What am I up to now?
September 1, 2025
October, 2025
Contents
Updates
I spent the first half of September in DC and New York; it was lovely seeing all my east coast friends and family. The last two weeks, we’ve been settling into our new apartment in San Francisco. Thanks to ALL the new and old friends who showed up to our housewarming last weekend.
Unfortunately, I won’t be getting any of my favorite month. October is peak autumn; I always loved DC as it got cold and dreary and the fallen leagues were at their soggiest. Instead, I’ll be heading to the southern hemisphere for the first time! In the first week of October, I’m flying to Maputo, Mozambique, where I’m working with the Maputo Municipal Council and the national energy regulator on various policy problems. I hope to get out of the city a bit; let me know if you have any tips. Also, big props to ZL for coming to visit me in Maputo!
After Mozambique, I’m planning to head to Ethiopia, Sierra Leone, and Gambia before back to Oxford in November. And I’ll be back in SF in December. I’ve already spent a bit of time in the economics department at Berkeley; it’s great; I love the people.
Reading
No Country for Old Men, Cormac McCarthy
I had never seen the move, nor read any McCarthy before. I didn’t expect him to be so readable. I really enjoyed this book. It has the anatomy of a standard thriller, and was good as “just” that. I would have been happy to have read it even without the meditations on fate and will.
I most recently had the character of Texas introduced to me through the Caro LBJ books. The character was mirrored by McCarthy: just as vicious and uncaring, but LBJ definitely thought he could exert his will over it more than any of McCarthy’s characters.
Convenience Store Woman, Sayaka Murata
A fun, short novel about a woman opting out of the Japanese career and social ladder to work at a convenience store.
I loved Han Kang’s The Vegetarian last year; she really hit even the American readers over the head with commentary on Korean gender relations. I think Murata is doing something similar here. There’s a not-so-subtle loser male character who the lead character treats as a pet. But I had a nagging feeling there was still something clever about gender going on which I missed.
Katabasis, R.F. Kuang
A PhD student travels to Hell and back to rescue her supervisor for a recommendation letter. I like having read Kuang’s books, but I never like reading them. This one could have been really fun, but the lack of stakes and unlikeable characters made it painful.
The Adversary, Emmanuel Carrère
I picked this up thinking it was a novel, but it’s a journalistic re-telling of the crimes of Jean-Claude Romand. Very well written and translated, but remains extremely French. Reminded me of Annie Ernaux in introspective prose, amount of infidelity, and moral non-realism.
Careless People, Sarah Wynn-Williams
I read this while writing my recent blog post on Meta and their AI dominance in poor countries.
Wave, Sonali Deraniyagala
Deraniyagala is an economist whose husband, parents, and two sons all died in the 2004 Indian Ocean tsunami; she was swept away and found everything gone. Definitely making my list of favorites for the year. It’s much more personal than Lewis’ A Grief Observed, and that works for it.
I’ve also read a few of Deraniyagala’s papers recently, on technology diffusion into developing countries. She’s a great writer across genre.
Proto: How One Ancient Language Went Global, Laura Spinney
Zach Weinersmith and Tyler Cowen both highly recommended this book; I didn’t love it as much. It’s about the proto-Indo-European language, from which everything from Gaelic to Bengali is descended. Spinney’s headline claim is that, at one point, this language was spoken by just 100 people. She is aware she’s making extraordinary claims and attempts to provide extraordinary evidence. But there’s a resulting focus on methods where I would have preferred more explanation of mechanisms.
Mozambique
I’m also taking the Mozambique trip seriously. The Marine Corps Intelligence Agency’s country study on Mozambique, while outdated, is a fun read. My understanding is that the MCIA produces these 300-400 page books on every country in the world for the embassy guards, and there’s a correspondingly useful focus on cultural norms, good places to eat, and the inadequacy of the Mozambican Navy.
In history, I also loved the chapters on the Indian Ocean trade in Before European Hegemony by Janet Abu-Lughod. She focuses on the world system which existed prior to the explosion of European influence in the 15th century, stretching from the Champagne fairs in northern France to Chinese influence in southeast Asia. The eastern coast of Africa, as far down as modern-day Mozambique, is peripheral but still present in the Indian Ocean trade which hinged Abu-Lughod’s world system.
The book also reminded me of a read from 2022 which I revisited, Islam’s Black Slaves: The Other Black Diaspora by Ronald Segal. Again, mostly focused on the Horn and Kenyan coast, but with good notes on the Mozambican coast and the importance of the rivers flowing from the interior.
More specifically, Malyn Newitt has the definitive books on Mozambique: a 2017 Short History of Mozambique and the definitive 1995 History of Mozambique. Newitt loves the rivers of Mozambique; they’re the story for him. I skimmed most of the dynastic sections and Marxist infighting in the larger history.
Finally, Portuguese is much closer to Spanish than I expected. Alongside some online speaking lessons, I’ve been reading, so very slowly, fiction in Portuguese. I’ve enjoyed, and mostly understood, some of Mia Couto’s short stories.
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