March Reading List
Hey friends,
A day late but better late than never, and at least this reading list is being sent out before the month is over!
I got through a good few books this month, ones that were mainly focused on current events. I’ve had some of them on my shelf for a while now, such as Boys in Zinc which I bought in 2020 I think! It was certainly an opportune moment to read them and I can’t recommend the four books below enough.
Each of them is an excellent read, if a bit depressing.
Boys in Zinc - This is a fantastic account of the Soviet war in Afghanistan from the mouth of Soviet soldiers, civilians, wives and mothers, whom it affected directly or indirectly. There are many great books about the Soviet Union, but the beauty of this one is that you feel the people in it are grappling with the reality of the country they lived in. Belief that they fought, or their husbands/sons/daughters, fought for something tangible, yet a realisation that they were sacrificed for an ideological war. Perhaps the most interesting part of the book is the last section, which deals with the trial of the author, Svetlana Alexievich over the depictions of the people mentioned in the book. If anything reflects the perversity of propaganda in the Soviet Union, and its effects on the general population, it’s this section.
Moneyland - The war in Ukraine has brought the issues of oligarchs and their subversion of democracy in Russia and abroad home. Oliver Bullough’s book is an important look at how public money in Russia, and elsewhere, found its way into the hands of a select few and has been transported around the globe via a lot of shady financial deals. The losers are, of course, ordinary people, who are shut out from these entities and pay the price through kleptocracy slowly eroding the fabric of democracy.
The Road To Unfreedom - I’m making my way through this book now, but I thought I’d include it on the list anyway. Timothy Snyder is one of the best historians on the planet, and this book deals with how events since 2010 in Russia, Ukraine and the United States have shaped the present moment. Again, it’s a prescient book given the war in Ukraine. What Snyder does well is to show how the failure of politics since the 1990s, and especially following the financial crash in 2008, has led to the dark forces that were banished following the Second World War reemerging to menace us all.
So You’ve Been Publicly Shamed - Jon Ronson’s book is an interesting and thoughtful look at the world of social media, Twitter in particular, and how public shaming has come back into vogue. It’s easy to think that calling people out online when they say something dumb or stupid, or malicious is right, sometimes it is. But there are occasions when it can cause massive harm and destroy people’s lives. What I took away from Ronson’s book was that the internet has allowed anyone around the world to cast shade on random people and brandish them with a scarlet letter in perpetuity because the internet never forgets. The irony of social media is that it’s not that social after all, and serves a better purpose as a public shaming gallery, where the whole world can join in instead of the whole village.
I hope you get around to reading a few of these selections. Whether you read them in the next month or year, I’m not bothered. The idea of my reading lists is to encourage you, the reader, to read more.
If more of us read, and read books outside of our comfort zone, the world would be a better place. You don’t know what you don’t know. Reading is one of the best ways to fill in those gaps in your knowledge.
If you have any comments about the books, maybe you’ve read one before. Or if you have some recommendations for me, I’m all ears. I’d love to hear your thoughts!
Until next time,
Tom