|
|
|
 |
|
Recently in Book Report Category
I am an Orson Scott Card fan. I've enjoyed everything I've read by him since the first time I picked up Ender's Game. My favorites have all come from the Ender related saga, but I've dabbled in Alvin Maker, and even read The Worthing Saga in its entirety. Tonight, though, I am not here to discuss how much I enjoy any of these books. I am here for the sake of clarity and demystification.
You see, I know a few people, my dear wife included, who glaze over anytime I mention anything from the Enderverse. We all have those subjects where no matter how much it makes sense to us, it just may never click for an outside witness. Tonight I present to you all, the most concise guide to the Enderverse, sourced from Wikipedia naturally.
Enjoy and hopefully this will help in any future discussion any Ender fans find themselves in.
 The Right to Be Out: Sexual Orientation and Gender Identity in America's Public Schools by Stuart Biegel
Despite significant advances for gay and transgender persons in the United States, the public school environment remains daunting, even frightening as evidenced by numerous high-profile incidents of discrimination, bullying, violence, and suicide. Yet efforts to protect the rights of lesbian, gay, bisexual, and transgender (LGBT) students and educators, or to enhance curricula to better reflect the experience of differing sexual orientation and gender identities, are bitterly opposed in the courtroom, at the ballot box, and especially in the schools. Underlying all of these issues is an implicit tension about the right to be out, a right that is seen as fundamental within LGBT communities today and, legally, draws on both the first Amendment right to express an identity and the Fourteenth addresses the implications of asserting and protecting this right with the hotly contested terrain of America's public schools. A safe and supportive educational environment for all students is possible, Biegel concludes, if built on shared values and a belief in the strength of our pluralistic society. Recognizing the right of LGBT students and educators to be out at school!
In simple terms, this book lays out incredible ideas about how the American Public school system can change to create a safe environment for the LGBT community. One of the first books of its kind, The Right to Be Out is a must read book for teachers, students, LGBT members and everyone who is involved in the American Public School system. NOW AVAILABLE at Indigo Bridge Books in the Gender Studies Section!!! A safe, non-discriminating and amazing place for everyone!!
If new knowledge doesn't
change the way you act, have you really learned anything?
I enjoy a lot of books.
My favorites, though, tend to make my life different. Make me live different. They aren't just fun and interesting; their
ideas and information illuminate more of the world for me and compel me to act
in new ways to match this new understanding.
A few such titles, for your consideration:
Let My People Go
Surfing: The Education Of A Reluctant
Businessman, by Yvon Chouinard
In this chronicle of the development of the outdoor sports
equipment company Patagonia (and to a lesser extent, the climbing-gear company
Black Diamond), founder Yvon Chouinard lays out the incredible, beautiful and
encouraging results of a group of climbers, surfers, skiers, and other people
passionate about the outside who more or less accidentally created a company
that is at once financially successful and has legitimate moral fiber.
Patagonia's primary reason for existence is not to turn a
profit, but to make the world a better place.
Profit is secondary. Chouinard
has seriously contemplated liquidating the whole business and using the money
to protect the environment, but has decided against that because of his belief
that more good can be done if the company continues to exist. This idea should be basic--nothing
should exist if it's not making the world better--but in a book about a
for-profit corporation, it's pretty rare.
Also key in Patagonia's operating values are excellent worker treatment
(they were one of the first companies to offer childcare for employees, and
their flexible policy on when people get their shifted hours done lets workers
maintain their often weather-dependent outdoor pursuits), minimizing
environmental impact of their products (many of their clothes are made of
recycled materials, and you can send some of them back once they wear out to be
recycled again), and making gear that's built to last through massive abuse
(Chouinard tells the story of a conversation where he said to another Patagonia
high-up that he wanted their company to make the best shirt in the world, and
he was rebuffed: she said it was
impossible, that the best shirts in the world are hand-stitched in Italy and
cost hundreds of dollars apiece. He
asked whether you could get those shirts dirty and toss them in the heavy cycle
of a washer, and she said of course not, the shirt would be ruined. Chouinard concludes that these are not in
fact the best shirts in the world.).
These values--doing good to the world; doing good to other people; living
freely; and making and using efficient, effective products--are presented as a
unified ethic. Seeing them all laid out
so plainly--and moreover, seeing them put into action with integrity,
consistency and success--touched me and shifted how I approach many parts of my
life and what new things I seek to bring into it.
Let My People Go Surfing is in our Biography
section--enjoy!
Bomb The Suburbs and No More Prisons by William Upski Wimsatt
These two books are hard to characterize. Wimsatt, a college dropout (from my college!)
turned hip hop journalist (yeah, hip hop is big enough to include journalism,
too) turned philanthropist, has considered many, many topics and written on
them here: the causes and effects of the
abandonment of urban centers by middle-class white people, self-education where
formal education leaves students cold, responsible use of inherited money,
cross-country hitch hiking, popular misconceptions about the safety of poor
neighborhoods, abuse of racial privileges within hip hop culture, and many
others. In a style that is at once
abrasively blunt and engagingly conversational, Wimsatt keeps you reading,
thinking, and re-thinking throughout.
The two books, read in order (Bomb The Suburbs came out
first), chart marked changes in Wimsatt's views on the topics he
discusses--ideas that were only partway formed in the first book are fleshed out
or critiqued and reconsidered in the second.
I first encountered the idea that this whole post is based on--that
really learning something will change the way you act--in Wimsatt's
writing. I learned later that it's also
found in educational theory; professional educators call it "deep
learning." This approach, focused on
big-picture results, permeates these books, and helps make what might seem like
scattershot collections of unrelated essays feel instead like strong, extremely
cohesive meditations on the state of contemporary society and what each
individual--any individual--can do to improve things.
Wimsatt has a newer book out--Please Don't Bomb The Suburbs. I haven't read it yet, but it's in the
Politics section here at Indigo Bridge.
If you're interested, be quick, or I'll pick it up first.
No Impact Man, by Colin Beavan
This fine specimen recounts the author's yearlong attempt to reduce
his family's negative environmental impact to zero. Not to "be green," not to drive a hybrid, not
to buy the plastic box of food from another continent with a "certified
organic" sticker on it instead of the one without, but to do nothing at all that
hurts our earth. Public transportation
is not good enough--the subway still runs on fossil-fuel power. Recycling is not good enough--the project
demands that no waste be produced whatsoever.
Forget CFLs--Beavan, his wife and their toddler daughter turn off the
electricity.
The book's power is multifold:
for one, it presents and strives to answer some very important
questions, questions that humankind has stopped being able to run away
from. If all our technological progress,
at the expense of the planet's livability and the lives, health and happiness
of billions of our poorest people, is legitimately making our lives better,
then perhaps it's worth the cost, Beavan suggests. But, he continues, are our lives better with
our Styrofoam and takeout boxes? With
our disposable tissues? With twenty-four
hour television, with plastic diapers, with so many material conveniences and
labor-savers that we are now expected to live at a pace so fast we can't enjoy
the life the conveniences are here to free us up to enjoy in the first
place? And if not--if we spend so much of
our time toiling to pay for another box of dross, and we're shooting the earth
in the face in the process, and it's not even making us happier--what do we do
about it?
The other big strength of the book is that it explains in
concrete terms just how Beavan and his family sought the "No Impact"
ideal. Their approach is specific to
their circumstances--a fairly well-off family of three living in an apartment in
New York City--but many of the things they do are applicable to other people
too, either in concept or step-for-step.
Perhaps grocery shopping on a custom-built cargo trike won't work for
someone living in the country, but washing clothes by stomping them clean in
the bathtub can work just fine.
In addition to telling his family's personal story, Beavan
returns time and again to the project's national and global context, which
helps keep the book's relevance constantly in focus. No Impact Man gave me a new framework
with which to conceptualize my commitment to environmental (and societal)
sustainability, specific tools and processes to make my life more sustainable
and potentially satisfying, and an image of what one part of our planet's
future may look like. Green consumerists
beware: his answer does not include
living as you always have buying everything you're used to, except made out of
recycled plastic and organic palm oil.
It does, however, include some possible directions to a future where the
planet supports us, we support each other, and we have a better time as we do
it.
We shelve it in Environment.
Books that don't go a step
beyond pure entertainment are wonderful and important. But books that give you new understanding of
your world and make you approach and engage that world differently can be
perhaps more wonderful still.
Read on,
~Grey
 Today, I have finally finished reading Into The Wild by Jon Krakauer. Some of you may recognize the title from the 2007 film adaptation [IMDB link] starring Emile Hirsch as Chris McCandless. I am guilty of seeing the movie before reading the book, but that's not terrible. In all honesty the movie cuts out some things from the book, that are actually completely irrelevant to the story. There were two whole chapters I glanced through, because for some reason Krakauer decided it was a good time to write about himself again. Those were the only instances of this book that I didn't enjoy.
For those of you not familiar with either form of this story it's the tale of Chris McCandless' sojourn across the Western United States and eventually his fateful march into the Alaskan bush in 1992. McCandless dubbed himself Alexander Supertramp, and took on many different identities in his travels, but almost each was some iteration of the name Alex. He left without notice after his collegiate graduation, and before going home to see his parents. He made his way west into the deserts of Arizona and Nevada, down into Mexico and eventually back up into California. He also made great strides in South Dakota, where he settled down for a bit and did some farm work.
Through out his journey Alex was constantly befriending and impressing new people. He left every person he spent any time alongside, with a feeling of love and respect toward him. One such man, who Alex appeared to have the greatest impact on, even renounced his faith in God after learning of Alex' ill-fate in Alaska.
One of the hardest things about this book, is getting yourself to understand that while Alex was interesting, intelligent and at least a little brave, his story is full of arrogance and tragedy as well. His great adventure feels both awesome, and overly self-indulgent at the same time. I spent a lot of my time reading this trying to decide if I was jealous, or relieved that I'd never follow in at least a few of his footsteps.
The final words Chris penned before his passing, are probably some of the most humbling words I've ever read:
"I HAVE HAD A HAPPY LIFE AND THANK THE LORD, GOODBYE AND MAY GOD BLESS ALL [sic]!"
The epilogue tells of his parents visiting his final base camp in Alaska. It's touching and beautiful. I considered skipping it, but in the end couldn't resist reading it. The sense of both loss and joy his parents display while exploring the abandoned bus are quite unique. I don't believe my own parents would react the same way, especially so soon after the events.
In the end if you want to know the story of Alexander Supertramp, you can just watch the film, but if you really want to gain some insight into Chris McCandless and the many people he effected throughout his journey then please take the time to read the book. Don't ever forget that non-fiction is good for the soul too.
 Mark Twain's been a popular man in the papers lately. Not only with the release of the first volume in his autobiography, but also with a newly edited version of The Adventures of Tom Sawyer and Huckleberry Finn in one volume. When it was originally published in 1885, Huckleberry Finn was denounced by many critics as "trash", but has regardless become a beloved classic by an American icon. It was also, of course, a different time,
with different tolerances and sensibilities.
Imagine the outcry that a book being newly published today would receive for 219 uses of the "n" word. In the edition of The Adventures of Tom Sawyer and Huckleberry Finn to be released in February by Alabama publisher NewSouth Books, edited by Alan Gribben, all 219 instances of that racial slur in Huckleberry Finn have been replaced by the word "slave". NewSouth freely admits that "slave" doesn't have the same impact or caustic connotations that the "n" word in Twain's original text did, but then, that's rather the point. Furthermore, the word "injun" has been edited to "Indian".
Huckleberry Finn is still banned in schools across the nation today, many teachers and parents uncomfortable at the idea of their children having such a confrontation with the "n" word, but those who support this cleaner edition think more students will now be permitted an earlier introduction to this story that teaches on themes beyond racism. It raises the
question of is it ever acceptable to propagate a word saturated with hatred, regardless of context, and what power we imbue a condemned word with by continuing to use it. There are cries from the other end of the argument that even these minor alterations to Huckleberry Finn bleach the heart and soul from the work, draining it of its historical and cultural significance while promoting censorship. Racial slurs are ugly scars across our language, but ignoring them does not make them fade entirely. What do we teach, when we explain to our children what these words mean, where they come from, and why they might make us ache today? How might that change our comprehension and appreciation of Twain's stories?
We here at Indigo Bridge Books invite you to develop your own opinions on such revisions and start conversations about the editing of classic literature, and will be happy to provide you whichever edition of Huckleberry Finn you would like to purchase. Regardless of the viewpoint
taken, we are always inspired to see people think critically and feel passionately about what they read, and exercising their rights to choose and speak freely based on what they believe.
|
|
