ARC, Books

Book 664: The Cost-Benefit Revolution – Cass R. Sunstein

Cover art of The Cost-Benefit Revolution with affiliate link to Amazon.comWhat. A. Doozie. Seriously, why do I decide to read the densest books EVER at the holidays and the beginning of the year? Really, I should’ve read this last year when I requested it from the publisher after seeing an advertisement for it on the train, but I kept pushing it off until now.* I requested this because having read Nudge, I assumed all his works were super approachable, but that wasn’t the case for this incredibly dense book.

Honestly, this compares more to last year’s kick-off read, Crashed: How a Decade of Financial Crises Changed the World. I mean just reading that title makes me exhausted again (it was 700+ very dense pages). This year’s kick-off, though roughly 1/3 the size, was just as dense and basically tried to look at how to make government regulation more even and effective by removing politics and opinion and replacing it with cost-benefit analysis. It’s no wonder it took me roughly three weeks to actually get through this one.

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Book 228: MaddAddam (MaddAddam #3) – Margaret Atwood

Atwood, Margaret - MaddAddamWhat a great ending to the trilogy. It wasn’t exactly what I expected and it definitely left me wanting more, but overall I think it was a great book. If I hadn’t read these books back-to-back with this book’s release I can definitely see how I could have been disappointed in this denouement, but as I didn’t have to wait for the next books in the series I thoroughly enjoyed all of them.

Although I enjoyed The Year of the Flood and MaddAddam neither were as great as Oryx and Crake. I’m not sure if it’s the change in writing style, which was minimal or if the last two in the trilogy didn’t have the wonderment of discovering a new old world, but they just didn’t quite live up to the first book. All three made me feel emotions and were beautifully written, so I would definitely recommend them!

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Book 227: The Year of the Flood (MaddAddam #2) – Margaret Atwood

Atwood, Margaret - The Year of the FloodWhat a great continuation of this series! And for a middle novel of a trilogy it definitely held its own which is not always the case. I also enjoyed reading Atwood from a different angle, although it was only a tiny bit different from her other books.

As I mentioned in my Oryx and Crake review every book I’ve read by Atwood has a single narrator who tells their story through a series of flashbacks. This book continues that theme, but rather than it being the same narrator there are two narrators, Ren and Toby, in this book telling their stories.

However, there were again SO many similarities. Each of the narrators, similar to Snowman/Jimmy, experiences the post-apocalyptic world in isolation until about midway through the novel. So looking back at all the characters of Atwood, they’re all isolated (physically, mentally and emotionally) and they all tell their stories from their own perspective. But this is not a bad thing! Atwood gets into each of her character’s minds and creates believable and unique characters which are amazing mirrors of humanity.

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Book 226: Oryx and Crake (MaddAddam #1) – Margaret Atwood

Atwood, Margaret - Oryx and CrakeI honestly cannot remember the last time I devoured a book this quickly or the last time I was this excited about a series. Let’s put it this way, I’m desperately trying to think of people to recommend this book to I enjoyed it that much. And I have no doubt I will devour the next two books in this trilogy as rapidly did this first installment.

Having only ever read The Handmaid’s Tale and The Blind AssassinIt has clearly been some time since I read anything by Atwood. When I found out recently that she would be visiting Harvard Book Store to give a talk and read from her new book I KNEW I had to go see her if only to get my copy of The Handmaid’s Tale signed. She will be reading from her newest book MaddAddam and as I haven’t read the first two books in the MaddAddam trilogy I thought I probably should, so I picked up copies of Oryx and Crake and The Year of the Flood from the library and I am SO glad I did.

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Books

Book 61: Brave New World – Aldous Huxley

First I have to apologize for the length of the post, it definitely got away from me. I planned on discussing the condition of the book when I bought it used (covered in ink writing, highlights, penciled notes, underlines, etc.) but will save that for another post. If you’re interested in the points I found most interesting click here. If you’re interested in quotes click here. If you want to know whether I think you should read it click here.

As pertinent today as when first written in 1931. The question though is when you read the novel whether you read it as a utopic or dystopic (anti-utopic novel). Having written a paper on these type of novels (A Handmaid’s Tale and Woman on the Edge of Time) I determined, and supported by many reference works that you can’t have one without the other.

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