Book Talk

It’s not easy being green.

Yes, it is spring cleaning time again and I’m ready to tackle the spring of ’06!  Thanks to our renewed green consciousness, cleaning is not just cleaning, it has a social purpose and a vision! The United States produces 30% of the world's waste.  Annie Leonard tracks the things we buy from raw materials to the trash bin in The Story of Stuff: How our Obsession with Stuff is Trashing the Planet, our Communities, and our Health – and a Vision for Change. It is in our power to change.

Bill McKibben’s book, The End of Nature, written twenty years ago, was an early warning about climate change.  He was largely ignored and now addresses the topic with new urgency. The changes have already started and they are destructive and expensive. Our planet is essentially different than the one of twenty years ago. He calls our new planet Eaarth: Making a Life on a Tough New Planet.

On the other side, read Green Gone Wrong: How our Economy is Undermining the Environmental Revolution, by Heather Rogers.  The conversion from the petro economy to green affects every aspect of life and has had unexpected consequences. The profit motive has prevented many energy saving technologies from coming to the U.S.

Another eye-opening book is 50 Great Myths of Popular Psychology: Shattering Widespread Misconceptions about Human Behavior, by Scott O. Lilienfeld and others. Sadly, it is not true that we only use 10% of our brains, that our brains are larger than Neanderthals, and that playing Mozart to our baby makes her smarter. The good news? Only about 20% experience a tumultuous teen period, older adults are happier than the younger, adults continue to grow new neurons and happiness depends more on our outlook than circumstances.

In April, 1967 an inmate in a maximum security prison in Missouri stuffed himself into a metal box and became the first man to successfully escape. He took the name Eric Galt and eventually drifted to California. A year later he was in Memphis, stalking and eventually killing, Martin Luther King. In Hellhound on his Trail: the Stalking of Martin Luther King Jr. and the International Hunt for his Assassin, Hampton Sides, portrays both men as embodying the two great causes of the twentieth century.

Fiction

Following in his grandfather’s footsteps, but not TOO closely, is Simon Tolkien, author of The Inheritance. When his estranged father is found murdered right after Stephen Cade returns home, he is the immediate suspect.  As the investigation goes on, police learn that Professor Cade had been involved in a deadly hunt for a priceless relic during WWII. What relic could have been so important to kill for, fifteen years later?

The Scottish play, which is how superstitious actors refer to Macbeth, is in rehearsal when the curse begins to stir. A trench filled with blood, a missing actor and a tarot card clue lead Kate Stanley to suspect an ancient pagan sacrifice. A recently recovered version of the play is said to contain Shakespeare’s darkest secret. Read Haunt me Still by Jennifer Lee Carrell.

Destined for a life in the court of Queen Elizabeth I, Ann More of Surrey encounters the poet John Donne. Their attraction is immediate, but Donne was a Catholic in a period when it was dangerous to be one, and he was certainly not the husband Ann’s father was hoping for. Their forbidden love couldn’t be denied in The Lady and the Poet by Maeve Haran.

Now back in Dublin, Ed Loy would prefer to forget the twenty years he spent in Los Angeles. Friend and film director, Jack Donovan is also in Dublin filming his new masterpiece, until production is stalled when two female cast members fail to show. Twenty years ago, while filming in Malibu, the same thing happened. The girls were never found.  In City of Lost Girls, by Declan Hughes, Loy realizes that someone on the crew is responsible for the missing girls, and races to stop more killing.

Haven’t we all wondered how a young man raised in the United States could change allegiance to an organization that wants to destroy it? Pearl Abraham explores the process in her novel American Taliban.

Remember, sign up for summer programs starts June 22.  Pick up you Summer Reading Packet.

Virginia Cooper
Adult Services Librarian