Indian Country

 Indian Country

By Shobha Rao

One of the best books I've picked up in a while!

This tells the story of an Indian couple who find themselves in rural Montana. They also find themselves
together. Janavi is a younger sister who acts like an older one -- until her mother dies. She is listless to the point of drowning herself in the Ganges, but holds back until she remembers the promise she made: to take care of her older, meeker sister Rajni. Her decision to live puts her back in the world, and she finds a meaningful path as a worker for an NGO trying to help street children in her city, Varanasi. But that is upended one day when her sister is set to meet her arranged betrothed. Rajni, it turns out, has a beau, one chosen for love. She convinces Sagar, to whom she has been committed since birth, to claim he wants to marry Janavi, who is aghast but unwilling to face the consequences of refusing the proposal. And so she is married.

She must also move. Sagar, a hydraulic engineer, has taken a  job in eastern Montana, in part to flee from his brother, who is a living reminder of the biggest mistake he has ever made: pushing him into a swimming hole, where he injured himself and became disabled for life.

At first, things go well -- at least professionally. Janavi is furious at her situation. But Sagar has been obsessed with rivers since a kid, and is excited at being a lead engineer on a project for the first time. His job is to remove a dam on the Cotton River. It's a project that has the support of the local native tribe, but not some of the most powerful men in town. The day that the first drainage notch is cut in the river, tragedy strikes. A co-worker, who has become a close friend, is found dead. Sagar's engineering work is blamed. He is fired and given six weeks to leave the country.

But Sagar knows his numbers, knows that it's not his work that cause the death. And so he and Janavi set out to find answers. In the process, they grow closer together -- while the Rajni's marriage in India falls into abuse. 

The book touches on lots of themes, including gender roles, race, and colonialism. It was a great read.

The Rider

 The Rider

By Tim Krabbè

I actually bought this book. It was recommended to me by Mark Ericson, a new teacher at our school with

whom I've gone a few bike rides. He is a die-hard. He came to Vermont from LA, where he commuted to work everyday, a tradition he's kept up in Woodstock.

The book is a 150-page account of a 150-kilometer bike race through the mountains of France. It is told from the perspective of one Tim Krabbè; it is a little unclear how autobiographical it is. It is almost stream of consciousness, toggling back and forth between the rider's "sporting history" as a child and young man and thoughts about racing strategy. Krabbè very much wants to win this race. 

It is a slim novel, but I will say that I found it a bit of a slog at times. It is filled with suffering, emotional and physical as Krabbè tries to pull off his first win at a well-known race. But while reading the last thirty pages, I found my palms sweating and my heart racing. I, too, desperately wanted Krabbè. Spoiler alert: He doesn't, falling 10 cm short after a sprint to the finish. It is heartbreaking, and the reader is left wondering: will Krabbè get back on the bike?

This one left me: A) Pretty firm in my belief that bicycle racing isn't for me; and B) Wanting to read some of Krabbè's other work.

Walk Two Moons

 Walk Two Moons

By Sharon Creech

This was some serious YA fiction, and I really liked it. Not sure what that says about my mindset these
days, but I really dig the way YA writers tell stories. 

This book's main character is Sal, who has recently moved to bland, suburban Ohio after spending most of her childhood on a farm in Kentucky, a place she loved and misses dearly. Why the move? Sal's mother left the family, and, it seems, isn't coming back.

The particulars of the departure unfold as Sal entertains her grandparents as they drive across the country to Lewiston, Idaho, with tales of her friend in Ohio named Phoebe. Phoebe is at turns likeable and pretty horrible, but the friendship is cemented when her mother suddenly disappears, too. Sal keeps her own first-hand experience with this to herself, but the shared trauma of the experience endears Phoebe to her. 

Throughout the book, the reader is kept thinking that Sal is on her way to reunite with her mother, who, we learn, left after suffering a miscarriage that led to depression. It feels like a hopeful journey. But then we learn why Sal's mother isn't coming back: she's dead. It was a bus crash that did it, and the journey Sal is on is merely to visit her mother's grave and pay her final respects. 

All in all, this was a great tale. Sal is a wonderful character that you keep rooting for all the way.

I Cheerfully Refuse

 I Cheerfully Refuse

By Leif Enger

This was the book that initially inspired me to pick up Peace Like a River, which I think I read last winter

and enjoyed. So I came back to this one after going up on another, more literary book.

This is set in a vague apocalyptic future in Michigan along the shores of Lake Superior. The main character, Rainy, has somehow managed to carve out a pretty good life with his partner, Lark, a former librarian-turned-bookstore owner, a sign of rebellion at a time when reading has become suspicious. Rainy, meanwhile, is a bass player in local bar bands. 

This world is turned upside down when a young man enters their lives. Rainy and Lark like him, and want to help. They suspect he is an escapee from a work farm, a place with reportedly horrible conditions that prey on people desperate for income but who nevertheless often cannot stand the brutality of the deal. But he turns out to be much more. As Rainy will learn, he has stolen a large amount of Willow, a new suicide drug that has become popular with "explorers" too eager to see what lies beyond this life to wait for natural death. The drug is worth lots, and soon people come to Rainy's home. When they don't find the drug, they take Lark's life instead. And Rainy goes on the run.

He does it on a sloop in Lake Superior, trying to stay away from his pursuers but also hoping to meet up with Lark in The Slates, a set of islands where he and Lark once ran into the author of I Cheerfully Refuse despite the fact that she had died many years ago. He is successful for a while, and takes on board a young woman from an abused home. But his luck does run out. His fate is better than most: The head of the pharmaceutical-producing ship his is taken to asks him to play the bass for him, and so Rainy is treated to real food and regular release from his cell. Yet when the rest of the crew rebels, Rainy joins them. Things end more or less happily every after.

I'm not exactly sure what this books was trying to say, and it definitely felt a little tedious by the end.

How Much of these Hills is Gold?

How Much of These Hills is Gold?

By C. Pam Zhang

This is a version of the Western told from the point of view of Chinese laborers. The book opens with the
two central characters, Lucy and Sam, trying to figure out how to bury their Ba, Mandarin for father. He'd taken to drink since their mother died, and did not last long after that. They try to follow their mother's directives about burial, searching and searching for a "home" in which to bury him. But they can't find one, or at least not one to Sam's liking. So the best they can do is mummify him, and carry him around as they search the hills.

Which is pretty much what the book is about: There is no "home" for people "like" Lucy and Sam in America. They are constantly othered, despite the fact that Ba, no matter the assumptions made about him, was actually born in this land. And so for Lucy and Sam, and their mother, it is a different west that holds their dreams -- a west beyond the Pacific Ocean, back in China.

Meanwhile, in the United States, nothing is as it seems. In fact, the US is never mentioned, perhaps a commentary on the fact that the land actually belongs to someone, or something, else. Sam is, in fact, Samantha. Ma is not dead -- she took off in the dead of night. Friends are not friends. There is no happy ending in this land of gold and golden dreams.

I loved the writing in this book. It was enthralling. The plot, too, kept you reading. But it was pretty clear from the outset that there would be no happy ending. We know at the outset, for instance, that Ba will die. So when we read of the family's good fortune to find some gold, enough to get them back to China, there is no joy in it. We know it will eventually taken from them. And when Lucy and Sam seem poised to head back to China, together, we wait for the other shoe to drop, and it does. 

The Boy Who Harnessed the Wind

 The Boy Who Harnessed the Wind (YA Adaptation)

By William Kamkwamba

Erin picked this up for Kes to feed his burgeoning reading habit, but I'd just finished a book, had heard of it,

and so gave it a shot.

It's been a long while since I've read non-fiction. My reading these days is largely escapism, so a tale is what I need. But this book had me hooked. It is quite the dramatic story. 

A boy born to poor farmers in Malawi is thirsty for knowledge. But when a famine hits his country, there is no money left for school fees. So he takes learning into his own hands, visiting his primary school library for books. He has become fascinated with dynamos, small devices that create electricity with the turning of a wheel. His home, like most in his village, has no electricity, and he wants to change that. If Harnessed correctly, it could be life changing and offer insurance against future famine. 

One day, in a book, he discovers the concept of a windmill, and he realizes it could be used to turn the wheel of a dynamo much like a bicycle's wheels. So he sets off to build one, visiting local scrap yards for whatever materials he can. He builds a small windmill as proof of concept, and powers a radio. So he goes bigger, eventually erecting a windmill at his family's house. People think he's crazy. But soon enough, his whole house is wired and electrified. His family no longer goes to bed at 7 pm; they have conquered the night.

Somehow, this invention is discovered by the outside world. Media attention follows suit, and William's life trajectory changes dramatically. He delivers a TED talk, goes back to school, and eventually graduates from Dartmouth, pledging to spend his life helping his countrymen in Malawi. Inspiring stuff.

The Intiutitionist

 The Intiutionist

By Colson Whitehead

I think I stumbled on this one while looking for The Hobbit at the Woodstock Library. There was an array of

Colson Whitehead books, and I thought this one looked interesting.

It takes place in a kind of alternate Jim Crow United States, one where elevators hold, well, an elevated position in society. Elevators are given the credit for the progress of American cities, allowing them to build up and therefore modernize. They hold a certain mystique. To keep them running properly, there arises a cadre of elevator inspectors, replete with badges, who rival the Police in terms of power and prestige. There is, however, a rift in these ranks, a philosophical schism in how to properly inspect an elevator. There are the empiricists, whose work centers around the physical inspection of the mechanical workings of the elevator. And then there are the intuitionist, who seek to become one with the elevator as they ride it, feeling any troubles rather than seeing them.

Lila Mae Watson is an intuitionist -- and she is never wrong. Until one day when an elevator she had just inspected at a new city building crashes to the bottom of its shaft. No one is hurt, but a scandal ensues. It is all the more troubling because it is an election year, and the two candidates represent the two elevator inspection schools. Rumors abound. Was it sabotage? And then, out of the blue, there appears in the mailboxes of many prominent elevator people portions of a notebook once owned by James Fulton, the most revered elevator theorist in history. The papers hint at a "black box", a perfect elevator, and both sides rush to find the rest of the plans.

Lila Mae becomes something of a pawn in this battle, until she reveals what the reader has been thinking all along: It's just a big joke. James Fulton invented impiricism to see if anyone would believe him. And they did. And then, strangely enough, he did. It's a little like Bob Dylan's Nashville Skyline, where he disguised his voice to see if anyone would still buy the record and it became beloved. 

I really liked this book. It is a wry commentary on race and mass delusion disguised with a plot that keeps you reading.