The books we read (Or why men love bitches)

A friend one time asked me for book titled “Why men love bitches.” I was shocked to learn the title was not available in all the bookstores I called.

“It’s selling like hotcakes,” a Powerbooks staff told me.

“You mean all the girls these days want to be bitches?”

It’s probably a zeitgeist, the spirit of the age. About a decade or two ago, girls in my circles were crazy about the works of Antonio Gramsci, Franz Fanon, Karl Marx and other “socially relevant” writers. They wanted to reengineer society. Now, many simply want to be “bitches,” to be winners in life, be it in the realm of relationships, business, or career.

Times have changed. Apparently, Francis Fukuyama didn’t call the collapse of Berlin Wall “the end of history” for nothing.

But come to think of it, zeitgeist actually shapes our reading habits—or at least, my reading habits. Not the other way around.

Recently, I found myself reading books about snipers (War of the Rats; One Shot, One Kill, Sniper One, Point of Impact). I seemed to have lost interest in political economy, international trade, or globalization. Maybe it’s because all these books are proving to be inadequate to explain the global financial and economic mess were are in. Remember Alan Greenspan’s “The Age of Turbulence”? Or Thomas Friedman’s “The World Is Flat?” I use to read these types of books. Since September 2008, however, they all started to look like the works of charlatans.

Why books on snipers? It’s probably an escapist thing, a passing fancy.

In these times of uncertainty, however, books on snipers are getting to be interesting. In the world of a sniper, a problem is analyzed through a 12-power scope and solved with a well-placed shot. The world is simple: you are either on the right side the barrel, or the wrong side.

I still keep Plato’s the Republic at my bedside, though.