Choosing Hope

This book is a testament to the remarkable courage and goodness that is instinctive to people who are fundamentally good and caring. "Miss Roig" is a loving, supportive teacher who inspires trust, loyalty and love in her students.  She is committed to the idea that children must learn to care for one another, even before they begin to learn how to read and write.   And Miss Roig is the remarkable 1st grade teacher who saved the lives of 20 of her students.  Her classroom was the nearest to the front entrance and desk at the Sandy Hook Elementary School and, when she heard bursts of gunfire, had the presence of mind to turn off the lights, lock the door and rush her children into a very small bathroom at the back of their room.  Though terrified for her life, she had the composure to comfort the children and keep them quiet, without scaring them.  Feeling certain they were going to die, she wanted them to know, and told them, how much they were loved.  Later, when help arrived, they killed the attacker and began searching for survivors.  Miss Roig refused to open the door to these "police," telling them if they were who they said they were, they would be able to obtain a key to the room.  In the weeks and months after the attack, she worked to make changes in the school that would reassure her severely shaken students, and eventually founded groups that allowed her students to share with needy students across the nation. Though clearly selfless and caring, her efforts received publicity that induced envy and cynicism among some colleagues and administrators.  This is a heart-rending, yet inspiring story that illustrates how differences in character cause people to react to tragedy in very different ways.

The Invention of Wings

Very compelling historical fiction.  Sue Monk Kidd was startled to discover, at a theatrical performance celebrating the unsung contributions of women, that two sisters, Susan and Antonio Grimke, were towering figures in the history of both the anti-slavery and feminist movements and had grown up in Kidd's hometown of Charleston -  yet she had never heard of them.  Monk's research produced this powerful and lyrical story that brings to life the sisters - especially focusing on Susan, who believed she was being encouraged by her father, a very respected jurist, to pursue the law as a career and become the first female attorney and judge in Charleston - her spirit was nearly broken by the shattering of this dream when her father and respected brother told her in no uncertain terms that this was an ludicrously impossible and inappropriate dream.  Then, on her 11th birthday, following a tradition in the family, her mother "gave" her a slave, Hetty, called "Handful," as a birthday "present" - horrifying Susan, who wishes to set the girl free.  The Invention of Wings follows the separate lives of Susan and Handful and also their relationship, which is close but blighted by the injustice and horror of slavery.  This is both a very absorbing human story and an informative and powerful account of the impact of slavery. Thanks to CH for suggesting this book!  Highly-recommended.

Bookclub Plan 2017

In case anyone would like to read along!

BOOKCLUB PLAN 2017

DATE	BOOK 1	BOOK 2	HOST
“JAN”  (Sat 2/4 7PM)	Dead Wake by Erik Larson		Lauren
FEB  (Sat 2/25 7PM)	Kindred by Octavia Butler	Disposessed by Ursula K LeGuin	Terra/Nate
MAR  (Sat 3/25 7PM)	The Sum of Our Daysby Isabel Allende		Gavin
APR  (Sat 4/29 7PM)	Cordelia's Honor by Lois McMaster Bujold	On Basilisk Station by David Weber	Sarah
MAY  (Sat 5/27 7PM)	The Language of Foodby Dan Jurafsky	Babel 17 by Samuel R. Delany	Hayley
JUNE (Fri 6/16 7PM)	Childhood's End by Arthur C. Clarke		Ezra
JULY (Sat 7/29 7PM)	It Can't Happen Hereby Sinclair Lewis	The Crucible by Arthur Miller	Terra/Nate
AUG (Sat 8/26 7PM)	Never Let Me Go by Kazuo Ishiguro	Franny and Zooey by J.D. Salinger	Colin
SEPT (Sat 9/30 7PM)	Little House on the Prairie by Laura Ingles Wilder	A Daughter of the Samurai by Etsu Inagaki Sugimoto	Sarah
OCT  (Sat 10/14? 6PM)	Dracula by Bram Stoker  (movie viewing!)	Endangered Pleasures by Barbara Bolland	Lauren
NOV (Sat 11/25 7PM)	The Secret History of Mongolian Queens by Jack Weatherford		Gavin
DEC (Sat 12/16 7PM)	Battle Royale by Koushun Takami		Hayley

Behind the Beautiful Forevers

This exceptional book by Katherine Boo reads like an absorbing, fascinating novel yet is, almost unbelievably, nonfiction.  Boo, a Pulitzer Prize-winning reporter and writer for the New Yorker, lived in Mumbai and delved into the lives of the residents of Annawadi, a small slum beside a lake of sewage, adjacent to a very busy international airport serving Mumbai.

"Everything around us is roses" is how Abdul's younger brother, Mirchi, put it.  "And we're the shit in between."

In an afterward, Boo describes her research, interviewing and filming residents with the help of translators and student interns, for four years, then piecing together this extraordinarily vivid and clear-eyed account of key events in the life of Annawadi, including suicides, a murder, a tragic accident involving horses painted like zebras, and always the crushing power of poverty, inequality and pervasive corruption.

As Abdul and his family had already learned, the police station was not a place where victimhood was redressed and public safety held dear.  It was a hectic bazaar, like many other institutions in Mumbai, and investigating Kalu's death was not a profit generating enterprise."

Boo's aim is to understand how globalization and world economics shape the lives of those at the lower end of the economic scale and her insights are penetrating and empathetic.  This is a beautiful book, though heartbreakingly sad.

H is for Hawk

This extraordinary nonfiction book by Helen Macdonald creates its own genre: a very personal memoir of grief that focuses on the training of hawks and makes extensive reference and comparison to T.H. White, author of The Sword in the Stone, and a tortured, repressed man who also authored a book on his sad and difficult experiences in training a goshawk.

Macdonald is devastated when her father dies unexpectedly.  She had had a lifelong, deep interest in falcons and, out of this passion and as a distraction, she decides to acquire and train a goshark.

When you are broken, you run.  But you don't always run away.  Sometimes, helplessly, you run towards.

The goshawk was an unusual choice.  Macdonald explains and explores the idea that falconry has been the domain of the nobility, partly because large tracts of land - estates - are necessary for hunting, and the language and customs of falconry are precise and mannered.  Modern falconry is steeped in this aristocratic history, which for some, promotes a special kind of identity that tends to exclude outsiders.  Falconry was a passion and source of style in Nazi Germany.  But, unlike the noble falcons, the goshawk, Macdonald explains, is a low, murderous bird

They were things of death and difficulty: spooky pale-eyed psychopaths that lived and killed in woodland thickets.

Because it needs only short flights to run down its prey, a goshawk can be trained on small properties.  Hunting with goshawks is thus possible for commoners and is, basically, low class.

Compared to those aristocratic falconers, the austringer, the solitary trainer of goshawks and sparrowhawks, has had a pretty terrible press.  'Do not house your graceless austringers in the falconer's room', sniped the fourteenth-century Norman writer Gace de la Bigne. 'They are cursed in scripture, for they hate company and go alone about their sport.  When one sees an ill-formed man, with great big feet and long shapeless shanks, build like a trestle, hump-shouldered and skew-backed, and one wants to mock him, one says, "Look, what an austringer!"'

Macdonald herself is pretty feral and her grief over her father's death drives her to some outrageous and heart-rending behavior.  But her reflections are sharp and the descriptive writing is brilliant - fresh and vivid.  And though this is a dark book, it is laced with humor and, ultimately, is optimistic.  A terrific read.

Graphic Novel Round-Up: Marbles, Fun Home, Are You My Mother?

I have read 3 interesting graphic novels this summer, reviewed briefly below:

Marbles: Mania, Depression, Michelangelo, and Me - Ellen Forney

Marbles is Ellen Forney's exploration of her struggles living as an artist with Bipolar I disorder (the more severe of the forms, characterized by true mania, as opposed to hypomania, and potential psychosis). More particularly, she wrestles with the question of whether or not Bipolar symptomatology is an essential part of her identity as an artist, integral to her work, something special that she shares with other renowned artists (the "Van Gogh club," as she calls it), or whether it is an illness to be treated and managed. Her story had personal resonance for me to some degree, and it was an interesting read, although I am not a huge fan of her style of illustration.



Fun Home - Alison Bechdel

In Fun Home, Alison Bechdel explores her developing queer identity against the backdrop of her father's repressed homosexuality and turbulent childhood. I found this novel utterly fascinating, and the graphic style highly evocative. Would definitely recommend.



Are You My Mother? - Alison Bechdel

Bechdel's second graphic novel is much more philosophical than the first, and I did not enjoy it as much. Some of the material was quite interesting, and I was inspired to purchase a copy of one of her sources (Miller's The Drama of the Gifted Child). Overall, however, I lamented that the book strayed so far from the personal narrative, and ruminated so extensively on (what I found to be at times rather dubious) psychology. However, her analysis of her fraught relationship with her mother was compelling, even painfully so, and I would still recommend it.

Aurora - Kim Stanley Robinson

Aurora is KSR's latest novel, published in summer 2015, and the only other book of his that I have read, other than the genius Mars trilogy. Aurora is just as delightful, and satisfyingly familiar in tone, with its hyper-detailed yet highly readable descriptions of technology, and the incisive and compelling character depictions, which elevate the book from tech porn to high literature.

Aurora is the story of a generation of families born on a spaceship in the middle of a 159+ year colonizing trip to Tau Ceti, led at this point in their journey by brilliant yet troubled scientist Devi, who keeps their aging vessel in working order through hundreds of daily repairs. Unlike Mars, with its numerous protagonists, this novel focuses primarily on Devi and her daughter, Freya. In a unique and engaging narrative twist, the tale's chronicler is the ship itself, an AI called simply "ship."

The action begins in Freya's youth and young adulthood, in the final years of the journey to Tau Ceti. A deeply interesting and moving tale, which I highly recommend to all sci-fi enthusiasts!