a veritable cornucopia

Plenty: One Man, One Woman, and a Raucous Year of Eating Locallyby Alisa Smith and J. B. MacKinnon 2007 (264 pgs)

In our modern economy, the average food item now travels 1500 to 3000 miles from farm to plate. Even locally grown food is often shipped overseas for processing before sale.  In Plenty  a Vancouver B.C. couple, hoping to decrease their ecological footprint, commits for a year to eat only food grown within 100 miles of their urban apartment. 

I like this book more the further I get away from it.  The concepts are intriguing, but the writing is off-putting.  In alternating monthly chapters the two authors chronicle their food-life experiment.  MacKinnon’s writing is so overly ornate and convinced of his own profundity that Smith’s more practical approach is a welcome relief. Both authors tend toward minutia and never delve into the personal. There is a resulting sense of disconnect and readers are left feeling uninvested.

In spite of its faults, the book is a good jumping-off point for examining your personal consumption and the ecological and economic consequences. My library selected this book as our “all staff read” for an upcoming in-service and I’m excited for the discussion. 

giving up is half the battle

Books I didn’t finish:

The Last Season  by Eric Blehm (335 pgs/read 60) 2006

Well written chronicle of an experienced back-country ranger who goes missing.  Blehm aptly captures both the Sequoia/Kings Canyon country and the ranger Jim Morgenson to the point that you feel you’ve know both for years.

Beyond the Body Farm: A Legendary Bone Detective Explores Murders, Mysteries, and the Revolution in Forensic Science by Bill Bass and Jon Jefferson 2007 (282 pgs/read 135)

A second case study book from one of my personal heroes. Bill Bass pioneered post-mortem decomposition analysis when he founded the Forensic Anthropology Research Center or “Body Farm” at the University of Tennesee in 1971. Not quite as riveting as the first book, Bass seems to be reaching deeper into his historical grab-bag than previously.  There are still some interesting cases, and Bass’s personable, down-home tone is always enjoyable.

Saffron and Brimstone: Strange Stories  by Elizabeth Hand 2006 (240 pgs/read 2 stories)

It’s the rare writer who can use “chiaroscuro” in a sentence (twice!) and not come off pretentious.  Hand is an apt and enjoyable author and her $50 words never distract from the narrative, but seem to fit with an almost unnoticeable ease.  And “strange stories” is right.  The writing is intense, compelling  and vaguely unsettling- like trying to meditate while caffeine-jittery to the point of nausea.

nature of the beast

The Fate of Mice  by Susan Palwick 2007 (218 pgs)

A short story collection with weight, where magical realism used to explore the human condition. The tales are thought-provoking and resonant, touching on myth and magic. 

Some of the offerings: A self-aware, existential mouse ponders his own mortality in a lab. A werewolf married to a human realizes how troublesome a relationship can be when you age in dog years. A politician learns never to trust a reanimated corpse to stay on message. The  dark reality of Cinderella’s godmother’s true identity is revealed.

punctuation is next to godliness

I’jaam  by Sinan Antoon 2004 Iraq, 2007 US (97 pgs)

The most stunning piece of literature I’ve read in years.  Antoon uses the prison narrative as a parable for how totalitarian government affects the individual psyche as well as the populace as a whole.  The poetry background of the author is evident in his loving use of language as well as the lyrical imagery of the periodic hallucinatory dreams.  Layered with meaning and stunning in its incisiveness,  I’jaam ranks up there with Kafka and Orwell in my opinion.

The word i’jaam refers to the practice of adding dots to Arabic script to clarify meaning.  In a masterful use of nested narrative, the underlying structure is that of an undotted journal kept by a prisoner.  But overlaying that is the premise that this journal is later found by his keepers who assign a low-level bureaucrat to literally add the dots, which means they’re assigning their bias to “clarify” the piece.  The dichotomy of the prisoner’s struggle to escape through his unjointed writing and the imposed stifling of the added i’jaam makes for a poignant picture of imprisonment.

walking in a nuclear winter wonderland

Into the Forest  by Jean Hegland 2007 (241 pgs)

Living a slightly bohemian existance in their woodland home, two teenage sisters hardly notice at first when civilization slowly disintegrates.  Interruptions of phone and electricity services and access to gasoline and food products are mere inconveniences that they slowly adapt to; when they disappear altogether the sisters are barely affected.

With no known world outside their home, each of the sisters turns to their individual obsessions.  The eldest dances the light away, clinging to her dream of joining a ballet company.  The younger, run out of study materials, prepares for her goal of attending Harvard by turning to the only books left- the encyclopedia set. With absolute faith, the sisters mark time waiting for normalcy to return. 

Despite some eye-rollingly “oh come on!” plot turns, it’s fairly enjoyable post-apocalyptic fiction.

necessity is the mother of obsession

To Build a Ship  by Don Berry (203 pgs)  1963/2004 ed

An wryly funny, enthusiastic portrait of settlers in Tillamook Valley in the 1850s.  From word one you’ll be hooked.  Berry’s sense of humor enlivens the already interesting story.  If you can get your hands on the 2004 edition with an introduction by Jeff Baker, I highly recommend it.  His snapshot of Don Berry makes you fall in love with the man before reading a word. 

The bones of the story are this: a young man goes to seek his fortune in the remote Tillamook Bay in the 1850s.  There he meets an eclectic mix of misfits and begins to settle in.  When the only captain willing to take a ship over the treacherous bar dies, the settlers are cut off from the outside world.  So they decide to build a ship.

It’s a masterful book that revels in toungue in cheek humor.  The characters treat themselves with utter seriousness, while Berry slyly highlights their absurdity, at the same time using that to intensify the darkness of their eventual obsession.

A couple of the best bits: 

Regarding the wild reputation of folks in the nearest town: “These fellows in Yam Hill were probably all fine boys, but they were the scum of the earth.”

As he waits for spring when he can make his way to the Bay, the main character says he “…prepared my pack and unprepared it, counted my single frying pan a dozen times.  It always came out One.”

mi comic es su comic

Not a lot of gn reading going on lately.  Here’s the last 2+ months worth.

Crossing Midnight vol 1: Cut Here  by Mike Carey, etal

A new series from one of my favorite writers. Bonus: cover art by J. H. Williams III. Twin teens born on either side of midnight discover they’re tied up in a world of kami and destiny.

The Plain Janes  by Cecil Castellucci and Jim Rugg

The new girl teams up with the misfits (always the most interesting people anyway) to stage “art attacks”- creative projects like putting hats & scarfs on the fire hydrants or wrapping all of downtown in brown paper & bows.

Clubbing  written by Andi Watson, art by Josh Howard

A fun-loving London club girl gets shipped off to the grandparents’ countryside golf course for the summer.  Green acres sure ain’t the place for this goth girl.   

The Magic Bottle  by Camille Rose Garcia

Great pop surrealist art.  The story lost me a bit.

The Tale of Genji  adapted & illustrated by Yoshitaka Amano

I’m not sure how you turn a 1000+ page book into a mostly-illustrated 79 pages, but I didn’t care since it was Amano.  I love the way he draws women- just a pale stretch of face or hand surrounded by a sea of color.  Beautiful. 

Runaways: Vol 1 & 2  by Brian K. Vaughn

Mostly a re-read of this great series that I’d caught in the smaller volumes, but I’d managed to miss a few. 

Fable vol 9: Sons of Empire  by Bill Willingham

Continuing one of the most evolved series currently running.  Most of the book was a giant wind-up culminating in the Adversary forces delaying their invasion plans.  I’d like to see some real battles at this point.

Anita Blake, Vampire Hunter vol 1: Guilty Pleasures  witten by Laurell K. Hamilton, art by Brett Booth

Mleh.  I’m a big fan of the Hamiltons books and the art looked great, but I was disappointed.  Sure it’s full of pretty boys but the adaptation was only so-so and since the comic ends only a couple chapters into the first book, it’ll make for an extremely long series.

Finder: Five Crazy Women  by Carla Speed McNeill

I have a new favorite store.  Not only were there shelves of Humanoids books (more than I ‘ve seen anywhere before) but they had several volumes of this hard-to-find series that I didn’t have yet.  Yay! 

Bizenghast vol 3  by M. Alice LeGrow

Excellent OE Manga.  Very gothic and atmospheric with the requisite quests and a hilarious sidekick demon.  I love that LeGrow is also a fangirl- she includes pictures of recenct cosplay costumes she’s created.

when walden goes wrong

Kitty Takes a Holiday  by Carrie Vaughn 2007 (272 pgs)

When the pressure of being a publicly-identified werewolf gets to be too much for Kitty she retires to a cabin in the woods to destress and write her memoirs.  But she finds it’s hard to maintain your Waldenesque calm when someone keeps leaving skinned animals and bloody crosses on your doorstep. 

As if that wasn’t enough, a couple of friends in crisis show up- one a professional werewolf hunter and the other a newly-bitten werewolf on the edge of his first change.  Toss in a curandero (medicine man), a skinwalker, a few curses, some unfriendly townfolk, and the every day hazards of being a werewolf in a man’s world and it makes for a particularly unrestful retreat.