Roast Books Blog Tour

Image by Getty Images via Daylife

Cherished readers, please note that my modest Evagation blog will be included in an upcoming tour of blogs by A.C. Tillyer, author of An A-Z of Possible Worlds. Check back on November 20th for the interview.

I've got a few questions that I plan to ask A.C., and would be happy to include questions of yours. So email or post if you have insightful questions. Please don't bother with silly questions, as I can come up with enough of those on my own.

Thank you to Faye at Roastbooks for setting up the tour!

The Boy Who Harnessed the Wind

The Boy Who Harnessed the Wind: Creating Currents of Electricity and Hope by William Kamkwamba and Brian Mealer is a no-holds-barred look at a life of poverty, dreams and tenacity.


In the beginning of the story, William is considered crazy by neighbors and others, and only his friends stand by him (one even funds his inventions). By the end, William has redeemed their investment tenfold - financially, of course, but even more so by improving their lives far beyond their expectations.

William and his family and his nation survive terrible hardship and famine in the course of his life, and he is unstinting in describing the horrors of starvation to the reader. The scene where his poor old dog Khamba dies is worthy of comparison with the story of Ol' Yeller, and to me far more gut wrenching. William is forced at one point to withdraw from school as he lacks the tuition money; but not before he spends 2 weeks basically cutting *into* class to try and stay to learn.  But being forced out of school has an up-side; in an attempt to keep up, William begins self-study at the library, finds a book describing how to make a windmill, and then he begins to scavenge parts and supplies from the local dump with which to build one.  And it works.

The story isn't ended by any means: William Kamkwamba has a blog, and his ingenuity and entrepreneurship is blossoming now that he is gaining resources to finish his educaton and challenge himself to see what he can do next.

Causing a Scene

Causing a Scene by Charlie Todd and Alex Scordelis is a detailed look at the early missions of Improv Everywhere and the interactions of their Agents on missions involving public performances "causing scenes of chaos and joy." Included are background on the Frozen Grand Central Station event, the Fake U2 concert, and the Synchronized Swim in Washington Park Fountain as well as the No Pants subway rides. For improvisers, reading about the planning and coordination needed comes off very realistically - 5 minutes stage time for the Mobius Starbuck easily stretches to hours of plotting and advance work and rehearsal. Bravo!

I would so love to do one of these in Indianapolis. We can start with the No Pants subway ride event. So, who's bringing the subway to Indy?

An A-Z of Possible Worlds by A. C. Tillyer

I just finished A. C. Tillyer's An A-Z of Possible Worlds and am happy to post today, on our spooky national holiday, on my successful completion of Carl's Readers Imbibing Peril challenge. The stories were strange and fantastical and in parts disgusting and contemplative or both:

• Evolution's dire twists and turnings for creatures that used to be humans
• An unmappable island with residents who have no concept of now or anything beyond here and there
• Tedious hum drum vampires, dreary commuters as boring as any human
• A boutique strip club catering to the strangest tastes, with a new dancer willing to bare all and then some
• The most beautiful and ornate palace ever, lovingly constructed though burdensome on the populace, with an unknown and unknowable king.
• A completely impregnable island fortress, forever ready against an unknown enemy (read the sample of A is for Archipelago).
  

Provided in bite sized serving sizes, the tales are easily digested and individually wrapped. The petite booklets are are delightfully portable, ready to read surreptitiously hidden in a class binder or conveniently retrieved from even a small purse.

The tales stick in my brain after reading, surfacing time and again for me to mull over. If vampires were real and did live today, how would they have evolved? What is the logical limit of exhibitionism when cinema-vérité becomes stale? In a perfectly engineered city, what place is there for misfortune?

I'm grateful to the author for leaving me with such mental fodder to mull over post-read. The best books excel at this - they summon reflection in the reader (willing or no) long after the book cover is closed.

I'll examine one story in detail as it gave me nightmares after. In M for Metropolis, a group of tourists seeking an "extreme experience" visit a post-urban environment where  the metropolis has collapsed. The inhabitants are presented for their elucidation. With clever misdirection, the author first presents the guide carefully explaining the precautions and procedures to be used by the tourists, putting the reader into the position of meta-tourist; the reader will see the displays on exhibit and also be watching the tourists. The curiosity-seeking tourists and the bored guide are both presented, unvarnished, equally as perverse in their own way as anything they might see.

The guide, numb from overexposure, provides no explanation for the 'exhibits.' The tourists are herded through the experience much like tourists anywhere - and the parallels between the tourists on display to the reader and the 'exhibits' on display to them continue. The tourists react clumsily and are terrifically unsuited to have anything beyond a shocked reaction - and is the reader better off than they? They gape, they retch, they cower and beg to be extracted - the reader has no escape from the story lodged in their brain. At the end, any sympathy for the tourists (and any of us who's fumbled through the London Underground maps as a traveler can sympathize) - all that sympathy erodes, and in its stead is left disgust at the tourists' callousness and lack of empathy with the post-human residents of the failed city.

Speaking of endings: today's post was written from The Bean Cup, which is sadly closing. I'll miss them.


Disclosure: the book reviewed was an unsolicited gift from Roast Books. Check out Roast Books for unusual fiction presented in original ways.