I Read Banned Books

This week (Sept 27th - Oct 3rd) is Banned Books Week. A banned or challenged book is one that has come under fire for various reasons. Sometimes libraries are asked to move a book to a different section (out of a teen section for example), to place a warning sticker on books considered "inappropriate," or they might be asked to remove a book from the library completely. The American Library Association keeps track of these attempts to ban/challenge books, here is a list of the top most challenged titles from 2014.

Some Luck

Before this century, farming was a way of life for many Americans. In the 1920s, 20% of our workforce labored on farms. Now it is less than 2%.  This novel, the first of a trilogy, covers the lives of an extended agricultural family, the Langdons, from the 1920s to the 1950s.

In 1920 Walter Langdon, a young 25-year-old walks the land of his new farm. His father thought he didn’t need to start on his own yet, but Walter disagreed. He had a wife after all--the beautiful and practical, Rosanna--and now a six-month-old son, the treasured Frank. As the first grandchild in the family, he receives tons of love and praise.

The novel covers a cycle of births, deaths, marriages, and children coming of age for two generations. The pace is slow, the characterization, deep, and you feel that you are really experiencing life as it was lived on an Iowa farm.

Deep Lane

I started this morning reading poetry, and couldn’t have found a better book of contemporary American poems than Mark Doty’s Deep Lane. He writes about memory, love, and human connections. Masterfully, he encases most of these themes in strikingly beautiful nature poems.

How gifted Doty is describing things as ordinary as a deer in a backyard, when he writes ”a buck in velvet at the garden rim, / bronze lightly shagged, split thumbs / of antlers budding.”

He also celebrates humanity in everyday New York City: the three barbers he visited for ten years who suddenly disappeared, the one-armed man at the gym, his old friend, Dugan, who appears suddenly on 15th Street, “—why shouldn’t the dead / sport a little style?”

The Tusk That Did the Damage

This timely novel set in South India tells the story of contemporary ivory poaching from three perspectives a documentary filmmaker, a poacher, and from an elephant named Gravedigger.

A calf who watched his mother and other members of the elephant clan die brutally, Gravedigger grows up in captivity until he breaks his chains and slips into the forest. There he seldom shows mercy for humans.

Tania James succeeds in showing each of these beings as having complex needs. Even the poachers, two brother, named Jayan and Manu, aren’t presented as evil even though Jayan is jailed for killing 56 elephants, including a mother who waited and grieved for two days after her son died.

But this book is not all doom and gloom. The author describes the setting beautifully and captures the pressures and love shared by Jayan’s family.  His wife, Leela, an ex-prostitute is one of the strongest and most interesting characters.  After one elephant death, she asks her husband, “Why did you kill a god?”

Reason in a Dark Time: Why the Struggle Against Climate Change Failed--And What It Means for our Future

After reading just the first chapter of this book, I was stunned at how long the heat storage properties of carbon dioxide have been on the world’s radar. What would you guess? Twenty? Forty? Fifty years? How about 150 plus.

Back in 1863, John Tyndall, an Irish scientist measured the absorption of infrared radiation by carbon dioxide and showed that slight changes in the atmosphere’s composition can affect our planet's temperature.

Guy Callendar discovered in the 1930s that carbon dioxide levels were rising and causing an increase in temperatures. He said that there had already been a 10% increase in carbon dioxide levels. Other scientists mocked him. But even then he predicted a 2-4 C temperature raise in the 21st century.

In this wide-ranging book, Dale Jamieson, a philosopher, presents a richly detailed account of many issues connected to climate change. He covers various ramifications from the moral and ethical to the economic, political and scientific.

Refund: Stories

Although she has written three novels, this is Karen Bender’s first collection of stories. Wow can the woman write.

Two of her short stories have won Pushcart Prizes and several others have been included in Best American collections, both for short stories and for mystery stories.

The pieces are irreverent, funny and sad at the same time, and rich with the absurdities and bizarreness of modern American life.  For instance, “The Sea Turtle Hospital” vividly describes a lockdown at a grade school. Bender’s writing is non-judgmental but rich in detail.

The narrator in this story gets the job of locking the door and pulling down the shades (what protection would thin shades provide?),  while the other teacher hustles the children into a closet. They proceed to eventually rolling the children up in a stinky rug after shots ring out. All the while anxious parents text the narrator.

One of the weirdest stories is “The Cat” where a mother adopts a kitten. Bender is a whizz at getting children down--both their conversations and behavior. 

But the story is really about the mother in this story, six years out from breastfeeding, but the kitten’s mews cause a let-down reflex and her milk to return. This leads to consultations with a breast surgeon who has a pet iguana. “Cold,” the mother says.  You’ll have to read it to find out what happens.

Bender seems drawn to non-politically correct topics.  In “A Chick from My Dream Life” she describes two teenage sisters whose parents offer them little attention. Their father is very depressed but the girls don’t know why he spends all day on the living room couch not wanting them near.

The younger sister, Betsey, has an arm that ends in a point like “the tailed end of whipped cream.” As the older sister, Sally, takes it upon herself to hide it in tube tops or paint it in vivid colors. When their dad starts ignoring them, they wander to the beach where Betsey sneaks away to kiss boys, telling them that her name was Sally.

“Theft” describes an older woman’s vacation on a cruise ship to Alaska after a life of crime. She meets a young woman, Darlene, who has a broken heart. The two women bond. Ginger tries to toughen Darlene up, tells her what to say to get her boyfriend back, while revealing some of her own backstory and how her parents and sister abandoned her. That’s what spurned her to become a first-class swindler.

Many of the stories etch out feelings of loneliness or loss, but with a quirky, off-kilter humor that makes everything bearable. Her narrators are smart, observant, and fallible--very much like us. Bender’s writing recalls that of the wonderful short story writer Flannery O’Connor. Try Flannery's Complete Stories.

Nimona

Nimona is a powerful shape-shifter who dreams of becoming a super-villain, so of course she signs up to be the sidekick of Lord Ballister Blackheart. Blackheart is already a known evil genius and arch nemesis of the country's top hero. However, this hero, Sir Ambrosius Goldenloin, might not be the hero after all. Nimona and Blackheart are out to prove that Goldenloin and the Institute he works for are the true evil in the land - that is if Blackheart can control Nimona even a little bit.

This graphic novel is original, creative, and hilarious. Nimona and Blackheart are great characters with intriguing back-stories. The world in which the story is set is part medieval and part modern with a bit of a futuristic twist. This is a quick read and will leave you hoping for more! Noelle Stevenson, we need a sequel please! If back to school has got you in a pleasure reading slump, pick up this fabulous graphic novel.

Modern Romance: An Investigation

How do we choose our romantic partners?  How has choosing a partner changed in the last 50 years? 25? Even 10 years?  What role has technology played in forming and maintaining our relationships?  And has technology had a net positive impact, or negative?  You might expect answers to these questions to come from Dr. Phil, Dan Savage or Dr. Ruth.  But Aziz Ansari?  What does he know about this sort of stuff?

Surprisingly-or not once you start reading Modern Romance- a lot! Along with sociologist Eric Klineberg, Ansari has waded through countless studies on relationships, conducted focus groups around the world and has enlisted the help of reddit for a massive online focus group. The Ansari/Klineberg team also combed through data provided to them by Match.com and OkCupid.com.  Even with all of this data on their hands there are a few limitations in regards to the content of the book.  First, it is primarily focused on heterosexual couples.  Ansari states that he felt it would require a separate book to examine the impact of modern technology on homosexual relationships-maybe we can hope for a follow up! Secondly, the people he spoke with and the data he received came mostly from the middle class.  So if you’re looking for information to land a sugar momma/daddy then this book won’t help much.

Ansari tackles all the aspects of dating from the first stage to the last. It may not come as a surprise that the way we meet has changed since the 1930s.  But did you know that 1/3 of all marriages in 1930 came from couples that lived in a 5 block radius from each other?  Today, with emerging adulthood and the internet our radius for potential partners has expanded to all corners of the world. 

Another effect technology has had on dating is time-as in: how long should I wait to respond to an electronic advance.  In the old days (read: 20 years ago) you may have gotten an answering machine the first time calling someone new.  Then it may have taken them a couple of days to get back to you and it was no big deal.  Now in the age of instant communication, we’re having crises of confidences if a text hasn’t been answered in 20 minutes.

The book isn’t all data and science-there is also a smattering of advice and little insights into Ansari’s own life.  He even included a feature from his latest Neflix feature-actual texts from people’s phones. One section even deals with the optimal type of dating profile pictures (spoiler: ladies-leave your pets outta there! Men- keep them coming!) If you are looking for your information with a side of comedy, then Modern Romance is your jam.

All the Wild that Remains: Edward Abbey, Wallace Stegner and the American West

This is a hard book to categorize. Is it a dual biography? A history of a region? An environmental paean to a place? A literary memoir of the West? A road book to both grand and despoiled places?

It’s all of the above and more. Gessner began the book as a tribute to two western writers who have inspired him: Edward Abbey and Wallace Stegner. Gessner went to grad school in Colorado and fell in love with the southwest. Abbey and Stegner became his heroes and teachers, although not literally—he learned through their writing.

He compares the more revolutionary-seeming Abbey who broke laws (trashed earth-moving machines to stop development and threatened to blow up dams) with the more straight-laced Stegner.

Circling the Sun

Miwanzo is the Swahili word for “beginnings.”  In this fascinating fictional biography, this word could stand for so many things: Beryl Clutterbuck’s family arriving in Africa from England when she was a child of four; the young girl establishing a close emotional bond with the local native families, known as Kipsigis; the first time she trained a thoroughbred on her own; and the first time she piloted a plane.

What an exciting life Beryl led. Beryl was one of those women who pushed against the boundaries of convention to fully partake in life.

She became the first female licensed racehorse trainer in Africa and the horses under her care won many races. She became an early bush pilot in Africa and the first woman aviator to fly across the Atlantic from east to west.

Pages