More Kingsolver

To honor Earth Day in April we elected to read Barbara Kingsolver’s Animal, Vegetable, Miracle. Later I borrowed a gorgeous book of essays that touched on similar themes called Small Wonder that must have been a precursor to AVM. I’ll save you some time if you’d rather not continue reading: read these books.

Again, readers will be familiar with my love of Kingsolver’s work (here and here). These books aren’t novels of fiction, but rather Kingsolver speaking directly to the reader through essays about what she is passionate about.

I would start with Small Wonder which is a collection of essays written about motherhood, sustainability, and politics in a post-9/11 world. I was very impressed. Each essay is so well-crafted that you could read one and savor it all day long. The exception would be the essay on her relationship with her mother that I think was written more instinctually than with her writer’s eye, but is nonetheless lovely.

In Animal, Vegetable, Miracle we get a more in-depth look at the Kingsolver-Hopp family’s journey through a year of eating only what they could grow or purchase locally. I was very impressed and totally intimidated. The book follows the growing season through the year and includes recipes and passionate advocacy for genetic biodiversity (which is a lot more interesting than it sounds), the local food movement, and sustainability practices. I’m not at all ashamed to say that I conscientiously bought the whole thing hook, line, and sinker. I’ve been passionate about sustainability for years and reading AVM was like coming home. My lifestyle isn’t quite where I’d like it to be, but I’ll get there.

As I’ve said before, I adore Kingsolver’s books and will treasure them for the rest of my life. I love the gentle way she explores the human condition and advocates for authentic human connection with the earth. I hope you find books that move you as these have moved me.

The Hunger Games

In March our book club elected to read The Hunger Games by Suzanne Collins and I’ll be forthcoming and admit that I was not thrilled. I have a devious little streak in me that avoids whatever books are selling really well because I don’t want to buy into the hype. The problem is, if my readers will remember from an earlier post, sometimes there’s hype for a reason.

As it turns out I read the entire trilogy in ten days. They were totally absorbing. I cried. I despaired. I gasped aloud. The story was just terrible enough to be appalling, romantic enough to be hopeful, and set in a futuristic place that nonetheless was familiar enough to make is scary. And they must have been well-written because I didn’t notice otherwise.

I appreciated the appeal of the stories to boys and girls, and ultimately, to my husband who is not a terribly interested reader. His comment was that he knew they must be good because all his 8^th graders were reading them (not just the girls), and so were all the teachers. I was pleased that he read them along with me and we had a great time sharing the suspense.

In the end, middle school would be my threshold for young people to read these books. The themes are pretty violent and I would want to make sure my child had the cognitive capacity to process the story somewhat politically. Without that they revert to a “Team Peeta vs. Team Gale” romance fixation that seems to have begun with the Twilight series (a bandwagon I don’t think I’ll get on). This is too bad because the author didn’t sexualize her at all, that wasn’t the point of the story. If not that pitfall, children may fixate on the violence and not be able to comprehend the story at all. I wouldn’t want this either.

I highly recommend this series, particularly to folks who are into dystopian literature, political uprisings or coups, or if they’re looking for a female protagonist with grit. I’m not buying many books these days but this is a series I will absolutely read again.

Catch-Up!

It has been a while since I’ve been able to contribute to the delightful folly that is our little book club. 2012 has been terribly encumbered.

I won’t catalogue each book I’ve read since January but here are some highlights:

•  After being on the list for weeks I finally got a copy of Anne Ursu’s Breadcrumbs and it was very sweet. It seemed like the author was borrowing quite a bit from classic children’s fiction but the story was darling and it took place in Minneapolis so that was fun.
•  I started Madeline L’Engle’s Time series after my mother told me for years that I’d love it. I found that while the stories are compelling, I think they’re actually pretty strange. I’ve read the first two (A Wrinkle in Time and A Wind in the Door) and will probably finish the series.
• Seedfolks by Paul Fleischman will take you an hour and a half and is absolutely gorgeous.
•  I also took my own advice and have been re-reading some beloveds from childhood: Philip Pullman’s Sally Lockhart trilogy, Morning Girl by Michael Dorris, and L. M. Montgomery’s Anne of Green Gables series, which I never actually read as a child.

Overall it’s been a good year in reading. I hope to not take such a prolonged absence as the last six months became and I hope that if you’ve read something lovely or terrible that you’ll share it.