I’ve decided to try something new this year and post monthly updates about my media consumption. I haven’t quite decided exactly how this will work, but I hope to give an overview of the books and magazine articles I read, the audiobooks I listened to, and the movies and TV shows I watched. While the list of books will be fairly complete, as I track that information already, I will probably just include a selection of the articles and TV shows I consumed. This may or may not last for the whole year (and I’m already off to a somewhat late start), but we’ll see how it goes.
Books
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Tyler Cowen, The Great Stagnation
This was a quick read, and worth the $3.99, but I’m not sure how much it changed my thinking. Cowen’s basic premise is that the rate of technological growth has slowed in recent years, and that this is one of the root causes of our economic slowdown. The Internet is an obvious counterexample, but Cowen argues that it hasn’t generated jobs or economic activity at the same rate as previous innovations (like automobiles). These points are worth making, but not particularly surprising, and Cowen’s solution, more eduction, is similarly obvious.
I think this book succeeds as a succinct outline of some of the economic challenges we face, but those looking for radical new ideas may be disappointed.
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Ernest Cline, Ready Player One
This was the most fun I’ve had with a sci-fi novel in a long time. I’m a bit young to appreciate all of the 80s trivia, but it was fast paced and engrossing and includes all sorts of geek wish-fulfillment. There was an interesting conversation on io9 regarding the somewhat problematic representation of the real world in the novel (as opposed to the virtual world in which most of the book was set). I tend to agree that Cline doesn’t develop his dystopian world as much as he could, but for pure entertainment value, Ready Player One was hard to beat.
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Ryan Avent, The Gated City
Like the other Kindle single I read this month (Tyler Cowen’s The Great Stagnation), I found The Gated City to be interesting and well-written, but ultimately redundant for those who have read more broadly about the issues. Avent’s main thesis is that outdated zoning laws have led to low density American cities and extracted high economic, social, and enviornmental costs. While this is now fairly well understood, widespread NIMBYism has consistently thwarted attempts at reform. This topic is one I find particularly important and interesting, but I would recommend Edward Glaeser’s Triumph of the City as a better and more thorough introduction.
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Amy Cortese, Locavesting
Locavesting surveys a number of different financial mechanisms for local investing and discusses the advantages and disadvantages to both investors and companies seeking capital. I learned something reading this, particularly about the challenges that small companies outside the tech sector face when raising capital. I was a bit worried that the author would sacrifice data and detail for a sort feel-good advocacy, but in the end I thought she did a fairly good job of focusing on the practical and regulatory challenges faced by some of these new investing models.
Audiobooks
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Rick Riordan, The Red Pyramid
I enjoyed Riordan’s Percy Jackson series, and I started listening to the Red Pyramid on Divya’s recommendation. I find this type of young adult fiction to be ideal in audiobook form as the narrative structure is simple enough that I can follow along without having to flip back for reference, even when I’m periodically distracted by traffic or other noise.
I thought Riordan did a particularly good job in this book with the interaction between the siblings, and the two narrators of the audiobook do a great job. On the other hand, I found the description/modernization of the mythology to be somewhat less successful than in the Percy books. This may be due in part to the nature of Egyptian mythology. The gods are less associated with specific phenomena than in Greek mythology, so there are fewer opportunities for clever updates (like the wind god weatherman in the Heroes of Olympus). Still, I can imagine this would be a great way to introduce Egyptian mythology to kids.
TV/Movies
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White Collar, Seasons 1-3
I started watching this on Netflix and plowed through the first two seasons in short order. It falls into the “quirky police procedural” model that is so popular these days, but I find the characters charming, and white collar crimes are refreshing after so many shows built on week after week of grisly murders. According to IMDB, the show is actually filmed in NYC, and I enjoy the portrayal of upper-crust Manhattan.
Articles
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Charles Duhigg and Keith Bradsher, Apple, America and a Squeezed Middle Class, NY Times
There’s a follow-up article dealing with the condition of the workers in Foxconn factories, but this one did a good job covering some of the macro-level forces affecting the migration of high-tech manufacturing. Surely it’s partially about cost, but I thought anecdote about Corning moving its production to China simply to be nearer to customers was worth thinking about.
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Marc Ambinder, Inside the Secret Service, The Atlantic
This was a fun read after watching so many movies and TV shows about law enforcement agencies. A usual, the truth seems to be both more and less interesting than fiction.
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Adam Davidson, Making it in America, The Atlantic
This is another article about American manufacturing, and everybody has heard the basic story, but I thought this article did a good job drilling down and discussing different types of manufacturing jobs, some of which are safe in the U.S. for the moment.
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Bryan Gruley, The Man Who Bought North Dakota, Bloomberg Businessweek
Eric Konigsberg, Kuwait on the Prairie, The New YorkerAs most of the country struggles with recession, North Dakota has been having a huge oil-fueled boom. These articles give a good overview of the major players and the effect of the boom on the local economy.
