Tinkers

"When his grandchildren had been little, they had asked if they could hide inside the clock. Now he wanted to gather them and open himself up and hide them among his ribs and faintly ticking heart."

Paul Harding

Tinkers

This story had an amazing opening line: "George Washington Crosby began to hallucinate eight days before he died." Tinkers is the story of an old man on his death bed, remembering his childhood and his father who disappeared when he was a child. As time collapses in his mind, the story jumps back and forth as he processes the trials and triumphs that was his life.

This book was wonderful. The language was beautiful storytelling breath taking. It was filled with beautiful sentences, for example: "I was just thinking that I am not many years old, but that I am many years wide," and "the universe's time cannot be marked thusly, such a crooked and flimsy device could only keep the fantastic hours of unruly ghosts." 

The characters as spectacularly complex, working through various emotions and they are described in a way that is so very real. I can definitely see why this book won the Pulitzer in 2010 and I highly recommend this book. It is a wonderful book club book (its our Rebel Alliance pic for this month), and a short one, so you can easily fit time to read it into a busy schedule. Short, sweet, you won't regret reading it. 

Dispatches From Dystopia

"Others will speak in mournful tones of what is lost, what I call rustalgia. As opposed to ruins porn, rustalgia can help show how sketchy is the long standing faith in the necessity of perpetual economic growth."

Kate Brown

Dispatches From Dystopia

This book piqued my interest, initially, because it was in the travel adventure section in the store. A travel adventure about the places that no one wants to go is bound to be interesting. So, I picked it up and was not disappointed.  Kate Brown tells a very interesting story; the book is a genre bender. It could easily fit in history, social sciences, and biography. 

In the book, the author talks of the trips that she has made to Russia for historical research. By including herself in the narrative, something that few do in academic writing, she allows us to see how she has shaped the stories she found, either by the questions she asks or the topics she focuses on. By doing this, she argues that history is tied to place. She looks and interviews people in Ukraine and Russia that were involved in the resettlement that occurred, and compares their stories to those told in the united states, particularly in the west and Midwest during the turn of the century. The stories of the people from those two very different parts of the world are not as different as you might think.

I enjoyed this book. The writing is academic but highly accessible, and by including her own narrative the author made the stories very relate-able. A mixture of biography, anthropology, travel memoir, and academic essay, this book kept me on my toes, and was a wonderful look at life in the USSR.   

Man is the Creature He Fears

'"Imp" is too kind. "Savage" too human. 
Malorie is not only afraid of the things that wade in the river, she is also fascinated by them.
Do they know what they do? Do they mean what they do?"
Josh Malerman
Bird Box

Bird Box, by Josh Malerman, is probably the scariest book I have ever read. People begin to suddenly go mad and kill those around them, and then themselves. Reports circulate that they have seen something. Five years after these events began to occur, Malorie lives in an abandoned house with her two small children. The windows are boarded up and they only go outside with blindfolds on. Her children have never seen the sky. This book follows them on a journey to a safer place, a terrifying journey twenty miles down river, while something follows them.

This book was phenomenal and utterly terrifying. Malermans use of flashbacks and language had me on the edge of my seat the whole time I read this book. Not one to read at night, it is an interesting look into how humans might act and survive when encountering and truly unknown being that causes such extreme reactions. If you like horror, this is the book for you. So well done.

10 Reasons Why Books are Better than Boyfriends

In the not too distant past, I was dumped by a guy I was seeing because I didn't text him back while I was reading. While this was, indeed,  good riddance to him, I was a bit baffled by the behavior. It hardly seems that me not texting back for the couple of hours I was reading would be cause for this kind of a reaction. I came to the conclusion that it must not have been the lack of texting, but the reasons for my digital absence. Maybe he felt like he was competing with the book for my time, and maybe he felt that he was threatened.
This wasn't the first time I've seen this weird social connotation with girls and books, either. From guys who have said that they "wouldn't want a girl who hung out a bookstore all the time," to "you read an awful lot, is it cause you don't like to chill with guys? Are you a lesbian," these comments have been said, and I had no response to either absurdity. While I'm not sure what my love of reading has to do with my desirability or my sexual orientation,  there is definitely a weird Beauty and the Beast treatment with girls who read, they are, apparently, a little odd. So I would like to set the record straight and give you 10 reasons why I will always choose books over boys (or girls, ambiguity can be nice).

1. No matter what happens, books wont loose their spine.

2. A book will never wake up in the morning and tell me it doesn't love me anymore.

3. Books can always afford to take me on big locations to far off places, 

4. Books aren't needy and will understand if I have to put them down for awhile to focus on work, or boating, or need to see other books for awhile.

5. If the boyfriend is more interesting than the book, the book wont get jealous if I spend some time with the boyfriend. If the book is more interesting than the boyfriend, the boyfriend will. 

6. The book loves me unconditionally and will be happy to be read again, no matter how long its been.

7. This book makes me feel like a space pirate......(if a boy could do this, maybe I wouldn't be reading the book).

8. Books don't need me to get serious. I can take as much time as I need, and read as seriously as I want.

9. Books are cheaper than dinners out (they tend to last longer too).

10. I love books, and have all my life. I just met you, lets not jump to hasty conclusions.

Why Science Fiction is Important

Sci-fi. A very unique genre that predicts a far flung future. In bookstores and libraries, it’s often grouped in with fantasy. There, however, is a very large difference between the two. Fantasy deals with the impossible, while science fiction deals with the improbable. This distinction is  very important, for while it may be improbable, the events that occur in science fiction are definitely possible, and sci-fi, and the values often shown in the books, are very important to society.

First off, fiction in general strengthens the imagination and expands our horizons. It shows the world as it could be. Sci-fi does this in a scientific, pragmatic way. Many things first dreamed up in sci-fi have been invented, from vehicles capable of flight to cell phones, and it drives us to explore different ways we could create the future (if you want to learn more about inventions inspired by sci-fi, check our this video: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=7dLSOIVk61k).

Fiction, in general, is also a lesson in empathy, it helps us to see how things could be from another person's point of view. Science fiction widens this view to artificial intelligence and alien life-forms, two things that are, scientifically, possible. These are things that we might have to deal with in the future (with the case of artificial intelligence, maybe the not too distant future), and it helps to have a template of what could happen, what could go right and, maybe more importantly, what could go wrong.

The most important thing, I think, that Sci-fi shows us is what we are capable of when we look upon the human species as a whole. How our actions are when we view ourselves as nationality vs. other nationalities, our religion vs. other religions, and our class vs. other classes and how they would be different if we stepped back and viewed ourselves as a species, floating in space on a little blue dot.

Science Fiction opens our minds to the possible futures we may someday live in. We have to start looking at what kind of future we want, and the decisions we need to make to achieve those futures. If we aren't careful our future might look closer to Mad Max than Star Trek.

Armada

"Everything I'd ever been told or taught about the state of the world had been a lie. I'd grown up believing that despite our aspirations, humans were still just a bunch of bipedal apes, divided in arbitrary tribes that were constantly at war over their ruined planet's dwindling natural resources. I'd always assumed that our future would end up looking more like Mad Max than Star Trek"

Ernest Cline

Armada

I want a sequel and a movie! I am truly convinced that Ernest Cline can do no wrong. He blew me out of the water with Ready Player One, and Armada (due to be released in July, pre-order your copy from your local bookstore now) not only followed suit, but topped it. Funny, geeky, filled with sci-fi and video game references, written from the point of view of a teenage outcast, fathers thought long dead, it was a glorious read that payed homage to every sci-fi book, game, and movie that came before.

In this wonderful book Zack Lightman, a teenager with some anger management issues, sees a flying saucer from his favorite video game. At first he thinks he is going crazy, but it turns out these games have been training civilians for the imminent alien attack. While Zack and his comrades scramble to defend the world, Zack gets sucked into the conspiracy theory to trump all conspiracy theories, and has to solve the biggest problem that humanity could get itself into.

Do yourself a favor and read this. You will not be disappointed. 

"You're welcome."

Denali's Howl

"To my father, who knew that putting more people at risk would not save those who were already gone"

Andy Hall

Denali's Howl

Living in a mountain town, and participating in risky activities, there is a definite draw towards stories with tragic endings. I think that the population as a whole, is generally drawn to these stories, stories like Into Thin Air, and Into the Wild. I think it largely stems from human beings love of control, it is a survival instinct that serves us well. But because of this, there is something very mythical about things that we have no control of: big mountains, raging rivers, the decisions of others, and the weather. These things take on a spiritual feel, the feel of being separate. The deaths caused by them almost feel other worldly, though to those close to the victim the pain is all too real.

I am one of these people who is very interested by these stories. I am also interested in playing in places that these stories have the potential to take place. But as Blaine Smith said, "there is no reward without the risk." These are not risks that we take lightly, and with the proper training and experience these risks, for the most part, can be mitigated. But accidents do happen, and some risks cannot be accounted for ahead of time.

Denali's Howl, by Andy Hall, is such a story. In 1967, twelve young men attempted to climb Mount McKinley, the tallest peak in North America. Known to the locals as Denali, it rises to 20,320 feet and is arguably the biggest mountain on the planet, covering 144-square miles and spanning 18,000 vertical feet from base to summit. Mount Everest, while rising to 29,029 feet, gets a boost from the Tibetan Plateau and only rises 12,000 feet from base to summit. Before their climb, Denali was thought to be merely challenging, but the tragedy caused by an unprecedented blizzard above 20,000 feet changed the view. Only five of the team survived.

Andy Hall did his research for this book, and his personal relation to the story added a wonderful layer to the story telling. The son of the park superintendent, he remembers the event through a five year old mind. This story was wonderfully told, and heart breaking. It examined the grief felt by the parents after the loss of their sons, and it dealt with the deaths of the young men in an extremely respectful way, with prose that was touching and heart rendering. 

The author began the book asking the questions that most people, especially people separated from the outdoor community, ask when a tragedy occurs: why did these young men have to die? Why would they be allowed to attempt something as dangerous as they did. Towards the end of the book he asks, what I think is a much more important question: would it have been right to try and stop them?

Everyone, I suppose, will come to their own conclusion regarding the answer to that question, but it is one that needs to be examined as the answer effects us greatly in our day-to-day lives, Andy Hall did an amazing job with this book, and I highly recommend it.