This time last year I had a book list ready for 2022 and I indeed started strong, quickly taking out The Body: A Guide for Occupants (Bill Bryson), The Dispossessed (Le Guin) and a Greek novella. Then the rate flatteeeeeened for months and only recently got rolling again. Superman: Red Son (Mark Millar), The Chinese Gold Murders (Robert van Gulik), Watership Down (Richard Adams) and now I am finishing a fresh buy, The Reckoning: Financial Accountability and the Rise and Fall of Nations (Jacob Soll).
Firstly, I need to stress out that I generally find reviews of products confusing, with the pleasant exception of books. Book reviews, positive or not, at least tend to be well argued, and I generally thought myself in agreement with the Goodreads “consensus”. Well, not exactly. For each book I present the Goodreads av. rating (in a scale 0-5), the number of ratings (a proxy for popularity) and my assessment.
Superman: Red Son (#1-3 in a book) was entertaining as an idea (the alien lands and is raised in the Soviet Union during the Cold War) and the (vintage style) artwork was satisfying. The story, hmm, I cannot really say since I have not read other Superman books, but I’m sure I forgot it the moment I finished it, so it kind of fell flat? The morals of the story have been praised as “gray”, citing that they don’t fit in the capitalist good/ communist bad scheme, however I still got a pretty clear conviction that the soviet system invariably bended good intentions of individuals.
Goodreads av. rating (~55,000 ratings): 4.17 - seems about ok
The Chinese Gold Murders, another gong’an story featuring Judge Dee, offers a dated mystery read, at times lumbering but rich in ambience and details of life in 660s Imperial China.
Goodreads av. rating (1584 ratings): 3.97 - somewhat generous
Watership Down is the only book that makes it to the “brilliant” tier. Better than the already flying colors ratings, a child tale epic if this is a thing (it is, Hobbits, anyone?), following the journey of a bunch of bunnies to the establishment of a new warren. I noted some leadership lessons on responsibility and trust that would put “experience ambassadors” to shame. Also, the allusions of social structures regarding security, community and freedom are terrifyingly relatable.
Goodreads av. rating (~ 460,000 ratings): 4.07 - vulgar undershoot
The non-fiction entrants fall towards the underwhelming side. Bryson’s The Body includes numerous interesting facts and figures from bio-medical history, so many that my attention started dwindling about half-way. Readable yes, a total pleasure no, I guess the subtitle (a guide for occupants) does it some justice.
Goodreads av. rating (~ 65,000 ratings): 4.31 - overshoot
Soll’s book, from the other hand, is quite misleadingly titled (this has also been pointed out in the goodreads reviews. The Greek title, though not a word-by-word translation, does not escape this trap, either). The Reckoning: Financial Accountability and the Rise and Fall of Nations seems cheesy as hell, a Grand Unifying Theory, that, sadly, it is not.
The author proposes that a fine thread connects accounting, accountability and national prosperity, and backs this via a series of vignettes from renaissance Europe and beyond, off to the British Empire and the US foundation. The book works as a condensed history with lay religious/ economic edges and a knack for influential, if unsung, personalities. OK, good bookkeeping underpins good governance (corporate first, state later). To do that it had to (a) be invented and formalized and (b) dodge all kinds of limitations and social barriers, as a method to define - God forbid! - profit, more suitable for middlebrows than for glorious lords. I particularly liked how a version of the “emperor’s new clothes” parable played out in the eve of the French Revolution, if you use “dire financial standing” instead of “invisible clothes”. Visibility, in this case, helped beat - supposed - invincibility. The book also offers a selection of paintings and some literature hints, depicting the role of accounting in society, a welcome addition.
The accountability of the title left me wandering, as it is often equated with transparency, and the “rises” or “falls” are only vaguely discussed. Actually, I think this to be my main rub: I expected a different mix (have another 2 chapters to go). More killer quotes (it has a handful). Maybe some more accounting (it featured almost none). No Mississippi fucking Bubble, that keeps turning up in every book that touches economic matters (yes it is there). More legal aspects (the American Constitution gets a mention or two). More of a “framework” approach, especially in accountability, less “see this, and this, followed by this”. Respectably researched and vividly written, but it does not quite balance the tallies, If you reckon my drift.
Goodreads av. rating (280 ratings only for this quirky subject): 3.90 - seems about ok, tentative