Ender's Game by Orson Scott Card

Ender’s Game is about preteen boys training to become space commanders. There is no way of getting around that. Unapologetically sci-fi, on the surface, Ender’s Game sounds like a poor episode of Star Trek or one of the fictional novels of fictional novelist Kilgore Trout. Once you get past the silly premise, however, Ender’s Game is a brilliant and pleasingly short epic about leadership, war and the (sometimes necessary?) abuse of power.

Andrew “Ender” Wiggin is a child – 6 years old in the beginning – who is drafted to military school in preparation of a third act in an interplanetary war with an alien species, the “buggers”. The school, a space station in close orbit, was once home to his older brother, who was dispelled for his violent and unpredictable character. Unbeknownst to Ender, he has been deemed the only hope to lead humanity’s starships in a last effort against the threat. He is isolated and humiliated by his superiors in an effort to turn him into a ruthless leader.

Described in this way, Ender’s Game may sound dull, even run-of-the-mill. A recent, fairly average, movie seems to indicate the same thing. Undaunted, I followed a friend’s recommendation to read it with an open mind. Once I got past the implausible seriousness of the children – they sometimes speak as if augmented with an elder statesman implant – I started to enjoy Ender’s Game.

I hugely enjoyed the author’s stylistic choices. Science fiction sometimes gets too tangled in trying to explain all the ways an imagined world is different to the one we live in. Card has chosen to give a minimal amount of description about Ender’s surroundings. For example, the space station is described as a rotating doughnut spinning around a central arena, and it’s corridors slope upward as a result. Beyond that, there is little discussion of what it is actually like inside. Card’s focus is instead on Ender’s mind and the relationships of the school’s boys (and few girls). Readers are given just enough context to fill the atmospheric void. As a result, Ender’s Game has aged extremely well: readers are able to substitute the lack of specificity with technology from the current age.

Another triumph is Card’s way of establishing power in the confines of the space station. Power is distributed unevenly between the children. Platoon commanders are responsible for their troops and suffer that responsibility in different ways. Their subjects rebel, submit and try to subvert their commander’s power. Their power is based on superior age, abilities and ruthlessness, not on their skills as a leader.

Power is explored methodically, inch by inch, in a sequence of escalating events that keep the story moving and genuinely affect the children. Even minor characters have credible story arcs as they are forced to live under new circumstances. Yet, the children are defenseless against the power of the school’s adults, who mercilessly intrude on their lives or stay back even when they would be needed.

In its brief 300 pages, Ender’s Game manages to be a coming-of-age story, a leadership guide and an exploration of war. It is mostly self-contained, although it is the first in a long series of stories from the same universe. I was not so enamored with this world to immediately reach for the next book in the series, but it is not out of the question either. Ender’s Game is part Lord of the Flies and part Starship Troopers – extremely serious, but partly absurd. Card walks that fine line well.

Purity by Jonathan Franzen (revisited)

Reading something twice creates an interesting second perspective. New details emerge, as the reader is free to let his mind wander through a familiar book. Characters may become more believable, when viewed with the benefit of hindsight. Overall, the story may come to make more sense. On the other hand, a second reading may reveal serious flaws that were missed on the first go. As the reader gains familiarity with the material, the suspension of disbelief that hid the most glaring problems may begin to subside. Often, repeated readings reveal the author’s quirks and weaknesses more than new elements of the story.

Rereading Purity had a bit of them all. There were parts that were more enjoyable, because I could look past the immediate storyline and see how the different puzzle pieces fit together. This is true of most books that are worth a second outing: Slaughterhouse-five, Freedom and (surprisingly) A Clash of Kings.

Franzen has once again created a structure that is closer to Pulp Fiction than to Reservoir Dogs – the narrative doesn’t follow a single character and the chapters are not in chronological order. This was frustrating, when I first encountered it, because you are forced to take on new people and places with each new chapter. However, once I was free of the burden of trying to guess how it all fit in, the individual stories seemed more coherent and pleasing.

That being said, it became clearer why Purity didn’t receive the same praise as Freedom or The Corrections. I was especially disappointed to realize that although Purity ought to be about Pip and her travails in the modern world, it is more concerned with practically anyone else. Above all, Purity is the story of Andreas Wolf, the youth worker who becomes a leaker and exposer of secrets. His character arc is enthralling and, at best, visionary, but he is also the villain in a nonconventional sense. More accurately, he is a psychopath and an asshole. While his demise is satisfying, his actions are not. Compared to Richard in Freedom (who has a similar but less creepy role), he is frustrating and, at times, insufferable. Andreas’s motives are sinister or narcissistic, so even his more noble actions are put in doubt.

So here is my list of gripes after a second reading: Pip is the most interesting character, but is left in a supporting role. Anabel and Tom almost get back together despite having an absolutely ridiculous marriage. Tom helps Andreas hide a body, but it is completely out of his character. There is too much talk about masturbation, perhaps by a factor of five. And someone’s mother gets her own backstory of moving out of Germany, but even after a second round, I still have trouble understanding why it is there and whose mother it was in the first place. But as I’ve mentioned before, Franzen has a way of describing the world around us that has always delighted and inspired me. Purity may not be his best work, but it did keep my attention through a second reading.

Our Kind of Traitor by John le Carré

John le Carré introduced himself as the de facto spy novelist of the Cold War era. His writing, including The Spy Who Came in from the Cold and Tinker Tailor Soldier Spy (both of which were previously featured on this blog), ousted spies as morally ambiguous, traitorous and amorphous. Pop culture had previously been acquainted with only the daring and adventurous detectives in Dashiell Hammett's work and Ian Fleming's high society spy James Bond. Le Carré introduced spying as the ultimate dirty work, where neither side ends up better off. In his work, good men and bad men were equally likely to be found on both sides of the Berlin wall.

The Cold War ended but espionage and intrigue didn't. Le Carré's work has always been rooted in modern fears and fabrications and so it is with Our Kind of Traitor. A Russian oligarch knows that his end is near and begs two Brits to arrange a new identity for him and his family - his information on the Russian mob in exchange for asylum. The Brits, Perry and Gail, play along uneasily at first, but are drawn into a standoff between Dima, the Russian, and the British Secret Service. Perry and Gail are fooled by their own vanity and end up getting a raw deal. The British Secret Service on the other hand is highly dysfunctional and has fractured into rival groups with conflicting agendas.

Despite an ending that felt too familiar from The Spy Who Came in from the Cold, Our Kind of Traitor is a riveting read. It is a perfectly well crafted spy thriller and I am happy to report that physical violence is kept to a bare minimum. This is not a superhero movie, nor a spy novel disguised as one. The characters, especially those of Hector, the spy master, and Perry, the Oxford lecturer turned envoy, are memorable and robust. Men especially will feel tinges of discomfort when reading about Perry's competitive desires and inability to back down.

Le Carré, as always, is the master of international espionage. Other writers put their weight on creating action and suspense through harrowing escapes, car chases and shootouts. Le Carré has instead perfected the slow build-up. Never have I felt so intimidated by a lone Swiss police officer at a train station in Interlaken, or a suave international businessman with an Italian sounding name, who is always nearby when trafficking and money laundering are discussed. Of course, it is all just as fictitious as the shooting and the racing, but for me this is what spies are really about: cold sweat on your back, neglected loved ones or friends and a pervasive uneasiness with the world around us.

Sapiens by Yuval Noah Harari

Sapiens by Yuval Noah Harari is both a phenomenal origin story of the human race and a frustratingly biased and imprecise look at recent history. In much the same way that Bill Bryson opened up the entire history of the universe in A Brief History of Nearly Everything, Harari attempts to reconstruct the development of Homo Sapiens, including everything from our chimpanzee ancestors to our near future. Unlike Bryson, however, Harari has serious problems in keeping the focus on objective observations - and while that may not have been his initial idea in the first place, it becomes a big problem especially toward the end of the book.

Sapiens is at its best early on, when Harari describes the origin of the different Homo-genus peoples. I didn't anticipate enjoying this part of the story so much. Textbook descriptions of hunter gatherer groups have never been able to capture my imagination in the same way as Harari does here. Not only do these chapters succeed in giving a vivid image of how humans lived at the time, but they also highlight the limits of our knowledge in an approachable and realistic way - much of the evidence of early humans has been lost to time. The early nomad expansions into Australia and the Americas are a fascinating example of the determination of early peoples to find new lands. For example, a few centuries after the first humans reached Australia, almost all of the large mammals of the continent disappeared in one of the worst waves of extinction. Before our arrival, Australia had been home to giant kangaroos and marsupial lions.

The largest issues come later on when, Harari describes the industrial age and the modern world. The way he tries to sum up capitalism and science into neat packets does a disservice to the previous few hundred pages. The latter chapters are less an enthralling revisit of history than the author's attempt to shoehorn his own conceptions into pre-existing theories. It is here that Sapiens loses some of its objectivity and credibility.

At one point, Harari claims that economic growth (and the belief in economic growth) are absolutely necessary for banks to take deposits and lend money. This is either a gross simplification or the author's attempt at Zeitgeist-type sleight of hand. I was able to get a mortgage because the bank knows that I have a steady monthly income that I can use it to pay back. This is in no way related to economic growth or the banks expectations that my salary will increase as time goes on. The bank could lend money even in a declining economy (and they do). Finance works (among other things) by smoothing out the immediate need for cash by guaranteeing income in the future.

I am tempted to overlook Sapiens's problems because it did leave an immediate mark on me. The way it looks at the world is quite unique and it will force readers to question even their most fundamental beliefs. Just remember that Harari indulges his whims a tad too much. As a reader, you don't always have to accept his explanations and assertions. Reading Sapiens, you learn much about early humans that you didn't know would be interesting. And you'll be left with a lingering sense that there is still much to learn about yourself and the entire human race.

New York 2140 by Kim Stanley Robinson

In 2140, the global water level has risen over ten meters. Coastlines around the world are swept under in "pulses" of rising water and populations counting in the millions are forced to leave everything and search for higher ground. Lower New York is mostly uninhabitable, except for the old skyscrapers,  the first few stories underwater, that have come to resemble Venice. Meanwhile, north of Central Park, "super scrapers" house the super rich. At the MetLife building in Manhattan, a ragtag cast of co-op inhabitants are forced to cooperate to save their building and perhaps the city.

That's the premise for New York 2140, a science fiction (or perhaps "climate fiction") piece by Kim Stanley Robinson. I picked it up, to be honest, because The Verge, a technology website, recommended it. It seems that I've been on the receiving end of book suggestions lately, and so far it's been great!

It's a nice read, but I was a little surprised by what felt to me like a lack of consistency in some of the narratives. Not all of the characters seemed to be acting in a logical way and some of the story choices felt contrived. For example, much of the story revolves around the mysterious disappearance of two young programmers, who had been working on some kind of stock market fix that could end inequality and restore fairness to the economic system. The exact nature of their disappearance is duly explained, but I never understood what it had to do with the rest of the story. A large scale conspiracy is behind most of the events, but it isn't entirely clear how. And most of the conspirators are acting behind the scenes and only mentioned by name in dialogue. The reader is left to imagine the villains based on very limited details.

Luckily, the conspiracy part isn't that important to enjoying New York 2140. Characters like Inspector Gen and Franklin are entertaining and compelling individuals, whose chapters were clear highlights. The dialogue is consistently great - it has wit, charm and keeps the pace wonderfully - and the action is typically at its best when multiple main characters are simultaneously involved. As the novel progresses, this becomes more common, so expect to find a smoother ride after the first half.

As with any book set in New York, the city itself is a towering main character. New York in 2140 is a wonderful amalgamation of Venice, left-wing utopia and modern day New York. The city is in no way a passive player, it seems to act with its own will - it is more than just a backdrop or moody setting. That makes it all the more unfortunate that the author's personal prejudices drive the second half of the action. Robsinson gives his left-wing ideologies a bit too much space, when New York was the real star all along.

The Imperfectionists by Tom Rachman

Years ago, I lent The Imperfectionists to a friend and after a while, I stopped expecting it back. Then one day, as we were making conversation at the university, she handed it back to me, much to my surprise. The copy she gave me was clearly new and she looked somewhat embarrassed. Apparently she had completely ruined the original one by dumping it in water (I can't remember how) and had ordered a new one for me from Amazon. Naturally, I was in awe at her thoughtfulness.

In a way, that story resembles the tone and contents of Tom Rachman's The Imperfectionists. It's a collection of anecdotes that all revolve around an American newspaper in Rome. Each chapter is its own short story almost, but there is also a strong central narrative that pulls the reader forward. Chapters are dedicated to the employees (and a reader) of the newspaper and show the daily life of working at a newspaper - and living in Rome.

Reading The Imperfectionists a second time - something that every reader definitely needs to do - I noticed how different my overall impression was. On my first read through, I found the newspaper well managed, Rome a delight and somehow managed to finish the book feeling that everything worked out in the end. Reading it a second time now, I realized how wrong my initial judgment was. Although there is humor and whimsy, The Imperfectionists has the same menacing overtones as Roald Dahl's work. The stories are fairy tales until they aren't. In one surprising scene, the callous "accounts receivable" finally hits it off with an ex coworker that she had secretly been responsible for sacking. Once they make it to a hotel room, however, the tables turn and the coworker turns out to be something different than the gentleman he seemed.

Many of the individual chapters are brilliant in themselves and I feel that I could read them again even now. The only issue I had was that I find the history of the newspaper dull and perhaps unnecessary. It's dispersed across the book, a few pages after each chapter, but it just doesn't have the same emotional weight as the chapters themselves. So it is inevitably outshone by the amazing stories that form the true core. But don't get me wrong, The Imperfectionists is a wonderful book, one that I'm glad to have back in my bookshelf.

What If? by Randall Munroe

In 2006, someone sent me a link to a webcomic. Back then we shared links via email and the term webcomic carried the same sense of silly novelty as something like "3D printed shot glass" does today. The comic itself was very unassuming, with three crude stick figures and almost no coloring. The title of the comic in question is simply "Philosophy", and while it does have a certain charm to it, it wouldn't strike anyone as the type of thing that could go the distance. You can find the strip I'm referring to here.

Over ten years later, Xkcd is one of the most famous mediums for popularizing science and Randall Munroe, the mind behind, is a science guru in the mould of Richard Feynman and Bill Nye. In recent years, Munroe has also written a science blog called What If? in addition to his triweekly comics. In it, readers ask absurd questions and Munroe tries his best to answer. The most recent answer (never mind the actual question) starts out: "So you want to give endangered whales powerful electric shocks. Great! I'm happy to help."

What If?, the book version, is a collection of the most popular questions from the first few years of the blog and some excellent new ones. Have you ever wondered what would happen, if you threw a baseball at close to the speed of light? Or if there was a giant portal to space in the Mariana Trench? Chances are you haven't, but that doesn't detract from the supreme readability of Munroe's answers. The book is less intense with the actual calculations than the Internet version, but that also means it won't frighten away students of the humanities.

Xkcd has always had a special place in my heart (and my head presumably). So it's no wonder that I absolutely loved What If?. Munroe has clearly found an audience that adores his humor and wit. To be honest, though, I have no idea how someone would react to it, if they were not familiar with its style. Somehow I feel it would be in everyone's interest to understand science more broadly than just what they teach you in school. Interest in the sciences seems to be declining just as we need it most. Answering frivolous hypothetical questions has never seemed this timely.

The Undoing Project by Michael Lewis

Daniel Kahneman's Thinking Fast and Slow is probably one of the best non-fiction books ever written. Not only has it sold millions of copies, but it really deserves to be read that much. If you look at the list of best selling books from the past ten years, Kahneman's work sticks out almost grotesquely from things like The Hunger Games and 50 Shades of Grey. There is an element of chance involved to almost all fiction best sellers - word-of-mouth is still the best marketing method and readers are not as rational as they like to think. Thinking Fast and Slow on the other hand was a compendium of the most important ideas in modern psychology put in a somewhat readable package. It became a best seller nonetheless.

Michael Lewis looks at the same subject matter, but from a typically Lewisian angle. The Undoing Project is the personal story of Kahneman and his research partner Amos Tversky and their quest to reform psychology research. It doesn't sound like much of a premise, but as always Lewis is able to create an extremely compelling narrative. Kahneman is an inherently pessimistic intellectual who, as a child, had to hide from the Germans in Nazi occupied France. Tversky is a superstar academic, war hero and socialite. Their paths cross in 1960s Israel and they become one of the most influential duos in academia.

Where Thinking Fast and Slow was strictly about psychology and human decision making, The Undoing Project focuses more on the personalities and lives of the researchers. As I've mentioned previously, I greatly enjoy reading about discoveries from the discoverer's point of view. Researchers don't often make for very entertaining reads, but the depth of Lewis's research ensures that there are always multiple interesting topics to explore. I was surprised to find myself tearing up towards the end; I really didn't expect The Undoing Project to be as soulful as it is. 

Having read The Undoing Project, I was struck by how little we currently take advantage of its insights. High school psychology is (or was, but I'd be surprised if anything had changed) a strange combination of vaguely important historical findings heralded as breakthroughs (Pavlov's dogs, for example) and outright absurd references to theories that have long been dismissed (anything Freud). These are life changing concepts that alter the way we think about ourselves. Why is this not part of the standard curriculum?

Olet hyvä tyyppi by Karla Nieminen

"Olet hyvä tyyppi" is a Finnish way of saying someone is a decent person, good company and an overall good guy. It's something of a coveted title. When you discuss recent job openings with a friend, they might say that it's not enough to have the technical expertise, but you also need to be a "hyvä tyyppi". When you describe your new girlfriend to your parents (and she's not there), you say that she's pretty but she's also a "hyvä tyyppi": dependable and genial. The latter is far more likely to impress them.

"Olet hyvä tyyppi" is a guide for better social encounters and relationships. It's a book that I wish I had read five or ten years ago. I had the same kind of engineer attitude to social encounters as the author. Small talk for me was never natural, so I had to come up with a set of rules to follow, if someone caught me off-guard. Reading this, I'm reminded of those first years, when I had to learn it all for myself. This book is a good resource for someone wanting to become better around other people. But I was happy that it never veered towards making yourself better at the expense of others. A zero-sum game is not part of its vocabulary.

A few things stood out. Karla Nieminen's sense of humor is effortless and surprising. She's able to sneak a few great lines in the advice and it genuinely made me smile. An American style version of this book would present the author as an unfaltering relationship guru that has all the answers. Nieminen is much more earnest and human. She makes fun of herself and encourages you to not take yourself too seriously. It feels like she's saying: "I had to learn everything by myself and I'm still not perfect. But I'm happier now and you can be too."

This book seemed to echo what I learned from Bruce Springsteen's memoir. People are almost never faking or putting on an act. When someone complements you, don't question them! When you show genuine interest in them, they will open up and your conversation will be much more lively. I didn't appreciate how different people are until I stopped questioning their intents. Letting go of this idea alone made this book worth the time.

The question at the end of the day is how to make the advice stick. For Nieminen, the answer is simple. You need to practice your skills in the real world until they become second nature. I would like to add to that. Great advice often comes in the form of a story or an anecdote. I've learned some great lessons from novels like The Grapes of Wrath and Freedom, because they make a different kind of imprint in the brain than just saying "now you have to do X differently". So instead of only reading self help books, pick up some classic novels as well. The combination will probably put you on the track to becoming the "hyvä tyyppi" in your own life.

Born to Run by Bruce Springsteen

Bruce Springsteen is one of the few international rock superstars who has consistently toured in Finland. Many of my friends have seen several of his shows in Helsinki, while other performers of the same caliber are always missed. Springsteen, however, has some kind of special relationship with the fans here. A few years ago, he played an extra 30 minute acoustic show before the actual concert began - and then went on to perform for over four hours with The E Street Band. According to the sources that keep track of trivia such as this, it was the longest concert in his career.

As you can tell, I'm a relatively casual fan of "The Boss". I've never seen him live and I don't own any of his albums. Born to Run (the album) is an amazing piece of rock and roll, but his other albums have never really hit home. I picked up Born to Run (the book) purely based on some positive reviews I'd seen but it really blew me away.

The biggest reason I never completely bought into the whole Springsteen mythos was that I found his lyrics silly and overwrought. I always had trouble believing that the things he was singing about - the cars, the girls, back alleys, small towns - were actually important to him. For some reason, I had always assumed that it was his way of pandering to the American lower middle class. That he wasn't singing with a straight face. How could he be serious?

Turns out that he was serious all the way through. That realisation made me re-examine his music from a whole new perspective. Springsteen has apparently been sincere from the very beginning. He wrote from his heart about the things moved him and lived his life more or less as his songs' characters do. He wasn't trying to fool the gullible working class into buying his albums. He wasn't trying to establish himself as a specific kind of folk hero. It was always about the music, the energy, the freedom and the crowd's reaction to him putting everything he had into his shows.

Underneath all the showmanship and passion, Springsteen was a restless soul and worrywart. He suffered from depression, every time he was forced to retire home from long tours. His soul wanted to be on the road constantly. But he also wanted to have a family, something that his own parents had never been able to provide him with. His father's schizophrenia only became apparent once Bruce was an adult and then it was already too late to truly reconcile.

Sometimes it's difficult to separate the man from the myth. Some will be sceptical of even this work because it might only serve as an attempt to play up the mystery of The Boss. But looking at how he played the marathon set in Helsinki at the age of 65, I'm having a hard time believing that Born to Run doesn't represent who he really is. He even gives a reason for playing those long shows: he's afraid that he's not giving enough, that people will be disappointed. His insecurities can only be put away by playing until the sun goes down.