Stephen

Sara

Revisado: 08-15-22

Sara Kruzan at age 17 shot and killed her pimp, who had groomed her since age 11 to be a prostitute. The judge took none of that into account, only seeing a violent girl, and locked her away for life according to minimum adult guidelines. This is her life story and it is really good. She is the namesake of H.R.1950 - Sara's Law a bill that would allow juvenile victims of sex trafficking who in turn commit violent crimes against their trafficker to have more lenient sentencing guidelines. The book is eye opening how trafficking happens. I think if trafficking victims started killing their pimps more often, and getting lighter sentences, there might be fewer pimps in this world. So far Sara's Law is on the books in two states, it will be interesting to see how the experiment works out. Sara Kruzan making life incompatible with pimping.

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Labrador

Revisado: 08-11-22

The Whisper on the Night Wind concerns the legend of a mysterious creature in Labrador. Many places have mystery creatures such as Sasquatch or Loch Ness and Labrador has its own. Shoalts uses it as a narrative thread to explore Labrador, and does arrive at a plausible explanation. It's also a travelogue and outdoor journey, first it takes 20+ hours to get there along a dirt road from Quebec. The largest settlement is North West River / Goose Bay and just east of there, south of Melville Bay, are the Mealy Mountains. Within the past 5 years they were made into a new National Park. The park has no roads or official trails and is exceptionally hard going with dense black spruce forests and barren rock mountains. It's been called the largest protected area in eastern North America. Labrador was one of the last areas to be settled by humans, being so far away from the Bering Strait, locked up by glaciers, and generally bypassed by Europeans for better climes south. To this day there are very few people. The Mealy Mountains are adjacent to the largest human settlement in the entire territory but hardly anyone goes there. The mystery of the creature keeps the narrative taught and pages turning while you learn about this fascinating place.

I am wary of 1-star reviewers and look how they reviewed other books because it's often just as badly. If you have any interest in Labrador this is a great gateway when followed with Google Maps. I read this book a while ago and it has stuck with me.

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"English Castle"

Revisado: 07-14-22

There's some interesting thought provoking stuff here, not all intended. The basic story is appealing, there are some issues. It's not a "castle", despite the title, that sort of mistake is a red flag history is secondary. Odd given DePree's goal of restoring a historical property. He has an elementary understanding of England, but we also can tell he's smarter - too cute at times. Nowhere does he discuss "landed gentry" to which the estate belongs, comprising about 1,000 estates in England sandwiched between the nobility - who had castles - and everyone else. They were sort of proto middle-class and the manor a proto McMansion with an army of servants. These estates remain controversial, not unlike slave plantations of the American south (forced labor work camps? Beautiful relics of a bygone era?), although this one has been so chopped up for use by a community college it's hard to complain. I felt a bit cheated as there is missing backstory about Hopwood, it's hard to get a handle on who he really is. So much is still unknown - will he complete the renovation, will he find a wife, what will happen to the house. I admit to being hooked in but it does feel like a hook. I wish him the best, despite the complaints it's a genuinely noble thing to restore a home, even if not actually a castle.

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Life attenuated

Revisado: 06-24-22

That's the theme. It's pretty remarkable actually how many ways Gaydos finds to explore it in this otherwise short book (her first love is poetry). At first I couldn't figure out why I felt depressed - early death, failure to thrive, disease and rot and blood sucking pets - oh man what is this dark vision of Vermont farming! Verging on visceral horror. Once I realized she had a theme and was actually doing something, I started getting into it, saw the light, had an epiphany. I hate to spoil it here but this is a gem. A lot more going on then a typical book of "I became a farmer" memoir, though it does give a flavor of what those old 1970s hippy farming communes in Vermont have become, and a side of working class rural farming life in New England. The ending brings it all home, the biggest one of all. Wait for it. Good. Unique stuff.

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From 3 to 4 stars

Revisado: 05-15-22

I originally gave it 3 stars ("Pretty Good") but later changed it to 4 stars ("It's Great"). The reason is I watched the 2-hour Nova show 'Dinosaur Collapse' narrated by Sir David Attenborough with guest expert Riley Black which covers much the same material in the book (the release of the book and show coincide). The show has incredible CG that brought to life 66 million years ago on Hell Creek, Montana that felt like true time travel. The world was both familiar and different, but familiar enough to be believable. This then fed into and reinforced what I learned in the book. The two together are more than the sum of parts. Highly recommended to pair these into a multi-multi-media experience (text, audio, video).

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Walking the Bowl

Revisado: 02-20-22

The world has something like 100 million street children. This is the true story of one city and a few of those children. It's pretty horrible what goes on with the rape and violence. Older children are predators of younger kids, who then grow up and repeat the cycle. There are gangs. Glue sniffing. Forced prostitution of young boys. It's a trip through hell really. It makes Lord of the Flies seem civilized. But this is true. The main story concerns the hunt for the killer of a street boy. Normally this would go unnoticed, but the deceased was the bastard son of a famous prostitute and she wants answers from the police who pressure one kid to get answers, or take the blame himself. He goes on a journey through the underworld (literally) encountering a wide variety of people and situations as he gathers leads and clues to the identity of the killer. It has novelistic qualities if you can stomach the indignities and horrors. It's more than a thriller though, it has a lesson about treating others humanely. That's what the cryptic title means, left for the reader to discover.

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3-stars "Pretty Good"

Revisado: 02-12-22

Found it hard going as an audiobook. Would be better read. The science terminology at times is a bit dense though not insurmountable. The descriptive language can be creative, it requires slowing down and letting sink in, he doesn't repeat for emphasis so you either absorb the sentence right away or it's lost. For these two reasons, the unstoppable grind of the audiobook format makes it harder going. The structure is pretty simple and each of the 16 chapters (point in time) is a standalone work. If your dedicated, 2 or 3 listens will reward. One problem is there is no thesis, it's like: here is a lake 10 million years ago and there are insects buzzing and fish jumping and strange trees. Next. Reminds me of general-topic books about "the ocean" or "salt", anything goes and ends up as an encyclopedic dump of predigested learning. 3 stars, "Pretty good".

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Awesome

Revisado: 01-26-22

Mala Kacenberg was 14 years old in 1939, and would soon become the only Jewish survivor of a Polish village exterminated by the infamous Reserve Police Battalion 101. It reads like a taught 'man on the run' novel. Mala is the master of deception, helped by blonde hair, she fools nearly everyone she is a Christian; yet there is always someone around who suspects otherwise. Intelligent, clever and brave she is on the edge of death many times, a cat with nine lives. The story has a literal cat that follows her throughout - unclear if true or an analogy for a guardian angel. There are no camps or scenes of massacres. This story has stuck with me for weeks after finishing, not because it's shocking, rather intriguing. The intrigue of hiding in plain sight for years, the close-call cat and mouse games, and Mala herself who is an intriguing character. Note: originally published in 1995 as 'Alone in the Forest'.

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A Wild Idea

Revisado: 08-19-21

Douglas Tompkins founded The North Face in 1960s era San Francisco; then Esprit clothing company in the 80s. He hung out with Grateful Dead, Janice Joplin and other royalty. He has been compared rightly to Steve Jobs for his forward vision and attention to design (really Jobs is comparable to Tompkins, they were friends). He was also a devout environmentalist and adventurer who spent 3-4 months a year on expeditions in the wild. So in the 1990s after he sold his businesses for 150 million he moved to Patagonia and started buying up land, lots of it, setting up a decades long fight with timber and ranching interests. He intended to conserve it and donate it back to Chile as a national park. As a person he was said to do more in one week then most people do in a month, a frenetic super-charged dynamo who inspired the entire country of Chile to build huge national parks, becoming a global model of conservation.

Jonathan Franklin is an American journalist based in Chile who writes on South American topics and has followed the career of Tompkins, the book is based on original interviews with dozens of people. It has all the right elements for good non-fiction: strong main character, a good plot (little guy vs. Goliath) , adventure and exotic locales, informative. And a strong though sad ending, bringing events to the present. It leaves you feeling a bit hopeful and positive towards humanity, Tompkins showed we can pay our due the natural world, give something back for what we take.

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"It's OK" - Amazon review scale 2 stars

Revisado: 07-24-21

This was published in 1999 and I suspect anyone interested in "wild swimming" has probably already read it. I'd never heard of this term and am not much of a swimmer anyway. I can see why it's so famous, dense with colorful prose and incident. The problem is it's very British, in terminology and culture to the point I had trouble maintaining interest. It's not only swimming but reports of local towns and pubs and other landmarks. It's as much a report on the less known areas and stuff that has nothing to do with swimming rather off the track tourism. And it's well over 20 years old now.

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