two books read, two books partially read
Nov. 4th, 2007 08:16 am![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png){kind=small}
snugglekittyI reread Bloodsucking Fiends: A Love Story by Christopher Moore as a prelude to reading the new sequel, You Suck. BF:ALS was still good the second time around. The turkey bowling thing always makes me smile.
I followed this up with Here If You Need Me: A True Story by Kate Braestrup. This is the story of a woman who went to seminary and became a chaplain to the Maine Game Warden service after the accidental death of her husband. This book was funnier and less grieving than I expected - I thought it might be more like The Year of Magical Thinking, but the author is mostly focused on how she moves on rather than remembering her life with her husband. I think![[livejournal.com profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/external/lj-userinfo.gif)
hanseth and sylvanstrom would like it, because it's set in Maine with the wardens, but I suspect a lot of other folks would enjoy it, too. She talks about spirituality a lot (duh) but in a lighthanded way. Four stars.
I need to return the new abridged edition of Living my Life by Emma Goldman to the library on Monday. I was able to read the seventy-page biography that prefaces the edition, but I'm going to have to go back for the other 500 pages. Call me a wuss if you must.
I will also be returning The World Without Us on Monday. I read Part One in its entirety. Then the book veered a bit. There was a lot of "look how terrible is the devastation we have wrought" and not as much "here's what would probably happen if we all died out." That was frustrating to me, for reasons that are probably obvious, so I went from reading to skimming. However, according to this book, there's hope! Even if humans all die out, the housecat will probably survive without them. Yeah baby yeah!
The book's coda contains a left-field suggestion, that we begin limiting all fertile women to only one baby, and that this will reduce our population and allow the Earth to recover. While I can imagine a number of middle-class Americans thinking that might be a good idea, less privileged parts of the world would have their populations more than decimated... that one kid would often not make it to adulthood, is my feeling, and what then? Plus, how would we do that anyway? The idea seems off-the-cuff and a little bit out of place, despite my feelings of sympathy, I'm actually a big fan of population control in theory - it would make everything easier - but how?
I followed this up with Here If You Need Me: A True Story by Kate Braestrup. This is the story of a woman who went to seminary and became a chaplain to the Maine Game Warden service after the accidental death of her husband. This book was funnier and less grieving than I expected - I thought it might be more like The Year of Magical Thinking, but the author is mostly focused on how she moves on rather than remembering her life with her husband. I think
hanseth and sylvanstrom would like it, because it's set in Maine with the wardens, but I suspect a lot of other folks would enjoy it, too. She talks about spirituality a lot (duh) but in a lighthanded way. Four stars.I need to return the new abridged edition of Living my Life by Emma Goldman to the library on Monday. I was able to read the seventy-page biography that prefaces the edition, but I'm going to have to go back for the other 500 pages. Call me a wuss if you must.
I will also be returning The World Without Us on Monday. I read Part One in its entirety. Then the book veered a bit. There was a lot of "look how terrible is the devastation we have wrought" and not as much "here's what would probably happen if we all died out." That was frustrating to me, for reasons that are probably obvious, so I went from reading to skimming. However, according to this book, there's hope! Even if humans all die out, the housecat will probably survive without them. Yeah baby yeah!
The book's coda contains a left-field suggestion, that we begin limiting all fertile women to only one baby, and that this will reduce our population and allow the Earth to recover. While I can imagine a number of middle-class Americans thinking that might be a good idea, less privileged parts of the world would have their populations more than decimated... that one kid would often not make it to adulthood, is my feeling, and what then? Plus, how would we do that anyway? The idea seems off-the-cuff and a little bit out of place, despite my feelings of sympathy, I'm actually a big fan of population control in theory - it would make everything easier - but how?
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Date: 2007-11-04 05:00 pm (UTC)Perhaps by limiting reproduction to just one per woman, those developing countries could then focus their resources on those fewer children and do more to ensure their survival? And perhaps if a child died, the woman would be "allowed" to have another - basically, one surviving child per woman...
interesting theory, somewhat tested in China, though now they are seeing some interesting effects of having a whole generation of only children, as opposed to siblings who have grown up negotiating with their brothers and sisters - truly a "Me Generation" completely unconcerned with democracy or other things, and focused almost entirely on their own careers and material things (okay, gross generalizations and such, and of course talking mostly about the urban middle class, but still, an interesting aspect of their one-child policy.) The other, even uglier side of that policy is of course the forced abortions and sterlizations, even of those 8 monts pregnant, that have been happening in more rural provinces.
So, one child one family is a great idea, and would do much to slow population growth, but could well wreak (sp?) havoc in many other, unintended ways...
:::::::shuddering at the thought of a land full of only children:::::::
(and yes, I am an only child myself, ha!)