Nonfiction.

Whodathunk?  I mean, my mom was a birder for years, and those folks aren't usually your cage match types.  But every year, a number of competitive birders strain just about everything - their budgets, eyes, sleep cycles, health, relationships - to come out on top in the number of bird species sighted in North America in a single year.

This is another one of those subjects I had no interest in until a good book smacked me across the noggin (hurray for good books, and good authors).

Every year there is a Big Year, but there has never been a Big Year like 1998's epic battle between three very (very) different birders.  Mark Obmascik channels Howard Cosell as he narrates The Big Year:  A Tale of Man, Nature and Fowl Obsession.

In one corner, a New Jersey roofing contractor.  In another, a corporate executive; and in the third, a nuclear power plant software engineer (all men - is it always guys who are this crazy?).  Obmascik follows the three on their wacky, sometimes hilarious sometimes tragic galavants around North America.  Like any good competition, it's neck and neck (and neck) the whole way.  I think readers of Bill Bryson will really enjoy this book, and I need to credit a co-worker for lobbing this one my way.

Imagine the obliteration of the Alpine Lakes Wilderness, Olympic National Park, North Cascades National Park, Mount Rainier National Park, Mount St. Helens National Monument, and then some.

1910's worst wildfire in U.S. history was not just a tragic loss, but an event that galvanized citizen support for forest conservation.  Timothy Egan, National Book Award winner, chronicles the events leading to the fire, the heroic and tragic stories from those few horrific days, and the nation's response in The Big Burn: Teddy Roosevelt and the Fire that Saved America. 

Although Roosevelt is listed in the subtitle, Gifford Pinchot and, indirectly, John Muir, were the driving forces behind the development of the National Forest system, and Egan spends the first portion of the book summarizing this backdrop.  Pushed through by the force of Roosevelt's will, the expansion of the National Forests was vehemently opposed by some of the most powerful senators in Congress.  Backed by timber, mining, and grazing lobbies, Congress effectively gutted Forest Service funding.  Idealistic young rangers lived a meager existence in towns that made Deadwood look like a kindergarten, desperately trying to control illegal logging and mining in an ocean of graft and hostility.

When hurricane force winds hit thousands of small fires during a summer of no rain, a handful of these poorly equipped rangers (the legendary Ed Pulaski among them) walked into a maelstrom.  Egan, again, marvelously captures a landmark natural event that changed the West.

[ see Timothy Egan at the Redmond Library:  December 3, 7pm ]

Literature, the best literature, both reflects and critiques the human condition.  Professor Arnold Weinstein uses novels, films, paintings and short stories to show how the world's best authors confront death, joy, dreams, love, and madness.

"Through art," Weinstein notes, "we discover that we are not alone."  Feelings and experiences are understood best by situating them in a social context, by discussing them with others either directly or through producing art such as novels, paintings and films.  Feeling, embodied by the heart, is at the center of Weinstein's book.  As the seat of popular conceptions of feeling, the heart also stands for the biological fact of being alive-- having a heart beat, pumping blood through the body, etc.  The convergence of this figurative and literal importance in what the author calls "the world's heartbeat" is the collective experience of which art brings each of us into closer awareness.  Weinstein discusses paintings, stories, novels and films revered for their exquisite depictions of human feeling, from the obvious choices of Hamlet and Oedipus Rex to the paintings of Swedish artist Lea Cronqvist.

The most intimate and complex of sentiments, grief and love, are explored through Faulkner's Tender is the Night and Edvard Munch's paintings after the death of his sister, Sophie.  As the examined works bear out, these emotions can be powerfully intertwined.  Themes of exposure, to plague (Camus's The Plague and Bergman's The Seventh Seal) to AIDS (Kushner's Angels in America), to smallpox (Dickens's Bleak House) allow authors to explore the objectification of the patient in modern medicine and the impulse to seek meaning through processes such as diagnosis.  Hamlet's "disposition turned heavy" echoes in Quentin Compson of Faulkner's The Sound and the Fury.  In an age more interested in banishing depression as quickly as possible, these two characters depict the depressed mind in great detail as a tragic melancholia, deeply compelling and ultimately deadly.

Weinstein is a professor of Comparative Literature at Brown University and is widely renowned for his teaching exellence.  This book reflets decades of study and refinement of his argumentation in dozens of classrooms.  The scream that goes through the house, Weinstein shows, is the primal, universal expression of feeling projected into the world through art and literature.  Even reformed English majors will enjoy his thoughtful, insightful discussions of how art can make us better people.

What book (that ended up selling over 100,000 copies in the first three weeks of its mainstream release) was originally picked up by a company that mostly published pornographic titles?  What enormously successful novelist worked as a grave digger, gas station worker, English teacher, and laundry mat attendant before his first novel was accepted for publication?  And, just who IS Pansy O'Hara?

If you want the answers to these questions and many others, here's the book for you.  If you've ever wondered how some of your favorite books ended up getting published, here's the book for you.  If you like little-known facts about well-known novels, here's the book for you.

Who the H*** is Pansy O'Hara? takes 50 of what the authors call the "world's best-loved books" and gives you the back story.  They dish on Charlotte Bronte's unrequited love, on Emily Post's divorce (gasp),  and on the World War II intelligence work of Ian Fleming.

The authors include both classic and modern fiction from Pride and Prejudice to The Da Vinci Code as well as nonfiction works like The Origin of Species and even Encyclopedia Britannica.  It's a fun read for bibliophiles and for people who wonder how and where classic novels come from.  And even though some of the stories are a bit sensational and the title sounds a little flip, the scholarship of these authors is serious and their writing is top notch. 

By the way, here's the answers:  Lolita was too hot for American publishers until Olympia Press out of Paris put out a modest 5,000 copies.  Stephen King worked a variety of jobs until Carrie was accepted by Doubleday for $2500.  Margaret Mitchell originally named her fiery Gone With the Wind heroine Pansy, but after multiple revisions, decided Scarlett was a more fitting name.  Happy reading.

The Worst Hard Time: The Untold Story of Those Who Survived the Dust Bowl , by Timothy Egan.

I thought I knew the basic facts of the Dust Bowl, but what I actually knew was the plot line for The Grapes of Wrath. I had no idea that the Dust Bowl was a man-made environmental disaster, and that most of the region's population were unable or unwilling to leave their land in the 1930's.   The Worst Hard Time set me straight on the facts, and deepened my understanding of that desperate era.

Now known as the High Plains, the region that was to gain notoriety as the Dust Bowl in the 1930's was nicknamed the Great American Desert in the 1800's.  It was an immense swath of arid, windswept, treeless land where tough grasses grew, buffalo roamed, and a few Indian tribes made their homes.  Once the Indians were forced to leave and the buffalo nearly exterminated, the U.S. government was eager to create white settlements in the area.  Railroad companies and land speculators were complicit in marketing the Great American Desert as the country's last great deal in agricultural homesteads.  New settlers plowed under millions of acres of prairie grass, then planted wheat. Several years of decent rainfall and high wheat prices in the 1920's gave them a nice return on their investment, but this success was short-lived.  Wheat prices dropped and drought returned to the Plains in the 1930's.  Since the prairie grass was gone, there was nothing to hold the soil in place.  High winds whipped up untold tons of topsoil from the land, creating blinding dust storms that killed people and livestock, buried buildings, and rendered the land unfit for farming.  Many families remained on the land, enduring tremendous losses through seven long years of drought and devastation.

Against this historical and ecological backdrop are the personal stories of several families who made the fateful decision to move to the High Plains in the early 1900's, then suffered through the dire conditions of the Dust Bowl era.  These first-hand accounts give the book an emotional power that stayed with me after I finished the last page.

The Worst Hard Time won the National Book Award and was chosen as Redmond's "One Book" for 2009.  The author, local journalist Timothy Egan, will be speaking at the Redmond Library on Thursday, December 3rd at 7 pm as the culminating event of the Redmond One Book program.  The event is free of charge and open to the public.  

And you can listen to Timothy Egan read excerpts from the book on this National Public Radio broadcast.

Yum! MmMm! Que Rico! America's Sprouting by Pat Mora and Rafael Lopez is a culinary treat you won't want to miss.

Pat Mora is the author of many beautiful bilingual books. This book is all about foods that are native to the Americas including: chile, corn, peanut, potato and pumpkin. Each food is presented with a haiku-style poem along with a side bar of information about the food. The colorful illustrations by Rafael Lopez are really a treat.

 

This is a Readers to Eaters pick!

Readers to Eaters is a nonprofit who's mission it is to promote food literacy from the ground up. They use books and a strong connection to the publishing world to promote knowing about food and where it comes from. They are currently working with schools and libraries to promote good eating and good reading.

Wicked Plants: The Weed That Killed Lincoln's Mother And Other Botanical Atrocities by Amy Stewart

I wouldn't have thought there would be enough material to fill a small pamphlet about deadly plants, let alone an entire book, but this fascinating and readable book proved me wrong.  Plants are labeled with headings to help the uninitiated discover plants covering these categories:  Intoxicating, Destructive, Deadly, Painful and Dangerous.  Briony Morrow-Cribbs etchings of the plants are accurate and Jonathon Rosen's illustrations are fanciful and sometimes surprisingly humorous, in a macabre way.  There are small sections set aside for special subjects like what you could plant in a Forbidden Garden - tagged with the Dangerous heading.  History, lore and interesting facts are shared for many of the plants.  For example, did you know that a medicinal dose of hellebore (a Dangerous plant)  is believed to have caused the death of Alexander the Great?  Can you guess what plant is so toxic it has taken the lives of 90 million people worldwide and is the focus of a worldwide industry worth over $300 billion?  Give up?  It's tobacco.  Once you start reading this book you will be addicted to reading it all!  (And no plant is necessary to enjoy it!)

Charles Darwin was not given to rash decisions. When he was nearly thirty and needed to decide whether to marry, he sat down, drew a line down the middle of a piece of paper and made a list of pros and cons. On the plus side, marriage would offer the benefit of children ("if it Please God") and an object of affection, "better than a dog anyhow." On the minus side, he would miss the "conservation of clever men at clubs" and might not be able to read in the evenings.

His decision to take the leap and marry his cousin Emma Wedgwood is the subject of Deborah Heiligman's 2009 National Books Award finalist  Charles and Emma: the Darwin's Leap of Faith..

Darwin was a pragmatist, an agnostic, and a scientist. Emma was his intellectual match and yet devoutly religious. Theirs was a true love story--a match of wits and wills, of science and religion. Despite her reservations about Darwin's theories, Emma helped edit her husband's work. She honestly feared for his soul and at the same time bore him ten children, three of whom died before the age of ten.

Heiligman is a skilled nonfiction writer. The Victorian Era is brought to vivid life through the couple's letters and other primary sources. This setting is the backdrop for one of the great marriages of history. Although originally published for the teen market, Charles and Emma will equally engage adult readers, who will know something more about the ups-and-downs of married life than its intended audience.  

It is a story that might have turned out quite differently if Darwin had decided to settle for the company of that dog after all.

Mission Control, This is Apollo: the story of the first voyages to the Moon
by Andrew Chaikin and Alan Bean

Chaikin, an NPR Morning Edition commentator and the author of A Man on the Moon, profiles each of the Apollo Missions, including the legendary Apollo 11 Mission which celebrated its 40th Anniversary this year. Each chapter briefly outlines the mission (dates, commanders, pilots, objectives, mission patches, etc), but also includes stories about the people involved. Armstrong, for instance, didn't spend a lot of time pondering his historic words; he was too busy avoiding craters! Of course, not all missions were so successful, as discussed in the chapter on the infamous Apollo Thirteen. Vintage photos show the jury-rigged filter that helped save the astronauts lives and another grainy photo shows the crippled module. Brief sections explore the finer points of space travel, from the rather discomforting physical side-effects as described in "The Dark Side of Zero-G" and "When You Gotta Go, You Gotta Go" to technical details like those in "The Moon Rocket" and "Clothes Make the Moonwalker". The brief introduction outlines the preceding Mercury and Gemini programs.

In addition to the wonderful photographs, Alan Bean contributes his amazing paintings to the book. Bean, who landed on the moon with Apollo Twelve and knows what he paints, brings a unique perspective to the book. An entrancing mix of color, light and texture, these paintings bring the lunar landscapes alive. A chapter at the end of the book explains how Bean paints, a process that includes small models astronauts, replica moon-boots and even fragments of capsule heat shields and foil insulation. Informational, but also celebratory, Mission Control, This is Apollo, is a treat for history and space buffs of any age.

With NaNoWriMo, (National Novel Writing Month), lurking just around the corner, my attention has turned to books about writing. There are many to choose from, including books on motivation, some that emphasize certain techniques and some that focus on selling your material once it's finished.

Break Into Fiction by multipublished authors Mary Buckham and Diana Love uses popular films to demonstrate the points of each technique they discuss. They've also provided templates for important story elements such as developing a story premise, creating believeable, motivated characters, strengthening conflict, and raising the stakes.

Many writers struggle with the beginning of a story, not knowing where to start. When facing the blank page, it can be a challenge. These successful authors suggest that the frustration can often be traced to a lack of preparation. If you have insight into the goals and motivation of your main character, it can be easier to get the words on the page. Taking the time to understand the story arc, how conflict must be escalated and the story question answered can help the beginning writer move beyond fear and into the flow of the narrative.

If you are interested in learning more about Power Plotting, NaNoWriMo programs offered throughout the library system will include workshops with Mary Buckham.