Books

Hillbilly Elegy

A kid grows up in a poor, dysfunctional family and somehow makes it into Yale. 

My wife, a devoted memoir reader, read this when it came out and hated it. The only books we’ve ever mutually loved have Harry Potter in the title, so this was a positive signal for me. 

Turned out there wasn’t much to love nor much to hate in my experience. The writing was respectable but not remarkable. The story was familiar for those of us who grew up in socioeconomically analogous communities. Same with its insights—nothing too surprising. That is, unless you’re a coastal elite in a bubble, and then it apparently blows your mind. 

For a directly comparable masterpiece of the genre, read The Glass Castle. For a similar story with different textures, read Angela’s Ashes or This Boy’s Life. 

Three stars for its class, mostly unexceptional.

The Wealth of Nations 

Adam Smith invents modern economics at a glacial pace. 

This was a grind. Even with the benefit of knowing what to look for, it’s exhausting to extract the core theses from the interminable illustrations of silver prices and pin factories. 

It’s one of those enlightenment works that felt zero urgency and zero obligation to cater to its reader. It’s a degree of authorial selfishness that’s inconceivable in 2025. 

And you’re going through all that just to mine out a handful of economic ideas that come to modern readers with mothers’ milk. 

Despite what the other book says, reading Adam Smith will not change your life, except that it’ll wipe out forty hours. 

I guess it’s a five star book as a historically influential work, but don’t bother reading it unless you’re consciously courting the clout. 

As an actual reading experience, it’s a two. Read Basic Economics instead, which is more entertaining, more edifying, and less demanding.

lol I tried this too after reading and listening to Russ Roberts and had a similar experience 😆