All the Light We Cannot See, by Anthony Doerr, won the Pulitzer Prize for fiction in 2015. As it definitely should have, because the book is absolutely fantastic.
Set in World War II, the book follows a blind girl, Marie-Laure LeBlanc, who lives in Paris. Her father creates intricate models of their neighborhood so that she can learn her way around by touch. Her father works at the Natural History Museum where Marie-Laure learns how to navigate her world, and he is also the keeper of a mysterious gem that is supposedly brings misfortune to whomever keeps it. It also follows a German boy named Werner Pfennig. He and his sister are orphans in a small coal mining town. He takes interest in radios and fixing things, eventually drawing the attention of the towns wealthy and earning him a place in an elite Nazi finishing school.
When the Nazis invade France Marie-Laure is sent to Saint-Malo to live with her reclusive uncle who, in his youth, made radio broadcasts in secret for children, radio broadcasts that Werner and his sister listened to. As the invasion progresses Marie-Laure and her uncle begin broadcasting again, all while the Nazis search France for the gem that her father has hidden.
This book is absolutely fantastic. The characters are brilliant and complex, the story is fantastic. The writing is amazing. The descriptions are geared less towards sight and more towards hearing. The result is a very unique reading experience. Everyone should check out this book. It really is amazing.
"Until I feared I would lose it, I never loved to read. One does not love breathing."
Harper Lee
To Kill a Mockingbird
This book gave me one of my favorite quotes on reading.
To Kill a Mockingbird won the Pulitzer Prize in 1961. This book has stayed extremely relevant. Its a commentary on racism, and the socioeconomic cause of it (those who are poor cannot afford lawyers to further their cause). I loved how race was examined through the eyes of a child. The over all message of it is one that we must do better. As the privileged we must do better to lift others up and knock down institutions that make things easier on us by making things harder on others.
This was a fantastic book. I read it for the We Read Drinks project that I do with Andi and Arielle (You should check out what we wrote for it here, its a bit more complete. I have a hard time writing about the same book twice).
Not a whole lot this week, everyone. Just packing and thinking about future projects. Though I did manage to make this video on the Magicians over at Between the Covers. Check it out! And more to come next week!
The Sixth Extinction, by Elizabeth Kolbert, won the Pulitzer prize for general non-fiction in 2015.
This book is important. Kolbert writes about the five major extinctions that have happened in the past, and examines the events leading up to them, all while looking at the way humans are causing a sixth extinction event today. She talks to meteorologists, paleontologists, geologists, biologists, and numerous other specialists, and examines data and trends to see what the next great extinction will look like and how it will effect us. She also looks at several different species, some extinct and some not, to see how their declines were alike and different.
The most interesting part of the book, was how humans might leave this extinction as their greatest legacy. Species go extinct all the time, but this is the first time it has happened at the hands of another species. This event is something entirely new. And extinction is a strange thing to wonder about. Will I someday have to explain to my children, or grandchildren, where the polar bears went and why there are no more elephants or rhinos? What will I say? Could we have done more of something, or ceased to do other things? Why didn't we care when caring made a difference?
These questions are important. They are questions that I feel I might never find adequate answers for. Kolbert helps to flesh out these questions, and show why they are important. Everyone should read this book. Everyone.
The Road, by Cormac McCarthy, won the Nobel prize in 2007. I read the book in 2008 during my last year in high school.
This was a book that stuck with me. It the story of a father and son walking south through America after a terrible disaster happens. The sky is always grey and dark, snow falls even in the summer, grey and ashy. The father has a terrible cough, and the son knows no other world. They have a pistol, a cart full of food, and their clothes.
I loved this book. The relationship between the father and the son is amazing. The father loves his son so much, and is trying to find a better place for him even though he has no hope that a better place exists. The darkness in the world is so understated, and it really makes the America that they live in feel real. People eating a new born baby, searching through homes for canned food, staying away from others in the dark; in this world, these are all just facts of life.
I loved the tragedy of this book as well. Through out the entire book, the father is sick and knows he is dying. He doesn't tell his son, instead he tries to prepare him for a life without him. I like how the father tries to teach his son hope, even though the father has had no hope except in his son for so long.
This is a great book. Though it is very dark, and at points gory, it has a beautiful story which shines even brighter against the backdrop. It's one I keep meaning to reread and never get around to.
After much thinking and debating, I have decided on a new challenge: the Pulitzer Challenge. I will be reading all Pulitzer Prize winners from the Fiction, General Non-fiction, and Poetry categories; a grand total of 248 books. I will be doing this over the next four years (cause I want to read and work on other things, like We Read Drinks and Between the Covers....you should check those out if you get a minute.) It will break down to a post a week (roughly), some weeks more than others.
I hope you all like this new project and keep tuning in! Happy Reading!
I miss blogging about books, so I will start posting again.
I am looking for a new challenge though. Maybe the Pulitzer Challenge, or maybe I'll read all of the Man Bookers. Please comment below and tell me what you think.
I've been working on several other projects. This week two of articles were published in the Durango Herald: the first on how writers have shaped the west, and the second a review of a climbing memoir, Sixty Meters to Anywhere.
There is also a new post from We Read Drinks, a blog where Andi, Arielle, and myself read books and drink drinks, on Moby Dick. Y'all should check it out!
I also started a YouTube channel called Between the Covers, you can watch my two latest videos here.
I look forward to posting again regularly and please let me know which book challenge you would like for me to tackle next.
As of the 8th of April, a year has come and gone. In that year I've read 107 books. That is a lot of books.
It has been fantastic. Some books I absolutely loved, while some books were just "meh." Some books reaffirmed beliefs I already had (feminism is important, as is immunization), while others contributed to drastic changes in my life (I am now a vegetarian). Some fiction touched me in such a way that I wish that I could read it again for the first time and think about the plot and the characters often, while other stories faded fast from my memory.
I feel like I learned a lot. I learned that I need to be more empathetic, and that entering into a conversation with someone about an issue can be extremely frustrating, but extremely worthwhile. I learned that sometimes it is important to give up on books that don't grab me by the first several pages.
Now that my year is over, I'm at a bit of a loss for what to do next. I've really loved writing about all the things I've read, though I am looking forward to not needing to read a book every three days (some weekends I just want to marathon Archer), and I would like to find ways to keep communicating about books, and issues that interest me.
If you have read this blog, I would like to thank you. Thank you for paying attention to me in all the noise of things that need attention on the internet. Thank you for caring about books enough to click the link, and thank you for putting up with my sometimes preachy prose. Thank you for everything.
I would also like to ask you. Would you like it if I continued some kind of book related blog? Would you read it, would you like to see different things in it? Would you prefer a different format (youtube, podcast ect...) What did you like about this blog, or what didn't you like? I would very much appreciate any feedback.
I'm hoping to stay involved with projects like this in the future (check out We Read Drinks by Andi B, Arielle S, and myself), and I will try to keep posting here occasionally to keep everyone posted.
Thank you for everything, and happy reading to you all.
"I suppose it's no surprise that we feel the need to dehumanize the people we hurt-before, during, or after the hurting occurs. But it always comes as a surprise. In psychology it's known as cognitive dissonance. It's the idea that it feels stressful and painful for us to hold to contradictory ideas at the same time (like the idea that we're kind people and the idea that we've just destroyed someone). And so to ease the pain we create illusory ways to justify our contradictory behavior."
John Ronson
So You've Been Publicly Shamed
People's behavior on the internet is often atrocious. It is this fantastic tool for spreading information, but often the things that are said are inappropriate and unkind. Part of the reason for this is that people have the ability to be anonymous. It's easy to be a bully when no one will call you out.
Jon Ronson explores why public shaming, specifically shaming that take place online, has made a comeback in today's society. Most forms of shaming we taken out of governmental laws for punishment in the late 1800's, not because they didn't work, but because they were so brutal. They have recently made a comeback on social media sites, and while conversation and transparency should be encouraged, the form of public shaming that occurs is just brutal, a form of bullying when it comes down to it, and the victims are often people with minor infractions.
Those who do the shaming are often not held accountable for the damage done and seldom any thought is given to how it affects the victim.
"I suppose that when shaming are delivered like remotely administered drone strikes nobody needs to think about how ferocious our collective power might be.. The snowflake never needs to feel responsible for the avalanche."
He explores the subtle sexism and racism that shows itself in what threats are used against different people (Do men people say "I hope you get fired), to women people say "I hope you get raped").
I liked this book. I think it is important, a sort of "How to be a Human Being on the Internet." It reminds us that, while we should be accountable for our mistakes, the punishment must fit the crime and social media public shaming is a punishment that is heave for the crimes that it is often used for. Ronson encourages us to be kind (that doesn't mean not standing up for whats right, bur it is in no way ok for anyone to wish job loss or rape on anyone, EVER!), and to pay attention to nuance, because it is important.
Everyone who is online should read this book. Everyone. Its funny and serious, a quick read that will have you turning pages.
"Because he knows you have to laugh at the things that hurt you just to keep yourself in balance, just to keep the world from running you plumb crazy. He knows my thumb smarts and his girl friend has a bruised breast and the doctor is loosing his glasses, but he won't let the pain blot out the humor no more'n he'll let the humor blot out the pain."
Ken Kesey
One Flew Over the Cuckoo's Nest
This one was part of the We Read Drinks project, and I highly recommend you check it out here!
"The process was slow and frustrating. What little information existed was veiled in in euphemisms and hidden in puritanical ellipses."
Ellen Feldman
A Terrible Virtue
Margaret Sanger was an amazing woman. She was one who I had never heard much about, but what she did has made my life so much better. She lived from 1879 to 1966, coined the term 'birth control,' was a sex educator, and started the organizations that would eventually lead to Planned Parenthood. My life would be unbelievably different if she had not existed.
Ellen Feldman tells her story in A Terrible Virtue, and fictionalized, first person account of Sangers life. Sanger was one of thirteen children, and she saw that poor women's inability to choose the amount of children they would have and when they would have them was dangerous to the women, and a means for keeping those who were poor poor (its hard to save money with another mouth to feed). Birth control was available, but only for men and only for the rich. She did enormous amounts of research into birth control, provided information on women reproductive health (much of the information was restricted, as were the procedures and medicine that would improve women's livelihoods), and worked to provide these services to all women who needed them.
I didn't much like the book. The writing was contrived, there was no nuance or subtlety, the narration didn't sound like a person, and the letters from others to Sanger were randomly dropped in seemed contrived and didn't add to the story. While it attempted to show the complexities of the woman herself, it didn't add much context to many of her complexities and the controversies surrounding her.
The story of Sanger, however, is fascinating and important. Her struggle shouldn't be forgotten, nor her goal to provide women with health care and the ability to control their lives and bodies by choosing if and when to have children. Her fight for women's rights should not be forgotten, and it should not be believed to be over.
"Such journeys have convinced me that it is not always possible to restore one's boundaries after they have been blurred and made permeable by a relationship; ourselves as the autonomous beings we previously imagined ourselves to be. Something of us is now outside, and something of the outside is now within us."
Mohsin Hamid
The Reluctant Fundamentalist
There is so much fear in the world today. So much fear, and not enough empathy. Terrible things have happened in the past several years. Terrible civil wars, acts of terrorism, people fleeing their home because it is the last chance they have. All of this amidst posturing and stereotyping, all on a world scale.
The Reluctant Fundamentalist is the story that a man named Changez, that he tells to a jumpy American in a cafe in Lahore, and his love affair with an american woman in the days immediately following 9/11 and the events that lead him to quit America and to return to his homeland.
This book was an incredible commentary on globalization, racism, espionage, and the mixing of cultures in a world where people seldom agree with one another. It was fantastic. Beautifully written, it was a wonderful examination on the nature of being a stranger in a foreign country, particularly a stranger whose foreignness is view negatively by the native populace, and the strange way the global politics is conducted.
"I stated to them among other things that no country inflicts death so readily upon the inhabitants of other countries, frightens so many people so far away as American."
The thing I liked the most about this book was how it examined how far the effects of Americas actions go, and how the average American seldom knows these effects.
Sunil Yapa’s debut novel, Your Heart is a Muscle the Size of a Fist, is a fantastic look at the differences in how people perceive the world, and how they deal with the existence of suffering. Set in the Seattle during the World Trade Organization protest in 1999, the novel weave several different stories together beautifully. Victor is a nineteen-year-old who ran away from home and his Chief of Police father after the death of his mother. King and John Henry are protesters preaching nonviolent protest trying to stop the meetings that will establish ‘free trade’ policies across the world, arguing instead for ‘fair trade.’ A trade delegate from Sri Lanka trying to find ways to bring his war torn home into the same arena as global leaders fights to find other ways to accomplish his goals, and two street cops deal with the conflicting emotions that arise when the city they are charged to protect becomes the targets they are told to defend against. The result is a beautiful, emotional, complex novel.
The story jumps rapidly between character to character, changing the point-of-view seamlessly. Yapa uses flashback, sentence structure, and dialogue extremely well so that there is never any question to whose head we are in. He couples this with complicated and intriguing histories for each character that makes their choices and interactions feel very real. They are complicated, at times contradictory, and they embody the ideologies that are at war between the protesters and the delegates. They all feel like real people that could be walking down the street on any given day, ones who may have been there on that day in 1999.
His use of language to convey emotion is masterful. He uses metaphor and description to portray how people would feel and react to traumatic events, and the effect is extremely realistic. He uses sentence structure to set the mood: short choppy sentences make time seem as if it is moving fast, longer, flowing ones accompany longer flowing thoughts as to the nature of the world and how such violence could exist.
While the story is set fifteen years ago, many of the issues that the characters grapple with feel extremely relevant. Victor is biracial and struggles with the differences between his white father's world and his own. The use of police force against the people they are policing is questioned, and the line between necessary force and brutality is blurred. There is a struggle throughout the book with the different ways people deal with and perceive suffering, between class, race, and nationality. The result was a fresh look at ideas that we are grappling with today.
Every once in awhile, a book comes along that makes you stop and think, to take a fresh look at the way we think about and discuss the struggles that we face. Yapa forces us to do this in Your Heart is a Muscle the Size of a Fist, and the result is a fantastic, exciting, thought provoking novel that feels extremely relevant, with characters whose struggles hit extremely close to home. The heart may only be a muscle the size of a fist, but, sometimes, it can swell to envelope everyone.
"It was purely an internal matter. Every kid past sixteen knew this fork, what the good guys did here, and the bad guys. Good guys stayed true to their love of science, their pursuit of knowledge for the good of humanity. Bad guys were venal. They made choices based on money."
Ginger Strand
The Brothers Vonnegut
If this is your first time to this blog, I really, really love the works of Kurt Vonnegut. I think his books are brilliant, honest, funny, and heart breaking. He does a fantastic job contrasting what we do as a society and a species against what we know we shouldn't. Most people know him for his book, Slaughterhouse-five, his book explaining the firebombing of Dresden. Vonnegut's personal life greatly influenced his work. But I had absolutely no idea how much.
In The Brothers Vonnegut, Ginger Strand follows the lives of Kurt and Bernard Vonnegut just after the end of World War II. Bernie was a scientist working on atmospheric studies, and Kurt was a (secretly) aspiring writer. Both of them ended up working at GE, in New York, a place that was every scientists dream for the short peace that existed momentarily between WWII and the Cold War, where money was abundant and scientists were encouraged to follow their curiosities and to discover knew things about the universe. Kurt and Bernie saw as these discoveries and the prevailing attitude towards science shifted from one of creation to one who's purpose was for war. These tensions greatly shaped the brothers lives as they struggled with the same deep questions. They led Bernie to make great discoveries that still affect us today (Project Cirrus eventually let to an examination on how man effects climate), and the questions that Kurt pondered in his books are ones we must answer today.
This book was fantastic. Strands storytelling is brilliant. It pulled me through the book quickly, and she moves between the two brothers flawlessly, brilliantly mixing their two stories to find the big questions surrounding science and morality that plagued both of them. She did a wonderful job relating both the technical scientific ideas and the complex moral ones, all while brilliantly relating the history of Project Cirrus, which changed the way we think about weather and climate.
Hey everyone! I just read the 100th book this year, but my year is not over yet. I still have until April 8th to end this project, and I am very curious to see how many books I can read. If you all will bear with me I think I can squeeze a few more in!
"Hope is an embrace of the unknown and the unknowable, an alternative to the certainty of both optimists and pessimists. Optimists think it will all be fine without our involvement, pessimists take the opposite position; both excuse themselves from acting. It's the belief that what we do matters even though how and when it may matter, who and what it may impact, are not things we can know beforehand. We may not, in fact, know them afterward either, but they matter all the same, and history is full of people whose influence was most powerful after they were gone."
Rebecca Solnit
Hope in the Dark
"The future is dark, which is on the whole, the best thing a future can be, I think."
Virginia Woolf
I sometimes feel overwhelmed. I feel that things are far from what they should be, and it sometimes seems that no matter how hard we fight, we will never get to the place where we should. Things sometimes feel desperate; sometimes it feels like we've barely made a step forward, only to be forced two or three steps back. I sometimes feel this way with a lot of things: women's rights, health care, living wages and affordable housing, war, climate change. Its often frustrating, often overwhelming.
In the book, Hope in the Dark, Rebecca Solnit addresses this question of why we should hope, especially when the problems that we need to solve seem insurmountable. She discusses why hope is valuable and necessary, especially when problems seem to be at their worst, and reminds us that things are never as dark as they seem. Often things are better than they were yesterday, and change is often extremely slow.
She also talks about many of the important and under reported movements lead by activists around the world and examines why they are often successful, even when they did not 'win' the day, and why they aren't talked about much in the United States.
Solnit (author of Men Explain Things to Me, A Field Guide to Getting Lost, and the Faraway Nearby) does all of this with masterful prose and beautiful composition. Her language pulls the reader through the book, covering a multitude of subjects (with occasional footnotes for the necessary backstory), and ties the book together extremely well.
This book is a must read for everyone. It shows us that our actions will always make a difference, even when the world is to dark to wade through, and sometimes acting when there is no light at the end of the tunnel is the bravest thing we can do.
"Maybe you can't kill somebody twice for real, but it sure hurts your heart just the same."
Sherman Alexie
Flight
Growing up is hard. Growing up is especially hard if you are a zit-faced, teenage Native America boy struggling through a hardly fail-proof foster care system like Zits is. Abandoned by his father at birth and after his mother died when he was six, Zits has a bunch of problems. He can't find a foster home that fits, he drinks a lot, he starts fires, and he does drugs. One day in prison he meets another teenager, named Justice, who convinces him to run away with him and to shoot up a bank full of people because of what whites did to the Native Americans. Right after he pulls the triggers, he finds himself spirited back in time into the body of one of the FBI agents working to bring down IRON in the 70's. His journey doesn't stop there. He leapfrogs from body to body across time, experiencing snippets of the lives of several different people: a Native American boy at little bighorn, a general in the US Army during one of the many massacres in the settling of the west, a pilot instructor reeling from the death of his Muslim friend from Ethiopia. Along the way he learns what it is like to walk in another mans shoes, and learns a whole different way of looking at the world.
I thoroughly enjoyed this story. I loved the way it looked at how our actions affect others, even if it is years later. I loved the way it looked at how connected we all are, and how two wrongs don't make a right. I loved how it looked at ways we could all be better as people, and the many reasons why what we are doing now is not enough. I loved this book.
I especially loved the character Zits. I loved the way that he described things, and how the language used really made you feel that you are in the head of a sad, hurt, and confused teenager. His character is fantastic, and I really love how the events that happen to him force him to consider really hard questions like those regarding shared cultural blame, absolute moral laws, trust and forgiveness. This was a truly fantastic book. Sherman Alexie is a magnificent writer.
"That's what I prayed for then: divine preservation of something I would never understand, the safeguarding of something I'd already lost."
"Everything I can say about what it means to lose, what it means to do without, the inadequate weight of the past, you already know."
Claire Vaye Watkins
Battleborn
Nevada is a strange state. Its large and beautiful, made up of basin and range as the state is slowly stretched apart. It's dry, held in the rain-shadow of the Sierra Nevada mountain range. Most population groupings are small, spread out, based on mining, with exceptions in Reno and Las Vegas. The Comstock lode put Nevada on the map, the civil wars need for silver making it a destination. It is a strange place. The Sagebrush Insurgency experiences a large amount of support, Manson was able to convince others to follow him into the hills. It is a fascinating and often overlooked state in the rush to get to booming California and whatever happens in Vegas is supposed to stay there, though it seldom does.
Nevada is the the theme of Claire Vaye Watkins (who also wrote Gold Fame Citrus) collection of short stories, Battleborn. It is a wonderful, dark collection that speaks on themes of desperation, isolation, and loneliness. Each story is different, some taking place in present day, either in the big cities or out in the rural wilderness, while others take place in the past, during the settling of the state when people considered it a vast and dry desert to be crossed on their way to the mountains full of gold. I loved it. Her characters are diverse, from men seeking their fortune to whores at a brothel outside of Vegas, an old rock hound to college kids fleeing Reno for the weekend. She changes voices flawlessly, and does an incredible job conveying what is happening in the characters heads.
One of my favorite stories is "The Diggings," which follows two brothers in the eighteen hundreds as they travel west to the mountains to search for gold. It bluntly shows the hardships that they experienced, which is so incredibly different from the glorified image we have of the settling of the west today. It shows the poor living conditions, the racism (mostly against the Chinese and the Native Americans), and how the greed drove people to do terrible things. The main character, Joshua, is often the voice of reason, and his kindness and realistic view of events was a fantastic contrast to the surroundings and drove home how cruel and brutal it was.
This collection was fantastic. Every story was well done, the characters all well rounded and complex, the storytelling beautiful, and the prose fantastic and gripping. I highly recommend it.
It was strange reading, though. I lived in Nevada when I was little, and I remember many of the places she talked about, the roads over the passes, the small towns of Beatty and Verdi, the mines out at Battle Mountain. I remember the places, but I was too young to really see some of the dark things that happened, to see the effects of drug and alcohol problems, the fall out from the mining. It is a beautiful place. It still feels empty out in the middle of the state, unlike most of the rest of the country. It is fantastic.
"Don't fake it till you make it, fake it till you become it."
Amy Cuddy
Presence
"Stand up straight."
Grandma Liz
What is presence, and how do we get it? This are the questions that Amy Cuddy seeks to answer in her book Presence. The answers she comes up with and the way that she presents them is entirely different than what I expected. I was expecting just another self help book that went into dominant posturing and tips on how to speak, but what Cuddy is talking about is something entirely different. Using tons of research, she looks into how posture can effect the brain, and how we can change that posture in order to bring our "biggest selves" to our biggest challenges. It was fascinating.
Cuddy examines the ideas of "power" and "presence" from several different angles. She looks at how differences in power effect peoples relationships (employers and employees), why the imposter experience is so widespread, and why post traumatic stress is so debilitating, and then examines how and why power posturing effects the body, and how it can be actively used to treat several different problems.
Throughout the entire book she does this compassionately with a wonderful dose of humor. She explains complicated neurological ideas very simply, and never stops asking questions to push her research to the next step. A great read for anyone who has ever dealt with anxiety, imposter syndrome, depression, fears of public speaking and so many more things. At the very least, check out her TED talk. You won't be sorry that you did.
"The dissonance they produce is not due to their being false, but to their being too accurate." Carol J. Adams The Sexual Politics of Meat
The Sexual Politics of Meat, by Carol J. Adams, is an extremely interesting book. It's well written, a feminist-vegetarian critical theory, which are two things that I didn't think were linked. This book was fascinating, and, truth be told, it got under my skin a little. Truth be told, it got under my skin a lot.
In the book, Adams examines how culturally ingrained misogyny is related to our cultural obsession with meat and masculinity. What is more masculine than eating a bloody steak? and a salad for the lady, please. It examines a history of vegetarianism among civil and sexual rights advocates, breaks down several of the arguments for and against vegetarianism, and looks at several examples of sexualizeing animals and animalizing women that are present in our culture. It extremely well done, so much so that it has me convinced.
Anyone who has ever wondered why eating a steak is manly, or why women who have been sexualized us metaphors of animal products do describe the experience should read this book. Everyone should read this book. It's changed my life, though I find it extremely difficult to talk about. So read it, and message me what you think.
"As it happened I did not grow up o be the kind of woman who is the heroine in a Western, and although the men I have known have had many virtues and have taken me to live in many places I have come to love, they have never been John Wayne, and they have never taken me to that bend in the river where the cottonwoods grow."
Joan Didion
Slouching Towards Bethlehem
I am convinced that Joan Didion has said the things she has said better than anyone whohas ever said them or ever will be able to say them. Her prose was beautiful, her composition spectacular, and her voice incredibly unique.
Slouching Towards Bethlehem is a collection of essays by Joan Didion. They range in subject from a murdering housewife to trips to Mexico, from John Wayne to the San Francisco drug culture of the 60's. She approaches all of these subjects with honesty, wit, and insight, and casts them onto paper masterfully.
Most of the pieces are centered around the idea of the 'American Dream,' what it was, where it went, and the lengths that people will go to find it, all the while questioning its existence and, if it ever did exist, whether it was a dream worthy of our desire.
I really liked this book. I thought the essays were masterfully done, and they were arranged in the perfect order in this book. Her prose is unlike any I have ever read before. Its lyrical, almost meandering through her thoughts, and then towards the end of each piece she ties her thoughts together in a way that is always poignant. If you haven't read it you should. I feel like this is one of those books that everyone should read at least once. Especially if you have lived in the west, or have ever contemplated the american dream.
"When Li Du finally went to sleep that night, he dreamed of being lost in a library whose books were spinning stars that would not remain on their shelves. They moved around him in bright circles and arcs, so that he did not know where he was or how to find the volume he sought."
Elsa Hart
Jade Dragon Mountain
I don't normally read mysteries. I often find that I'm extremely disappointed if I can guess the ending, I generally don't respect the characters on an intellectual level (after Sherlock Holmes, everyone else is so-so), and I often feel like I'm reading the script to a blues-clues episode. This was not the case with this book. It was extremely well written. Elsa Hart blends a spectacular cast of characters in this mystery set during a tumultuous China in the 1700's. Mixing several different characters from several different countries, it draws on the clashes that arise when two countries with different customs meet and have difficulty communicating.
Our hero is Li Du, an exiled librarian traveling through the outskirts of China. In the town of Dayan, just south of Tibet, a Jesuit priest is murdered in the magistrates house, days before the Emperor will visit and summon an eclipse of the Sun. Li Du must find the killer before the eclipse and salvage his honor, if he fails the disappointment of the Emperor could be fatal. Through the story he encounters a fantastic cast of characters: a storyteller from Egypt, or perhaps Arabia, a merchant from the Dutch East India Company, a nervous botanist, and a mistress that is as cunning as she is beautiful.
I really liked this book. The characters were fantastic, the use of place and historical political tensions added to the story, and the plot kept me guessing (there is a fantastic twist in the last twenty pages). I highly recommend this book. Something light and fun while still being engaging and exciting.
I don't read a lot of poetry, though I love hearing poetry read to me. I have a hard time finding the beat, the rise and fall of the tones, the pauses. I'm much better at listening to it. It helps when you know the person who wrote the poetry. In your head you can hear their voice, where they would place the pauses, and it helps the words hold their shape in the air.
That is how it was with this collection by Joel M. Jones. Joel comes into the bookshop often. He is one of those fantastic customers who makes a point of knowing your name, and having fantastic conversations about books, and meaning the question when he asks how your day is going.
This collection of poetry covers a vast range of subject matter, from the desert and a sense of belonging in the landscape of the south west, to academia and the strange disjoint between the hopes and dreams of teachers and students and the bureaucracy that finds its home in the system, to his birth and his fathers death. He talks about all of these things elegantly and poignantly.
I really liked this collection, though it seems weird reviewing poetry. It seems so personal, it feels much like having an opinion on the tragedy of a friend, or the joy of a sister. While the writing style can be separated from the events depicted, they are intertwined, and shouldn't be divided.
"One must have the nerve to assert that, while people are entitled to their illusions, they are not entitled to a limitless enjoyment of them and they are not entitled to impose them upon others."
Christopher Hitchens
Letters to a Young Contrarian
I have never read Christopher Hitchens before. I'd heard his name often, he has been mentioned in many of the books I've read, and is often portrayed as an asshole (I can see where people who say that are coming from). And seeing as I've been shaking the table a lot recently, and have been having a very hard time dealing with some of the injustices of the world, I figured Letters to a Young Contrarian would be a good place to start.
This book took me a bit to get into. Hitchens can be a bit of an ass. But once I got past that I really enjoyed it. It is written as a series of letters from Hitchens to a young man, outline different ways to deal with controversy and confrontation. He talks about how its okay to feel like you are beating a dead horse, because if the issue is important you do not want to give up on it. He talks about how there will be people who disagree with you, after all it wouldn't be controversial otherwise.
For the most part, it was well written. And it was reassuring to know that its okay to have backlash for standing up for something that you think should be obvious to others. I recommend
"Not long ago, I wrote an article about being young and female in Lagos. And an acquaintance told me that it was an angry article ant that I should not have made it so angry. Gender as it functions today is a grave injustice. I am angry. We should all be angry."
Chimamanda Ngozi Adichie
We Should All Be Feminists
A few days ago, I reposted an article on Facebook. It was an article on the subtle forms of discrimination, things that women experience often at the hands of wonderful, if sometimes thoughtless men. "8 Ways Men Don't Realize They Are Subtly Shaming Women." It's a good article. It points out things that many women experience and, sometimes, often, explaining why these behaviors, while seemingly harmless, aren't okay. The post got many likes, from both men and women. But it had some unintended reactions.
Two men, men that I knew personally (not just 'facebook friends') and thought highly of commented on, commented in negative ways. The first commented with "If you're offended by the way a large group of people (i.e. "males as a gender) speaks, the problem is not without, but within." This worried me. This man was telling me that my experiences in which I was treated as 'less' and many women who have had similar experiences with subtle systematic discrimination that the problem was all in our heads. This very behavior, is a large part of the problem, this writing off and discounting our experiences as women as 'inadequate.' I proceeded to call him out. Another man, one that had worked with over the winters responded, "This is a double-edged sword. Alleviating all woman or any victim of any and all responsibility to predict, prevent, or even subconsciously invite abuse, is to reduce them to hapless, incapable creatures, and in fact, re-victimizes them. Woman can think for themselves and don't need terms like 'internalized misogyny' or 'privilege' to victimize them and make it seem otherwise."
This astounded me. The response in itself seems absurd. The responsibility for any action should not fall on the subject. It is not the oranges fault that it is peeled by the child. It is not a mans fault if he is shot in a theatre. It is not the elderly couples fault if someone breaks into their house and steals their possessions. It is the child who peels the orange, the shooter who shoots the man, the burglar who robs.Why then is it deemed okay for this faulty logic to be used in cases of women? Why is it that when a women is raped, the question is always asked "why didn't she take the precautions to avoid the situation?" "Why was she walking home alone at night?" Why is it okay for the statement to even be thought "She must have been asking for it?"
These questions are not okay. The fact that society thinks that they are just shows the underlying assumption that women are, somehow, inherently guilty. This is absurd. It is not a woman's fault if she is raped, any more that it is the mans fault that he was shot, or the oranges fault that it was peeled. This same logic follows to small infractions, that happen and happen often.
The conversation digressed from there, and you can read all of it in the picture, but this was the part that really bothered me. This inherent blame of women, this very blatant discrimination. This idea that I was thought of as inherently less than these men due to the nature of my gender, regardless as to my skill set, my intelligence, my various merits. This idea that no matter how 'good' I was, I would
always be less. That I would never be an equal. And while this is something that I had experienced countless times at the hands of strangers, it was something entirely knew to experience this behavior and judgement from people who I had thought of as friends.
"The problem with gender is that it prescribes how we should be rather than recognizing how we are."
We Should All Be Feminists is a book by Chimamanda Ngozi Adichie, and is adapted from a TED talk of the same name. I fled here after this interaction in order to find a better vocabulary to express how I felt about this interaction, as well as to find community and comfort in reading the writing of someone who has experienced the things that I have felt, especially after I had been told that it was all in my head (you think I wouldn't be bothered being told that I'm crazy, or on my period, or hysterical, for being upset at poor, but socially acceptable, behaviors in others, but I have this irrational need to be liked). This speech is phenomenal.
Everyone should read this book. Everyone.This book is so important that every 16 year old in Sweden was bought a copy. It is only 48 pages long, so there is no excuse not to read it, and if you don't want to read it you can watch the TED talk. In it, Adichie talks on the effects, and absurdities, of sexism, and outlines the reasons that everyone should be a feminist. She talks on the effects, how it would be beneficial to not just women, but men as well. She explains why sexism is bad for not only women, but for men as well. And she does so extremely eloquently.
Sexism is something that almost all women, on all continents and in all cultures, will have to face. The few who don't are extremely lucky. It is not, however, a problem that we have to live with. It may be our culture now, but "culture does not make people. People make culture. If it is true that the full humanity of women is not our culture, then we can and must make it our culture." We must do better. Cause were we are now is not good enough.
"You can't ever reach perfection, but you can believe in an asymptote toward which you are ceaselessly striving."
Paul Kalanithi
When Breath Becomes Air
Death is something that is always present, but something that we never want to think about. When it does present itself, it often seems like a slap in the face, especially when it seems sudden, "before ones time." Paul Kalanithi examines our relationship with death, in the medical field and in literature, in his book When Breath Becomes Air.
At the age of 36, Paul was diagnosed with late stage lung cancer months before the completion of his training as a neurosurgeon. This book, published by his wife after his death, chronicles his journey, from his undergrad studies in literature to Stanford medical school to being a patient himself. He discusses the difficult decisions he made throughout his life: his choice to study and be a doctor, to strive to connect with his patients on a deeper level, to have a child with his wife even if there wasn't infinite time. He does this eloquently and thoughtfully, looking deeply into how we handle morality in our lives all the while facing his own.
This book was fantastic and sad. It was fantastically sad, and sadly fantastic. Well written, thoughtful. Kalanithi captured the essence of the human struggle, and he did it with compassion, logic, and love for his friends and family. This book was beautiful.
'After a pause he closed his eyes and asked, "Am I a tiger yet?"
I looked him up and down slowly, and then answered, "No."
"Why not?" he asked.
"Because it takes a long time," I answered.
"Why does it take a long time?" he pursued.
"Why? I don't know," I admitted, then added, "It takes a long time to turn into what you're supposed to be."'
Hope Jahren
Lab Girl
This book was so many things. It is a fantastic memoir of a woman who is so many things. It is a wonderful piece of writing on science and the way plants work and how we perceive them in our world. It is a magnificent examination of a relationship. It is funny, sometimes darkly hilarious and sometimes hopefully bright. If anyone only reads one book a year (which is a rather silly thing to do, books are awesome and everyone should read at least two) they should read this one. And I am sorry I am telling you about it now instead of in April when it comes out...so, pre-order your copies or reserve them at the library. Because this book is the bee's knees.
It is so hard to pin down exactly what I loved so much about this book. I don't know if it was finally reading a memoir of a woman who didn't stop doing what she loved cause she had a kid (why can't we have our cake and eat it too?), or the fact that she is so unapologetically passionate for science, and specifically plant science (if you missed kindergarten, trees are really important). I don't know if it was the honest critique of the way science funding is doled out in America, or the way Americans feel about curiosity driven research. "America may say that it values science, but it sure as hell doesn't want to pay for it." Maybe its how eloquently she writes, the grace with which she describes the natural world, and the humor she uses to explain how she feels about it. Maybe its the wonderful relationship she has with her lab partner that is so fantastically platonic, with no pressure to have something more, and how they see each other as they are. Maybe its the way she put word to how sexism has made me feel doing things that I love all my life, defining it as "the cumulative weight of constantly being told that you can't possibly be what you are." That thing that has often made me feel inadequate when I am more than qualified. Maybe its all of these things.
And for this book, I would like to thank her. This book meant so much to me. It made me feel that I am not alone in feeling the ways that I sometimes feel. It made me feel that its OK that I'm uncertain, OK that I'm not where I thought I'd be or that I don't have all the answers because things take time.
And to everyone else: I highly recommend this book. It is truly on a different level.
Let me list what this book is, and has, and does, so wonderfully. Not only is it good science fiction. But its science-y science fiction, with really physics, and principles that have been tested and proven in the real world. It is set in China, and not just China in modern day but peoples revolution China. Its well written, it conveys complicated abstract ideas beautifully, and it accomplishes all this translated from Chinese (it even has foot notes to explain historical nuance and puns that exist in Chinese and not in English). This book was fantastic. Liu Cixin is truly a writer to be reckoned with, and I cannot wait to read the next books in the series.
Set against the political backdrop of the peoples revolution in China and the prosecution of scientist and intellectuals, the story follows the life of a scientist who is involved in a top secret research project looking for extraterrestrial life, a physicist working on nanotechnology, and a cult that worships a lord that demands the killing of scientists.
This book was fantastic. I loved it. I think this was honestly one of the best science fiction books I've ever read, and I highly recommend it to everyone.
"Ancient Rome is important. To ignore the Romans is not just to turn a blind eye to the distant past. Rome still helps to define the way we understand our world and think about ourselves, from high theory to low comedy. After 2,000 years it continues to underpin western culture and politics, what we write and how we see the world, and our place in it."
Mary Beard
SPQR
Rome. By 63 BCE the city was made up of more than a million inhabitants, sprawling on the banks of the Tiber. It has captured our imaginations, from the assassination of Julius Caesar to Commodus' battles in the gladiatorial arena (the movie, it turns out, isn't to far off). Marcus Aurelius is still taught in schools and the fact that we still are responsible for the sidewalk in front of our house are remnants of this time.
But how did Rome become a large and powerful state? Mary Beard examines the rise of Rome from a small town in central Italy to an extravagant empire that stretched from Spain to Syria over the course of of a millennium. In doing this, she changes our historical perspective, instead of examining the lives of the great men (and in the case of Rome, they were all men) she looks at how the Romans themselves were effected by the lives of these great men: what they thought of republic and empire, how they responded to terrorism and revolution, how their thoughts on freedom and slavery changed. She also examines the stories often overlooked in traditional history, those of women, slaves, conspirators, and those on the losing side. The effect is marvelous.
Beard is extremely readable. She breaks down the history of Rome into several important events, looking at the large, overarching trends rather than the complicated events. This gives a unique and extremely interesting view of Roman history, examining the big shifts in thinking, the large changes in politics, looking at how stable society as a whole was during different times.
This book was phenomenal. A well researched, well written history of a place that still greatly effects the way we think about things and the way we govern ourselves today. A fantastic read that I highly recommend to anyone who has been to Italy (I definitely wish that I had read this book before I went), would like to go to Italy, or who has ever uttered the word "republic."
"So far as I can see, the future has no narrative. The future does not exist until it has become past. To a very limited extent, prediction has worked. The sun, so far, has set and risen as we have expected it to do. And the world, I suppose, will predictably end, but all of its predicted deadline, so far, have been wrong."
Wendell Berry
Our Only World
Climate change is, in my opinion, the toughest challenge humanity will ever have to face. Part of the trouble stems from a slew of 'deniers,' refusing to acknowledge that there is a problem at all. The other difficulty comes from how complex the issue actually is. From greenhouse gasses, to energy production, rising sea levels, and thawing permafrost. There are so many different facets, so many things leading into the problem, and we must try to find a solution to every single part of the equation.
In Our Only World, Wendell Berry examines how we use the land we have for production of food and timber, and has come to the conclusion that this method of production is unsustainable. In this collection of ten essays, he looks in depth into how we cannot sacrifice land health for production, and how we might remedy that, and reasons why we should support local farmers, who are more likely to take care of their land year after year.
I thought that this collection was fantastic. It is so often that the climate change problem is written of as a "find that one big solution" problem, and its not. Not only must we find cleaner ways of producing energy and ways of making our energy system more efficient, we must find ways to use less (make your car last 20 years instead of buying a new one every 5), not only must we find ways to capture the methane emissions of cows, we must have less cows (eat less meat, outside wrote a great article on it). It is a fantastic solution, one that may not always jib with the consumer society that we live in. It will be difficult. But the consequences are to dire for us to balk at the challenge. As Dumbledore once said, "we must choose between what is easy, and what is right."
"I'm getting used to this planet and to this curious human culture which is as cheerfully enthusiastic as it is cheerfully cruel."
"It has always been a happy thought to me that the creek runs on all night, new every minute, whether I wish it or know it or care, as a closed book on a shelf continues to whisper to itself its own inexhaustible tale."
Annie Dillard
Pilgrim at Tinker Creek
Pilgrim at Tinker Creek is a beautiful collection of observations that Annie Dillard makes about her home near Tinker Creek in Virginia over the course of the year. Starting at the end of winter, she describes her experiences of the place and how her observations shaped her world view, and how her world view shaped her observations and interactions with the other inhabitants at Tinker Creek.
I really liked this book. The way Dillard describes everything is fantastic. She has an incredibly unique way of describing her world. She asks questions and challenges the assumptions she has routinely, trying to reconcile the beauty and order that she finds in nature, with the harshness and seeming randomness that she also finds. She often describes this struggle using scientific knowledge that she has gained from books, and frames it against a backdrop of religious text. I really liked the scientific inquiry that she brought in, though her arguments and religious references sometimes seemed forced.
Her prose is phenomenal, the way she phrases things is beautifully blunt, whether talking about where she finds home or how unique having an interior skeleton is among most of the animal kingdom.
"The general rile in nature is that live things are soft within and rigid without. We vertebrates are living dangerously, and we vertebrates are positively piteous, like so many peeled trees."
She does a fantastic job making her statements about the way the world is intensely personal, which is a feat when so many pit us against nature: we are separated by clothes we've made and shelters we've built. She breaks down this barrier and makes the connections clear, all the while not discounting the differences between all living things.
First: I've been published! It's a review in the Durango Herald of the kids book the Star Bright Factory. I can now be a for real professional writer!
This might lead to a bit of a lag in post on this project, just because if I read a book and want to get it published I can't have it published online, Though things will get posted once they are in print or the pitch has been denied.
Second: New Blog!!!! It's the We Read Drinks project, where we read books and drink drinks. Books that I haven't read yet still count for this project. The first one we read is To Kill a Mockingbird. Which is awesome, check out the review at we read drinks!
As we slide from 2015 into 2016, I would like to participate in the tradition of reflection, and it comes to you like Aristotle's soul: in three parts.
First, I would like to apologize for only four posts in the month of December. Throughout the winter I work two jobs: one as a bookseller at a small, independent bookstore and the other as a rental tech at our local ski area. December is super busy at both, so I have mostly been working and sleeping. I promise over the coming months to read more and do better.
I would also like to look back at the books I have read in the past year, talk about my favorites and the ones I think are the most important. In the past year I have read 104 books, 80 of which are included in this project (twenty left, and four months to read them in). A mixture of fiction, and non-fiction (I've failed in the reading of a romance), I would like to give you two different lists: the 7 most important books I've read, and my 7 favorites.
The most important books I've read this year are:
1. Black Earth by Timothy Snyder
2. The World and Me by Ta-Nahesi Coates
3. 6th Extinction by Elizabeth Kolbert
4. All the Wild that Remains by David Gessner
5. Missoula by Jon Krakauer
6. On Immunity by Eula Biss
7. End of Night by Paul Bogard
My favorite books that I've read this year are:
7. War of the Encyclopaedists by Christopher Robinson and Gavin Kovite
6. Water Knife by Paulo Bacigualupi
5. Martian by Andy Weir
4.All the Wild that Remains by David Gessner
3.Frankenstein by Mary Shelly
2. Fates and Furies by Lauren Geoff
1. Black Sun by Edward Abbey
These are all fantastic and I highly recommend them.
Lastly, I would like to talk about what I am hoping to achieve in 2016. I'm planning on completing the Year in 100 books project. There are four months and 20 books left, and I am greatly looking forward to reading these books. I've really enjoyed this project and hope that I will be able to work on more projects like this in the future.
This year I will also be working on my first joint project. Andi (writer of the Survival of the Twenties), Arielle, and myself will be reading all of the books, and drinking all of the drinks in Tim Federle's book Tequila Mockingbird and writing about them. Check it out at We Read Drinks. Were hoping to have our first post out in the next couple of weeks.
I hope that everyone has had a wonderful New Years, and I hope that everyone will have a great year filled with wonderful books!
Set in World War II, the book follows a blind girl, Marie-Laure LeBlanc, who lives in Paris. Her father creates intricate models of their neighborhood so that she can learn her way around by touch. Her father works at the Natural History Museum where Marie-Laure learns how to navigate her world, and he is also the keeper of a mysterious gem that is supposedly brings misfortune to whomever keeps it. It also follows a German boy named Werner Pfennig. He and his sister are orphans in a small coal mining town. He takes interest in radios and fixing things, eventually drawing the attention of the towns wealthy and earning him a place in an elite Nazi finishing school.
