Our lives are so carefully structured and scheduled that it can be difficult to imagine them being completely upended by nature. This is a reality for many. Here are some stories (both fiction and nonfiction) from the survivors, the helpers and the researchers of natural disasters.
“Haiti After the Earthquake” Three days after the massive 2010 earthquake, Dr. Paul Farmer rushed to Port-au-Prince to help. Having lived in Haiti for nearly thirty years, Farmer offers his perspective on the socioeconomic and political factors that made the earthquake even more devastating. Other doctors, volunteers, and survivors offer their perspective on the disaster and recovery efforts. Continue reading “Read Harder 2020: Books About Natural Disasters”
As the recipient of a charmed life, my dreams generally bring me glad tidings (normal stuff like a time lapse of cinnamon rolls baking or a dog pushing a stroller filled with kittens, etc.). Like most folk, I have the occasional nightmare (again, typical dream content: dogs and cats aggressively defending their territory from each other or an endless void suffused with the howls of the damned, etc). Add it up, and I’m enthusiastically pro-dream, but I can understand why one wouldn’t be if their slumber was consistently corrupted by visions of atrocities in which they participated. What I cannot understand, and what I will not abide, is the desire to replace everyone’s dreams with propaganda designed to advance the agenda of the state. This is one of many ways in which I am at odds with the protagonist of “China Dream” by Ma Jian (translated by Flora Drew).
Ma Daode has earned his terrible dreams by spending portions of his youth killing people while they tried to kill him, denouncing his parents as traitors (shortly before they killed themselves), and abandoning his home for the spoils of corrupt power before eventually participating in its destruction. As the head of China Dream Bureau, he is leading the effort to insert a chip into people’s brains that will regulate their dreams. His attic is overflowing with bribes, and his phones are constantly chiming with messages from an array of mistresses. One understands why he might find himself pelted with trash now and again.
After being suspended from his job for buffoonery, aiming to erase his past, he seeks out a notable guru type and obtains the recipe for what sounds like a truly disgusting beverage. This drink, famous for being what’s imbibed shortly before reincarnation so that one doesn’t bring too much of their past into the future, has ingredients such as ginger that’s been sucked by a corpse and a wolf heart. He drinks this foul concoction, and tries to sell others on it’s benefits. They are not convinced, and food is thrown at him. The book ends with a satisfying crescendo before an afterword that elaborates on the author’s anger at the Chinese government.
Ma Jian lives in exile, and his books are banned in China, but good satire is universal, and reading banned books makes you cool, is what I hear.
More than 2,400 years ago, Aristophanes complained about the youth of his community, “…they have bad manners, contempt for authority; they show disrespect for elders …” In the intervening centuries, the world has seen many changes, but the propensity of adults to complain about younger generations has remained constant. Of course, there are always teens showing up to prove them wrong — the Marquis de Lafayette serving as a general in George Washington’s army at 19, young Mary Shelley creating a new genre of literature with her science fiction masterpiece, “Frankenstein,” or Barbara Johns fighting school segregation. Continue reading “Literary Links: Terrific Teens”
Check out below to learn more about a few popular titles coming out in February! For a more extensive list of new nonfiction coming out this month check out our catalog.
Top Picks
“The Splendid and the Vile: A Saga of Churchill, Family, and Defiance During the Blitz” by Eric Larson
On Winston Churchill’s first day as prime minister, Adolf Hitler invaded Holland and Belgium. Poland and Czechoslovakia had already fallen, and the Dunkirk evacuation was just two weeks away. For the next 12 months, Hitler would wage a relentless bombing campaign, killing 45,000 Britons. It was up to Churchill to hold his country together and persuade President Franklin Roosevelt that Britain was a worthy ally — and willing to fight to the end. In “The Splendid and the Vile,” Erik Larson shows, in cinematic detail, how Churchill taught the British people ‘the art of being fearless.’ It is a story of political brinkmanship, but it’s also an intimate domestic drama, set against the backdrop of Churchill’s prime-ministerial country home, Chequers; his wartime retreat, Ditchley, where he and his entourage go when the moon is brightest and the bombing threat is highest; and of course 10 Downing Street in London. Drawing on diaries, original archival documents, and once-secret intelligence reports — some released only recently — Larson provides a new lens on London’s darkest year through the day-to-day experience of Churchill and his family: his wife, Clementine; their youngest daughter, Mary, who chafes against her parents’ wartime protectiveness; their son, Randolph, and his beautiful, unhappy wife, Pamela; Pamela’s illicit lover, a dashing American emissary; and the advisers in Churchill’s ‘Secret Circle,’ to whom he turns in the hardest moments. Continue reading “Nonfiction Roundup: February 2020”
Here are some of the most talked about books by debut authors that are coming to shelves near you this month. Place your holds now! And please visit our catalog for a more complete list.
“The Unspoken Name” by A.K. Larkwood
What if you knew how and when you will die?
Csorwe does. She will climb the mountain, enter the Shrine of the Unspoken, and gain the most honored title: sacrifice. On the day of her foretold death, however, a powerful mage offers her a new fate. Csorwe leaves her home, her destiny, and her god to become the wizard’s loyal sword-hand — stealing, spying, and killing to help him reclaim his seat of power in the homeland from which he was exiled. But Csorwe and the wizard will soon learn — gods remember, and if you live long enough, all debts come due. Continue reading “Debut Author Spotlight: February 2020”
It is now 2020. Doesn’t that sound so futuristic? I feel like we should be able to travel to Mars for our vacations and jet pack our way to work every morning, but that isn’t happening. There have been significant technological innovations, but in many ways, today resembles what life was like a few decades ago.
Let’s take a look at some prognostications from the past of what life would be like in the 2020s. Some are laughably off base. A few are eerily on target. And then there are the frighteningly plausible possibilities. Continue reading “Know Your Dystopias: The 2020s”
Karen Piper is a Columbia, MO author whose latest book is called “A Girl’s Guide to Missiles.” Piper grew up at the China Lake Naval Weapons Center, a missile testing base in California’s Mojave Desert where her family had a role in developing weapons for the US government. This memoir looks back at her unusual childhood and how it affected her and her family as she emerged into adulthood. The book was named the Capital READ for the Missouri River Regional Library in 2019. Piper is the author of several other nonfiction books and is currently a professor of literature and geography at the University of Missouri. I recently emailed some interview questions to her about the book, and she wrote back some answers. Continue reading “Author Interview: Karen Piper”
I read a lot of books I like and some that I like a lot and occasionally one that metaphorically causes my guts to combust because I love the book so much. “Inland” by Tea Obreht made my insides explode and whatnot. I get those great-art aches when I think about this book, and not just because of the book’s wells of sadness (which, unlike the book’s well of water, overfloweth) or how beautiful and elegant the writing is. I reckon the ache also comes from how thoroughly the novel attached the main players to me and how badly I wanted things to go right for those folk and from the literal ache a primary character feels when a ghost touches him and he is then imbued with a desire for whatever that ghost wants and from the knowledge that it is a narrow possibility at best that I’ll ever forge any sort of relationship with a camel, never mind the airtight kinship of the human and camel pairing in “Inland.” Continue reading “The Gentleman Recommends: Tea Obreht”
Post-holiday blues and cabin fever aside, something is making us all very agitated these days. The general level of anger feels like it has been escalating in recent years, as evidenced by heated social media exchanges and, often, by our daily encounters. It’s a worrisome trend, which can cause us to doubt our every move as we attempt to navigate the murky waters of human interaction.
While most difficult people are only fleetingly troublesome, there are a few types of people who can, knowingly or unknowingly, do us great harm — and they are not always easy to spot. In “5 Types of People Who Can Ruin Your Life,” lawyer and family mediator Bill Eddy helps identify the narcissistic, borderline, sociopathic, paranoid and histrionic among us. These high-conflict personalities can leave others extremely damaged, emotionally and physically. Eddy offers tactics to engage compassionately with these troubled souls, while allowing protection for those who are close to them. Continue reading “Literary Links: Troublesome Types”
The new year is ushering in a slew of new books by debut adult fiction authors. Those featured here have already received glowing reviews, so check one out today and see if you agree. As always, please visit our catalog for a complete list of this month’s debut titles.
“When We Were Vikings” by Andrew MacDonald
Sometimes life isn’t as simple as heroes and villains. For Zelda, a twenty-one-year-old Viking enthusiast who lives with her older brother, Gert, life is best lived with some basic rules:
1. A smile means “thank you for doing something small that I liked.”
2. Fist bumps and dabs = respect.
3. Strange people are not appreciated in her home.
4. Tomatoes must go in the middle of the sandwich and not get the bread wet.
5. Sometimes the most important things don’t fit on lists. Continue reading “Debut Author Spotlight: January 2020”
