T.C. Boyle: A Friend of the Earth

Even though this novel was first published in 2000, it is even more relevant today, as the disastrous effects of climate change have become more apparent. The plot goes back and forth between ecological activism in 1989 and a time after the collapse of the biosphere in 2025, leading to the conclusion that no efforts at social change were successful in averting the catastrophes prophesied by the environmentalists.

Boyle's prose is vigorous, even dazzling. His message may be dire, but he does not dump on his readers. In fact, if you decide to read this book, prepare to be thoroughly entertained. Against all odds, the ending is positively hopeful.

Too Young to Retire: 101 Ways to Start the Rest of Your Life by Marika and Howard Stone

I guess it is no secret that it is hard to live on Social Security and pensions when we reach retirement age. Many people are looking for ways to supplement their incomes. I found the list of 101 'Opportunities for the Open-Minded' to be very interesting. The authors are guiding us to ditch the notion of retirement in favor of enthusiastically creating a new work life. Many of their ideas were quite exciting. 

French Women Don't Get Fat by Mireille Guilano

This book is so utterly delightful that I felt sad parting from it at the end. It is written in a personal way, like a memoir, and the format is creative, not like the usual diet book. It is very clear about how French women take pleasure from food differently from Americans, and how we would all be healthier and slimmer if we were more like French women. The book includes many helpful tips on diet and exercise and how to live a more balanced life, whatever your age.

Factory Girls by Leslie Chang

This book is a comprehensive look at the lives of factory girls in China. The book describes how two young women in particular jumped from farms into city life and from one job to another -- to another -- all on a quest for a better life.

Factory conditions are harsh but perhaps not any more so than life back home on the farm. Working for a living means that the girls can send money home to their cash-poor families, enabling them to buy refrigerators and furniture, for example.

The girls seem to have adjusted to the factory way of life, a capitalist system with few restraints or amenities. They work long hours with few days off a year for a wage that is low by U.S. standards but that really makes a difference in the Chinese economy. Little is said about later, when the girls get older. Their safety net and future security appears to be the family farm and traditional life back home.

I looked inside my sneakers and the label inside said they were made in China -- probably at the very factory described by Leslie Chang. This is a New York Times Notable Book.

Mr. Penumbra's 24-Hour Bookstore by Robin Sloan

Computers and books printed on paper. 3D printing and type fonts from the Middle Ages. Google's headquarters in California and a secret society underground in New York. A code to break, and a puzzle that many are racing to solve. This novel is refreshing, ingenious and downright fun.

Simon Van Booy, Everything Beautiful Began After

The author brings Rebecca, Henry, and George together. The characters find love and keep friends despite this alienated world of ours and the presence of almost a fourth character: Cruel Fate.   

"If F. Scott Fitzgerald and Marguerite Dumas had had a son, he would be Simon Van Booy," writes reviewer Andre Dubus III.

This novel is a real page turner.

Rachel Carson

William Souder, the author of On a Farther Shore: The Life and Legacy of Rachel Carson, has written a graceful biography of one of the most important women of the twentieth century. Rachel Carson's book Silent Spring, published in 1962, started the environmental movement. 

Carson wrote about how the overuse of pesticides threatened all life on earth. She was writing at a time when many atomic tests were taking place in the atmosphere and the public was already alert to the concept of contamination of the environment. 

These two threats, atomic radiation and pesticides, have never gone away. The situation at Fukushima in Japan is unresolved as of this writing. Radioactive water from the nuclear disaster is still poisoning the sea. Secondly, many believe that the mass die-offs of bees all around the world are a result of their poisoning by insecticides.

It may come as a surprise to some that Carson was already familiar with the problem of global warming and the rising level of the sea. Scientists had already noticed the increase in carbon dioxide in the atmosphere due to the burning of fossil fuels, the greenhouse effect, and the consequent melting of the polar ice caps.

Souder's book came out for the 50th anniversary of Silent Spring. The climate change deniers still don't think there is anything to worry about. They believe the environmentalists are deluded left wingers. In other words, what should be matters of fact have become politicized. I have to wonder where humanity, at this slow rate of progress, will be 50 years from now.