Review 134: My Green Manifesto

My Green Manifesto: Down the Charles River in Pursuit of a New Environmentalism by David Gessner
My rating: 4 of 5 stars


One month after finished reading this book and finally have some notes:

There were three parts to this book: a river trip on an urban river, that ends up in the Boston Harbor, a coming to his own philosophy about environmentalism, how it should be approached, and the literature criticism of an environmental book.

The primary way the book moves forward is the river trip. Gessner and Dan Driscoll (a friend from the Frisbee days), paddle down the Charles River that ends in the Boston Harbor. Driscoll has made it his life work to improve the river. It started in the 1990s, new in the department and they said look at this river. Driscoll then says, hey, let’s green the river. Put in green pathways, connected, plant native plants, improve it. Soon he became known as “the River man.” It has been a long road but he has been persistent and constant for nearly twenty years. And now it is a good success for most of the river, of course more can be done. During their trip they do pass through very urban areas. Places where they have to haul the canoe a short distance the nature in urban become incongruous. When at the end of the day, you can hop over to a pub, have dinner and a few drinks, it is spectacular.

There is also a conversation about a book Gessner reads while taking this trip, Break Through: From the Death of Environmentalism to the Politics of Possibility by Ted Nordhaus and Michael Shellenberger. He argues with the authors on their viewpoints of environmentalism. This book helps Gessner to define his own approach and what may be something more people would be open towards, such as finding a spot in the natural world and fall in love with it

Bonus: Gessner's ideas:

• Have a small love affair with something in the world.
• Get in a fight. (to improve what you love)
• Launch a larger project of self and world.

Read two Gessner books at the same time. This book read: (April 29-May 07)
Other book: All The Wild That Remains: Edward Abbey, Wallace Stegner, and the American West

• 3.5 stars (April 22-May 04)

Review 55: In the Valleys of the Noble Beyond: In Search of the Sasquatch

In the Valleys of the Noble Beyond: In Search of the Sasquatch by John Zada
My rating: 3.5 of 5 stars

Here's a book with a great cover. The title fits the image and perks my interest, then we get to the sub-title...Sasquatch? Well, why not. My personal belief is much like aliens visiting Earth, so not likely. We would know if any of this was real, the cover-up is too much. I don't like conspiracy theories too much either. Anyway, I thought the book might be a fun read.

As I read the book it felt like we, reader and author, are sitting around a camp fire and he was telling stories. Zada has a lot of stories. This book is a collection of those tidbits her learned and he also writes of how he got those stories. The book has these short exciting stories, between longer periods of what's going on with the author and the people he meets.

The book takes place nearly entirely in the Great Bear Rainforest, which is located in British Columbia, on the west coast near the central and northern coastal region. It is one of the few areas where old growth still exists. There are small towns populated by people of different First Nations who have lived in the area for thousands of years. This area has the most Sasquatch stories, but also it is part of the oral history for the people.

Zada goes into the project with an open mind, trying to truly determine if Sasquatch is real or not, despite his boyhood fascination with the subject. There is only a little review of the history of "Sasqualogy" and some of the most important "Sasquoligists." Perhaps Zada believes people reading this book already knows all that came before. I didn't, but it doesn't really matter too much.

The book was entertaining enough, the writing well done. The story line got a little distracted and sometimes not very focused. For myself, the most interesting parts of the book to me where of the landscape and the First Nations people.

Book rating: 3.5 stars


Thanks to Atlantic Monthly Press/Grove Atlantic and NetGalley for an uncorrected electronic advance review copy of this book.

Review 40: Falter: Has the Human Game Begun to Play Itself Out?

Falter: Has the Human Game Begun to Play Itself Out? by Bill McKibben
My rating: 3 of 5 stars

To start off, this is the 4th book of McKibben's that I read this year, and all I've read. So far this one I've liked the least. Maybe I cherry picked better books? I don't know, but certainly after reading this one I'm not too inclined to run out and read more of his oeuvre.

This book feels like McKibben is just railing against us humans, and with some specifics towards certain people (current president, republicans, Koch brothers, etc.). Diatribe is what comes to mind. And there are tangents of other ways we as humans may be falling into not fully natural humans, with gene editing and potentially post-human with a blend of computer and biology. McKibben certainly will not go there, and desperately wishes we wouldn't.

The book isn't just about climate change, although that is a big part of the book. His solution is solar, about how much that makes sense. And it does, especially, and particularly in countries without all the energy infrastructure right now. But we need it in the modern west as well.

I do agree with McKibben's general outlook and what he is trying to do, but writing this book I don't think gets us any closer. There is serious doubt in my mind that the people whose minds need to change will read this book. Will people on the fence about climate change, pick up this book? Probably not. Yet, I'm still glad he wrote it.

McKibben has a way of being optimistic even when the outlook is grim. With this book I think he's turned a bit of a corner. Hopefully we, meaning in the west, and especially in the United States, will start to take this climate change more seriously and quickly change our ways. There isn't much time left. And that is perhaps why this book is so dire.



Thanks to Henry Holt and Co. and NetGalley for an uncorrected electronic advance review copy of this book. Although I did have access to an early review copy, I listened to the audiobook version from my library.




Previously Read Bill McKibben books:

• The Bill McKibben Reader: Pieces from an Active Life (NonFiction)
• (4 stars) Feb.-April.2019
• The End of Nature  (NonFiction)
• (5 stars)   Jan.-Feb.2019 
• Radio Free Vermont: A Fable of Resistance (Fiction) 
• (4 stars)  January.2019

Review 30: The Ash Family

The Ash Family by Molly Dektar
My rating: 3 of 5 stars

How much would you sacrifice for what you believed in?

Berie knew college wasn't for her, but her mother and ex-boyfriend thought she needed to go. At the airport, after Berie's mother drops her off, she walks away, spends her last dollar taking a bus leaving. Berie doesn't know what she wants or where to go, only that she wants to help heal the dying environment. It is fate that Bay chose her to go with him, to live with the Ash Family. To live for the new earth that will come. When Berie gets into Bay's car she goes with nothing, her clothes and suitcases left on the bus, and no one knows where in the Appalachian woods they end up.

I wanted to like this book, well, I did, somewhat, but I didn't love it. Berie is told, like all newcomers, you can stay for three days or the rest of your life. Berie is renamed Harmony. Everyone in the Ash Family leaves their fake-world names behind.

The Ash Family is like a cult, but instead of religion you have fervent belief in the dying earth and desire to save it for humans; to become something else, a hive, interconnected. The leader Dice says he doesn't make the rules, and you don't have to do anything you don't want to, but people do what he says. They even believe Dice, the father, leader, can make miracles such as changing the weather. Like all cults there are strict rules, and usually they don't apply to Dice, such as not using fake-world soap and infrequent washings.

Dice picks little bits about the world that doesn't work, that is so out of whack with nature, that it is easy to believe him. The family is learning a new way to live with the earth, and it looks very similar to how we lived in the past, with farming and planting on small scales, to sustain the 20-odd people.

Harmony easily lets the three days go by, so she assumes that she will stay the rest of her life. But throughout the book she questions staying, or leaving, and alternates towards being certain this is the place for her. It is confusing. Berie/Harmony is a confusing character. We know she cares about the environment, was a vegetarian upon arrival, yet eats a slice of meat the first time it is offered to her without even saying anything. She is not in harmony, she is uncertain about everything. And there is part of the problem with the book. We want to like the narrator but I didn't. I couldn't understand her motives, why she would stay or want to go. And the ending was unresolved, not a strong ending at all.

Overall the book is okay, but ultimately disappointing to me. Did Berie learn, grow, become her own person? I'm not sure.


Thanks to Simon & Schuster and NetGalley for an uncorrected electronic advance review copy of this book.

Review 5: The Heart Is a Lonely Hunter

The Heart Is a Lonely Hunter by Carson McCullers
My rating: 4 of 5 stars

I have no idea how or why this book came across my radar, but that's how books are sometimes. A glance or browsing, something peaks your interest. It gets on my to read list someday. Well this past week was the someday for this book.

It felt like a long, short book. Well it isn't very short, 358 pages in my copy, but it isn't a 600 page beast either. The book is written in a slow languid way. It takes place in the South so the slow pace is appropriate. The book came out just before WWII and there are pieces of that stewing, the stirrings of war. There are several things that surprise me about this book and one is the timeliness for when it was written and how much awareness of what was going outside this town that's the setting of the book.

All of the main characters are longing, lonely and have some restlessness about them. The first we meet is John Singer a deaf mute who desperately misses his fellow friend Antonapoulos. They used to live together, do everything together except work, until Antonapoulos went a little crazy and his relative had him committed, taken away. Since then Singer has been bereft and pines until he can go visit him on a short vacation.

There are four other main characters and they all go to Singer to talk and find something in him they cannot find in anyone else. They find Singer peaceful and so understanding, and all without knowing what Singer himself feels. There is a young teenage tom-boy girl Mick Kelley who is one of a large family that runs the boarding house where Singer now lives. Mick has music inside her so much it hurts. There is Jack Blount who is a drunk and communist, or close enough, who wants everyone to know about how the system is, how there shouldn't be the rich businesses taking all while the people go poor and hungry.

Another man who visits Singer is Biff Brannon, the owner of the New York Café. He reads and organizes the newspapers very carefully, and never throws one away. He is a hoarder on this aspect. He doesn't talk as much as the other three with Singer as he's more of an observer and tries to figure things out. When talking to Blount he will ask questions of him, such as why and what would you do. The other man who regularly visits Singer is a black doctor, Benedict Mady Copeland. He is the father of Portia who is the cook at the Kelley boarder house. He has four children and he had such ambitions for them once they were born but they went along with their mother and religion. Doctor Copeland has always had a "strong true purpose" and he tried to impart that on his children, and his race, but could never seem to succeed.

The struggles these characters go through are what sets them apart from everyone else. Even Blount and Doctor Copeland end up talking and realizing they want the same thing, but then how to succeed at getting people to the same place they differ and end up arguing. Interestingly Doctor Copeland has this idea that years years later Dr. Martin Luther King organizes and does, the March on Washington. How did this writer come up with this? Another place that amazed and surprised me.

The book is thick with characters and ideals, longings, but not much on plot. Perhaps there's a little one, but the book doesn't linger there. There were a few moments when I thought it was going on too long and I had to push on. It's worth reading, but it isn't a joyful experience, and parts are so painful. It's an incredible book. It's a good one to read and discuss with others, even now going on 80 years later.