This week I have a backlog of reader-recommended books to share. The subjects are wildly different, but all, coincidentally, touch on ideas of hope and despair.
James Raffan, Arctic explorer, shared his three-year journey circumnavigating the Arctic Circle to a sold-out crowd at this year’s Meadowlark Festival. Seated in the front row, I had to crane my neck to peer over a large stack of Raffan’s books.
But as soon as the house lights went up, the copies of Raffan’s book, Circling the Midnight Sun, were snapped up by the audience. And no wonder. More than shining a light on environmental devastation in the north, Raffan documents the overwhelming, and in many cases soul-crushing, cultural changes: from a nomadic reindeer herder who tries to sell him Amway soap, to a year’s supply of Coke collapsing the floor of a brand new community centre.
In contrast, The Optimistic Environmentalist, by David Boyd, is a collection of environmental success stories. Boyd believes that in order to enact change we must have hope for the future: “In the face of overwhelming environmental threats, people are overcome by feelings of helplessness and are less likely to take any kind of remedial action. They’ll even begin to deliberately avoid the issue. In contrast, hope is like an elixir for action.”
I was moved and convinced by this argument. Having just gone through a school closure process, I could relate to members of the public who feel they have no ability to influence decisions that affect their future, and so begin avoiding the issues and falling silent.
Reader-recommended The Light Between Oceans by M.L Stedman is based upon the classic idea that one person’s joy is another’s misery. A boat containing a dead man and a crying infant washes onto the shores of an unpopulated Western Australian island, save for a lighthouse keeper and his wife. Rather than report the tragedy to authorities, the childless couple decide to cover up the incident and care for the child as if she were their own. Holding out for a happy ending, it’s impossible to put this book down.
The final book on my May reading list was Mr. Splitfoot, by Samantha Hunt. This strange and terrifying contemporary gothic novel depicts foster children who, without hope for the future, attempt to channel the dead. Mr. Splitfoot is only for those who don’t mind going to bed with a chill down their spine. Please continue to send in more book suggestions. Happy reading!