The Monday Mix (26/04/2021)
Hey guys,
I’m gonna get straight into it this week. Not much has changed on my end, the weather’s good and society is slowly reopening here in the UK. Life’s good at the moment.
7 Gripping Novels That Will Keep You Turning Page After Page - For my latest post on Medium, I decided to write up a list of novels I enjoyed reading. You’ll find a variety of classics, thrillers and one or two you might not have heard of before. If you’re looking for a book recommendation before I send my monthly email in the next few days, this is the post for you.
Here’s what I want to share with you this week.
Greece’s Fugitive Nazi
This is a crazy story and not in a good way. Greece has suffered following the financial crash in 2008 and the Eurozone crisis which followed. Those upheavals led to the rise of the far-right Golden Dawn party. Last autumn, most of the leadership of the party was jailed, but one of them managed to escape and remains on the run. The Greek authorities don’t know where he is and there are rumours he’s hiding out in Kosovo, Serbia or maybe a remote ultra-conservative monastery in Greece. It’s a bonkers story and you can only hope he’s brought to justice before too long.
35 Years After Chernobyl
Today is the 35th anniversary of the Chernobyl disaster. I shared an article and the book I was reading about the disaster in last week’s email, oblivious to the fact this anniversary was a week later! It’s hard to describe just how much of an impact the disaster had in the region. The effects are still being felt today. The above link shows how much the landscape has changed around Chernobyl after the disaster. I’m sure many of you have the images before, but every time I see them it still boggles my mind how much has changed in such a short space of time. For an article on the implications of the disaster, and its effects today, this is a good read.
John Gray
I’ve fallen down a John Gary rabbit hole in recent weeks. For those of you who don’t know, John Gray is an English philosopher and, in my opinion, one of the most underrated thinkers on the planet. I’ve been reading his books and as many of his articles as I can get my hands on. I’ve noticed he has a sharp eye for how events may pan out. This article on the implications of the 2010 general election in the UK was more or less spot on. While an article on the financial crash was prescient in its depiction of America’s fall from grace. Obviously, he’s not right all the time, but he does have an uncanny ability to tease out remarkable insights from current events. The above article is one he wrote as the Covid crisis unfolded. With cases surging in India and vaccine rollouts slowing, it’s well worth a read. The virus may not be finished with us yet.
Book I’m reading - The Silence of Animals by John Gray
This is the second of three John Gray books I’ve bought recently. The first one, Straw Dogs, was a fantastic read and I’ll talk more about it in the reading list email. The Silence of Animals is the sequel to Straw Dogs and is just as interesting but the arguments aren’t as powerful as those in its predecessor. Still, it gives the reader much to ponder.
Quote I’m pondering
“Every positive value has its price in negative terms... the genius of Einstein leads to Hiroshima.” - Pablo Picasso
That’s all for this newsletter. Look out for my short essays and reading list this week!
Tom.