Life On The Line

One Woman's Tale of Work, Sweat, and Survival, by Solange De Santis.

Quickie Recap: A journalist and all around white-collar woman decides it will be interesting to live the life of a labourer to see what it's "really like" so she goes to work at a GM auto plant and describes not only the physical work involved, but the people she befriends, the management she doesn't, and the union that baffles everyone.

Quickie Review: I'm a little wary of anyone who wants to see what life is "really like" for others because they so often do an insulting half-assed exploration that leaves me frustrated as a reader and embarrassed as a human being, but I grudgingly admit that De Santis does some justice here. She manages to tell her story without being condescending to her fellow workers. She writes more compellingly about snobbery without realizing it than most authors who set out with that purpose. Of course there's a smidge of self-righteousness within the pages, but maybe that's inevitable when you put a soft person into hard circumstances. There's a certain grit and grime to this that's unmistakable, but to her credit, it is overshadowed by the dignity with which she writes, perhaps not closing the gab between white and blue collar worlds, but at least shedding some light on it.

Quickie Recommendation: Certainly one of the better of its kind.

The Lost Continent

Travels in Small Town America, by Bill Bryson.

Quickie Recap: After a decade of living in England, Bryson returned to the US, got in his car (well, his mum's car anyway) and drove in search of the warm fuzzy places he remembered from family trips of his youth.

Quickie Review: Well, he never found those warm fuzzy places. They all seem to have been replaced by nearly identical towns of stripmalls, gas stations, and fast food joints. Bryson is a genius of course, and he manages to paint this bleak picture with his characteristic dark humour. It's a bit sad too though, because he drives 14000 miles in search of something that doesn't really exist anymore, and you get a double sense of loss: on the one hand a personal loss, that of a youthful image of a mythical small town that keeps luring him on but remains elusive, and on the other hand a more generalized loss for the rest of us as we discover that the postcard perfection is not just elusive but extinct.

Quickie Recommendation: I read The Geography of Hope and was inspired to read Drive, which in turn inspired me to read The Lost Continent. For me, this was a pretty organic selection process and I'm happy with the outcome. Bryson is a pretty sure bet, and I might even give him the edge in an otherwise pretty stellar trilogy.

Drive

A Road Trip Through our Complicated Affair with the Automobile, by Tim Falconer.

Quickie Recap: Falconer goes for a drive to think about how driving is killing the planet.

Quickie Review: Forget that the content of the book completely contradicts the thesis - this was one of the most enjoyable road trips I've ever taken. It seemed a natural progression from The Geography of Hope, allowing further exploration of "car culture" and the need for a fundamental challenge to our attachment to wheels (to conquer the inconvenient truth, it seems that cars must be sacrificed). Sure I had qualms about Falconer's delivery - driving 15000km makes him part of the very problem he's describing - but it's still an interesting read. Interesting, but I suppose ultimately unsuccessful, since he admits that he himself remains unconvinced. He is unwilling to make the sacrifice he knows is necessary.

Quickie Recommendation: I realize I just called it a failure, but I still really liked it.

Holidays on Ice

by David Sedaris

Quickie Recap: Christmas in some families is a time of tradition and warmth and celebration. But if you've got a family half of crazy as mine, if you veer toward the untraditional, then you'll have an appreciation for these stories.

Quickie Review: You may have already heard Sedaris read his Santa Land Diaries and you can be glad to read them here again. If not, you're in for a treat because Sedaris working as an elf in a Macy's department store = pure comedy gold. He's also included some other holiday gems, some of them never before published, so yay!

Quickie Recommendation: I laughed out loud, what more do you want?

Tales From Outer Suburbia

by Shaun Tan.

Quickie Recap: I have no earthly idea how to describe this book! It looks like a children's tale if you judge it by the cover, but please don't. Although it does contain what may be called tales inside its pages, this is no ordinary book, it has a darker edge and a more sophisticated feel.

Quickie Review: To be honest, I had to read this a few times before I could get to the place where I might say I liked it. But now I really like it. I've felt the same way about really dark indie films too: it's such a departure from the norm that your first response is confusion, but a couple of days later you're still thinking about. So you see it again, and you're blown away by how good it is, and how different. I'm a big fan of different, and I think I can safely say that I am a big fan of Tan.

Quickie Recommendation: Oh yeah.

Fifteen Days

Stories of Bravery, Friendship, Life and Death From Inside the New Canadian Army, by Christie Blatchford.

Quickie Recap: Fifteen "important" days are highlighted from among Blatchford's trips to Afghanistan to spend time with the Canadian army. Unfortunately, "important" in this case means that shots were fired, lives were lost. Blatchford uses the tragedies to underscore the closeness of the army in ways that we don't normally hear from the media.

Quickie Review: Army books are a bit of a hard sell with me, but this book wasn't what I was expecting. It's not political, not remotely. It's about the people who are serving their country, and what that really means. Blatchford reports respectfully but she's not detached. These are real people she's writing about, and she lets us know it. I think that's why it resonates in the reader so strongly.

Quickie Recommendation: Despite the tightness in my chest, yes.

The Geography of Hope

A Tour of the World We Need, by Chris Turner.

Quickie Recap: When it comes to the environment, that is to say, the health and the fate of the planet we call home, we are very near the tipping point, the point of no return. Humanity needs to be cultivating a new sustainable lifestyle and this book offers exactly that.

Quickie Review: HOPE is the key word to this book. Lots of green books get overexcited by the topic and doom us all but Turner instills hope by showing what can be done, in fact, what is being done in small doses right this very minute, and how it's working and could be working on a much larger scale if only we could get everyone on board. At various times in reading this book, I was ready to sell up and live in a mud hut, and then an eco-village, and god knows what else. The power of this book is that it makes it all feel possible, and that's not always something that environmentalists are good at. Parts of this book were more readable than others and Turner cares more for telling cool stories than for sticking to the topic but that's okay because he's got some important words here that I think deserve to be read.

Quickie Recommendation: Yup. What makes this book different, and my opinion good is that it's not about technology. We already have the technology. It's our consciousness that needs to change, and I think this book not only defines the problem but helps contribute to the solution. Wow, eh? Buy it here.