Paris to the Moon, Adam Gopnik (2/52)

Largehearted Boy reads a book a week and keeps a record of it on his blog. I wanted to try it this year, but I was unsure whether I could keep up. But now - nearly a month in - I can say that, including graphic novels, I’m well over the quota, so far.

So the second book I read this year was Paris to the Moon, by Adam Gopnik, which I’ve wanted to read for quite a while. Excellent stuff. Written in Gopnik’s timeless style, he muses about life in Paris around the turn of the millennium.

I particularly liked this bit in the intro. Speaking of journalism he says,

If there is a fault in reporting, after all, it is not that it is too ephemeral but that it is not ephemeral enough, too quickly concerned with what is small and more likely to linger. It is, I think, the journalist’s vice to think that all history can instantly be reduced to experience.

Also, worth noting is his compelling health care debate with Malcolm Gladwell from nearly ten years ago. Gladwell has
since retracted his stance (arguing for privatization), but Gopnik’s arguments are more relevant than ever.

Says Gopnik, “I would rather pay the extra money and know that everyone I looked at on the subway was not going to worry about how they were going to pay for their kid’s illness.”