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. 

Olivetti

 Olivetti

By Allie Millington

I picked this up yesterday while in the Woodstock Library, where Kes had curled up with a Big Nate book
and didn't show signs of stopping. I didn't want to interrupt a good reading session on a summer's day, saw the type writer on the cover of this one, along with a supportive quote from Tom Hanks, and decided to give it a try.

The story is told from two perspectives. Ernest is a 7th-grader going through some very challenging times. He barely speaks to anyone, including his boisterous family of five, and spends much of his time pouring over the Oxford English Dictionary on the roof of his San Francisco apartment. Olivetti is, well, a typewriter. The idea here is that typewriters are sentient beings, sworn to hide their intelligence from human users, who take on and hold the memories of everything that was written with them.

This becomes quite handy when, one day, the matriarch of the family, Beatrice, disappears. It is the family's worst nightmare, but hits Ernest particularly hard. It turns out his psychological challenges stem largely from a bout of cancer that Beatrice survived over the course of several years prior. He just doesn't trust that anyone else he connects with won't suffer a similar fate. Doing some detective work, Ernest discovers that his mother has pawned Olivetti for $126 at a pawn shop across the street from his apartment. He returns there one evening, finds the door unlocked, and goes to the typewriter. He writes a short sentence, thinking it is to his mother: I think it's my fault you ran away. But it isn't Beatrice who responds -- it is Olivetti.

Ernest is, of course, shocked. But Olivetti says he will help him find his mother, so he absconds with the typewriter and his search continues in, well, earnest. With the help of Olivetti, and the pawn shop owner's daughter, Quinn, he is successful in finding Beatrice, whose disappearance is an irrational, but perhaps understandable, reaction to news that her cancer is back. She ran rather than have to face the fact that she would be putting her family through another round of sickness.

I finished this book in a day. I can't remember the last time I did that! It was a nice read.

Murder at Gulls Nest

 Murder at Gulls Nest

By Jess Kidd

This was my first read of the summer; I finished it just before our departure for Costa Rica on July 3, which

is why I am just getting to it now. 

This was a lovely little murder mystery that felt perfect for the days just after school got out. It was set in the scenic, but becoming-run-down seaside town of Gull's Nest in England. The main character, whose name I forget, is a nun who has just given up her vows after three or four decades in cloister. The spark that set this move in motion, though it had been long simmering, was the disappearance of another newly-freed nun who had rented a room in Gull's Nest, faithfully corresponded with our accidental detective -- and then suddenly stopped. Such is the main character's loyalty to this friend, that she is convinced something must have happened. 

It did, of course, which becomes all-too-obvious when another murder happens at the same inn that the main character and her former friend take rooms. And then another. The former nun helps guide the investigation, which leads, improbably, to a wife whose groom, it turns out, was gay. The other murders were simply cover-ups for that one. 

Can't say this book was earth shattering, but it kept me turning the pages.

The Fortress of Solitude

 The Fortress of Solitude

By Jonathan Lethem

This year marked the 20th anniversary of my graduation from college; I was unable, or unwilling, to attend

my reunion. But it felt like a milestone worth marking. So I decided to reread this novel, which I consumed while on a transcontinental train ride from LA to Boston that I took from college to NH, where my parents still lived.

The first part of the book I remembered quite clearly. It features Dylan, whose parents, especially his mother, move the family into Brooklyn as part of some idealistic experiment. The mother had been a "Brooklyn kid", and so would her son. He is "one of only three white kids in his school." She is proud of this. His father, a painter who has decided that his life's work will be a hand-painted film that nobody will every likely see, is oblivious. The Ebdus' are not the only white newcomers to Dean St., but others are there less because of progressive ideals than conservative ones -- they wish to "reclaim" the neighborhood. They no longer live in Gowans, but in Boerum Hill.

Whiteness comes to define Dylan's childhood much as blackness defines others depending on who is the minority. It has its pros. He is exposed to everything that was hip in Brooklyn's black community in the 1970s, and will be in the rest of the white nation not long after. Deep funk. Weed. Graffiti. But it has its downsides too. He is constantly "yoked", or stolen from, usually with some sort of physical reminder of his lowly place in the world. The major saving grace is the arrival on Dean Street of Mingus Rude, who is the son of a once-famous soul singer and who becomes something of a best friend/protector to Dylan. Together, the two navigate adolescents with the help of a ring bestowed upon Dylan by a wino that he has seen fly. The ring helps them fly.

But it is only Dylan who is able to escape Dean Street. It isn't easy. He is expelled from a fancy Vermont college and winds up in Berkeley with a Brooklyn-sized chip on his shoulder. He lives in the past, penning the liner notes to box sets of old blues and soul records. 

I found that the story lost its vitality a bit in the second part of the book, when Dylan tries to reckon with his childhood. I wish the ring and its magical powers, which threaten to send the book into parts beyond realistic fiction, had played a larger role. But, still. It's a brilliant book. Perhaps I will revisit it in another 10 years.