It’s been a busy, busy academic year so it seems I’m only managing monthly round-ups here at the moment. A little more though on two books i’ve read in the past few days.
One was Mark Fabian’s Beyond Happy. Mark, who was a postdoc with us and is now an associate prof at Warwick University, is a true academic expert on wellbeing. He has a definitive recent scholarly book on this A Theory of Subjective Wellbeing. Beyond Happy is aimed at general readers, and is a lovely book. It refers to the literature in philosophy, psychology and economics to offer practical advice – not ‘how to be happy’, but how to make sure your life is meaningful, full of purpose, rewarding: “Wellbeing is about living a pleasant, fulfilling and valuable life. In recent decades we’ve been too narrowly fixated on the pleasant part, and an a crude way too. We’ve gone in for materialism, hedonism and tranquillity.” He also emphasises – in contrast to the dreadful ‘wellness’ industry – that wellbeing is a social phenomenon. Relationships and community make a huge difference. The book is a bit denser than the typical self-help book because it does synthesise the academic literature, but is correspondingly more rewarding.
The other was Markus Gabriel’s Doing Good. I encountered Markus at several workshops in Oxford and Hamburg in recent years as he developed his arguments that “the business of business is doing good.” The book advocates for ‘ethical capitalism’, with a chief philosopher or ethics officer in every business, having the same board status as the finance director. And extending the vote to children so the voice of the future is better represented in democracies. For my tastes, the book is too utopian, focused as it is on why societies need ethical capitalism rather than how they might get there. I tried to imagine how I’d react to its arguments if I were a troglodyte Milton Friedman-loving, greed is good, free marketeer; and am not sure it would make a dent in my certainties. Still, it’s an elegantly argued book that might provide woolly-liberal me with some ammunition.
Other reads this month:
Three state of the nation books – I’ve reviewed them for the FT in the near future – The Land Where Nothing Works by A.G. Hopkins, Challenging Inequalities by Paul Johnson, and Yesterday: the United Kingdom from Thatcher to Covid by Brian Harrison
Holiday reads with the family in Whitstable:
Number Go Up by Zeke Faux – very funny (sceptical) perspective on the crypto world
Death in the East by Abhir Mukerjee – another in this excellent detective series set in India as the independence struggle heats up
Down Cemetary Road – Mick Herron’s first novel.
Careless People by Sarah Wynn Williams. I was late to this whistleblower’s account of what it’s like inside Meta. Eyebrow raising.
Death of an Ordinary Man by Sarah Perry – a beautiful reflection on death, and life, as she recounts her father-in-law’s last days
And since then:
Tyll by Daniel Kehlmann – odd novel set in 15th century Germany, but compelling
The Playbook by James Shapiro – history of the Federal Theatre Project in the New Deal, and its downfall
Silent Voices by Ann Cleves – a Vera novel, just what I needed one exhausted evening. Though I found this less well-written than some of her others in the series.
Whitstable – a great place to read on holiday