After the world as we know it ends in new ficiton

I’ve discovered two recent apocalyptic novels which I highly recommend:  FAR NORTH by Marcel Theroux and THE GONE AWAY WORLD by Nick Harkaway.  These are not dark, dystopic fantasies; they are more like Margaret Atwood’s books than Mad Max.

Theroux’s novel is very much like Russell Hoban’s RIDLEY WALKER, in that it is a first person account by a survivor who is focused on staying alive, yet who still wonders if it is safe to hope for more.  This novel is set in a near-future Siberian Arctic desert where only one woman, Makepeace, still lives in the small town her Quaker parents had founded when they migrated from Alaska to avoid the world’s drought-baked famine.  Her English is conventional (unlike Ridley’s phonetic, pidgin voice in Hoban’s superb novel), her trials and tribulations tough but surmountable, and I felt I traveled back and forth along the Tundra in a world that was all too easy to imagine could be real in a few decades.

Harkaway (a screenwriter and the youngest son of John Le Carre) is a very original story teller.  His protagonist knows exactly what Armageddon was like and how lucky he is to have survived.  Along the way, there are intricate layers of lyrical descriptions of the horrors which technology has wrought and Taoist mysteries which survive to fight them. The plot often doubles back on itself with confusing (and fantastical) digressions, but in the end, Harkaway makes believable that human beings can reinvent themselves as much more than predator and prey. 

Transitioning ebook discussions to new blog

Please watch this space for a new blog which will be devoted solely to eBooks and digital publishing issues.  READ TO SURVIVE will remain my book review blog, and I will be trying to introduce indexing for the books discussed in archive posts.

Amanda

AMeckeCo website

Michael Pertschuk, a writer for optimistic liberals

A coalition builder's lesson for progressives
By Katrina vanden Heuvel;

Read today’s Washington Post recommending

Michael Pertschuk’s new book:

THE DeMARCO FACTOR:
TRANSFORMING PUBLIC WILL INTO POLITICAL POWER
 (Vanderbilt University Press, paperback)

Mike has been a friend since I worked with him on REVOLT AGAINST REGULATION, which he wrote while standing firm as Liberal on Regan’s FTC.

He has been a life-long anti-smoking advocate, someone dedicated more to improving public health and saving lives rather than scoring ideological points, but he has no illusions about the obstacles to common sense changes that progressives continue to face.

You cannot learn from a better consumer advocate who walks the walk as well as talking the talk, and one of his heroes is Maryland’s Vincent DeMarco.