Book #57: A Lesson in Secrets by Jacqueline Winspear

I believe this is book number 8 in the Maisie Dobbs series? And I really don't have much to add about this one that I haven't already said about the other seven. I really liked this one--I think the books have gotten better as the series has gone along. One thing I liked about this one was how Maisie and James are so happy and in a good relationship, although I feel like Maisie's going to be dumb and ruin a good thing after a while. Why doesn't she just get a grip and marry the guy? (Not to totally spoil the book or anything...) I'm anxiously waiting the next in the series from the library... and then I think I've reached the end of all the ones that have been published so far!

Book #56: Mao's Last Dancer by Li Cunxin

Grandma Murphy actually recommended this book to me when I was talking to her on the phone a little while ago, so I requested it from the library. Somehow, I ended up with the Young Readers Edition (whoops), but that may have been a good thing because I got through it pretty quickly and enjoyed the storyline a lot. Li Cunxin was a poor peasant boy from a rural province in China who was selected to be a part of Madame Mao's ballet company, and this memoir tells the entire story of his life, from growing up in one of Mao's communes to learning to study ballet at the cultural university they'd established. He eventually got a chance to study ballet as a cultural exchange student at the Houston Ballet Company and defected from China to stay in America, and became a huge star in the ballet world (apparently).

One of the most interesting things about this book, which was probably downplayed or dumbed down since this was the Young Readers Edition, was reading about the propaganda that the Chinese government fed to their citizens and Li's eventual realization that it wasn't all true. They were apparently told that America was a land of evil people with horrible poverty, while China was the best and richest country in the world, but once Li got to America all of those statements clashed horribly with his upbringing as a poor peasant boy living off of dried yams. All in all, this was a really interesting book because of Li's "insider perspective" as a Chinese citizen during the 60s and 70s--a time period I didn't really know much about.

Book #55: The Lemon Tree by Sandy Tolan

If there's anything that is a grown-up topic of discussion, it's the Israeli-Palestinian conflict. And since I still do not consider myself a real true grown-up, I've never known anything about it (sad as that is to admit). There's always stuff happening with it, but I've never had the chance to be introduced to the conflict from the beginning and therefore always been overwhelmed to try and learn anything about it. But this book was an AWESOME introduction to the entire situation. I would highly recommend it to anyone who wants to find out what's going on over in that part of the world.

Tolan tells the story of the conflict through the narrative of two people, two families: an Arab family from al-Ramla, and a Jewish family who moved into their home after the Arabs had been expelled from that part of Palestine. He uses these two people as the example of what happened to hundreds and thousands of people on both sides of the conflict: the Arabs kicked out of their homes, the Jews brought in in the aftermath of the Holocaust, the Arabs longing for the right to return from exile, the Jews terrified of the Arabs' increasing desperation. You can't read this story without feeling terribly sorry for both sides of the conflict, and without feeling angry at the overriding "powers that be" that made the decisions that affected both groups of people so seriously. For someone like me, on the outside of the conflict, it's easy to see the truth to both sides of the conflict and the rights that both groups have. There is no easy solution--the only obvious fix is to go back to the past, before all of these problems started (which would really be thousands of years), and obviously that's no solution at all.

I really liked how Tolan seemed (to my inexperienced view) to be really impartial to the conflict and to be trying to represent both parties fairly and equally. I think that's part of the problem with the conflict--it's nearly impossible to hear from both sides.

Book #54: Her Royal Spyness by Rhys Bowen

This book kind of goes along with all the Maisie Dobbs books I was reading over the summer (and I'm actually reading another one right now)--an attractive young woman in London in the 1930s starts solving crimes. But Maisie Dobbs is set much more in the aftermath of WWI and the difficulties of the depression, while Her Royal Spyness seems much more happy-go-lucky Roarin' 20s-ish. Lady Georgiana, a duke's daughter, is a "minor royal," as she says, and gets caught up in a mystery when she finds a man drowned in her family's London home's bathtub. Eventually it comes to light that someone is also trying to kill her, and she manages to figure out who it is and find love in the bargain. Hooray!

I didn't love the author's style--it seemed pretty clunky at times--but I did get attached to Georgie and kept going back to thinking about the storyline after finishing it. I don't really feel interested in reading more of the sequels, but it was a fun, quick read.

Book #53: Abundance by Peter H. Diamandis and Steven Kotler

Sometimes, when I read news stories or even just think too hard about the future, I get depressed. Oh, most of the world lives in poverty and doesn't have access to clean water or education. Oh, the environment is going to pieces and we're all going to die when global warming happens. Oh, the world's population is too big and we're not going to be able to produce enough food and clean water for ourselves in a few years. Oh, the health care system in America is messed up and what are we all going to do when there are more retired people than working people in America?

Now, I really don't know very much (or ANYTHING) about these issues, except what you hear over the news. But this book, which I am really very happy I read, is actually promoting the opposite, non-depressing vision of the world: things aren't getting WORSE, they're actually about to get better. There are tons of problems facing the world right now, but the good news is, there are hundreds and thousands of people working on coming up with solutions to those problems, and a lot of those solutions sound really, really neat. And are becoming actual realities really, really fast.

For example, a huge percentage of the world doesn't have adequate energy sources and still relies on wood-burning stoves to provide their food and heating. This lack of energy contributes hugely to their poverty level--they can't improve their situation when they have to spend 50% of their time searching for more wood to burn so they can feed their families, etc. But there are some really incredible developments that are coming in the energy world, in solar, biofuel, and nuclear energy, that might change all of those problems. Solar energy is becoming more and more affordable by the year, and thousands of people are highly invested in developing better and better technologies for it. According to this book, within the next five years, solar energy should be just as affordable as normal energy sources in the United States. Isn't that amazing to think about? And similar developments are coming about in nuclear energy as well--imagine personal-sized nuclear generators that are completely safe and maintenance-free, which can be buried in the backyard and work for 50 years without problems. (That's a little farther away--maybe 15, 20 years, but people are talking about it!)

Diamandis and Kotler present tons of examples of these developments in a number of other areas as well: water, food, education, health care. I feel so much more optimistic about the world's chances of survival after reading this book. Even if none of these specific developments end up fixing everything (or anything), the point is that there are people out there who are working on fixing these problems. There are technologies being developed to specifically address every single issue we're worried about. I just hope they come about pretty quickly, you know?