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January book log
Jan. 25th, 2018 08:55 pmMaybe this will be a way to keep me posting more often! I didn't read a lot of books in January but I did get through two audio books:
Revolution by Jennifer Donnelly
Bury My Heart at Wounded Knee by Dee Brown
Revolution is a Young Adult novel that I know is popular because the library I used to work at had copies stolen repeatedly so that I could never actually borrow it while I was there. Andi is a high school senior in NYC whose life is a mess: she's depressed, suicidal, self-destructive, and has to take care of her mother who is more or less catatonic after the death of her little brother. We don't actually find out how her brother (Truman) died until late into the book, but we know from the beginning that there was something very wrong about what happened. The only thing keeping Andi going is playing her guitar and her music lessons at school. During winter break she's hauled off to Paris by her mostly-absent father and forced to work on her senior thesis, a project about musical DNA starting with a fictional French composer named Mahlerbeau who lived during the French Revolution. And then things get weird.
The book is long and I was surprised at how quickly it went by. Andi is definitely not a happy camper and she makes sure everyone around her knows it. At times it almost goes overboard but generally the author does a good job of showing a person who's been stuck in despair for two years now and is barely hanging on. The portion of the story set in France really grabbed me and I laughed in many of the scenes when Andi is describing her rich, pretentious classmates.
Bury My Heart at Wounded Knee has been on my To Read list for years. It's a non-fiction book about Native Americans during the second half of the 19th century. Predictably, it's depressing and harrowing, but always fascinating. I knew a little bit of the tribes and events Brown recounts, but most of the specifics were new to me. It focuses primarily on the western half of the country though trips to Washington, D.C. turn up occasionally. Some of the things I'd vaugely known of before reading this book but didn't really learn about till now where Geronimo, Custer, the Ghost Dance, and the origin of the saying "The only good Indian is a dead Indian."
One of the things that surprised me were the examples of people in the U.S. government and military who actually tried to help the various tribes and make things better, but these people were typically changed to a different position, fired, or driven to the point where they resigned. I think my favorite is a white mail carrier who'd been harassed by a tribe (I'm sorry, I didn't write down which tribe or chapter this happens in and it's a very long book) while carrying out his duties to the point where he almost quits. One day, he waltzes up to where the tribe is currently camped, sets down the gun he carries, and walks right up to their chief and sits down to work things out. Look, I'm just trying to do my job, I'm not trying to do anything on your land except get through to carry the mail in and out, how about you guys get off of my back? And then the mail carrier and the chief became friends and stayed friends for the rest of their lives.
Revolution by Jennifer Donnelly
Bury My Heart at Wounded Knee by Dee Brown
Revolution is a Young Adult novel that I know is popular because the library I used to work at had copies stolen repeatedly so that I could never actually borrow it while I was there. Andi is a high school senior in NYC whose life is a mess: she's depressed, suicidal, self-destructive, and has to take care of her mother who is more or less catatonic after the death of her little brother. We don't actually find out how her brother (Truman) died until late into the book, but we know from the beginning that there was something very wrong about what happened. The only thing keeping Andi going is playing her guitar and her music lessons at school. During winter break she's hauled off to Paris by her mostly-absent father and forced to work on her senior thesis, a project about musical DNA starting with a fictional French composer named Mahlerbeau who lived during the French Revolution. And then things get weird.
The book is long and I was surprised at how quickly it went by. Andi is definitely not a happy camper and she makes sure everyone around her knows it. At times it almost goes overboard but generally the author does a good job of showing a person who's been stuck in despair for two years now and is barely hanging on. The portion of the story set in France really grabbed me and I laughed in many of the scenes when Andi is describing her rich, pretentious classmates.
Bury My Heart at Wounded Knee has been on my To Read list for years. It's a non-fiction book about Native Americans during the second half of the 19th century. Predictably, it's depressing and harrowing, but always fascinating. I knew a little bit of the tribes and events Brown recounts, but most of the specifics were new to me. It focuses primarily on the western half of the country though trips to Washington, D.C. turn up occasionally. Some of the things I'd vaugely known of before reading this book but didn't really learn about till now where Geronimo, Custer, the Ghost Dance, and the origin of the saying "The only good Indian is a dead Indian."
One of the things that surprised me were the examples of people in the U.S. government and military who actually tried to help the various tribes and make things better, but these people were typically changed to a different position, fired, or driven to the point where they resigned. I think my favorite is a white mail carrier who'd been harassed by a tribe (I'm sorry, I didn't write down which tribe or chapter this happens in and it's a very long book) while carrying out his duties to the point where he almost quits. One day, he waltzes up to where the tribe is currently camped, sets down the gun he carries, and walks right up to their chief and sits down to work things out. Look, I'm just trying to do my job, I'm not trying to do anything on your land except get through to carry the mail in and out, how about you guys get off of my back? And then the mail carrier and the chief became friends and stayed friends for the rest of their lives.
