On the value of checklists, simplicity and complexity, and communism

The Checklist Manifesto, by Atul Gawande (Profile, £12.99)

1. Select book from tottering stacks; scrutinise jacket; decide is potentially interesting; find pencil; begin reading. 2. Wince in fascination at a couple of medical near-horror-stories. 3. Smile when the author says his book is about "eptitude" – not competence, but the ability to use that competence consistently. 4. Find out that the checklist was invented by the US Army Air Corps for its test pilots in the 1930s. 5. Remark that use of checklists has become a central part of "evidence-based medicine". 6. Express surprise at surgeon author's description of many doctors as still resistant to following checklists, thinking of them as "nursing stuff". 7. Follow author around a building site to learn lessons from architectural engineering (they use checklists), and up in the air to experience simulated aviation disaster (averted by checklists, mostly). 8. Enjoy reference to Van Halen. 9. Begin to feel as though checklists really could improve everything, from chefing to finance, as well as surgery; conclude book is important as well as absorbing. 10. Glance at word count. 11. Try to think of witticism to end review. 12. Make coffee. 13. Consider drawing up coffee-brewing checklist.

The Perfect Swarm, by Len Fisher (Basic Books, £13.99)

1. Marvel at opening image of 97 locusts being strapped down to watch Star Wars while scientists record their brainwaves. 2. Notice that this book shares a theme with The Checklist Manifesto – that simple rules can help us manage complicated affairs – though we get there by a different route. 3. Observe author's skilful elucidation of findings about insects, cellular automata in mathematics, financial networks, decision theory, "viral" marketing, dating and so forth, the message being that complex behaviour can "emerge" from apparently simple rules. 4. Note, however, that there is no proof that such rules are actually operating in nature or somehow at the base of social affairs: this amounts to evidence by analogy. 5. Approve therefore of author's final proviso: "Simple rules, patterns and formulae can often help us steer our way through, but in the end it is the complexity that rules. OK?" 6. Find oddly moving Fisher's confession that he suffers from "the inability to recognise faces", and that he once managed to identify his wife in an airport by means of her hat.

The Communist Postscript, by Boris Groys (Verso, £12.99)

1. Attempt to make sense of argument that a) the "medium" of capitalism is money, and the "medium" of politics is language, but b) you can argue only in language, and not in money, "so" c) society must "become communist" before it can be "subject to criticism". 2. Wonder how Groys is able to criticise western society given that "In capitalism [. . .] language is indeed powerless". 3. Raise eyebrow at claim that "all speech that is presented as logically valid is sophistical"; observe mildly that Groys's own writing is presented as logically valid. 4. Admire some sardonic diagnoses, such as this on most "critical discourse in the West": "Where are people not traumatised? [. . .] Where is the human not threatened by the machine? The answer is that this is the case everywhere. The sales potential of this critique is therefore potentially infinite." 5. Lift other eyebrow at vision of "infinite finance" which would "transform the entire world into a Deleuzian body without organs"; ponder whether this is a consummation devoutly to be wished. 6. Finish book oddly refreshed, though with severe fatigue in muscles behind eyebrows. 7. Wonder if there is a future in checklist reviews. 8. Uncork supper. 9. Begin to feel checklists really could improve everything, from chefing to finance and surgery; conclude book is important as well as absorbing. 10. Glance at word count. 11. Try to think of witticism to end. 12. Make coffee. 13. Consider devising coffee-brewing checklist.