I mentioned Naomi Klein's book, "Everything must Change: Capitalism v The Climate" below and what a pleaure it was to read. Not entirely because Klein does not dodge the issues coming from the gobal warming crisis we find ourselves in but the writing and the development of her arguments make for enjoyable reading.
Klein is Canadian and she begins the book with a retelling of the attack on Canada at the WTO that effectively closed down it's solar panel manufacturing industry. With the death of that industry and the expansion of the Alberta tar fields and the massive increase in tracking Canada is, in the words of our own Prime Miniature, open for business. Klein has been attacked on the right and the left for her describing the crisis as one driven by capitalism. We all know that socialism/communism lost the ideology wars and how dare she fault capitalism? Read the book. A huge amount of research has been done for this book and she has anticipated the merchants of doubt and the paid nay sayers well. There is a trailer here http://www.naomiklein.org/main My friends in Coorabell (Kate and Phillip) alerted me to our mutual mate's book "Carbon Shock" by Mark Shapiro. Another work diligently researched for five years it is also a description of what is happening around the world to deal with, or not to deal with, global warming. Mark is an award winning author, journalist, teacher and all round good citizen. I read his book in one sitting (on my iPad) and will reread it because it was such a good read that I now feel I might have missed something in the way I got through it. Mark points to what some countries are doing and how global warming is already affecting our lives. In any case buy the book. download it to your device but read it. A book I read in it's paper form was "J" by Howard Jacobson who won the Man Booker prize with his previous novel "The Finkler Question" and the cover of J announced that it was long listed for the most recent Man prize. By the time I was reading it it had been short listed for the prize. Richard Flanagan eventually won and as I haven't yet read his book I can only comment that it must be a very good book indeed because Howard's book is even more impressive than Finkler which I also liked. Set in a unspecified near future in which an unspoken catastrophic recently past event has occurred which nobody can or will mention other than in a highly coded way. The book charts the love of two people who find lose and find each other again but in the course of finding and losing they also find out something about themselves and the shocking events that happened. Much of the story is grounded in what we know (or should) and much of it has the edgy humour that Howard is celebrated for. I must admit to a tear and feeling gutted at the book's end an d as I never read reviews before reading the book myself I won't spoil this one for you by rehearsing the story. Suffice to say that in one sitting the three books mentioned here will be worth the price of admission and your time in immersion. Happy reading.
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