Wednesday, May 4, 2022

Nevermore Notes: Sand County Almanac, Black Water Sister, To Govern the Globe, Helter Skelter

 


Reported by Garry

 

A Sand County Almanac: And Sketches Here and There by Aldo Leopold was reviewed in January by another of our readers. This classic conservation book originally published by Oxford in 1949 is credited with having launched a revolution in land management practices and wildlife conservation. Our reader absolutely loved every word of this book, stating how you can read a chapter, put it down and reflect on it, and come back and do the same over and over again. She was struck with how beautiful, gentle, kind, and lovely this relatively thin volume is, and how much power for good is contained in its pages.  CD

 


Black Water Sister by Zen Cho is an award-winning fantasy novel with ghosts, gods, and gangsters.  Jessamyn Teoh is a young lady who lives in the United States, but who is faced with moving with her parents back to Malaysia – a country she hasn’t seen since she was a small child. Jess starts to hear a voice in her head, which she thinks is due to her overwhelming stresses. Soon Jess realizes the voice is not even hers, but that of her grandmother, Ah Ma. Ah Ma was a psychic medium and the avatar of the Black Water Sister, a mysterious Malaysian god, and is out for revenge against a crooked business magnate, using Jess to do her bidding – whether Jess likes it or not.  MH

 


To Govern the Globe: World Orders and Catastrophic Change by Alfred W. McCoy. Distilling 700 years of colonialism, capitalism, and geopolitics, this book lays bare how the echoes of British and Iberian expansion have paved the way for the ecological crisis that we are now facing. McCoy, the Harrington Chair of History at the University of Wisconsin-Madison, shows how the patterns of our past can be extrapolated out into the near future. Our reviewer, who is an avid reader of political science books, stated that this book is very well written and accessible to a wide audience.  AH

 


Helter Skelter: The True Story of the Manson Murders by Vincent Bugliosi was a real surprise for our next reviewer. An amazingly detailed account of the Manson family murders, this work puts together family history, various thefts and frauds, as well as the detailed police work that finally brought the criminals to justice. Our reader stated that the Manson family was bad news, long before the killing spree that made them famous. This fascinating work was touted as a triumph of the American legal system and a must-read book. BS

 

Also Mentioned:

Nora Ephron: The Last Interview: and Other Conversations

The Bluest Eye by Toni Morrison

Umboi Island (A Creature X Mystery) by J.J. Dupuis

The Heron’s Cry by Ann Cleeves

The Blonde by Anna Godbersen

How Everything Can Collapse: A Manual for Our Times by Pablo Servigne

The Rage of Innocence: How America Criminalizes Black Youth by Kristin Henning

Maus: A Survivor’s Tale by Art Spiegelman

The Wayward Bus by John Steinbeck

Lugosi: The Rise and Fall of Hollywood’s Dracula by Koren Shadmi

The Dictionary of Obscure Sorrows by John Koenig

A Melungeon Winter by Patrick Bone

The Emergency: A Year of Healing and Heartbreak in a Chicago ER by Thomas Fisher

The Yellow Wife by Sadeqa Johnson

Churchill’s Secretary: The War in Her Words by Elizabeth Nel

Foundation by Isaac Asimov

Girl in Ice by Erica Ferencik

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