Litterbug

by Tony Morphett

Science Fiction is a tough genre for me.  Some of it I really like, such as Ender's Game, I Robot, most everything by Ray Bradbury.  But there's a lot that too bizarre, too disturbing, or just too badly written to get into.  As many Sci-Fi readers might know, many of the really good works in this genre are in short-story form.  Not sure why, but that's what I've found.

One such short story is a family favorite called "Litterbug" by Tony Morphett.  Its about a guy named Rafferty who invents a garbage disposal that apparently vaporizes whatever you put in it.  However, he soon learns that things aren't getting vaporized, so much as transported elsewhere.  When his garbage starts coming back through the machine, he discovers that it is actually being sent to another planet.  From there, it becomes a decision of what kind of relationship to have with his new "friend" on the other side. 

It sounds odd, but this story is actually quite funny.  I can't even think of one other sci-fi story or book that could be considered funny, but this one is.  That's why it is so memorable to me.  I love that "Litterbug" is also a hopefully story, unlike many other sci-fi narratives which often involve being taken over by machines, aliens, each other, or just our own stupidity. 

The trouble with my post, however, is you may have difficulty locating this story.  Our family came across it many years ago in a collection simply titled "Science Fiction" (edited by Sylvia Z. Brodkin) and I believe it is acutally an old, out-of-print textbook.  It is worth trying to find however if you do like sci-fi, as it includes many other wonderful stories including more famous ones like "A Sound of Thunder" by Ray Bradbury.  Other family favorites include "And He Built a Crooked House" by Robert Heinlein, and "The Winner" by Donald E. Westlake.  I did find some copies of this collection on Amazon, but only as used copies from various sellers, and a good copy will cost a fair amount.  I assume you may be able to find the story within other sci-fi collections, and it will certainly be worth the search.

Under Fishbone Clouds

by Sam Meekings

Another heavy read, but definitely worth the effort.  This book opened up much more Chinese history than I had ever before known, and yet I know it only just scratched the surface of a very complex society.  As heavy as all this sounds, the novel is actually all about love, the kind of love that grows between a couple, the kind of love that will last through life, death, and sacrifice.

I love that the novel's narrator is not one of the characters of the story, but is actually the Chinese Kitchen God, challenged by the Jade Emperor to figure out the workings of the human heart.  He follows the lives of two people as they learn to love each other, all while surviving extreme political and cultural upheaval.  I love the voice of the Kitchen God, who knows all, but is also down-to-earth and has an intriguing attachment to the two mortals. 

I also loved the poetic language that Meekings writes with.  I would sometimes drift off just reading the beautiful language and descriptions, then realize I wasn't quite processing what it was saying about the story.  But I always went back because the story really drew me in.  The beginning hooked me quickly, but I'll admit there was a short time in the early parts of the book it did slow a little more than I like in a narrative, but once it got into more of the political happenings, then I was caught once again in the story and it just got better and better.

Again, not an easy book to read.  It follows this husband and wife as they become swept up in the political changes of China before, through, and after the "Cultural Revolution."  I'd heard this term many times before but was honestly lacking in any knowledge at all about what that meant, other than it had something to do with socialism.  Well, this book solved that problem for me, at least a little.  I know now that the Cultural Revolution was about the working class rising up against the bourgeoisie and the beginnings of socialism.  That seems a simple enough explanation until you finish the book and have learned about the thousands that disappeared when they were sent to do forced labor in the countryside, thousands that died from straight out starvation, thousands that died from brutal beatings received from youth gangs.  That only mentions the human suffering, and added to that is the rejection and destruction of thousands of years of culture, books, science, learning, art, and creativity, all for the good of the "people".

And yet, despite all this horror, the Kitchen God does learn that the human heart can continue to love through all that, though the love changes into something more.  He has profound thoughts about what a marriage really is, and why people keep holding on to each other.

This booked helped me understand a little bit more about why China is what it is today.  I do not, in anyway, assume that I have anywhere near a full grasp of the culture and people, but this one small part of their history (which is long and varied) helped me better understand how they view themselves and the rest of the world, how socialism and the Cultural Revolution changed them forever.  This book made me want to learn more of Chinese history, because it made me realize that this story is but one small ripple in a huge ocean of history about a people that, to most of us here in America, we really know very little about and often judge without any idea of what made them the people they are today.

Skippyjon Jones

by Judy Schachner

Let's take a break from the serious book I am currently finishing up, and review an awesome children's book I came across at the library bookstore for 50 cents!  I love the occasional gem I find at these places.  It makes me wonder why someone would give up such a fun book, especially as it sat amid a sad plethora of Disney princess books and the "new and improved" version of Winnie-the-Pooh.  Don't get me wrong, I don't mind these things for their own value, but compared to this unique and fun book, the rest seem like boring replicas of each other.  Enough said.

Skippyjon Jones (don't you love that name?!) is a Siamese kitten who has a wild and vibrant imagination.  First he pretends he's a bird, until his mother gets him out of the tree and puts him in to time-out in his room.  Which only leads to offering him even more opportunity to explore his imagination as he goes on adventure as his pretend Chihuahua alter-ego, El Skippito. 

Two things drew my eye immediately to these book while thumbing through the other mundane offerings.  First, the front cover art.  With children's books, you can actually tell a lot about a book by the cover alone.  This one just made me smile, because that cat looks like he's got a lot of character.  The second thing I noticed was the little award symbol, which is a good, quick, visual indication that a book has a good chance of being worthy of your time and money.  The award on this one happens to be the "E.B. White Read Aloud Award".  If you don't recognize that name off the top of your head, E.B. White wrote Charlotte's Web and Stuart Little, to name two of my favorite of his works.  I'd never heard of this particular award, but any book that receives an award for being a good "read aloud" book is usually good - and it was.

If you are lucky enough to come across this one at some yard sale or library clearance, snatch it up before someone else does.  After doing some quick research it looks like there are other books about this funny cat, so I'll be keeping an eye for those as well.

Funny in Farsi

by Firoozeh Dumas

I was looking for a something a little different to read and came across this memoir about an Iranian family that moves to America.  It made me laugh and it also made me a little sad about some people's attitudes towards those them don't understand.  Oddly enough, for as "different" as this family is from my own, it reminded me of the many similarities we all have. 

I'll be the first to admit I don't know much about Iran, so I enjoyed being enlightened by this book.  I also learned a little more about the reaction that Americans had when the Iranian hostage crisis took place.  And it made me appreciate a little more the massive amount of culture shock an immigrant faces when moving to a new country. 

All of these serious topics are covered through hysterical stories of her family.  Her father, always dreaming of making it big, an uncle who tries every crazy weight loss idea offered on TV, and mostly through stories about herself as she attends her first school, her first summer camp, and gets her first babysitting job.  Her father is a particularly memorable character and reminds me at times of my own. 

If you don't know much about the culture of Iran, this is a good book to start with. 

Ship of Gold in the Deep Blue Sea

by Gary Kinder

Can you possibly pass up a book with a name like that?!  I love it!  The English language is a beauty to behold, even at its simplest. 

This is a non-fiction work that is immensely interesting, intense and fascinating.  It tells two stories.  The first one is of the Central America, a ship that is sunk by a storm on its way to New York during the California Gold Rush, with 21 tons of gold on board.  It goes down 200 miles off shore and 2 miles below the surface. 

The second story is about Tommy Thompson, a visionary man who many think is crazy.  He is an adventurer, an inventor, and he is on a quest to find the ship and the gold, despite everyone telling him it is impossible.  When others say that a deep sea recovery of this nature is virtually unattainable, he spends a decade inventing ways to get there, and in the process changes the very nature of deep sea diving and what the world believes is possible in the depths of the ocean.  Towards the end, Thompson's adventure takes on quite an urgency as others begin to get close to what he has been working on for years.  I was on the edge of my seat and biting my nails, wondering if he would indeed win the race.

Yet amidst this all, the story of the people aboard the Central America and their ordeal on the ocean is time and again brought back to the forefront, so that the reader never forgets the harrowing journey that these people made and the great losses they suffered.  Both Thompson and Kinder do a wonderful job of honoring the ship, its crew, and its passengers for what they went through, helping the reader understand at what cost this gold was bought.

As Captain Jack Sparrow says, "Not all treasure is silver and gold, Mate."  This is one book that is a treasure in and of itself, so go on the greatest hunt ever and read it today.

Airborn

by Kenneth Oppel

Occasionally, in the midst of the heavy reading I usually gravitate towards, its refreshing to simply read a good adventure story.  Airborn is just such a book, about a young man who works on an airship and aspires to someday fly his own.  He meet a young lady on board and they have quite an adventure with pirates, a mysterious island, and an even more mysterious animal.  It is well-written, especially as it describes with inner workings of the airship and the crew on board.  I especially loved referring to the diagram of the airship to see where all the different areas are located.  It reminds me of an old book that my grandmother gave me about a little kid taking his first ride on a clipper ship.  I'll have to review that one soon! 

It is considered a Young Adult fiction, but is appropriate for all ages.  I thoroughly enjoyed the short escape from my much more boring (but no less important) reality.  The book won the Canada's Governor General's Award and is followed by a sequel called Skybreaker, which I will be picking up at the library soon.

Cutting for Stone

by Abraham Verghese

This book is not for the faint of heart.  But it is full of heart, blood, bone and sinew.  I haven't even finished it yet, but I know its a good one.

You see, I started to read it a few weeks ago and was so excited to find out that my mother had never heard of it.  I knew she'd like it because its all about doctors and the medical profession, which is what she loves and does so well.  Shortly after I gave her the recommendation, we went on a trip to visit my sisters.  She hadn't found time to get a new book from the library, so I said she could start reading my copy.  We passed it back and forth all week, careful to mark each others spots, and then she graciously left me the copy to finish.  A few days later, I took her to lunch for her birthday and asked what she planned to do, or what she wanted.  She said it had been a stressful week and all she wanted to do was go home, lay on the couch and read all afternoon. So, I gave her the book back as a present.  She not only finished it in a few days, she is also now reading it aloud to my father, one of our long held family traditions. I wish I could be there and listen.  She said it was the best present she's gotten in a long time.

But, back to the book.  The story is about two boys who grow up in Ethiopia, born in mysterious and horrific circumstances to a nun who serves as a nurse at a small hospital outside of Addis Abba.  The presumed father, Dr. Thomas Stone, flees after their birth.  Political and family challenges separate many of the characters and then bring them back together.  It is a narrative about things broken, and things mended - body, soul and family.   

As I said, a book not for the faint of heart.  The political turmoil which the book is set within is full of violence.  The medical descriptions and procedures are outlined in graphic detail.  As my mother confirmed, medical personnel often are the most vulgar when referring to the human body and its processes, and this is not glossed over in the book.  But my mother said that it is one of the most profound books she has read recently and also one of the most honest in presenting what medical school, doctors, and jobs are really like.  She said it reminded her of early internships and her first jobs at the state mental hospital and some of the large hospitals.  So none of it bothered her.  The reason these things don't both me in this sort of book is because they fit the topic, they are necessary and even crucial to the story.  You know they are not just thrown in to shock or disturb the reader, just for the sake of shock value itself.

I am champing at the bit to get my book back because after only reading the first quarter of the book, I find myself often thinking of the characters and what will happen next.  If that's not a good indicator of an excellent read, then I don't know what is.