Animal Farm by George Orwell
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Animal Farm (which, after 1984, is probably Orwell’s best know work) is an allegory critical of communism.

Ok, I lie.

Just a little?

Communism in its simplest form is both the classless and stateless ownership of the means of production. At the time Orwell was writing Animal Farm (1943-1944) Russia under Stalin was arguably far from what someone like Marx had envisioned. The fundamental problem with a classless system that I see is that someone has to make decisions about what needs to be done. That, and greed. Greed always creeps in. So if it’s not about communism then what is it critical of? Orwell was strongly critical of Stalinism led by (you guessed it) Stalin, the leader of Russia at the time. Orwell believed that Stalinism was a corruption of the socialist ideals that Marx originally had in mind. It’s not hard to imagine the kind of political embarrassment for the West when it was first published in 1945. At the time Russia was an ally of the West, having just defeated the Germans in Berlin a few months before.

Animal Farm is set on a farm with your typical range of animals and a farmer, the dreaded (by the animals) Mr Jones. One night one of the aging animals incites the animals to take action against their human suppressors. An uprising occurs not too soon after his death and soon the animals have the farm to themselves and free to live in the society they have always dreamed of.

At first, everything goes swimmingly. The power vacuum does start to prove to be too great however, and as I alluded to earlier, when you have a group of people trying to achieve something, someone always ends up leading. We see this familiar trend emerge soon enough and the ‘slippery slope‘ thoughts will start creeping in to most readers minds.

What is charming about this book as a criticism is the narrator is completely objective and doesn’t pass judgement about any of the occurrences on the farm. It would be way too easy to slant this way towards Orwell’s argument but he lets the reader take away from it only as much as they want to. If you had no idea that communism/Stalinism even existed then you may just see the unfolding events as sad or scary. I would like to think though that most people would have a vague idea about the circumstances surrounding the book (as if the references to “Comrade” wouldn’t be enough).

If you read this book make sure you have a look at Wikipedia to see the correlation between characters in the book and figures of the era. See how many you can fit together before you look. My opinion of the book sky-rocketed when I found out who all the characters were meant to represent (I had many “ohhhhhhhhhh………I get it now” moments).

On The Beach by Nevil Shute
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“That’s so depressing,” my sister remarked when she saw I was reading this. Gee thanks, I thought. On the Beach is set in Melbourne in the 60s amongst a post-World War III environment of impending nuclear doom. Due to no fault of Australia, cobalt-based bombs have wiped out everywhere north of Australia and the cloud of destruction is slowly but surely drifting south.

We follow the lives of five people: the captain of an American nuclear submarine, an Australian navy officer posted to the submarine, his wife, their alcoholic friend and a CSIRO scientific officer also posted on the submarine. The seagoing members in the book are sent on journeys to work out how far the radiation is spreading and to look for signs of life up north.

What surprised me was the calm resignation that pretty much all the characters exhibit, despite knowing that all life is sure to end in just a few months time. They go on with planning for the future years down the track (planting gardens, ploughing fields, etc.) which at first I thought was crazy but then it dawned on me: even if you knew when you were going to die, keeping busy is the only thing that would prevent you from curling up in the corner in the foetal position.

The other linked concept here is the difference between knowing when you’re going to die and it being a surprise. All the characters have an approximate date for Melbourne’s demise and its interesting to see the way the community as a whole handles the situation.

So overall, I didn’t find it depressing (a little bit sad, yes). The dignity with which the characters face their inevitable doom was inspiring. A good classic Australian (I think Shute was British but we’ll claim it anyway) book.

Syrup by Max Barry
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So I’ve finally gotten myself a copy of Syrup, Max Barry’s first book. Whilst Company was about office politics and Jennifer Government was about capitalism, Syrup is about the image-driven world of marketing. We follow Scat and 6 (yes, Barry loves screwing with the conventions of peoples names, just like in Jennifer Government) as they try and climb the corporate ladder at Coca-Cola.

Not surprisingly, the path to success is far from easy, nor guaranteed. There’s double-crossing and backstabbing galore, with twists and turns all the way. The pace is sharp and there’s heaps of laughs to be had. If you weren’t already cynical about marketing then you’re definitely going to be after reading this (and that’s probably not a bad thing I would say).

The screenplay for Syrup has just been finished. Make sure you read this before they start filming so you can say you were an original fan (!)

Another great Barry book. Given Company was only just released I’m guessing we’ll have to wait another few years for his next book. I can’t wait.

Stumbling on Happiness
by Daniel Gilbert
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Firstly, this is not a self-help book. I felt burning eyes of judgement when I pulled it out on the train but of course if I stood up and shouted the truth I’d look more crazy. This book is about the science behind happiness and how the brain works. It contains some very interesting revelations. If you won the lottery how happy do you think you would be in one year? More happy than someone who has a car accident and becomes paraplegic? Of course you would think you would be but Gilbert shows otherwise. We discover that lottery winners are equally as happy as paraplegics one year after the major change in their life.

There’s two reasons for this. Firstly, we are really bad at predicting future outcomes of events. We over-emphasise the duration and intensity of our abnormal feelings about these outcomes. We think a lottery winner would be a lot happier than they actually are and we think that these feelings would last a lot longer than they actually do. Secondly, we synthesise happiness in the absence of ‘real’ happiness. People whose situation from the outside may seem hopeless will often our brains soften the impact of bad events.

He also discusses how the brain ‘cheats’ in its memories by filtering out a lot of the boring stuff and highlights key points in events. For example, our opinion of a movie is heavily skewed towards the ending just because our brain picks key parts (it can’t store every event in our lives) out and ‘fills in’ the rest when required. This filling in is not always reliable though so although you may really enjoy a movie at the time but aren’t impressed by the ending, recalling the movie in a few months time will probably bring the bad ending to forefront so your memory later is that you didn’t really like it.

Maybe if I hadn’t already read The Paradox of Choice before reading this I would have gotten more out of it. There is a bit of overlap between Gilbert and Schwartz’s work. I did end up struggling through this one from about three-quarters of the way in until the end. The themes do get slightly repetitive although there is a liberal dab of humour thrown in there to keep you interested.

I wouldn’t recommend you read both Paradox and Stumbling and I would probably recommend Schwartz’s work over this one.

Gilbert’s appearance at TED is below and he covers a couple of the studies he discusses in the book.

Company by Max Barry
(Buy it at Amazon)

(Yes another book review - I’ve been reading a bit lately)

Max Barry is one of my favourite authors. Granted I’ve only read two of his books but he’s only written three. The other one I’ve read is the terrific capitalist-world-gone-mad story of Jennifer Government which I might review if I read it again.

Company is a novel about company politics. Specifically, the friction created between us and them (senior management) and the Sisyphean task of doing work that seems to the people actually doing the work to be completely pointless. We follow Stephen Jones, a new recruit to the Zephyr Holdings. Jones is simply not satisfied with his co-workers ignorance at what the company actually does (I think the quote is “we’re a holding company - we hold things” but I can’t find it right now) and seeks more information.

That’s it for the plot. I’m not telling you anything more. I really didn’t see the next part coming. People on the train must have thought I was channelling a goldfish because my mouth was opening and closing in amazement and what happened next. Like in Jennifer Government Barry takes a concept and pushes it to the extreme, but never to the unbelieveable. This is an immensely appealing book because who hasn’t had to deal with a hierarchical and faceless management team and/or a monotonous and meaningless job at one point in their life?

Recommended.

The Paradox of Choice: Why More Is Less - How the culture of abundance robs us of satisfaction
By Barry Schwartz
(Buy it at Amazon)

Decisions, decisions. That’s what this book is all about. More to the point, it’s about the choice we are faced when we are required (or invited) to make decisions that affect our life. One thing that has crept up on us in modern times is that there’s just so much ’stuff’ to choose from. Even at something so mundane as the supermarket, it’s easy to be overwhelmed by choice. This book hit a nerve with me because I’m currently facing the choice of where I want to work after I graduate - not a small decision by any stretch of the imagination. What I realised after reading this book though is that obsessing about choices you make will definitely not make you any happier - something that I’m trying to keep in mind as I attend interview after interview.

Anyway, enough about me and more about this book. Schwartz divides the book into When (we choose), How (we choose), Why (we suffer) and What (we can do). Schwartz argues that the advancements in freedom (a subjective term I know) should be voluntarily curtailed by self-imposing limits and rules on the choices that we evaluate. For example, I’m not looking for any jobs that would involve me moving from my hometown - that greatly simplifies my choice of where to apply for jobs. If I didn’t limit where I applied by location I would be completely snowed under with the choice of where I should work. In fact, after reading this book I realised that if I only got one job offer then it’s likely that I’d be happier than if I got 10.

He identifies two groups of people: maximizers and satisficers. Maximizers agonise over every decision they make. They don’t just want to make a good choice, they want to make the best choice. Satisficers are generally satisfied by making a choice that is good, but not necessarily the best. The result is that maximizers are generally speaking less happy with their decisions than satisficers even though the maximisers have made better choices.

That’s just a brief glance at what this book contains. There’s a lot more to it, Schwartz highlights many studies that backup his points. It’s also an immensely readable book (unlike the last book I read) and I absolutely raced through it in about a week (which is good for me considering I only really read when I’m on the train).

I’ve included Schwartz’s appearance at TED for you. He discusses many elements that are in the book and should give you a good taste for the subject at hand (just under 20 minutes long).

The J Curve - A new way to understand why nations rise and fall, by Ian Bremmer

Ahhh…economics. I’ve done a bit of economics at uni. You know the one - more graphs without units on their axes than you can poke a stick at (and of course, as anyone with an engineering/physics/maths background will tell you, this is “really bad” TM). Eco101 is actually quite valuable in a degree - I don’t know why more courses don’t insist on it. If you haven’t done it then I’ll present you the first three weeks of the course through the next graph.

The curve can move up or down depending on some country-specific factors. If the price of oil rises, for example, a country that is a large exporter of oil will receive more money which enables the government to increase the stability of the country without having to increase its openness.

Ok, got that? Note the lack of units? Note how the graph isn’t defined for all values of price? Ok - that’s all you need to know.

Welll…I tell a lie, actually. It’s not all you need to know, it’s all my economics lecturers implied I needed to know. The thing is, the most important factor in a market is consumers. Consumers are not rational. Therefore, whilst drawing up silly graphs might be fine in theory, in practise observations of consumer behaviour don’t fit to the pretty lines.

(At this point, if you’re still reading you’re probably vaguely interested in the subject matter. Good on you! Here’s a reward. Jessica Hagy’s website contains more graphs without units on their axes but they’re really funny/thoughtful graphs and Venn diagrams. It’s a like a social mathematician’s ultimate comic.)

But wait, isn’t this review filed under ‘Politics’? Yes it is. Bremmer’s book discusses the stability of nations being a function of how open they are to the outside world. If you were to plot stability versus openness the graph would look a bit like the letter ‘J’, hence the title.

So just looking at the J Curve graphically what can we imply? Nations that are closed (left side countries) can be more stable than slightly more open countries but cannot ever be as stable as the most open countries (right side countries). We can also see that for a country to progress from a very open system to a very closed one (or vice versa) it must, at some point, suffer a period of instability (the depths of the J curve) as it transitions.

The curve can also move up or down depending on some country-specific factors. For a large exporter of oil, a rise in the price of oil gives the government more money which it can use to increase the stability of the country without making it more open. Hence, the entire J curve rises upwards.

Finally, notice the slope of the graph. It is easy for a left side nation to fall into the depths of the curve quite quickly but it will take a right side state a lot more effort to do so. Likewise, little effort is required for a close state to reach stability but an open state has to work much harder to achieve the same level.

That, in a nutshell, is the gist of chapter 1. The remainder of the book discusses three far left side nations (North Korea, Cuba and Iraq under Saddam), three borderline left side nations (Iran, Saudi Arabia and Russia), two nations in (at the time) the depths of the curve (South Africa and Yugoslavia) and three right side nations (Turkey, Israel and India). The penultimate chapter is devoted entirely to China, such is the importance Bremmer places on it.

In each of these country dossiers Bremmer gives the reader a brief history of the country in question, then justifies why it resides on the given point of the J curve. Although on the whole I found these parts fascinating, as I ploughed through I began to find Bremmer’s language to be somewhat repetitive - I felt that it went beyond hammering home his message.

In the end I found myself agreeing with Bremmer’s central concept. The model holds up well, although as he notes, China is attempting to cross from the left to the right of the curve without bottoming out into chaos so time will tell as to whether the model is broken by the worlds most populous nation.

Having said all of that I would hesitate to recommend this book to someone with only a passing interest in world politics and/or history. As I mentioned, I didn’t find the pages slipping away under my fingers. It certainly is a book for thinking. It is not, as the cover jacket suggests, the Freakonomics of world political books. This will not bring a whole new group of people who have never cared about politics before to the field. It will most likely only interest people with an existing affection for global politics.

So…to buy or not to buy? I’d suggest getting it if you’re a die hard fan of global politics, but you could also watch one of the lectures Bremmer gave to Google which would probably satisfy most people.