Stuff and Ill Nature (Book of the Week)

Woo hoo!

SOMEBODY found one of the few gems of absurdity that I've snuck into Griffin's Room of Words.  That would be Young Samurai: Bodybuilders of Japan, photographs by Tamotsu Yato. It could just be me, but I think it's hysterical. (Yeah, I know I have a very weird sense of humor.)
Call number TR675 .Y3213 1974

Somebody also found one of the classics that is being added to the Room of Words, which is Stone Soup by Marcia Brown.  This was one of the omnipresent books of MY childhood (I think they used to read it on "Captain Kangaroo")  Call number PZ7 .B8162 St 1947

Also going out on the shelves is another one by Maurice Sendak:  Chicken Soup With Rice.  Call number PZ7 .S47 Ch 1962.

Have you seen "The Story of Stuff?"

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=gLBE5QAYXp8

I had to watch it this week in my Environmental Science class at St. Ed's.

It's a good tie-in for pointing out one of my personal favorite books (I like it so much that I bought a copy for Griffin's Room of Words (i.e. the Library):

Ill Nature:  Rants and Reflections on Humans and Other Animals by Joyce Williams.  (Yes, those are dead fish on the cover, and I'm sure Williams thinks they are  totally appropriate)

The book is sharp, sarcastic and uncompromising.




Let others tell you about it:
"A mocking, sarcastic tone pervades "Ill Nature." It will turn some readers off. But mockery and irony are key to Williams' message. These essays are brave, uncompromising and angry takes on contemporary American culture. She skewers hunters, developers, fishers, consumerists, tourists, yuppies, omnivores, animal researchers — in short, just about everyone who lives in America, including the Makah Indian Tribe, which won the legal right to kill whales off the coast of Washington.

Williams is talking directly to you, and she's holding you responsible for the slow, steady destruction of Earth. Through our consumerist economy, Williams is saying, we have lost our connection with nature, and the further we move away from this connection, the more shallow we become as a society, and the more superficial we become the more ruinous we are.

Not all of the essays in "Ill Nature" are eco-rants, though. One of the best pieces, "Sharks and Suicides," concerns the life and death of Wendy O. Williams, lead singer of the punk-metal band the Plasmatics. The final essay, "Why I Write," is a quaint, lyrical reflection on the writing life."
— Ben Welch (bwelch@english.umass.edu)

Find it at call number GF75 .W56 1971

It's a good day for being out in the world.

Bookishly yours,

Ingrid