A Gentleman in Moscow by Amor Towles

Readable, diverting book about reconciling oneself to changed circumstances, and to keeping your chin up in the face of adversity. Unfortunately it is also Russian literature-lite, a kind of Oprah's Book Club version of the real thing: the author apes the style of a real Russian novel, and his characters' comportment and dialogue ape what you'd find in real Russian literature.

Maybe this might lead a few curious readers to actual Russian literature (see the Russian Lit Starter Pack at the end of this post). If so, then it's good that this novel exists.

The story revolves around Alexander Rostov, a Russian aristocrat deemed a "Former Person" by the Bolshevik regime and sentenced, implausibly, to lifetime house arrest in Moscow's famous Metropol Hotel. In the decades to follow Rostov lives out his life in this hotel as a sort of reverse Forrest Gump: all the world's interesting people come to him.

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Rostov is a good example of a Mary Sue character: perfect in nearly every way, always ready with the consummate bon mot, an unerring observer of human nature, and an expert in whatever arbitrary skill the storyline requires: classical music, literature, orology, gourmanderie, oenology, marksmanship--even pilferage (in one particularly far-fetched plot event late in the book).

For a reader to swallow this novel's fundamental premise (that Rostov, rather than being summarily executed, would be put under house arrest in one of the world's finest hotels where he could somehow, for free, still eat in the hotel's restaurants, drink at the bar, wander the halls, seduce actresses, and, eventually, help teach European and American culture to powerful Bolshevik apparatchiks) requires either complete ignorance of Soviet-era history or a gravity-defying suspension of disbelief. Get past that and the story will carry you along harmlessly.

Russian Literature Starter Pack:

Anton Chekhov short stories

Ivan Turgenev: Fathers and Sons; Torrents of Spring

Nikolai Gogol: Dead Souls; see also his short story "The Overcoat"

Fyodor Dostoyevsky: The Brothers Karamazov

Leo Tolstoy: Anna Karenina

For Good and Evil: The Impact of Taxes on the Course of Civilization by Charles Adams

Wide-ranging historical survey looking at major world civilizations through the lens of taxation and tax policy. It's a good read, a great review of world history, and it gets you to think about that history in a refreshingly unusual way. I've said elsewhere that one cannot understand history properly without some grounding in monetary history . Add tax history to the list! The author makes a robust argument that many if not most political instabilities and revolutions largely emerge out of resistance to punitive taxation. Likewise, this book will help deprogram readers away from the many schoolbook historical narratives we carry around, like the hypersimplified " Just say slavery " narrative of the American Civil War, or the pro-government narrative of the Whiskey Rebellion as "Federal law and order prevailed over frontier tax cheats." It is a surprisingly sentimental and romantic intellectual experience to hear the author describe bygone eras like the ...

Cod: A Biography of the Fish that Changed the World by Mark Kurlansky

History of the cod fishing industry across more than a millennium. The author begins with 10th century Viking and Basque explorers, and takes the reader on a roundabout journey right up to the modern era of global fishing moratoriums. In some ways this book is all over the place, its narrative at times only loosely connected to the cod industry, sometimes not at all. But it's okay: just enjoy the ride and let the author share what he knows. Which turns out to be a pretty interesting history on a subject you'd never expect would be so interesting. Each chapter has a postscript with one or two codfish recipes from a range of cultures and eras, some dating as far back as the 15th century. Once again it's more interesting than you'd expect: the preparation methods, the cuisine styles, even the recipe writing styles of these different eras. It adds an extra something to the book. [A quick affiliate link to Amazon for those readers who would like to support my work here: if...

The Gift of Fear by Gavin de Becker

A book about heeding the miraculous cognitive process we call intuition, "a brilliant internal guardian" that enables us to perceive things before they happen. This book give you a tremendous set of tools for assessing risks, making predictions, and understanding which things you should (and shouldn't!) be afraid of. This book is a wonderful navigational tool for modernity. I'll add that aside from being an insightful guy, author Gavin de Becker is quite an interesting guy. I recommend digging into any of the podcasts or long-form interviews he's done. See for example this interview with Tucker Carlson , striking in part because Carlson (for once) hardly talks--he simply lets de Becker talk. [Again, please skip or skim these notes below, they are too long and life is short!] Notes: Chapter 1: In the Presence of Danger 1) "Like every creature, you can know when you are in the presence of danger. You have the gift of a brilliant internal guardian that stand...

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