I can't remember how I first heard about this book but I think this quote sold it for me: "Rooted in indigenous oral-history traditions and contemporary apocalypse fiction..." The main character is a very pregnant anthropologist who "comes to" with the world in chaos and her family missing. She ends up with various others on Zuni rez and the story begins to feel like an indigenous teachings lesson. I really wanted to love this book. It started out fun and page-turny but then it got bogged down in the middle and never quite recovered. As I was reading I thought the author was indigenous but from reading her bio, this appears not to be the case. I find that problematic given the story material.
Saturday, December 26, 2020
Tuesday, December 8, 2020
41. The Accidentals
By Sarina Bowen (316 ebook)
After the heaviness of Barkskins, I needed something light and fun and this YA fit the bill. A teenaged girl's mom dies and her estranged rock star dad swoops in to help and try to repair the damaged relationship.
Saturday, December 5, 2020
40. Barkskins
By Annie Proulx (714 pp) ebook
I am a huge fan of Annie Proulx and this is an amazing book but also very long. I was goofing off reading 20 pages here and there. I had to commit or I would be reading this until next June. She creates one vivid character after the other, some only lasting a few pages. This is a story about two families in the timber working business beginning in the 1600s in what was called New France and goes all the way up until the 2000s. (I just searched online for a map and found one that refers to certain lands west of New France as "unsettled" and "unclaimed." Stay adorable colonizers!) It's super interesting and well-researched and shows how harsh that time was but also the story demonstrates just how devastating the greed for natural resources has been to the environment and to indigenous people particularly the Mi'kmaq. The book was really good and I enjoyed it but it was also a bummer after awhile watching these terrible people scheming to amass more for themselves at any cost. Still big recommend from me.
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