Reading Week - II

The last post identified three categories in my library – “so far unread”, “done and dusted” and “virtual”. But I now realise that there is an “in-between“type – namely the books I hadn’t finished despite recognizing their significance, Let me give a couple of examples….

The first is The British Regulatory State – high modernism and Hyper-innovation; by Michael Moran (2003) whose first 60 odd pages I clearly read with great interest some years ago - since those pages in the copy I found in my library are scored with strong pencil marks. Perhaps the recipe was too rich since the final two thirds seems unread – but I was deeply impressed when I rediscovered it last week.

All previous books I’ve read about British politics (and I’ve read quite a few!) focus almost exclusively on what has been called “high politics” ie the high and visible institutions of the State. “Low politics” covers the professional associations (eg health and financial), local government and all their inspectorates and is pretty technical – and that is the focus of Moran’s book.

A fair number of studies have been made of this field but it is one which tended to fly under most people’s radar until the publication of a book by Majone in 1994. The new interest reflected the huge privatization programme which started in the UK in the 80s and had reached global proportions by the millennium. Moran was one of the best (if rather low-profile) UK political scientists with a focus much wider than most such academics.

Yanis Varoufakis’ And the Weak Suffer what they Must? (2016) is the second example.  From the start I recognized that this was an extraordinarily well-written and seminal book - but I can’t remember actually finishing it – although I wrote about it a couple of years ago as if I had. It’s the problem of having books scattered in several places. I know I picked it up again last year in a friend’s house on the coast of the Moray Firth in the North East of Scotland whose taste (the friend’s!) also includes Varoufakis – and good food and wine!!

For me, Varoufakis is one of the finest writers of non-fiction prose – and, earlier this year, I tried to explore what it is about his writing that is so good –

What makes Varoufakis' various books such excellent reading is the sheer originality of his prose –showing a mind at work which is constantly active…...rejecting dead phrases, clichés and jargon… helping us see thlngs in a different light..... using narrative and stories to keep the readers’ interest alive…He's in total command of the english language - rather than, as so usual, it in control of him.....

You don’t expect to find good prose in the “Further Reading” section of an economics textbook, but just see what Varoufakis does with the task…… 

The first two links in this section about Varoufakis give a fairly extensive reading list about the man if you want to read more….