The Unsettling of America: Culture & Agriculture

The Unsettling of America: Culture and Agriculture by Wendell Berry

My rating: 3 of 5 stars


"The Unsettling of American is Wendell Berry's probing and personal inquiry into the way in which we use the land that sustains us, and an expression of profound awareness that farming cannot be considered separately from the larger culture. His provocative suggestions for change are by turns passionate and eloquent, here is a book that gathers urgency for today's troubled society."
~~back cover

When I was doing my upper division course work at UC Santa Cruz, there was no graduate program offered in my major. Nonetheless, several graduate level courses were offered. I took them all eagerly. One of them knocked me on my bottom! The course was on transhumance. The syllabus was 3" thick, of xeroxed articles from professional journals. The reading assignments were brutal -- 5 or 6 articles at a time. And you better have read them -- they were discussed in class. And class was small -- no hiding out in the back row. There wasn't a back row. Even worse, my mentor was teaching the class -- a clear fiat to perform and perform well.

I struggled with those damn readings. It took me hours to get through each one. I constantly felt behind, consequently dull, lumbering, inadequate. Eventually I realized that I was struggling so because I had never read anything about transhumance before, and suddenly I'd been thrown off the bank into the deep water of the cutting edge of theory. No wonder I was struggling -- I didn't have any of the foundation, the resonances, didn't know the paths through the jungle. My mentor, of course, could read those articles in minutes, appreciating the nuances as she went.

This book was somewhat of the same experience for me. It read like a textbook, or a professional journal. Indeed, he's been a university professor (amongst many other things -- he's a true Renaissance man), which explains the tenor and depth of his language. I struggled with the language, and of course that made it difficult to unlock his ideas. But I'd waited so long to read Wendell Berry -- no matter how much I wanted to put it down, I needed to finish it, to be sure I got it all.

I'm glad I did.

The crux of the book is that agribusiness and the US Dept. of Agriculture are in bed together, the one aiding and abetting the other. And agribusiness is killing the land. Small diverse personal farms are the only way to save or restore the land. Agribusiness will drain all productivity and make the land unusable. He takes a lot of words and a lot of examples to support this hypothesis. Because he's passionate about it. He thinks it's a matter of life or death.

And it is. But I doubt that many will be persuaded by this book, which is offputting in its complexity and obscurity.

Truth and Beauty

Truth & Beauty: A Friendship by Ann Patchett

My rating: 3 of 5 stars


"Ann Prachett and the late Lucy Grealy met in college in 1981, and, after enrolling in the Iowa Writers' Workshop, began a friendship that would be as defining to both of their lives as their work. In Grealy's critically acclaimed memoir, Autobiography of a Face, she wrote about losing part of her jaw to childhood cancer, years of chemotherapy and radiation, and endless reconstructive surgeries. In Truth & Beauty, the story isn't Lucy's life or Ann's life, but the parts of their lives they shared. This is a portrait of unwavering commitment that spans twenty years, from the long winters of the Midwest, to surgical wards, to book parties in New York. Through love, fame, drugs, and despair, this is what it means to be part of two lives that are intertwined ... and what happens when one is left behind.

"This is a tender, brutal book about loving the person we cannot save. It is about loyalty, and being lifted up by the sheer effervescence of someone who knew how to live life to the fullest."
~~front flap

I don't really know how to talk about this book. It was unsettling, disquieting. In this day and age, of life lived too fast, with too much to do and not enough hours or days, we've become ruthless about friendship. A friend with too many problems, with unresolved emotional issues -- someone needy, clinging, possessive? Ah no. It's too much -- we haven't the time, the emotional resources ourselves to withstand the depth and scope of the cataclysm. It's too demanding, too much work, too much trouble. We cut those sorts of people out of our lives, remove them with surgical precision and congratulate ourselves for facing reality without flinching.

The book is also comforting, heartening, enlightening. The author never considered her friend a liability, a disaster, someone to be jettisoned in order to survive herself. She loved her friend with that unwavering commitment we all search for in a friend or lover, and so seldom find. Unconditional love, that's the phrase I'm hunting for. No matter how outrageous, how demanding, how inconvenient, the author loved her friend.

As I read the book, as Lucy's actions and emotions became more and more bizarre, more demanding, more outre, I found myself thinking that I couldn't have been the friend that Ann was. I doubt I could have remained her friend through the drug use, the medical emergencies and all the other crises and catastrophes that Lucy sought to give her life the frisson she so desperately craved. And yet, this book delineated a beautiful love that we all would wish for ourselves: unconditional love.

Sometimes in this world, we have to look at relationships with eyes wide open, have to tally up the cost benefit analysis, and generally find the relationship not worth the cost. But equally, sometimes we have to immerse ourselves in a relationship for the sheer joy of it, for the love of the other person, for the comfort of our soul. This book is about choosing the latter path, and the joys and sorrows that came of that choice.

Saving Grace

Saving Grace by Tom McGregor

My rating: 4 of 5 stars

"What is Grace growing in her greenhouse?

"Grace Trevethan has a wonderful life, living with her husband in their beautiful house and grounds in the Cornish village of St Liac. Then one day, Grace's dream-like existence is shattered as her husband dies suddenly by jumping out of a plane without a parachute (nearly taking out an unsuspecting morris dancer in the process). Faced with huge debts that mean she will lose her beloved home, Grace is at her wits' end, under she and her gardener, Matthew, come up with a perfect, if highly illegal, solution that they believe can save her ...

"Gradually Grace becomes embroiled in a daring scheme that can either save her home or end with disastrous consequences. The events that ensue make life in the usually sleepy village more complex, nerve-wracking and entertaining than anything a city has to offer."
~~back cover

A charming, well-written, funny, understated, laugh-out-loud funny book. Nor is it your typical English village recap -- it takes place in an English village, but you'll not met Miss Marple or Miss Silver round any of the corners.

I can't wait for the movie to come up on my Netflix queue!

Reflections From the North Country

Reflections from the North Country by Sigurd F. Olson

My rating: 1 of 5 stars

"These are reflections, and the philosophy, of a man who has traveled the wilderness most of his life. 'I hope.' writes Sigurd Olson, 'those who travel with me may hear an almost imperceptible note of harmony that runs through the grand symphony of the land I have known.'

"His book is alive with anecdote and insight, born of his long familiarity with rivers, lakes, and primitive terrain, from the northern United States and the mountains of Alaska to the Northwest Territories of Canada and the arctic tundra.

"He evokes the soaring grace of raven, osprey and eagle, the call of the loon and the song of the hermit thrush. He sharpens our awareness of the beauty around us -- gently warning us to leave behind our excess baggage of scientific sophistication and open ourselves to wonder. He reflects on our frontier heritage, ponders the meaning of solitude--its freedoms and cleansing powers. He meditates on wholeness, cosmic rhythms, and the slow cycles of seasonal change, and once again offers eloquent testimony to the inherent joys and truths he has found."
~~front flap

Oh BOY! This is going to be one of my all time very favoritest of books, thinks I. Don't I have a special connection with ravens? Isn't the song of the hermit thrust burned forever in my memory after that magical hike at dusk along the North Rim of the Grand Canyon? Don't I thirst after wholeness, and the slow cycles of seasonal change? Doesn't my heart sing for rivers, lakes, and primitive terrain?

So I rubbed my hands together in glee, and dove right in.

I hated it.

This book says "Me me me -- look at me! See how environmentally and woodsy I am? Aren't I wonderful?" Well he may have been wonderful, and the back flap of the dust jacket says he was: "one of America's distinguished ecologists and interpreters of wilderness, and one of the best-loved writers in his field." But what I wanted from this book was to see what he'd seen, go where he'd been, travel and watch and wonder with him. Instead, I got lectured on every page about the danger of losing wilderness, and how we should all care, and do something about it. I do care, I do do as much as I can about it, and if I didn't already know all that, do think I'd be reading a book about wilderness?

Quarry

Quarry by Susan Cummins Miller

My rating: 2 of 5 stars

"With crimes of passion striking the quiet University of Del Rio campus, geologist Frankie MacFarlane is enmeshed in the case of a fragile psyche pushed to the edge ...
"Just as Frankie arranges her doctoral dissertation's long-awaited defense, a police investigation has reopened -- alongside unhealed wounds. When her ex-fiance Geoff Travers vanished, expelled by the university for plagiarizing Frankie's research, she should've deduced that his remains -- found later in the desert -- couldn't be legit, either.

"Now an unknown assailant is preying on high-profile geologists. Two members of her dissertation defense board have been attacked, one of them fatally. A fellow student has been abducted from her fieldwork site and, trapped amid the volcanic mesas of the Cady Mountains, has little time left. As Frankie sorts clues, she'll need to keep perspective -- or she'll swiftly become a psychopath's latest quarry."

~~back cover

I thought I would like this book more. It has lots of elements I like: university life, being a graduate student, being a graduate geology student (which in many ways is like being an archaeology graduate student), field work, a mystery, etc. Unfortunately, the plot revolves around a psychopath and trying to figure out what he will do next. And why. Not my cup of tea.


The book is very well written. The plot is clever and excellent for its genre. The characters are believable and interesting. Frankie, our hero, is not a lovely woman thrown into harm's way, who doesn't quite know what to do about it except plunge ahead into very predictable danger. She's a competent, self-assured young woman who is independent and quite used to solving problems and taking care of herself.

I wish I could give this book more stars. It deserves more stars. It's just that I'm not a fan of the psychopathic murder genre. If you are, you'll probably love this book.

The Pursuit of Alice Thrift

The Pursuit of Alice Thrift by Elinor Lipman

My rating: 2 of 5 stars


"Meet Alice Thrift, surgical intern at a Boston hospital, high of IQ but low in social graces. She doesn't mean to be acerbic, clinical, or blunt, but where was she the day they taught Bedside Manner 101? Into Alice's workaholic and wallflower life comes Ray Russo, a slick traveling fudge salesman in search of a nose job and well-heeled companionship, but not necessarily in that order. Is he a con man or a sincere suitor? Good guy or bad? Alice's parent, roommate, and best friend Sylvie are appalled at her choice of mate. Despite her doubts, Alice finds herself walking down the aisle, not so much won over as worn down. Will their marriage last the honeymoon? Only if Alice's best instincts can triumph over Ray's unsavory ways."
~~back cover

That description would lead you to believe that Alice is one of those highly intelligent, intellectually arrogant women who don't have much time or patience for the rest of the world. On the contrary, Alice would like to have friends, a boy friend, be accepted by her fellow medical students. But Alice is a train wreck of a girl -- completely clueless and paranoid about herself to boot. She has unfailing instincts -- for not seeing the forest for the trees, and mislabeling the trees as well. She's clumsy and inept -- disasterous traits in a doctor, fledgling or otherwise.

It's a train wreck of a plot -- I kept wanting to scream at her, & throw the book across the room. How could anybody be that daft, that dense?

I suppose this is some arcane form of chick lit. It was well written and the characterization was excellent. Everyone seemed so real -- Ray obviously a silver-tongued devil, Alice totally oblivious. But it was just too frustrating for me.

There was an interesting debate about why Alice was like she was. I won't go into it here so as not to spoil it for the next reader. I'd be interested to know what you think, if you read the book.

Of Flowers & a Village

Of Flowers and a Village: An Entertainment for Flower Lovers by Wilfrid Blunt

My rating: 3 of 5 stars


Of Flowers and a Village: An Entertainment for Flower Lovers is written in the form of chatty letters from a doting godfather to his goddaughter, Flora, an enthusiastic (if inexperienced) gardener who is recovering from an illness that has left her temporarily bedridden. Along with snippets of history, lore and practical gardening knowledge, "Wilfrid Sharp" (the author's thinly disguised persona) paints a vivid picture of life in the village of "Dewbury", home to a large cast of eccentric inhabitants. There is Admiral Downes, whose favorite pastimes are cutting down trees and tippling at parties; Susannah Tumaniantz, an Armenian emigree who adores tulips and avant-garde art and writes terrible poetry ("Spring in Mush"); the sweet-natured Delia Lovell, who calls everyone "darling" and whose dogs are nammed Hither and Thither; the dreadful Mrs. Moon, who runs roughshod over everyone in her path; and the even more dreadful Mrs. Putterham, a righ vulgarian whose inexplicably nice son, Oliver, likes music and gardening.

Although we learn a great deal about the daily life of Dewbury, the subject never strays far from gardening -- by the novel's end, both Flora and the reader have received a gentle but thorough horticultural education. Never has learning about gardening been so much fun.
~~ front flap

It's a lovely book. Charming, and certainly a snapshot of the quintessential English village. And gardening. For my tastes, I could have done with a bit less gardening and a bit more village, but it's lovely all the same. Enjoy!