The Martian by Andy Weir

I DO NOT read science fiction.  Ever.  Until this month when I wanted to find a book that was out of my comfort zone.  I read “The Martian” by Andy Weir.  And I must admit I enjoyed it.  A lot.  It is the story of Mark Watney, a failed mission, and his quest to survive on the frigid planet of Mars, months before a possible rescue.  It is an inventive tale of suspense, science, and humor.

Now a major motion picture starring Matt Damon (in theaters October 2015), “The Martian” began as a free serial novel, posted one chapter at a time on the author’s website.  A self-proclaimed “nerd”, Andy Weir began dreaming up a fictional, yet plausible, manned mission to Mars.  He says, “Science creates plot.”  And along with the story’s hero, we learn that every action does have an equal - and opposite - reaction.  We follow the astronaut through trial and error, problem and solution, logic and imagination.  

A dust storm forces Mark Watney’s crew to abandon their mission. Mark is left behind, injured and believed to be dead.  Alone, with dwindling supplies and no communication with Earth, he uses his skills to stay alive - to find a way home.

 

Through a series of log entries, we experience survival on the Red Planet through Mark.  We are witness to his incredible wealth of scientific and practical knowledge, as well as his creative solutions to inevitable complications.   Drawn in by his dry, subtle humor, we can’t help but admire how he keeps sane in this utterly solitary situation.  We are thrown up against high level mathematics and science concepts, but he is an infectious teacher – and his lessons are tempered with disco, 70s tv, and Agatha Christie novels.

Mark Watney’s situation has been compared to “Robinson Crusoe”, but this episode is timely.  And unlike the writing style of Defoe’s classic, readers are offered intermittent breaks from Mars, observing what is happening behind the scenes at NASA and with the remainder of the crew – all focused on bringing the man home. 

The non-stop action is addicting.  Will this man make it- or won’t he?  Will another dust storm wreck havoc – or not?  Will he have enough food – or is he in dire straits?  Where will he get water?  Will he be able to communicate with NASA – will they be able to communicate with him?  The odds are stacked against Mark – can he make it home?  What happens when something goes terribly wrong?  Constant problem-needing-solution creates a tightly driven plot. 

I repeat: I DO NOT read science fiction.  Ever.  But this creative, original story hooked me in with the possibilities of our day and the unique laws of each planet.  Taking a bath in space, creating units of measurements (the “pirate-ninjas”), and planting Martian crops are incidents woven into the type of science-fiction story I WILL read.  Maybe even twice. 

This review originally appeared in the July 25, 2015 issue of The Canon City Daily Record on page 7B.

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"Silk Brocade" by Tessa Hadley

This story can be found in the July 27, 2015 issue of The New Yorker magazine.

First Line: "Ann Gallagher was listening to the wireless, cutting out a boxy short jacket with three-quarter-length sleeves, in a pale-lilac wool flecked with navy."

Last Line:  "A jacket hardly mattered, in the scheme of things."

I write literary reviews.  And yet, I loved this short story so much I do not want to write a literary review of it.  

"Analysis destroys wholes.  Some things, magic things, are meant to stay whole.  If you look at their pieces, they go away." (Please ignore the fact that I just quoted Bridges of Madison County.  I know it is not a "literary" delight, but I read it in high school and this became my senior quote.  It has become imbedded deep in my cerebral tissue - not to be denied because of snobbery.)

I do not want anything to be moved, shifted, or reworked in my brain about "Silk Brocade".

There is a feeling that came over me when reading this story - a sense of magic - as when I read Dodie Smith's I Capture the Castle.  Maybe it is similar timing and setting.  Maybe similar themes - but I don't want to know.  I just want to continue to love it. 

 A brief synopsis?  Very brief.  A young woman is a designer and seamstress, moving her way up in the world, especially when an acquaintance is to marry a rich man with old and lovely materials in his home.  He is willing to share.  With these, Ann can make beautiful, and unique clothing.  There is a drunken picnic, an upcoming wedding, a death, a child, and a silk brocade.

The first and last lines cradle the content of this tale, letting the story naturally sway - move - from moment to moment.

Please read this story without ay intent to dissect or judge or critique. Just experience the fact that this story is enough.

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The Boys in the Boat by Daniel James Brown

"My primary interest as a writer is in bringing compelling historical events to life as vividly and accurately as I can.”  http://www.danieljamesbrown.com/about/#.Vag8UfldxnQ

What can I say about The Boys in the Boat that has not already been said – over and over again?  At some point accolades become trite and lose their meaning.  Yet not so here.

This book is magic.  It is real life –  yet larger than life.  It is about real boys – men – but also heroes.  It is about a time of desperation and fear – and about hope and radiance.  The power of the human spirit.  It speaks of our need for connection in order to tap into our highest sense of faith in self.   And trust in those around us.

It has already been summarized eloquently:  nine college boys, new to the sport of crew, come together during the Depression at the University of Washington, with skill sets that come from laboring backgrounds.  They impress the world as they progress to the 1936 Olympics - defeating the elite, the privileged, the Nazis - winning the gold medal.

What is so fantastic about this telling is the idea that each historical event has a personal story at its heart.  It’s why we bother to care 80 years later.  And this is the story of Joe Rantz and the other 8 boys that made up the heroic team.

Each chapter is introduced with a quote by George Yeoman Pocock: shell builder, rower, artisan, and philosopher.  We are brought into this generation – globally and locally – and are given context to understand the immensity of what the boys accomplished.  There are pictures framing the time period, the events, the boys and their boat.   We see the story from different vantage points, giving us an appreciation of what this story meant then – and what it means now.

Daniel James Brown says he takes five years to research and write his books.  They become labors of love.  The care and attention create a compelling story that is beautiful, moving, and memorable.

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The Mine by John A Heldt

The Mine is a self-published historical novel (available on Amazon).  It is fast-paced.  A happy ending is guaranteed.  This is light reading with short, episodic chapters.   It is a love-story set in motion by time-travel and a swash-buckling hero.

I love a love story.  And I found the ending to be quite satisfying.  The middle-school girl deep inside me was certainly caught up in the romance that blossomed between Joel and Grace.  And I was excited to read a story that was reminiscent of Back to the Future but set in the 1940s.  The dialogue is well-written and show-cases the characters personalities.  Conversations are lively and added to the pacing.  

But I like stories that examines the real “meat” of a situation.  The emotions shown through the actions of realistic characters.  Joel was larger than life, always the good guy.  I like the characters to be human and not akin to contract-actors from MGM or RKO Pictures.

It feels “edited”.  Heldt’s voice is there, for sure, but some of the writing feels like he snipped and cut, rearranged.  While this can be a good thing at times, it just didn’t come across as natural.

This story feels gimmicky at points.  It is trivia –laden, nostalgic and romanticized.  Lists of minutiae or news events felt like they were cut and pasted from “On This Date in History” web pages.  I would rather read the experiencing of those examples by the characters instead.

Joel, fearless hero, referenced Marty McFly (twice) but didn’t examine his own struggle with life nearing time of Pearl Harbor.  Any of us going back six decades would experience struggles – with tasks that are simple now due to advancements in technology.

This idea has been done.  I wanted something different.  Something less kitsch.  Something less surface.  Less clichéd.   

But I will repeat: it is a fast-paced, satisfying love story.  If looking for a quick read with a happy ending, you’ll find it here.

This book is part of a series by the same author.  The Mine is Northwest Passage Book 1.

Photo credit: http://ecx.images-amazon.com/images/I/41oakTsA0-L._AA160_.jpg

This review can also be found on Amazon. 

"Ghosts and Empties" by Lauren Groff

This story can be found in the July 20, 2015 issue of The New Yorker magazine.
 
First Line: "I have somehow become a woman who yells, and, because I so not want to be a woman who yells, whose little children walk around with frozen watchful faces, I have taken to lacing on my running shoes after dinner and going out into the twilit streets for a walk, leaving the undressing and sluicing and reading and singing and tucking in of the boys to my husband, a man who does not yell."

Last Line: "It is terribly true, even if the truth does not comfort, that if you look at the moon for long enough night after night, as I have, you will see that the old cartoons are correct, that the moon is, in fact, laughing, but not at us, we who are too small and our lives too fleeting for it to give us any notice at all."

I had a hard time finishing it.  For me, it was somewhere around the swans. I just stopped caring about this woman and her thoughts, observations, feelings on these therapeutic walks.

I loved the first line: "I have somehow become a woman who yells"...  It has promise and it draws me in because I am a mother and I have a dense understanding of the shame, frustration, and hopelessness that comes in moments that are pent up and explode.  But then the piece develops into a series of vignettes - possibly even mini-stories.  I am sure there can be great symbolism drawn from them, but, again, I didn't care to find the connections between her and the nuns, and the swans, and the teenage boy. 

As I forced myself to buckle down and finish the story, and I had some moments of compassion for her, the pain she must have felt discovering her husband's secret, but then I trusted she would be fine - especially as she began to move into a hopeful tone.

The pacing is akin free-verse poetry.  It is a bit distracting.  And while some of the poetic images were great (there were plenty of interesting details), I wanted a closer, more intimate tone.  The narrator shut down and needed a walk, taking us along, speaking in a code - dancing around her feelings.  I wished I had spent my time in another way.

Photo credit: https://upload.wikimedia.org/wikipedia/en/3/38/Lauren_groff_bw.jpg

Nancy Oswald, author

There wasn’t a washing machine on the ranch during the 1970s. Not even a laundromat in town.  If Nancy needed to wash clothes, she had to drive 35 miles into Canon City.  And it was at the laundromat on the corner of 9^th and Highway 50 that Nancy met her future husband. 

Nancy was a rancher’s daughter when she married Steve Oswald. And after a couple years on her family’s acreage in Cotopaxi, the newlyweds followed another ranching opportunity into British Columbia.  A year or two quickly became twelve. While Steve immersed himself in ranch management, Nancy balanced her time between motherhood, teaching in one-room schoolhouses, and beginning a writing career.  “There were so many things pulling on me… I wanted to teach and write children’s books.” Bees, Bugs and Baseball Bats, published by Scholastic, Canada, was her first, recently rewritten and re-released as Insects in the Infield.

The Oswalds came back to Colorado in the early 1990s.  Steve made vital changes to the family ranch: raising and selling grass-fed beef and promoting sustainable agriculture. Nancy still managed to find time to write her witty and engaging fiction for young readers. Nothing Here But Stones, Hard Face Moon, and Rescue at Poverty Gulch, historical novels, were published during those busy years. The Biography of Edward Wynkoop is her first nonfiction book.

Rescue at Poverty Gulch is where we first meet the adventurous eleven-year old, Ruby, and her loyal side-kick, a donkey named Maude.  Readers will find more of this spunky heroine in the latest book in the series, Trouble on the Tracks.  Ruby evades danger, solves mysteries, and tries to shake a wearisome cat during the days following two terrible downtown Cripple Creek fires.  Nancy Oswald masterfully addresses a universal issue concerning children throughout history: life with a single parent.  She handles with sensitivity events that can be daunting to young readers: lynchings, train robberies, outlaws. She tells the stories of Colorado’s past in an accessible and engaging manner.

I sat with Nancy at her kitchen table, looking out at the ranch, thousands of acres nestled in the Colorado mountains.  As we talked, it occurred to me that I was not only in the presence of an award-winning author (WILLA Literary Award in 2005; two-time Spur finalist, IRA, Notable Book for a Global Society; two-time winner Evvy, Colorado Independent Publishers; and finalist for Juvenile Literature, Colorado Book Awards, 2012), but maybe I was also sitting with Ruby herself.  Our heroine is intelligent, curious, and well-spoken.  As is the writer.  When I asked how closely the precocious Ruby mirrors her creator, Nancy smiled knowingly.  She gave a little laugh and said, “Well, could be.  I’m not saying.”

Newly retired from the classroom, Nancy is writing her third “Ruby and Maude” book.  She visits local schools, is a conference presenter and guest speaker.  Her website is http://www.nancyoswald.com/.

The Oswalds are committed to preservation: the land and the stories, both part of its history.  Nancy, believing in connecting children with the past through literature, has written books that entertain and educate. 

From an interview with the author.  Photo from the author.

Wild: From Lost to Found on the Pacific Crest Trail by Cheryl Strayed

A memoir bridges the gap between people, finding connection in the ways we are different yet still the same. Wild, the incredibly vulnerable story of a young woman's hike on the Pacific Crest Trail, is such a bridge. We have all had a burden that was too heavy to bear, found ourselves lost in a wilderness of grief, and come out the other side with a measure of healing.

This tale begins with a hiking boot, tragically lost, close to the end of a long and intense journey. A slow-motion boot tumbling from the top of a ledge - down, down, down until it cannot possibly be retrieved. Despair is evident and we find ourselves wondering with true curiosity and concern - what will she do? What would I do? Left to ponder this, we are taken to the beginning of this story. Back to the time a young woman decided to hike through California and Oregon, alone.

When Cheryl Strayed was in her mid-20s, her youthful mother lost a battle to cancer, swift and vicious. A life that had once had some semblance of order and understanding began to unravel. She was no longer able to hold her siblings together as a family or even stay in her own unseasoned marriage. Raw and bitter pain surfaced and played out in adultery, drugs and reckless behavior. A divorce, an abortion, and an impulsive choice to hike the newly completed Pacific Crest Trail tumbled together in a collection of decisive moments.

On the trail, Cheryl is weighed down by an immense sorrow and a 70 pound backpack nicknamed "Monster." She carries other things at the outset of her trek, quite soon leaving them behind: binoculars, foldable saw, worn-out memories, former perspectives, sections of beloved books, burned at their completion to lighten the burdensome load. She describes herself as "the woman with the hole in her heart." That hole, emptiness itself, is the most cumbersome of all.

The history of the trail is woven in a beautiful tapestry of Cheryl's tumultuous past, frayed and ragged present, and hopes for a simple and unadorned peace. The details that stitch this tale together are specific, honest, and raw. Dauntless, candidness is what connects reader and writer. Cheryl develops a narrative that reminds us that "fear, to a great extent, is the story we tell ourselves."

The pilgrimage beyond grief, to our truest selves, is borne of wanting. "The wanting was the wilderness and I had to find my own way out of the woods." Cheryl finished her 1,100 mile-long hike at the Bridge of the Gods in Oregon. Along the way, there were gifts from others: peaches, T-shirts, showers, rides, and escapes from imminent danger, but the gift she gave herself was the adventure, the discovery of the woman her mother had raised her to be, "from lost to found."

Her gift to us?

It is this memoir.

This article was originally published in The Canon City Daily Record.

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