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Happy Holidays

Wherever you are!

And a reminder that it’s not too late to make a donation in honor of someone through Alternative Gifts International. A modest sum can help provide wholesome meals in Haiti, empowerment of girls in Tibet, microloans in Northern Uganda or help for the hungry and homeless in the U.S. These are just a few of the possible gifts. For more, go to www.alternativegifts.org/projects/.

Reading for a Global Perspective

We’re still waiting for major changes at our website, and looking for items to feature in our store. So far, we’re considering books and videos. Keep sending us your suggestions, and keep checking back to see what’s new.  Also please note that message board postings or blog comments that advertise sites or services are being deleted.

As for books that may provide insights about the expat experience, I’ve chosen several. One I strongly recommend is Ann Patchett’s State of Wonder, which takes place in Brazil, not the Brazil of multicultural mega-cities, but deep in the interior, where a group of researchers, mostly Americans, are investigating plants that appear to have miraculous properties. The author reportedly traveled to this part of the world as research for the novel, which is intricately structured and reaches a masterful ending.

Not as well received as some of her earlier works, A Change in Altitude by Anita Shreve is a story of American expats living in Kenya in the 1970s or 80s. Shreve is known for well crafted novels set in New England. This one deals with the strains put upon an American couple living in a foreign country. The husband, a physician, is doing important work, while the wife, who had been a photographer, faces a common problem of expat wives: the need to find meaningful activities to fill her time. The novel is the story of coping with dislocation, regaining strength and overcoming fears.

At the same time contemporary Egypt dominated the headlines earlier this year, many readers were drawn to the new biography by Stacy Schiff, Cleopatra: A Life, and I’ll admit I was one of them. Because so little is really known about the Egyptian queen, the author acknowledges that it’s impossible to know her feelings and motivations. Instead this book, offers a detailed history of her times and some theories as what probably drove her to certain actions. The language here is never dull and is, at times, sparkling. 

Because I happen to like spy stories, I couldn’t resist the real-life account, The Triple Agent: The al-Qaeda Mole who Infiltrated the CIA. Author Joby Warrick takes us behind the scenes of the tragic attack that killed CIA Officers, security personnel, a Jordanian Intelligence Officer and an Afghan driver. Warrick doesn’t lay blame or offer anything but known facts, but career ambitions and lack of experience are evident. The triple agent himself is portrayed in such a way that his motivations become clear to the reader, though they eluded these espionage experts. It’s a fascinating story, though a sad one, and I couldn’t help wondering what John Le Carré would have done with the same cast of characters.

The Magician of Lhasa by David Michie is a novel that offers a glimpse into Tibetan Buddhism and recent Tibetan history, which are subjects worth pursuing. The writing is good and the author has an extensive knowledge of these subjects. However, I felt that the plot hinged on a gimmick that would make some readers feel cheated, as I did. Many non-fiction books offer a better alternative for learning about Tibet.

Tell us what you’re reading, or if you’ve written something, tell us about that, too.

Changes, a Warning and More Books

We’re making some changes at our website and would like your input and suggestions. Although you can still obtain copies of our newsletter by writing to us, our back issues page will be converted to a “store” and we’d like your suggestions as to what kind of store. What would you like to buy - books, maps, DVDs or something else? Also, if you have a product that you believe would be appropriate for us, let us know. We’ll give consideration to any serious suggestion. Just hit reply.

Note that in our “Updates from All Over,” we have an important warning about tax reporting on overseas bank accounts. Read it to stay out of trouble!

Now for more notes on books:

I wasn’t looking for books about expat living when a friend recommended Stones from the River by Ursula Hegi. While it may not have a lot to offer today’s expats, it answers some questions I’d had for a long time about what happened in Germany before and during World War II. What were ordinary people thinking? What did they know? The story here is told by Trudi Montag, a dwarf, who is smart, spunky and a busy-body who makes everybody else’s business hers. Her village has Catholics, Protestants and Jews living side by side; some are tolerant and accepting of differences, while others are not. Their differences are more pronounced after the war begins and Hitler’s policies are put into practice, and only a few are brave enough to risk their lives to save others. It’s far more that a story of politics and war, however, as we see Trudy grow up and try to have a life that’s nearly normal. This is fiction based on reliable insight: the author spent the first 18 years of her life in Germany. For those who’d like a faster moving story, there’s Eric Larson’s non-fiction In the Garden of Beasts: Love, Terror, and an American Family in Hitler’s Berlin which I happened to discover while looking for new books. More on this next time.

Breaking Night: A Memoir of Forgiveness, Survival, and My Journey from Homeless to Harvard by Liz Murray isn’t about expat living at all, but it takes the reader to world few of us know. I’d never heard of the author when I read about the book in the NY Times Book Review. The accompanying photo showed a young woman who looked as though an ivy league education might have been her birthright. When I finally go my hands on the book, I was struck, too, the photo of her mother, who, I soon learned, was an addict, as was her father. Miraculously, these parents stayed together during the early childhood years of Liz and her sister, and despite drug habits, seemed to love their children. Once the family breaks up, Liz is in a group home only long enough to decide that she’d prefer living on the streets. Her only priority is survival during several painful years, but at 17 she sees education as her only hope, and with a determinations that is mind-boggling, puts herself on an accelerated schedule for finishing high school. I’m not a great fan of inspirational stories, but I found this one truly impressive.

I thought that Cristina Garcia’s The Lady Matador’s Hotel would be the ideal expat novel, though the nude on the cover might be off-putting to those who read old-fashioned printed books in public places. The hotel here is a luxury property in the capital of an unnamed Central American country. The title character is a Japanese-Mexican-American matadora. We also meet a waitress with a history in guerilla activities, a colonel who has committed atrocities in the country’s civil war, a Korean industrialist with an underage pregnant mistress plus serious labor relations problems, a European adoption attorney engaged in baby trafficking and a Cuban poet with an American wife hoping to adopt a baby. It’s a colorful bunch, to say the least. There’s action and suspense, yet I was disappointed in this highly acclaimed work because I wanted more detail about these initially fascinating characters and their motivations than the author provides.

Then I discovered a novel by Julia Glass that I hadn’t read: I See You Everywhere. Picking it up was like encountering an old friend who is witty and fun yet very wise and sensitive. I don’t have any sisters, but reading this helped me understand, in heart-breaking detail, what having one might be like.

What’s New?

What’s new at LiveAbroad.com? Very soon we’ll have an article on expat taxes, a topic that’s often misunderstood. Watch for a link on our home page under expat issues.

We hope that more of you will use our message board to connect with others who share your interests. But please, don’t use it to write about topics having nothing to do with living abroad. The same goes for comments on the blog pages. We welcome your opinion, but not a sale pitch for pharmaceuticals, replica watches, etc. If you do have something to sell that might be of interest to expats, consider advertising with us. LiveAbroad.com is supported by our loyal advertisers and a few affiliate programs.

I was deep into Swedish mysteries when I wrote my last “notes.” That phase has now ended but I must recommend Before the Frost by Henning Mankell. Inspector Kurt Wallander’s daughter, Linda is finishing her police training and eager to prove herself. The tension between father and daughter is altogether believable. So is Linda’s friendship with two women, neither of whom turns out to be what she seems. Then there’s a survivor of the 1978 tragedy in Jonestown, more examples of fanaticism gone wrong and enough suspense to keep the pages turning.

Then, for a change of pace, I picked up the Spanish novel set in 1940s and 50s Barcelona, The Shadow of the Wind by Carlos Ruiz Zafón. The protagonist is a young boy, Daniel Sempere, who discovers a novel called “The Shadow of the Wind.” by Julián Carax. We follow Daniel as he becomes a young man, tries to unravel the mystery of Carax, falls in love, first with a beautiful blind woman, and meets other engaging characters, including the witty eccentric, Fermín Romero de Torres. Increasingly, the events of his life parallel those of Carax, but will he meet a similarly tragic ending? The writing is so rich in detail and the characters and events are so intriguing that I didn’t want it to end.

Enough of exotic settings! Hearing praise for the American writer Julia Glass, I reserved three of her novels at the local library. The first one I read was her second, The Whole World Over. The jacket revealed that it was about a woman pastry chef who moves from Bank Street in Manhattan to Santa Fe to work in the New Mexico governor’s mansion. At last, familiar territory! (I have lived in Manhattan and now live in Santa Fe, though nowhere near the governor’s mansion. As I was reading this, our new woman governor, was plotting to fire the two chefs at the mansion.) This altogether believable story is populated with diverse characters, and Glass is particularly adept at writing from a man’s point of view. Most unforgettable, though, is a young woman who has suffered a severe brain injury in the past, and who wanders across the Brooklyn bridge as throngs of people are fleeing Manhattan on 9/11.

Glass’s best known novel, Three Junes, a National Book Award winner (2002), and is comprised of connected stories that take place in June of 1989, 1995 and 1999. Here we learn more about Fenno McLoud, the quiet bookstore owner from The Whole World Over, his Scottish family and his friends. Yes, there’s considerable insight into Scottish middle class people, but the characters themselves are enough reason for reading the book.

Her most recent is The Widower’s Tale, featuring a 70 year-old curmudgeon, his daughters (one accomplished and one flaky), his grandson (a Harvard student) and quite a few other fascinating characters whose lives intertwine in complex ways. Again, the characters make the book worth reading, but this one has a bang of an ending as well.

What are you reading? Let us know. Let us know, too, what you’d like to see at our website, or if you have something you’d like to share.

Swedish Mysteries and… War

Not having posted my notes in quite a while, I have quite a few books to report on.

Mark Mills, whom I mentioned before, did not disappoint. The Savage Garden, a mystery set in Tuscany in the 1950s, is exceedingly well written and filled with historic and literary references. Deciding to look into Dante’s Inferno, the hero, an expat from England, chooses the Dorothy Sayers translation (How many mystery fans know that British mystery writer Sayers also translated Dante? I was pleased that Mills knew.) His earlier novel, also a mystery, Amagansett set on Long Island, N.Y. in 1947, is even better. Mills, who is English has done his homework here, too, bringing that time and place to life, and not only that, he has created some unforgettable characters, including one who manages to say very little. I’m looking forward to his latest work, The Information Officer: A Novel.

Like everyone else, I found myself reading The Girl with the Dragon Tattoo then The Girl Who Played with Fire and The Girl Who Kicked the Hornet’s Nest by Steig Larsson. What can I say? The translations aren’t especially good, the bad guys are unbelievably bad, the events are often highly improbable, and yet...I couldn’t stop until finishing all three and seeing the first two movies as well. What made these stories so gripping? I’m still not sure. But I must say that they don’t follow any mystery formula; they’re different, perhaps a bit rough and that may be part of their appeal. Larsson, a journalist who died shortly after hitting the publishing jackpot, cared about some really important issues such as violence to women and former Nazis who hid their wartime activities. He also succeeded in creating some fascinating characters, none more so than “the girl” herself, Lisbeth Salandar, who is interpreted brilliantly in the films by Noomi Rapace. Although I saw the film in the theater, I was fortunate to see the DVD of The Girl with the Dragon Tattoo [Blu-ray] which has a brief interview with her. I can’t imagine how Hollywood could improve on the Swedish films.

I don’t believe I learned a lot about Sweden from the Larsson books. Swedes drink a lot of coffee, may speak several languages, and are not at all sexually prudish, but what else is new? These books, however, led me to some other Swedish mysteries, which are more traditional. One was Kennedy’s Brain by Henning Mankell, which really has little to do with the brain of JFK. The title seems to be a gimmick, and the protagonist flies all over the globe but isn’t in one place long enough for insights that might interest expats and seasoned travelers. Still, it deals with an important social issue, namely AIDs in Africa. Mankell has written a number of other novels, some of which look promising.

I’m currently reading The Laughing Policeman , a multi-dimensional mystery with touches of humor, published in 1970 and set in Sweden the sixties.. The authors Maj Sjowall and Per Wahloo wrote a number of mysteries together before Wahloo died in 1975. I’ll probably read more of them, not so much for important insights as for pleasure.

I still read hard copies of books, that is ink printed on paper, but reading these works from Sweden, I would have liked an e-book with a search function because the names of people and places can be hard to remember when the language is unfamiliar.

I also tackled Sebastian Junger’s War, put it down briefly ( I guess because of the violence), then picked it up again. I’m glad I did. Junger, who wrote such books as The Perfect Storm: A True Story of Men Against the Sea, is a master of macho, he knows what makes men tick, but he is also intelligent and sensitive. Having seen him on television discussing this latest book, I knew I needed to read it to reach a better understanding of why men go to war and why they volunteer for a second or third tour of duty when they could go home. Junger describes the bonding that occurs when soldiers are attacked, the loyalty they feel for each other, and yes, the love. Anyone who wants to prevent war will need to find something that gives young men a real sense of purpose. It’s older men who send young men to war, however, and, alas, women, too, whose hold on power is insecure and who want to appear tough. What’s to be done with or for them?

Books for and about Expats

I usually have a lot to say about the books I’ve been reading, but right now I have to admit that none were either especially memorable or important for expats and prospective expats. In my e-mail, however, I discovered messages from an e-group catering to expats, abroadview@yahoo.com (the group is an offshoot of the excellent website talesmag.com) with messages about books they’d been reading and would recommend to others. I began making a list of books I’d like to read and decided to pass it along.

Barbara Kingsolver’s The Poisonwood Bible is a novel about a Baptist minister who takes his family to the Belgian Congo in 1959. One of the many well known books I haven’t gotten around to reading. It’s sometimes compared to The Mosquito Coas,by Paul Theroux, which, as I recall, was excellent.

For something different, there is Azadeh Moaveni’s Lipstick Jihad: A Memoir of Growing Up Iranian in America And American in Iran, which promises to be interesting.

Pulitzer prizewinner Jhumpa Lahiri has written The Namesake, a novel about a young man who comes to America from India to study.

Another memoir, this one by Sarah Macdonald, is Holy Cow: An Indian Adventure, a young Australian woman’s account of following her journalist boyfriend to India. One reviewer called it “a wonderful roller coaster ride on the road to enlightenment.” I definitely want to read it.

In Tahir Shah’s The Caliph’s House: A Year in Casablanca, an Englishman of Afgani descent moves to an ancient house in Casablanca with his pregnant wife and young daughter. Although everything that can go wrong does, readers find this book extremely funny.

Extra Virgin: A Young Woman Discovers the Italian Riviera, Where Every Month Is Enchanted by Annie Hawes is a travel memoir in which two English sisters set out for a village just two miles from the Italian Riviera. Note: the author has remained in Italy.

Rules of the Wild: A Novel of Africa is a well received novel by Francesca Marciano, narrated by an Italian woman who goes to Kenya.

Since I started making this list, I’ve started reading The Savage Garden by Mark Mills, a mystery narrated by an Englishman who goes to Tuscany. I’ll have more to say about it next time.

More Books

If you’ve been reading my notes for a while, you know that I praised Elizabeth Gilbert’s Eat, Pray, Love: One Woman’s Search for Everything Across Italy, India and Indonesia. a memoir of her sojourns in these countries. I mentioned it here because it has some interesting observations on the culture of these very different locales.

She has just come out with another volume, Committed: A Skeptic Makes Peace with Marriage which is about marriage and her decision to marry for a second time. What does this have to do with living abroad? Well, when in Bali, she fell in love with a man who is Brazilian. They became involved and lived together until...surprise, surprise… he was stopped by Homeland Security in Dallas for having exited and entered the U.S. too many times. Such are the hazards of international relationships and one should be aware that this can happen. Marriages would solve the problem, however. They are, in effect, “sentenced” to marry.  Deciding that they wanted to be together while he awaited a new visa, they found inexpensive places to stay in Southeast Asia.

The reason prospective expats might benefit from this book is Gilbert’s perceptive analysis of the difference between a traveler and someone who is at home anywhere. She admits she’s a traveler. When she and Filipe arrive at a comfortable hotel in Bangkok, he wants to sit by the pool and read mysteries while she wants to go to Cambodia and visit the temples there. Filipe is a person who is at home wherever he happens to be, so he’ll be happy living wherever she wants, while she acknowledges that she would not consider settling permanently anywhere but along the U.S. eastern seaboard. So, if you’re still wondering if you and your significant other are suited to the expat life, it’s not enough that you enjoy traveling. Stop and ask yourselves, can you be at home anywhere?

Another book I can’t resist mentioning though it doesn’t have much to do with being an expat is Yann Martel’s Life of Pi, just because, in my opinion, it’s a gripping story, very well done. You can see what it’s about by looking at the cover, but there’s far more to it.

Welcome to all those who’ve signed on with us recently. We’re sorry if you are getting e-mails that seem to be from us advertising pharmaceutical products. They aren’t from us! Some unscrupulous vendors are using our return address to send them, and we can’t stop them from doing this.

LiveAbroad.com and our e-mail Updates are supported by our advertisers and by our affiliate relationships with Google and Amazon. We’re grateful to those who’ve clicked on those links at our site because this helps support our efforts. 

Ho…Ho…Ho….

It’s that time of year again. I don’t blame anyone who is trying to stay out of the malls, although I think it’s good to patronize local merchants and craft fairs. I’m also a believer in giving a donation in someone’s name to a worthwhile cause.

Typically, I write about books here and a well-chosen book can be one of the most personal of gifts. Giving a book can say: “I know what you like, what ideas you appreciate, where you like to go in your imagination.” While you may not know what the person has not yet read, selecting a book they have read and loved sends the same message, maybe even a little stronger.

Some of my favorite books for giving are ones by the Brazilian writer Paulo Coehlo. The best known is The Alchemist.  It’s a sort of parable - simple, spiritual, beautiful. I’m also fond of The Witch of Portobello: A Novel (P.S.). It you’re not familiar with Coehlo, be aware that his work isn’t magic realism like that of Gabriel Garcia Marquez, whose Love in the Time of Cholera is another gift idea.  If you prefer to give a recently published book, consider this long-awaited American novel, A Gate at the Stairs by Lorrie Moore. She’s an unusual writer with a great many fans.

Calendars also make good gifts, and there are more choices than ever, especially for travelers and would-be expats. For example, there’s 365 Days in Italy Calendar 2010 (Picture-A-Day Wall Calendars) as well as Mexico - 2010 National Geographic Wall Calendar and Colors of Guatemala 2010 Calendar. These are just a few.

Thank you for subscribing to our Updates and for visiting our pages. Happy holidays to all. Be well, be safe and may 2010 be a better year for all!

The End of Summer

Welcome to all those who’ve recently signed up as affiliates. 

Summer is over, and I’ve just heard a weather forecast predicting a 30% chance of snow tomorrow here in Santa Fe. This would be unusual, but it feels as though it could happen.

For my summer reading, I continued with John Le Carre, whose books are, I think, worthwhile for their elegant language as well as for the suspense. I also believe Le Carre is keenly aware of cultural differences as well as political and historical matters. A couple volumes that I stumbled onto recently also provide insight into the troubled history and raw feelings of the people in the breakaway republics in the Caucasus, specifically Chechnya.

Our Game is the odyssey of a former British agent, Tim Cramer, who has retired to an inherited estate and vineyard in the English countryside. An agent he trained has disappeared and evidence points to Cramer as having been responsible. Meanwhile, Cramer’s young live-in girlfriend has also disappeared. What follows is not only a hair-raising tale but one in which the main character, a not very likeable sort at the onset, transforms himself into what we might call a hero. Written in the 1990s after the end of the cold war, the book was a best seller, yet does not seem dated.

More recently, Le Carre wrote A Most Wanted Man The story takes place in Hamburg, Germany, a beautiful old city where foreigners are generally welcomed. The “wanted man” is a young Chechnyan, who is soon surrounded by an international cast of characters. A Turkish immigrant and his mother befriend him; a young liberal, upper-class German woman becomes his lawyer and a British banker appears because a large sum of money is involved. Secret agents from Germany, Britain and the U.S. with interests of their own enter the picture and the conflict evolves from there.

Please - let us know what you’re reading and where you’re going. Keep sending news and resources of interest to expats and prospective expats. Thanks.

“Don’t Pack Your Bags”

That’s the title of an article on Metro, (sorry, the link is just too long) where I was quoted about the difficulty in finding a job overseas. Things are tough all over. Writer Luke O’Neil did a good job of summarizing my ramblings.

I did suggest, however, that some people might do well to wait out the recession in one of the countries with cheaper living costs such as Mexico or Costa Rica, where you can live on less than you’d pay in rent on a New York apartment.

A special welcome, though, to all of you who found your way to our website and signed on as associates because of the article.

If you’re among the many people wondering if an overseas move is right for you, or facing another difficult, life-changing decision, I have a book for you – How We Decide. Author Jonah Lehrer describes which parts of the human brain are involved in various kinds of decisions, how we’re often misled and why rational thinking isn’t always the best way to go. It’s a fascinating read.

A number of books about the brain have appeared lately. Among them is How God Changes Your Brain: Breakthrough Findings from a Leading Neuroscientist by Andrew Newberg, M.D. and Mark Robert Waldman. It’s not offering religion as a solution but it explains which parts of the brain are involved in various religious practices, especially meditation, and offers simple practices or exercises that can improve memory, promote relaxation and relieve stress. After doing just a few of the exercises. I found myself remembering numbers that I hadn’t even tried to memorize and putting my fingers on objects I had misplaced months ago. Power of suggestion perhaps, but that’s good enough for me.

Wishing you all a pleasant summer and hoping you’ll send us tips and suggestions to help other expats and would-be expats.

Books Worth Looking Into

I’ve just discovered Tourmaline, a novel by Joanna Scott, published a few years back. The title refers to the gemstone found on the Italian island of Elba, where Napoleon was exiled and where an American family goes for a vacation that keeps getting extended. The story is told by various family members long after the fact. It’s the early fifties, post-war Europe. The Americans have borrowed money from their more affluent relatives for a vacation. Their misadventures begin when their luggage is stolen before they even get to the island. It’s not a comedy of errors, though errors are plentiful. Murray Murdoch, the father, is full of grand schemes, some of them quite absurd and his pursuit of them leaves his wife and four young sons unsettled. What’s interesting here is the juxtaposition between these American expats and their Italian neighbors who are ever polite and accommodating, but who become suspicious after the mysterious disappearance of a young woman from a prominent local family. The loose ends are tied up finally. This is recommended to anyone considering a move to a country where there’s apt to be culture shock.

Another not-so-new book that I enjoyed tremendously is The Mission Song by John Le Carré, whose work I’ve always loved. Here the main character, (dare I say hero?), Salvo, is half black, half white, a highly gifted interpreter, who happens to be married to an upper-class Englishwoman who is a journalist. There is another woman, though, African, sincere and compelling. Salvo is summoned to a meeting where the fate of an impoverished African country is being decided by a group of moneyed Europeans and some Africans tribal leaders they’ve hoped to dupe. The Africans are characters one rarely meets on the printed page, much less in real life. One in particular, Haj, is unforgettable. As Le Carré fans would expect, the plot has more than a few twists and turns. Le Carré is now well into his seventies and let’s hope he enjoys good health for some time to come.

I’ve been spending time with Living Abroad in Costa Rica, an excellent source for anyone considering a move there or who enjoys Costa Rican lore. See the review Updates from All Over.

Please note that the Living Abroad books aren’t related to Network for Living Abroad or liveabroad.com/ However, we do think they do a fine job.

Send us your suggestions as to books, resources and news items. We like hearing from you.

A Book for All Seasons

Imagine healing a broken heart by living three months each in three exotic locales! That’s what Elizabeth Gilbert writes about in Eat, Pray, Love: One Woman’s Search for Everything Across Italy, India and Indonesia. I opened it not knowing what to expect, and while I don’t always enjoy books that make it to the best seller list, this one was a delight - funny, sensitive and finally, wise. 

Having undergone a protracted divorce followed by a love affair that ended badly, the thirty-something author takes off on her travels. With Rome as her first stop, she takes Italian lessons and indulges in gastronomic pleasures. I wish she had explored a greater variety of Italian foods but she’s no gourmet, just a young American with a taste for pizza and a need for comfort food. 

Her next stop is an ashram in India, where she arises before dawn to meditate, becomes friends with other acolytes and gains some serenity. Living in an ashram isn’t for everybody, to be sure, but the spiritual part of Gilbert’s journey is highly accessible. Finally she lands in Bali where she finds joy, generosity and even love, though not right away.  I found myself thinking, well, she could have just gone to Brazil in the first place....  Nevertheless, the section on Bali is where she shows the greatest sensitivity to the local culture.

I wish I had written about this book before Christmas or at least before Valentine’s Day because it would make a good gift for either of those occasions. It’s still not too late to buy a copy and share it or give it to some one special. I’d advise ignoring the negative reviews on Amazon but you can find out more about Elizabeth Gilbert at www.elizabethgilbert.com/ At her site, you’ll also learn what happened to her after the book ended, but please, don’t look until you’ve read the book. For those with a special interest in Indonesia, see Cool Maps of Indonesia: An Unauthorized View of the Land of EAT, PRAY, LOVE.

Make it a Serendipitous Year!

A new year, a new president in less than a fortnight and lots of problems we never expected. The financial world as we knew it has undergone a sea change. My interest in AIG, which I wrote about under International Investing, is more than academic. I worked for the company in New York after college, helping with a company magazine that reflected AIG’s worldwide reach. The morning’s mail might contain letters from Singapore, Manila or Sao Paulo. It was an exciting time and if anyone else who worked there happens to see this, I’d love to hear from them.

Partly to make sense of the recent cataclysmic economic events, I picked up a copy of Nassim Nicholas Taleb’s The Black Swan: The Impact of the Highly Improbable.

Most of us live with a false sense of security, Taleb maintains. We’re wired that way and the so-called experts, especially economists and statisticians, encourage us to think that things will stay pretty much the same. Then wham, the unexpected happens and catches us off guard. The world economy has just experienced a black swan event. The title refers to the fact that everyone thought swans were invariably white until black swans turned up in Australia. An options trader turned philosopher, Taleb writes with considerable wit and humor. The book is tough going at times but worth the effort, and its outlook isn’t totally grim as these quotes prove.

“We are so quick to forget that just being alive is an extraordinary piece of good luck, a remote event, a chance occurrence of monstrous proportions.”

“Imagine a speck of dust next to a planet a billion times the size of the earth. The speck of dust represents the odds in favor of your being born; the huge planet would be the odds against it. So stop sweating the small stuff. Don’t be like the ingrate who got a castle as a present and worried about the mildew in the bathroom. Stop looking the gift horse in the mouth – remember you are a Black Swan.”

I especially liked the advice - “maximize the serendipity around you.”

New York, Crime and Cricket

I’ve never been big on summer reading. I believe books are to be enjoyed year round and perhaps more than ever in the winter when there’s less to do outdoors. But in any event I’d like to recommend a novel I enjoyed very much,
Joseph O’Neill’s Netherland.

The hero is a Dutch expat, living in New York just after Sept. 11, 2001, working as an oil analyst for a major investment back (we don’t hear much about that), and becoming involved with cricket and a cricket enthusiast named Chuck, who is from Trinidad. (we do hear a lot about cricket). There’s an appreciation of New York that as rivals Woody Allen’s use of the city in his films. There’s enough about cricket to demystify the game or almost. And there’s a glimpse of small-time criminal activities as well. What happens, however, isn’t nearly as important as the way the story is told and it is told beautifully.

By the way, any Amazon purchase made after clicking on one of our Amazon links helps support our website. Whether you buy this book or read a library copy, as I did, get your hands on it.

Tell us what you’ve been reading as well as sending your ideas on great places to live.

Let’s Get Connected!

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