Review 532: The Mosaic

The Mosaic by Nina Berkhout
My rating: 3.25 of 5 stars

I plucked this book off my bookshelf not reading what it may be about and quickly realized this is a young adult book. I read YA books sometimes, but I do like to know up front, so that was a bit of a surprise.

The writing style is a bit easier, simpler than an adult book, but some of the content was perhaps not so much. Twyla is a senior in high school, ready to leave her small Montana town. It’s a dwindling town supported by the military base nearby, which when it announces will close means certain death for their town.

Twyla’s plan is to go with her boyfriend to California. He, Billy, has plans to be a chef and Twyla will be there to support him and take photos of the food. Before they graduate the seniors have to put in volunteer service. Twyla ends up with a new program, Save A Vet.

Twyla is paired with a vet not much older than her but, war torn and working on a mosaic art piece in an abandoned missile silo on his family farm's property. Gabriel’s parents have moved, leaving him alone and rely on Twyla for checking in and making sure he’s okay. Seems like a lot for teenager doing 20 hours of volunteer work.

One weird thing about the book, for me anyway, was how many different nicknames Twyla had. Everyone called her something different and often multiple different names. There is some shocking gruesomeness near the end of the book that seemed unnecessary in a way, or could have been minimized a little. But there is violence and racism and other things in the book. I can’t imagine this would be an easy read for a teenager.

I received a free copy of this book at a library conference. I was not required to write a review, but felt like it and, of course, the above opinions are my own.

Review 531: Mrs. Dalloway

Mrs. Dalloway by Virginia Woolf
My rating: 3 of 5 stars

This book has made me realize I'm not a big fan of stream of consciousness style of writing. And particularly when it moves between various characters.

Review 530: Defending Giants

Defending Giants: The Redwood Wars and the Transformation of American Environmental Politics by Darren Frederick Speece
My rating: 4.25 of 5 stars

This is an in-depth look at the fight to save old growth redwoods on the California northern coast that are now known as the Redwood Wars. The redwood tree is known by several names, scientifically as Sequoia sempervirens, colloquially as coastal redwoods, California redwoods, or just plain redwoods. Their preferred habitat today is along the coast of Northern California reaching into Oregon. The old-growth trees that were at the heart of the redwood wars are forests and these giant trees which can live for two-thousand years.

With the narrow range of where these trees can grow, which like coastal fog, the 1.3 million acres of area from pre-Columbus days are now down to just 5% of the land. And to save that five percent was a hard fought battle that this book describes.

The main company involved is Pacific Lumber. It was founded in 1863 and was a family company that grew to be one of the largest in the area. The company policy in cutting trees was in a fairly sustainable manner with looking towards long term and generally did not clear-cut groves of tree stands. They were more selective.

Unfortunately, it didn’t stay that way. In 1985 the company was taken over by Maxxam Corporation run by Charles Hurwitz, who was known as a corporate raider and used the Michael Milken junk bonds. (see savings and loan crisis of the 1980s.) This is when the old-growth redwoods became extremely endangered. The plan by Maxxam was to reduce the inventory, i.e. trees standing, in order to increase profits as quickly as possible and clear-cutting began.

In order to make this shorter, let’s just say that didn’t happen, not entirely anyway. The book is detailed in explaining all the various steps and stages that took place during these years. There were many, many lawsuits, activists protests and actions all to raise awareness and save the last standing redwoods from being cut down. Environmental groups, forest plans and government agencies, along with the main environmental leaders are heavily features in the book. Several women took major roles as leaders, which needs to be acknowledged since the corporations, forest service and government were all men.

There aren't any close biographies of people involved, only cursory. Although the car bombing in 1990 of two prominent activists, Judi Bari and Darryl Cherny, does come up several times. It was a major point in the Redwood Wars.

The book is somewhat academic. Darren Speece wrote his PhD thesis on this topic being nearly the same length of this book. Certainly that was transformed into this book. The book comes with extensive section of notes (46 pages), Selected Bibliography (8 pages) and a very long index that is 31 pages.

Review 529: Water, Water

Water, Water: Poems by Billy Collins
My rating: 4 of 5 stars

Typically there is a large dose of humor found in the poetry by Billy Collins. This collection does have some of that here, but not to the degree that is usually found. Overall, they are still accessible poems.

There are sixty poems broken into four unequal parts. Many of these poems were previously published in magazines or journals through the years, and are collected here together. I found it hard to find a connecting theme for all of them other than observations about everyday life and surprise, which is fairly typical of his poems.

Another highly enjoyable collection by a past U.S. Poet Laureate.

Thanks to Random House and NetGalley for an advance review copy of this book.

Review 528: The Forester

The Forester by James Kraus
My rating: 1 of 5 stars

I read this book to about the half-way point. I almost stopped earlier, due to major plot holes, but decided to give it more room. Then another farcical moment arrived and after another unbelievable situation that I had to quit this book. The writing style wasn’t very good, but I was willing to overlook that a little, but with all the other problems with the book, no there are much better books out there to spend my time on.

Normally I don’t rate books I don’t finish because I think it’s more me than the book, my reading mood at the time or something. This time it is the book.

I was disappointed this didn’t work out better. The book cover is nice, the title sounds like something I’d be interested in, and the overall content is dealing with the environment. Oh, I didn’t even mention how there was this message, repeating how environmentalists are naïve and misguided in not wanting clear cutting a forest, or wanting wild animals to live.

I’m just glad I got the book for free instead of paying for this. I got it free from amazon back when I had prime and there are free monthly offerings, if I remember correctly.

Review 527: I Hope This Finds You Well

I Hope This Finds You Well by Natalie Sue
My rating: 3.75 of 5 stars

I’ve read a few work fiction books; they tend towards satire and have extreme situations that seem quite implausible. This book has a bit of that, particularly of the later, but it also turned out to be more than I expected.

The main character Jolene has extreme anxiety from a situation in high school that dealt with her best friend. It apparently ruined her family as well, and now they live in a different major metropolitan area of Canada. The result is Jolene has trouble with personal relationships, and she has become an outcast at work. Landing in trouble she has to undergo a training program with HR in order to save her job.

What develops is a little predictable at times, but the story was told well enough that it wasn’t enough to turn me off entirely. It has quite a bit of humor but in the end, not as sarcastic as one might expect. I listened to the audio book which was narrated quite well.