Right now, One hundred years of solitude by Gabriel García. I have been taking a break from scifi and nonfiction to enjoy some classics. The latest book I've read just before this one were

1. The Dictator's Handbook by Bruce Bueno de Mesquita and Alastair Smith. They present a compelling argument for their framework to understand political structure and action based on the size of the coalition. The book is actually a condensed, much more readable version of the academic research of both authors. It was both a depressing and exhilarating read (as implied by the title, the whole book has a very sarcastic tone). It was also very interesting many of their arguments also apply in corporate environments just as they do in "normal politics"; the corporate power structure is not that far removed from the royal palaces of the kingdom or more generally from a dictatorship. Recommended read.

2. Social Acceleration by Hartmut Rosa. This one was a though read, but absolutely illuminating. It presents an extremely clear analytic analysis on why we increasingly feel like like "we don't have enough time".

It starts by arguing how the preception of time in the preindustrial age was slower than the industrialized one (in short, mostly because in the preindustrialized society major sociotechnological change took longer than thee generations to occurr, making your life look not that different than from those of your parents and grandparents), and then it discusses the age of industrialization (standardization of national time, introduction of schedules for factory working hours) which by necessity introduced "temporal structures" to coordinate these new massive social structures. Also, the rate of technological progress became such that your life was no longer like your parents and grandparent's one, i.e. there were major inter-generational sociotechnological changes; Further, compounded on top of that was the secularization of western society and the romantic belief that enjoying more wordly experiences (as opposed to the afterlife) implied living a fuller or "more complete" life, introducing the need to experience more and faster to the masses (cf. mass tourism etc.).

Finally it reaches the (post)modern age where the author argues that the introduction of instant worldwide communication (& internet) began eroding the temporal structure of the 20th century since they are no longer needed, as the technology now allows for (nearly) instantaneous coordination (eg. home working, international firms, etc). Moreover, technological progress is also accelerated as the internet allows for faster global exchange of ideas between more people.

However, even though we are freed from the "temporal structures" of the 20th century we are not going back to the preindustrial slower perception of time. On the contrary, because we still have these structures and can now bring about major changes even faster there is intra-generational sociotechnological change, i.e. society can change by a lot more than before within your own lifetime. So even though we have supposedly "more time" thanks to the efficiency introduced by technological advancements, we actually end up feeling like we have less because of how fast change occurrs. And this is does not refer only to greater social change, but also to the life of the individual that is increasingly filled with last minute rescheduling and planning changes that reach them outside of working hours.

Parallel to all of this, the internet also allows to experience more, faster than any other technology before. This latches on the romatic idea of the previous century and naturally leads to the current "attention span crisis" induced by the exploitation of this myth by tech companies. All of this, of course, is not good for your psyche as people need to have some constants in their lives, and the author concludes with a warning on the effects of indefinitely sustained social acceleration.

So that was the gist of it, more or less. The book has a lot more (eg. connections to the capitalist economic model, the problem(s) all of this causes to the construction your own identity) but as I said it is rather though to read because of its academic style of writing. Not recommended unless you're motivated, but I wanted to share the author's ideas, since reading this book really helped me to find more time in my life by seeing _why_ I felt like I had none.