180/365 (June 29, 2010) – Have you seen this book in the stores? I urge you to pick up a copy and at least read a few pages in the bookstore. It’s wonderful. You will laugh, you might groan, but you will relate to something in it.
We spend so much time fussing about stupid things, and forget to appreciate the tiny little daily occurrences that are totally awesome. This book will make you realize that some things that you never really think about…are worth appreciating.
And it’s funny.
I just finished reading an interesting book that a friend passed on to me. It’s called The World Without Us by Alan Weisman. It was quite the thought experiment and there is a website that revolves around the book (http://www.worldwithoutus.com/)
And then Kirk came home and told me about a video he saw on the CNN site yesterday. It told of toxic waste and garbage dumped in fields and on roads in Southern Italy and the impacts it was having on agriculture, animals, and human health. 60-70% of all the food produced in the region is toxic. The milk contains dioxins. People’s lives are significantly shortened. Cancer rates are sky high.
We have made two trips to the Mediterranean (Greece) and both times were horrified at the attitude towards the environment…mostly indifference. Garbage is tossed into the se without a backwards glance, where it gets caught up in vessel props and coolant intakes, where it is eaten by unsuspecting marine animals thinking it is food, where it collects and smothers shores and the sea floor. Most towns have no sewage treatment, the wastes flow directly into the local streams and harbours though pipes that are hundreds, if not in some cases thousands, of years old.
As Alan Weisman shows, and as the videos demonstrate…perhaps this world would be better off without us here. In the meantim, what does it take for governments to realize that our agricultural land should be treated with kid gloves.
Back here at home we may not dump toxic waste at the end of the street, but we do something just as bad that takes healthy food out of the stores. We take prime agricultural land out of the land reserves and we build subdivisions on them.
Humans think they need everything. We think we are owed it for some strange reason. Instead of being grateful for what we have, we feel that we need more, want more. And in doing so we fuel the problems by being over-consumers or items we don’t really need and will probably discard soon after we attain them.
If we could all find a way to live a little smaller, leave a lighter footprint, give a little more. Maybe this world will have a chance to continue to support us.
117/365 (April 27, 2010) – With boating season comes the reading list. Floating out there is hard work you know! So I need some good reading material. This is about half of my pile of books waiting to be read…
Fiction
Shutter Island by Dennis Lehane
I Know This Much is True by Wally Lamb
Good Grief by Lolly Winston
The Sacred Cut by David Hewson
Vancouver by David Cruise and Alison Griffiths
Saturday by Ian McEwan
Broken For You by Stephanie Kallos
The Ha-Ha by Dave King
Next by Michael Crichton
A Widow for One Year by John Irving
Late Nights on Air by Elizabeth Hay
Lost Horizon by James Hilton
Water for Elephants by Sara Gruen
The Book of Negroes by Lawrence Hill
Family Matters by Rohinton Mistry
The Lost Symbol by Dan Brown
Turtle Valley by Gail Anderson-Dargatz
Fall on Your Knees by Ann-Marie MacDonald
Cold Mountain by Charles Frazier
JPod by Douglas Coupland
Yay Yas in Bloom by Rebecca Wells
Little Altars Everywhere by Rebecca Wells
The Time Traveler’s Wife by Audrey Niffenegger
The Third Translation by Matt Bondurant
Non-Fiction
Why Evolution is True by Jerry A. Coyne
Hitching Rides with Buddha by Will Ferguson
Neither Here nor There by Bill Bryson
The World Without Us by Alan Weisman
Great Waters: An Atlantic Passage by Deborah Cramer
Cat Confidential: The Book Your Cat Would Want You to Read by Vicky Halls
Fishy Business (Animals, Culture, and Society) by Rik Scarce
Virtual Clearcut – The Way Things Are in My Hometown by Brian Fawcett
Too Good to Be True – Alcan’s Kemano Completion Project by Bev Christensen
When the Wind Blows: Extraordinary Adventures with a Deadly Twist by Maggi Ansell
Salmon Wars – The Battle for the West Coast Salmon Fishery by Dennis Brown
The Golden Spruce: A True Story of Myth, Madness, and Greed by John Vaillant
The Tipping Point by Malcolm Gladwell
Beyond Belfast by Wil Ferguson
God is not Great – How Religion Poisons Everything by Christopher Hitchens
Silent Spring by Rachel Carson
Anne Frank – The Book, The Life, The Afterlife by Francine Prose
Killer Germs by Barry and David Zimmerman
I have always loved reading. When I was a kid I hid under the covers with a flashlight after I’d been sent off to bed for the night. Books were, and are, so many things.
They are knowledge.
They are an escape.
They are inspirational.
They are educational.
They are entertaining.
They enlighten us.
They feed curiosity.
There is something about picking up a book and settling back to read it. Turning the page is a tactile experience. And when you hit that point where you think “What happened there?” you can flip back a few pages and reread something.
Old books have a smell that I love.
I can take a book to the beach and go for a swim and not worry about leaving it on my blanket. I can read a book int he bath and not worry about a drop of water. I can take a few books on the boat and not worry about dropping them overboard. When I finish a book and can set it aside and then pass it on to someone I know will love it…and I don’t expect it back.
But this Kindle thing?
I don’t think so!
Sure, you can download something like 1500 books onto it. And I’m going to read all those when? And I can’t share them. And if something happens to my Kindle I’m out not only the $12 I paid for the book…but the $300 for the reader?
No thanks, I’ll stick to paperbacks. I don’t worry about dropping them, and I can always press a leaf inside it.
I had never heard of Gerald Durrell (the little brother of Lawrence Durrell) until a friend introduced me to his writing just before we went off to the Ionian this past Spring. He was British and was hauled off to Corfu as a child where he became interested in the natural world. Later in life he founded the Jersey Zoo (The Island of Jersey in the UK).
I have to admit that I don’t have a fuzzy feeling for zoos. Here in Vancouver we have the most pathetic excuse for a game farm that many feel does more harm than good. But I also recognize that without wildlife preservation societies, there are many species that would likely have gone extinct by now.
While the Aye-Aye and I is a cute read, it also highlights the efforts that some people have gone to in order to gain access to severely threatened animals in an attempt to preserve the species.
It’s a funny read, but also a good reminder that zoos have their place.
If you haven’t read a Gerald Durrell book before, don’t start with this one though, start with My Family and Other Animals, it will give you some history and definitely bring a lot of laughter.