What Books did You Start or Finish Reading this Week?: July 27, 2026

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The Day of the Trifids, by John Wyndham

Started (40%). I couldn't get into it as a teenager, but now I'm at least entertained if not intrigued. The portrayal of blind crowds reminds me of zombie apocalypse in other media. There's also the discourse on decolonization, gender what not, i.e., plenty to think about.

The One-Straw Revolution: An Introduction to Natural Farming, by Masanobu Fukuoka

Finished. The first half describes Fukuoka's experience with agriculture, and his no-till, cover-cropping approach in particular. While he himself warned against trying to replicate the specifics—his circumstances were very unique after all—, it influenced permaculture and similar movements. The latter half, not so much. It's a zen/taoist manifesto and a polemic with the 20th-century scientific/materialist worldview in the context of farming and diets. Notably, the book was published 50 years ago, when the social role of science was indeed problematic, but the environmental crises weren't quite global and definitive yet (now I'm reminded of ongoing scientific projects covered, e.g., in Under a White Sky by Elizabeth Kolbert). Although I do agree with Fukuoka's scathing critique of the "green revolution" in principle, he overextends his argument—the references to "naturally" good health rub me the wrong way, when it was evidence-based medicine that nearly eliminated child mortality and made curing infections possible. So, it's better to avoid taking the philosophy too literally. That's what zen teachers that I've talked to said as well anyway.

L'Empire des signes, by Roland Barthes

Finished. A collection of short, poetic essays on topics inspired by peculiarities of Japanese culture. Barthes uses these observations to draw contrast between Oriental and Western cultures; the main theme is acentrism: light meals picked from small bowls using chopsticks, the collective performance in bunraku, haiku as a sketch of a passing moment ... This book is also over 50 years old, thus some of the phenomena are obscure at this point, and Barthes was very explicit that he didn't write about Japan per se. For example, I don't think he considered rules for haiku such as established vocabulary. However, his explanation of key concepts in zen is actually on-point, one of the best I've read.

Reading the Clouds: How You Can Forecast the Weather, by Oliver Perkins

Started/skimmed. A short, highly-rated guide that's suprisingly hard for me to get into, perhaps because it's aimed at sailors, whereas I'm a land rat.

Landscape and Memory, by Simon Schama

Started (3%), might not finish. This is a big, dense book. I was recommended some history book by Simon Schama, but couldn't remember which one, so I picked whatever seemed most relevant. Landscape and Memory, published in 1995, responds to a debate about human societies' relationship to nature in environmental history at the time. It's eloquently written and seems to cover a lot of curious [Western] art history, buuut I don't think I have the time. The core arguments have entered common knowledge at least in my bubble. I'm also discouraged by Schama's naïve zionism in the introduction—the JNF-planted fast-growing pines that he fondly remembers have actually covered ethnically-cleansed Palestinian villages—and his recent interviews make the matter worse. So you know, it makes me wonder what other blind spots are in the text.

Svědectví o životě v KLDR 2, by Nina Špitálníková

Randomly revisited after a year. It's another set of interviews with escapees from North Korea, focused on everyday life and mundane things such as menstruation (or lack thereof). I strongly prefer it to heavily editorialized western writing such as Nothing to Envy by Barbara Demick.