

It is a fast read that looks much longer and more cerebral than it is. Lindstrom's simple style makes reading the brain chemistry explanations easy. It's better researched than a Gladwell, but not quite as entertaining. Maybe the most interesting bit of the book is the evidence that contradicts the idea that most people are capable of knowing themselves and their motivations. I believe in man's ability to resist emotional urges. I think Lindstrom does too, and wrote this book to share tools for overcoming our irrational impulses.

Blue Like Jazz by Donald Miller (28)

A lot of memoirs I've read lately have tried to balance guilt and regret with humor. Self-deprecation is easier to take with a spoonful of humor.

Miller doesn't try to alleviate the vulnerability in Blue Like Jazz with jokes. The book is full of his mistakes and he shares some very personal thoughts, but it never feels intrusive or uncomfortable, perhaps because it is so introspective. Miller is really pondering himself, his motivations, and his past. He really cares about knowing what he believes and treating other people with love and respect.

What I like best about Blue Like Jazz is that it reminded me, during a very selfish portion of my life, that I really need to care about the people around me. I need to stop letting little things bother me, show my affection in actions, and really admit my mistakes. Blue Like Jazz is about spiritual mystery and Miller's rise to spiritual, emotional, and social maturity.

Yeah, yeah, I know. I grew up in the church and just got to reading this book two years after college.

Lit, A Memoir by Mary Karr (27)

Lit is the third of poet Mary Karr's not-so-poetic memoirs. I was immediately repulsed by the phrase "knobby head" in the foreword dedicating the memoir to her son. I took a few days' break and returned to the book. I'm glad I let it (and myself, really) mellow.

The foreword may be filled with sentimental landmines of motherly love and devotion, but the memoir is honest, funny, self-deprecating and fair to all those involved. I loved that Karr often included caveats about remembering mean things her husband said because they were uncharacteristic, or that she was selfish in her addiction or irrational when pregnant. She didn't use her story to absolve or explain herself. She just told it. And for a reader with a practically anti-addictive personality, it gave me a true picture of an alcoholic's life.


It looks a lot more like my life than I would have guessed.

The Blind Contessa's New Machine by Carey Wallace (26)

A book of such beauty and sweetness could only be written by my lovely friend, Carey Wallace. I don't have a lot of published friends, so I am pretty psyched for her wondrous book and her reading tomorrow.

The Blind Contessa's New Machine is the story of a wealthy Italian woman in the 18/19th century as she grows up and becomes blind soon after she marries. I needed the first chapter or so to fall into the rhythm and accept the lushness of the setting and the focus on relationships. Like sci-fi, it worked best when I allowed myself to dwell in the imagined world and know the other dwellers. And though romantic, it reads nothing like fluffy, brainless chick-lit or a retold fairy tale.

The Contessa marries the local rich McDreamy and seems to have the perfect live. She's in love, privileged and has the resources to spoil herself with knowledge. But she loses her vision and it changes her perspective on life, marriage and her husband. Carolina also must depend on her inner life to feed her curiosity. The prose sharing her thoughts is like what I imagine was in Dali's brain or Chagall's dreams.

It's a short book - a charming, thoughtful, anti-fairy tale. Read it and support my friend!

Hiroshima by John Hersey (25)

John Hersey's Hiroshima tells the story of the first atomic explosion in Hiroshima, Japan. I hope we all learned about this and WWII in school...

But the history books don't detail the skin slipping off of victims' hands like gloves, dead babies crazily cradled by terrified parents, people who drowned because they were too burnt to move out of floods. While reading, I must have made a color wheel of faces for different shades of horror. Sometimes I just couldn't keep reading.

Hersey doesn't get poetic about any of the facts. His straight reporting only foils the bizarre tragedy, apparent randomness of survival from the bombing and following diseases, and the loss. So much loss.

Its an overwhelming story that I hardly want to remember. That's the point, if there really is any. To remember.

Woman at Point Zero by Nawal El Saadawi (24)

Firdaus, the main character and narrator of most of Woman at Point Zero , is continually molested, raped and beaten by the men around her. She finally finds a sort of power when she discovers that the tools men use to abuse and control her only mask their terror of a woman who is not afraid of men. Unlike Hollywood heroines, she finds this power in murder and loses her fear of death in prison.

I can't say anything about the questions I was left pondering without sounding angry and self-righteous or after-school-specialy. I picked this book up because I'm falling behind on my 52/52 and needed a quick read. For a quick read, it certainly is lingering as I think about women who are abused like this and what it means for the fight against the mildly irritating sexism I experience as a symptom of unresolved misogyny in our society.