Reading Life: Themes

 

Sometimes, actually many times, life throws you themes.

This week I read two books - very different subjects but... Hunger. Hunger is the theme of the week.

As a reader, I often find that I am not reading a book in isolation. One book connects to another which connects to life which connects to the news which connects to what a friend or a colleague shared which connects to a podcast - well you get my drift.

These two books!
The Snow Fell Three Graves Deep: Voices from the Donner Party - this is all about the Donner Party striving to get to California in the mid 1800s and all the barriers that got in their way. It is about overcoming. This book is narrated by Hunger. But not just hunger for the meals that didn't come, but the hunger for love, for power,  for family, for a new kind of future, for possibilities...

And then there is Shop Class as Soulcraft, written by philosopher Matthew B Crawford, about motorcycle mechanics, but really about hunger. The hunger for a fulfilling life, the hunger for challenge and the happiness that comes when you are so absorbed in a task that the world disappears. It is about steering our youth toward careers in which they can become so absorbed in a process that they might just lose themselves in their work. (Not in a bad way, not in an external demands way, but in a chasing curiosity way.)

Hunger, Yearning, Chasing one's dreams. Those are my themes for this week.

Book Review: The Snow Fell Three Graves Deep: Voices from the Donner Party by Allan Wolf

The Donner Party left a bloody footnote in United States history and this book is a novelization about their journey and hardships.

Can you imagine walking across the United States? Can you imagine what it was like to be a part of the Great Western Expansion when hundreds of people walked, rode horses, traveled by wagon across the United States? Did you know that these wagon trains traveled on average at about 3 miles per hour? We drive across this country now and pick up a bite to eat or visit a bathroom at a rest stop. It still feels like a gargantuan endeavor, but early settlers faced difficult challenges - bad weather, illness, few resources… BUT the Donner Party faced unfathomable difficulties and even harder choices when they chose to travel a relatively new path AND the weather turned bad much earlier than expected. I mean really bad. Seriously folks, 15-20 FEET OF SNOW. That makes even the worst of our New Hampshire winters seem tame.

Read this historical fiction pieced together by author Allan Wolf from documents and stories shared by both survivors and those who perished (through letters and journals.) And yes, there is cannibalism involved - so if you are squeamish - don’t pick up this book. But if you are brave enough to crack open these pages - put yourself in their shoes and think about how you might survive. Think about how each person carries within themselves the possibility of heroic and villainous acts - often times both.

Finally, note that there are extensive notes at the end of this novel. Please check them out before you start reading - you will find a list of characters (put a bookmark on this page because it is hard to keep everyone straight), a timeline, short biographies of the characters in this story, some glossaries and more. Some you might want to read before you get started, and some you might want to leave until the end. But know they are there.

 

Book Review: The Life I'm In / Sharon G. Flake

Char is one tough kid. Often in trouble - it doesn't take much for her to come out fighting. She bullies people often and has been kicked out of school repeatedly. She has lived with her sister JuJu since their parents died and they survive by throwing parties and charging people to come. But now JuJu has had enough of Char's bad behavior and is sending her, by bus, to her grandparent's house. Char wants nothing to do with that. She plans to survive on her own.

Char meets people on the bus and becomes friendly with April and April's baby. Who knows? Maybe they can live by working together. But things go awry when April takes off leaving the baby with Char. How can Char take care of herself, and a baby - alone, underage, in a strange place?  

Spoiler, this is a book about human trafficking - it is sad and hard to read. There are resources to learn more about human trafficking at the end of this book. This is an important topic to learn about. It is easy to think that this couldn't happen to us, to our friends, to anyone we know. But there are people who are trafficked everywhere. And sometimes them becomes us.

This is a book about trafficking, but also about healing. If you don't mind reading about hard things - try this book. 

 

Book Review: The Marrow Thieves by Cherie Dimaline

 

Frances (Frenchie) and his brother are hiding in a treehouse at the beginning of this story, but they soon find themselves in trouble as the recruiters have found them. Mitch distracts the recruiters to allow Frances to escape. 

Frances is Native American. The time is the future. People have stopped dreaming and their only hope is harvesting the marrow of Native Americans - the place where dreams still are generated. Frances finds himself on the run from the recruiters - this is not a safe time for Native Americans. Soon he is rescued by a group of strangers.

This book has a little of everything: A diverse cast of characters, survivalism, grobal warming, a dystopian world, friends and family, love and luv. And hope. And a happy ending.

Try this story, you won't be sorry.

"Cold is an effective alarm clock, and I was up before the sun. The fire had gone out, but not long ago, since there was still smoke. The cough I'd been cultivating over the past few days was more insistent now. I coughed, and each push of air brought a fresh ache out of my back and legs. The jump and run had really done a number. Still, I stood and started my jumping jacks following Mitch's morning warm-up routine even through he wasn't there to remind me. 

'C'mon French, I've seen higher from a boulder.'"

Do you think you could survive alone in the great north woods? alone? What would you draw upon to save your own skin?