"A Gentleman in Moscow" by Amor Towles (2016)

Count Rostov is a rooted cosmopolitan and a gentleman. A gentleman is an optimist. An optimist seeks to master his circumstances lest he be mastered by them. A gentleman has his most valuable possessions always on him at all times: memories, friendships, languages, and logical structures. Rostov lives as if there were tomorrow.

Like Starbucks, like a product of many a multinational, the Hotel Metropol is an Embassy of Civilisation. It is a whore---the best one money can buy. It is an education. It is where life comes to expose herself to you if are too busy to live or are otherwise engaged.

A rooted cosmopolitan, Amor Towles cherishes the language, for he knows---just as his protagonist does---that the journey will be a long one, and that language is a dependable companion, especially when spoken with Nicholas Guy Smith's versatility.

But Towles delicately blows his own cover. He does not bow down before fate. He celebrates a moment of supreme lucidity accompanied by an opportunity to act.

Inside Bill's Brain: Decoding Bill Gates (2019)

This vulgarly titled mini-series is an alien's look at a man who thinks, a species that is on the brink of extinction in public life but is probably still familiar first-hand to most viewers. The species also reads. And then reflects on what it has read. Which is supposed to be a shocker, as is Gates's admission that he does not seek to inspire but rather to be effective, to optimise. Nor is the failure to eradicate every single case of polio or to solve the world's energy problem is Gates's personal failure---or indeed a failure at all. There are guiding problems in mathematics, in science, and in each individual's life, which are not meant to be solved but rather to inspire and direct smaller victories.

The series is worth watching if only to observe Gates's fast, incisive mind and his superior interior designs. Gates is intelligent and erudite enough to salvage any conversation. His offices are cosy, conducive to work, and rivalled only by the views of Washington. The ever-in-the-frame troop of Coca-Cola cans is a reminder of Gates's proletarian allegiances. He optimises all that which is both a necessity and a luxury for each of us: a toilet, a drink, an operating system, electricity.

Westworld (Seasons 1, 2 and 3)

The series is concerned with the noblest of all pursuits: the pursuit of immortality. The show has its moments, which are mostly concerned with winning lighting and Ed Harris. While the entire show appears to have been written by a sizeable committee, Season 2 was likely crowdsourced on Amazon's Mechanical Turk, with contractors majority-voting on each scene and every directorial decision. A team of copywriters must have been charged with writing not-too-tired one-liners, to be pasted on buses and, if good enough, fed to Anthony Hopkins's and Ed Harris's characters, as their contracts must have specified. Speaking of contracts, it seems that starlets view sex as career sinking and violence (if delivered, not received) as career enhancing, and make sure to craft their contracts accordingly. The audiences have to suffer through the consequences, of which Season 2 the worst offender.

Overall, what's missing in Westworld is a vision and passion. Instead, the show is a well-connected machine held together by professionalism.