Booklouse Recommendations for April
March 30, 2010 by admin
Filed under Booklouse, Features, Main Content
My fellow insects,
Two extraordinary books, this time; one is fiction but has an amazing follow-up story in to-day’s world; and the other is a science based book which is very relevant to to-day’s world.
Mister Pip by Lloyd Jones.
This is the story of a little girl living on the island of Bougainville, to the North East of Australia. A revolution is in progress and all the whites have left the island except one man, Mr. Watt, who is married to a native girl. Mr. Watt decides to keep the school open for the children but has only a copy of Great Expectations from which to teach. You’ve guessed it, hence the name of the book Mr. Pip.
The story of the orphan Pip living in this mysterious city of London becomes so fascinating to the children, especially a 13 year old girl named Matilda, that all they want is to take shelter in their minds from the ravages of real life on the island and immerse themselves in Dickens’s story. But too much imagination can be a dangerous thing.
The story is well written in a very good story telling style that will keep you happily turning the pages. Lloyd Jones won the Commonwealth Writer’s Prize Best Book Award and was short-listed for the Man Booker Prize for this one.
And now to the modern day part of this story. On your computer, (don’t tell me you don’t have one; if so, go to the library and use one there because you must see this follow-up to the book.) Once in front of the machine, go to Google and type in the words: ‘Coconut revolution’. Up will come a page of listings on the top of which are the words: video results. Click on: Coconut Revolution (2001 50mins) and watch. What a fascinating story. You are now watching the BBC documentary from the very same island where the people have managed to win back control of the south where a huge copper mine had been established by RTZ, the world’s largest mining company. They started their fight back by firing arrows at the helicopter gun ships and making fuel for their truck out of Coconut milk!! There is even another update from when elections were being held on the island and even the rumour of a referendum to decide if they should declare independence from New Guinea.
I went back and read the book again with the video in mind. An interesting experience, to say the least.
Under a Green Sky by Peter D. Ward Ph.D.
More than a couple of hundred million years ago, there was a cataclysmic event which caused the extinction of nearly 97% of all species on earth. This event was called the Permian Extinction. All through the 1990’s and into this century, scientists have been arguing over whether or not this happened due to something large dropping out of the skies or was it caused by something much more sinister happening here on earth.
Don’t worry. You don’t need to be a scientist to understand this book. It is a fascinating chronological discussion by an expert Paleontologist who himself wrote this book, being fresh from his research and subsequent explanation of how the dinosaurs became extinct due to a 10kms wide meteor hitting the earth.
In Under a Green Sky, Peter Ward explains not only the Permian Extinction but also four others of a lesser nature, but none the less, disastrous. The evidence for these ancient cataclysms show very clearly that global warming should not be ignored. Once the oceans start belching the poisonous gas, Hydrogen Sulphide, into a poisoned atmosphere under a sky that is always slightly green and hazy, there is little left but the same dire fate that has overwhelmed this planet several times before.
Some of you may remember a while back when a whole group of people and animals living in the bowl of a long extinct volcano on the west coast of Africa were found dead one morning after the volcano had belched out a cloud of Hydrogen Sulphide during the night, killing every living thing in the area.
Now, once again you have the opportunity to see the essence of this book on video. Go to cbc.ca and click on documentaries. Now look for One Ocean Episode One. This is a fascinating film about this subject and a lot of it is narrated by Peter Ward as he goes about his studies, including some beautiful underwater filming.
Even if you don’t believe in anything to do with global warming, I would urge you to read this book and watch the video. Personally, and for the sake of my grandchildren and their future families, I would rather do something about this now, than leave it for them to have to deal with, by which time it could be a lot more serious.
These two should definitely give you some good chewing till next time,
The Booklouse.
