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Quite simply, to become immersed is to say ‘no’ to the way the world is and begin to create a new world built not on injustice, greed, individualism and passivity, but rather a world based on justice, community, solidarity, action and love of the other. In short, immersion is to help the world stand the correct way up.
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This book surprised me in that I don’t usually pick out a book on this subject, but when I was browsing, the cover photograph of a man’s dusty bare feet drew me in. I’m glad it did, because I was rewarded by a smart, sincere first-hand account of an immersion volunteer’s experience in Zambia. Donaldson’s depiction of the impoverished strikes a perfect balance – there is none of that coddling tone sometimes taken when discussing the poor. He tackles the subjects of immersion versus volunteer tourism, injustice, the marginalized, and how existing systems create poverty. He challenges one’s privilege and inaction, but he adopts a fair stance towards everyone including the wealthy, so the book doesn’t read as heavy-handed or preachy to me. Read it!
Check the BPL catalog for this title: Encountering God in the Margins
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No one knows what brought the huge animal down. … At some point its knees buckled and it dropped to the ground with a seismic thud … It was almost certainly still alive …
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William Northdurft weaves together two narratives, German paleontologist Ernst Freiher Stromer von Reichenback’s 1911 discovery of fossil dinosaurs in the Egyptian desert and the expedition of a group of contemporary paleontologists hoping to rediscover that fossil bed. Stromer had been the first to describe many of the species he brought back to Europe. Yet Stromer’s entire collection was obliterated during allied bombing raids in WWII, and no one any longer knew quite where his dinosaurs had been found. For a non-scientist looking over facts and diagrams science can look staid, but when you get into the history it takes on more color – the fleas in the tents, the gigantic bones poking out of a hillside, the denunciations of rivals, the thefts. Nor does Northdurft neglect the old monsters themselves. Did those long-necked dinosaurs munch from tree tops like giraffes? Or was it more efficient for them just to keep their heads low and turn their bodies in a gigantic arc, eating and eating and eating without hardly having to move a step? An engaging mix of travelogue, history, and science.
Check the BPL catalog for this title: The Lost Dinosaurs of Egypt
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We’re the middle children of history, man. No purpose or place. We have no Great War. No Great Depression. Our Great War’s a spiritual war… our Great Depression is our lives. We’ve all been raised on television to believe that one day we’d all be millionaires, and movie gods, and rock stars. But we won’t. And we’re slowly learning that fact.
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Fight Club is at once an analysis of modern consumer culture and support groups. The plot of the movie revolves around the birth of underground boxing as a new support group that is not about people coming to grips with dying from disease, but supports each other in their quest to separate themselves from that culture, find new meaning and purpose, and ultimately, evolve society from the bottom up. The chemistry of Edward Norton, Brad Pitt, and Helena Bonham-Carter works really well, and watching this movie several times has inspired me to check out the novel from the library!
Check the BPL catalog for this title: Fight Club
GREAT LINES:
I have lived in Middle-earth, and so have you; and it matters to us, or you would not be reading this book, and I would not be writing this essay. All these years since Tolkien died, and yet he still reveals the world, the wide and wild world, to us.
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Even if you haven’t read what the BBC called “the most popular work of fiction of the 20th century”, this book of short essays by fantasy and science fiction writers helps to explain the power of a work of fiction to change a person’s life. The offerings range from humorous (a woman named Galadriel in a power suit) to profound (the author’s musings on immortality upon the birth of his son), to thoughtful (a woman sees a blossom in the Alps, and is reminded of elanor, the tiny but significant flower of Galadriel’s garden) with plenty of wonderfully dated memories of 1960’s afternoons in paperback book stores. These are meditations not just on Middle Earth but reflections on mortality, friendship, love, virtue, war, loyalty, power, good and evil, and duty. Nor are they literary essays, but personal accounts from successful authors musing on their very first reading of the Lord of the Rings, and how it changed their lives and writing. A “comfort” read for Tolkien fans, who will then be inspired to take another trip to Middle Earth themselves.
Check the BPL Catalog for this title: Meditations on Middle Earth
OPENING LINE:
When Isaac Amin sees two men with rifles walk into his office at half past noon on a warm autumn day in Tehran, his first thought is that he won’t be able to join his wife and daughter for lunch, as promised.
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It is September 1980 and the Amin family’s existence is turned inside out by the Iranian revolution. Isaac Amin, a gem dealer and a Jew is arrested and taken to prison on charges that are unclear. He does not know whether he will be released, killed or subjected to constant torture until he dies alone in prison. Farnaz, his wife, is unable to learn anything about Isaac’s arrest or confinement. She does know that her family and their lifestyle are at risk and she becomes less and less able to function in their home. Daughter Shirin is off balance at school as she tries to understand who are friends or enemies and what she can say to each. Son Parviz has been living in New York, sent away from the family to protect him from the revolution. An exile living among people who are not his own, he is friendless, out of touch with his family, and as his money runs out increasingly dependent on the Hasidic Jews with whom he lives. This is the story of how each finds a way to survive the painful ordeal of Isaac’s arrest. Inextricably tied to time and place it is also a story about a cultural revolution and how people who have thought of themselves as coexistent with a place may need to become independent of it. It is a hard and beautiful book.
Check the BPL catalog for this title: Septembers of Shiraz
OPENING LINES:
John Wlikes Booth awoke Good Friday morning, April 14th, 1865, hungover and depressed.
The Confederacy was dead.
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This well researched account of the asassination of President Lincoln reads like a good work of fiction, pulling the reader along with fascinating historical detail and day by day accounts of America’s greatest manhunt. Washington’s mood was elevated after years of bloodshed and was ready to celebrate the impending defeat of the Confederacy. The “Great Illumination”, a wonderous lighting of every possible public and private building by candlelight, torch, and fireworks had just occurred. The city was finally starting to brighten, but Booth was feeling very blue. His beloved Confederacy was crumbling, and only a bold and decisive stroke could save it. A series of circumstances the morning after the illumination changed Booth’s outlook and the course of the nations history.
After setting in motion a plot that had been in the planning stages for some time, the murderous deed was done. The reader is taken along on the chase through Maryland and Virginia, feeling as though they are standing off to the side, witnessing the words and actions of the villain and those in pursuit. Many direct quotes from the historical record, Booth’s diary, and newspaper accounts are used to create a feeling of immediacy and “insider” knowledge. The author James L.Swanson has created a compelling account of our national tragedy with many photos and illustrations included. I was reluctant to see the book end and lingered over some sections before returning my copy.
Check the BPL catalog for this title: Manhunt
GREAT LINE:
Here was the strangest part: I completely forgot that I’d sworn never to speak to her again, and that she’d left me years before without a word of explanation, without so much as saying goodbye, the way they abandon dogs when summer comes (as I put it to myself at the time), the way they abandon a dog chained to a tree for good measure.
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In this slim memoir, the author is looking back on a dinner party he was invited to by an ex-girlfriend. The relationship with this woman had ended abruptly, and the author had never really gotten over it. So the invitation throws him into a bit of a tizzy. What does it mean? What should he do? What should he say to her? We spend quite a lot of time in his head as he deals with the existential crisis that this invitation has provoked. And although he is pathetic as only the dumped can be, he is also sympathetic and very, very funny. Just when you are afraid that our narrator has been looking for meaning where there is none, we get a lovely pay off from an unlikely literary source. As French as can be, this work is whimsical and navel-gazing but in an endearing way. You will never look at a man in a turtleneck quite the same way.
Check the BPL catalog for this title: The Mystery Guest