I Am Not Sidney Poitier

I Am Not Sidney Poitier follows a man called Not Sidney Poitier from his hysterical birth to his unlikely and unofficial adoption by Ted Turner and beyond. It’s a wry novel that made me think of Paul Auster, Charles Bukowski, John Kennedy Toole and Kurt Vonnegut all at once and not at all.

Doughnut Economics: Seven Ways to Think Like a 21st-Century Economist

Kate Raworth is an economist who works in the area of environmental change and the junction of economic and ecological issues. I came across her in a reference to Doughnut Economics in Mariana Mazzucato’s Mission Economy. In a nutshell, Raworth believes that the pursuit of constant economic growth is outdated, a factor in the degeneration of the planet and the gulf between rich and poor, and a more distributive, doughnut-shaped economic model focused on thriving rather than growing is the future for the 21st century.

There’s a 15-minute TED talk on Raworth’s website that explains the theory. The book is the detail that underpins Raworth’s eloquence on a stage. You don’t need to know any economics to read the book as Raworth explains everything you need to know clearly and simply. You do need to have more than a passing interest in economics and how it affects your life, though, because there’s a lot of economics between the covers.

Six Degrees of Separation: From Born to Run to Dangerous Liaisons

Is it really April already? That means it’s time for Six Degrees of Separation, the book meme hosted by Kate at Books Are My Favourite And Best where we start with the same book and then create a chain of six books that link to the one before. Sometimes kismet allows you to link all of the books to each other, but it’s okay if it doesn’t. You don’t have to have read any of the books in the chain, either. Which is handy for me because I’ve rarely read Kate’s starting book.

This month, Kate’s starting book is Bruce Springsteen’s autobiography Born to Run. I haven’t read it. I’m not that interested in Bruce.