Books: June 2023

The Remains of the Day — Kazuo Ishiguro

⭐⭐⭐⭐ Well written, feels like it could be used in a writing course as a template for plot and character development. Stevens is a great character, verging on caricature at parts. There is a great tension between Stevens as noble-hearted perfectionist and weird automaton. The author makes clear Stevens knows what’s happening but refuses to acknowledge it to himself.

Latecomer State Formation: Political Geography and Capacity Failure in Latin America — Sebastian Mazzuca

⭐⭐⭐⭐ The counterfactual history puzzles at the center of this project are very interesting: what if / why didn’t Mexico, Argentina, Brazil break up into smaller states despite secessionist impulses. As social science it’s a mess: there are so many cells in the typology, it can feel like theorizing from cases. Might pull a chapter for my class.