Nonfiction Reading, June 2017
Jul. 2nd, 2017 05:59 pm![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png){kind=small}
livingdeb15-Siy, Alexandra. The Waorani: People of the Ecuadoran Rain Forest (Global Villages series) (1993) - Previously reviewed.
16-Gilman, Dorothy. A New Kind of Country (1978) - Half philosophy, half autobiography, Gilman talks about her move to a small fishing village in Nova Scotia.
The philosophy mostly doesn't resonate with me, though some of her own personal observations do. Like unhappiness happens when your brain takes the problem and multiplies it: after a break-up, you think about all the break-ups in your life, etc.
Each chapter has a different topic. One favorite was the one on weather--it didn't get terrible cold or snow terribly often but it did get amazingly windy. There was a twinkle in the eye of the guy who said he probably would never need anyone to plow her driveway.
The chapter on men and women talks about the sexism during the 1970s. "It's simply that I hate waste. If I had to define evil, or sin, or wickedness I would point to waste: waste of talent, waste of potential, waste of freedom, women, men, food, and the earth's resources as well. This includes prisons, poverty, alienation, bad education, pollution, and what happens to people when they prefer shadows to sunlight."
And she has an interesting take on privacy--sacrosanct in the suburbs, no one comes over without calling first. But in her small town, not only do they just come over, and even walk right into your kitchen, they watch you and call to see if you need any help when you do anything different, like go to bed at a different time. One advantage of the latter is that you don't have the problem of dying in July and not getting discovered until December.
She also talked about how much of her life had been based on anger and rebellion. She would even open tin cans at the wrong end.
16-Gilman, Dorothy. A New Kind of Country (1978) - Half philosophy, half autobiography, Gilman talks about her move to a small fishing village in Nova Scotia.
The philosophy mostly doesn't resonate with me, though some of her own personal observations do. Like unhappiness happens when your brain takes the problem and multiplies it: after a break-up, you think about all the break-ups in your life, etc.
Each chapter has a different topic. One favorite was the one on weather--it didn't get terrible cold or snow terribly often but it did get amazingly windy. There was a twinkle in the eye of the guy who said he probably would never need anyone to plow her driveway.
The chapter on men and women talks about the sexism during the 1970s. "It's simply that I hate waste. If I had to define evil, or sin, or wickedness I would point to waste: waste of talent, waste of potential, waste of freedom, women, men, food, and the earth's resources as well. This includes prisons, poverty, alienation, bad education, pollution, and what happens to people when they prefer shadows to sunlight."
And she has an interesting take on privacy--sacrosanct in the suburbs, no one comes over without calling first. But in her small town, not only do they just come over, and even walk right into your kitchen, they watch you and call to see if you need any help when you do anything different, like go to bed at a different time. One advantage of the latter is that you don't have the problem of dying in July and not getting discovered until December.
She also talked about how much of her life had been based on anger and rebellion. She would even open tin cans at the wrong end.