The Never-Ending "To Read" List

In the last month, I've added at least 20 books to my "to read" list.
Three that I'm looking especially forward to are “Pilgrim at Tinker Creek” by Annie Dillard, “The Man Who Melted by Jack Dann”, and “Stolen Voices: Young People's War Diaries, from World War I to Iraq” by Olara A. Otunnu.

A co-worker and friend recommended her favorite book of all time, Annie Dillard's “Pilgrim at Tinker Creek”.

The title doesn't appeal from me--it sounds very wholesome and
“Little House on the Prairie”-ish. However, my co-worker assures me that Pilgrim is quite beautiful and doesn't conform to any type of label that she can describe. That's enough for me to be intrigued. However, in looking a little further, I came across
Sandra Stahlman's webpage on “The Mysticism of Annie Dillard's Pilgrim at Tinker Creek”. In her essay, Ms. Stahlman concludes that:

Annie Dillard grapples with age-old questions with the knowledge and energy of a 20th century thinker. She is not limited to one religious point-of-view, and has at her disposal information from numerous fields of study. Sometimes it's as if she is burdened with the facts; knowing so much, she cannot take anything at face value, but looks from every angle, fitting the pieces to together to form a coherent picture. The nature of God, and of the human condition, does not escape her scrutiny. Annie takes the information she has acquired from her schooling and through reading many books, and mixes that together with the images she finds in nature. The result is Pilgrim at Tinker Creek - a poignant look at the mystical relationship between God and nature, and an attempt to synthesize the duality between suffering and beauty.

(My emphasis.)

I'm interested to see how far Dillard takes the “coherent picture“ and whether she sacrifices some of the mysticism in favor of establishing a sense of order.

Another day while I was circing (rhymes with working), Stolen Voices: Young People's War Diaries, from World War I to Iraq compelled me to take a second look. R. Krithika of The Hindu eloquently states that:

Given the number of conflict-ridden areas in the world today, war has become a fact of life. Iraq, Sri Lanka, Somalia are perhaps the major war zones today. Countries like India, Pakistan and Indonesia also have areas that are prone to violent conflagrations. What is forgotten often is the impact of war on the common man. How do people live in the middle of war zones? More importantly how do children cope with the violence in their lives? Adolescents and young adults already face a tough time; what does war do to their crucial growing up years?

Stolen Voices: Young People's War Diaries from World War I to Iraq is a collection of extracts from the diaries of youngsters — teenagers to those in their early 20s. Youngsters whose lives changed suddenly through no fault of their own. This is a book that takes us right into the heart of what it means to live in the middle of violence - the fear of losing loved ones, even parents; no access to essentials like food and water; the gut-wrenching fear as you live through shelling and bombing...

I can't imagine living in this type of world as an adult. As a child, however, I find this beyond comprehension.

The cover of “The Man Who Melted” by Jack Dann caught my eye while checking in books in my capacity as a Circulation Associate. Thomas M. Wagner of SF Reviews.net writes:

The Man Who Melted is all about the secrets that hide beneath surfaces. It's about the way people deal with the collapse of everything that has defined their lives, and more specifically, the lies they tell themselves to avoid confronting terrible truths. Its future is one that has not fully recovered from the Great Scream, a global outbreak of collective
madness that saw millions of rioting lunatics — normal people who, as one character puts it, could not adjust to a "dysfunctional society" — come within a hair's breadth of destroying all society. But how can society be dysfunctional unless its people are dysfunctional first? The novel paints a future in which the inability of the individual to reconcile himself with society has resulted in an epidemic of schizophrenia that taps into the collective unconscious; the ironic result is that emotionally isolated individuals finally come together through
insanity and mob violence.

(My emphasis.)

OK, Mr. Wagner, you've hooked me. Bring it on.