Book review: Water Knife - by Paolo Bacigalupi

I really enjoyed this page turning thriller although it also felt like a bit of a guilty pleasure because it rolls like a high-octane action movie. Nevertheless I thought it had real depth which made it more than just a bond-esque gore fest. It’s set in a time more near future than his previous novel (The Windup Girl), so it didn’t contain as much fantastical technological-development speculations which I enjoy but the closeness of this novels setting made up for that. Its set in Central America not far from now and water shortages have led to states playing politics with people’s lives – and dirty politics at that.

I found the characters were very rounded and I enjoyed how the use of their different narratives gives the crisis multiple perspectives. The pace of the book is impressively fast, by the middle I thought I was at some finale which then just kept giving with no let up till the end. But although it’s dark and violent I think it would be wrong to just dismiss it as some techno-gangsta future pulp – it’s grappling with the seriousness of the climate change future we’re sleep walking into along and the book goes some way to analysing the psychology of what makes people act in certain ways in extreme situations. The harrowing situations of those in the crisis needed to be very detail to understand their motivations and, in the end, I felt that balance was right to show who the characters were without going too over the top.

Overall a very enjoyable book, both thrilling and thought provoking.

The Path: A New Way to Think about Everything (Professor Michael Puett and Christine Gross-Loh)

I guess the silver lining to the somewhat gloomy cloud of reading this is that it made me realise I’m very aligned with the Buddhist world view. You’d have thought as this is a book about Eastern Philosophies it was because I was agreeing with what was written but strangely it was quite the opposite. The Buddhism they described was a woolly acceptance of everything. However only a small amount of research would show this is not the case but a misinterpretation which exists in hallmark cards and viral facebook posts. I thought that much of what was described in the book compliments Buddhist notions of mindfulness, for example Mencius’ comparing goodness to cultivating small sprouts which is akin to the teaching that we all have seeds of potential goodness which it is our duty to cultivate and water by mindfulness.

Added to the above frustration I found the style of writing difficult to get along with. To me it sounded like listening to an old uncle going on and on about the good old days and berating the youth for having it all wrong. The good old days are Chinese philosophies (which, in another uncle-ish way he claims many others have misunderstood but we are to trust his version just because they are right). The youth is modern society. The introduction sets out the theme running through the whole book – modern society thinks like Kant and looks on old Chinese philosophies as coming from a less developed time.

Now I don’t think everyone in the Modern West thinks like Kant – indeed the book later quotes psychologist William James saying ‘a man has many social selves as there are individuals who recognize him’ which they say is a ‘surprisingly Confucian sentiment’. It’s not surprising as many Western thinkers from different disciplines would agree with this, basically I felt this division was a false dichotomy between East and West.

Still persevere I did in the hope there were nuggets of wisdom somewhere in the pages of this book. Unfortunately I could fathom few and I often found the examples given vague or contradictory. I was then surprised that by concluding chapters which expounded more grandiose boasting about the authors views of East / West relations. An alternative history was sketched where all Western bureaucracies are thanks to China. Then the concluding comments continue with new-ageist claims that ‘we can create a new age where all sorts of global ideas come alive again. Given the personal and societal crises we face today, these ideas may be our best chance.’

I was left confused how this book could claim to readdress idealist reading of Eastern wisdom. It basically gave a whistle stop tour of one person’s opinions and claimed this was a cure-all. Surely this makes it another idealist reading of Eastern Philosophy rather than the antidote to it?