... and that means more time for reading! We added a screened back porch to our house 2 summers ago, and it is my favorite reading place.I just finished An Unreasonable Woman: A True Story of Shrimpers, Politicos, Polluters and the Fight For Seadrift, Texas -- Diane Wilson's account of her (largely) one person stand against the Formosa Plastic Corporation. While similar stories have been told over and over since "ecology" first became a buzzword in the early seventies, Diane's feistiness and the connections she makes between environmental movements, sustainable living (including those who make their living as commercial fishermen/women) and workers' rights are invaluable. At times it is excruciatingly frustrating; when it appears that she has lost and Formosa will be able to continue polluting her beloved bay unchecked, Diane muses
"I felt like a huge game was being played - on me, on ordinary, regular people! In this game there were ten thousand stupid rules, like dot all your i's, and send in your petition properly and timely, and file all your legal briefs with the proper and duly appointed judge, and follow the proper sequence in the Codified Federal Registers. As long as us regular, ordinary people kept busy playing the game and we believed we were doing everything right and it would make a difference and we could control our own lives and make things better and safer ... well, then the game was working!"
But she goes on to show that one person, one unreasonable woman, can make a difference. This book is an inspiration.
Other books in my (impossibly towering) stack:
Mary Rose O'Reilly, The Love of Impermanent Things
Ian McEwan, Atonement Paul Hawken, Blessed Unrest
Kenneth Helphand, Defiant Gardens: Making Gardens in Wartime
Sonia Nieto, Why We Teach
Robert Hinshaw, Living With Nature's Extremes: The Life of Gilbert Fowler White
Hugh Barbour, The Quakers
John D'Emilio, Lost Prophet: The Life and Times of Bayard Rustin
Michael Pollan, The Botany of Desire
Sy Montgomery, The Good Good Pig
I need to insert some more fiction or I will burn out. The trouble is, Terry Pratchett has spoiled me for anything else. What am I to do? Last summer I took a young adult literature course and discovered Gary Paulsen, among others. (But not Hatchet.) Maybe I'll check out what's new in YA lit. I'm (almost) always open to suggestions; however, I much prefer historical fiction to anything futuristic or post-Apocalypse.
6 comments:
Yes, I want to read the Good, Good Pig and I can't recommend the Bayard Rustin book enough, as you know.....as for fiction, isn't there a new Harry Potter book coming out this summer? Or am I much mistaken? teehee But seriously, thanks for the list. I'll be interested to hear what you think of "The Quakers"....
A plague of yipping pekinese upon you, Poodle Doc! I should have known you'd work in a Harry Potter comment ... but I admit I left myself wide open for that one.
So ... are you buying your copy of HP at A Room of Ones Own, or are you, as I suspect, going to the evil empire? Why do you hate Norman Rockwell, Mom and apple pie so much?
I'm blaming it all on the "dis-organizer" in my pocket.......ook
As for Norman Rockwell, that's an involved story, I gave up hating my mom after years of therapy, and I really like apple pie.....really.
I'll have to re-think this Harry Potter, thing. I mean, the movie (#5) is coming out a week before the book, then the book itself. That's a lot of HP to digest.......maybe if JK Rowling herself came to Room of One's Own.......hummmmmm
Thanks for the list of books, I'm always on a search for a good read.
I like an even balance of fiction and non, I enjoy both equally.
A Thousand Splendid Suns by Khaled Hosseini, who wrote The Kite Runner. Read it now! And prepare to cry and also be made very, very angry. It's a marvel.
Oh, Dave, thanks. I liked The Kite Runner very much, and I like to cry. I'll add it to my list.
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