Author: Andres Kabel

Naomi Klein writes like an avenging angel, with incandescent courage yet in clear prose, so her “On Fire: The Burning Case for a Green New Deal” is a welcome combo polemic and analysis on that most important topic, how the United States should (no, must) brings its emission fast towards zero. A collection of essays and talks and think pieces from as long ago as 2010, with the Green New Deal material expanded, the book could have been a disjointed mess. Instead, it’s a revisited refrain of her core ideas about the need for radical change. As with most fiery outpourings, there’s quite some stuff for me to disagree with (I’m a believer in capitalism with a human face, for example), but Klein’s excoriation of the evildoers of the world (yes, you fossil fuel apparatchiks, I’m looking at you) was a balm to this troubled soul. With this year’s American election looming, “On Fire” is recommended as briefing and call to action both.

The first season of “Abstract: The Art of Design” reinvented the “here’s how a creative person creates” doco, with nifty visuals, rapid cuts, the interposing of technical and personal, and a sophisticated viewpoint. Not all the eight episodes engaged me but that was simply because I found a few of the domains of the particular artists/designers/creators to hold less interest. Season 2 ups the ante and is a mind-engaging delight from start to end. If anything, the high-end quality and dramatization, by a consistent, intelligent team of directors, excels beyond Season 1’s on-screen impact. We pursue the output and inner creative processes of eight fascinating creators: an architect, a bio-architect (yes, there is something called that), a costume designer (how did they manage to intrigue me with that?), a toy designer, a Web interface designer, and a typeface designer (could there be anything more nerdy?). If you have a creative bone in your body, “Abstract” is essential, thoroughly modern viewing.

Who doesn’t adore reading aloud to children or (in my case at this time of my life) grandchildren? But I don’t usually consider them “worthy” of a formal review. “What Color Is Night?” is a sparkling exception. I was drawn to purchasing this slim paean to the intricacies of night-time scenes by Grant Snider’s exemplary cartoons, and I bought it as an ebook designed to be read as an ebook to one of my grandsons. Each page is a rich, clear evocation of our world beyond the day, and the book’s title is indeed the topic of every such scene. Something deep imbues the unexpected colors of night time, something that has compelled me to read aloud “What Color Is Night?” again and again, and to bring it to mind every time the sun does down on my adult world. This is a child’s book but oh no, it is not. Wonderful.

Robert Harris is a remarkable novelistic traveller through time and space, setting his extensive roster of dramas/thrillers anywhere his curiosity takes him. Who else could render Pompeii’s plot-whumping reality as a breathless story? One of Harris’s strengths is the opening scene, always unraveled with economy, always unmistakably settling the place and milieu, and “The Second Sleep” is no exception. We ride beside a callow priest, in the year of 1468, on his journey to put to rest a deceased clergyman, arriving at a gloomy, downtrodden village in grungy Exmoor. No plot spoilers but from there on, Harris’s unwinding of a wonderful plot runs at a breakneck pace, and the book unfurls as a terrific armchair read. I can recommend “The Second Sleep,” but for myself, consider the climax a step down from what Harris usually conceives.

A killer opening scene on a white trash stretch of the North Carolina coast sets “Where the Crawdads Sing” on a chugging, rewarding trajectory through the life of Kya Clark, the local “Marsh Girl.” Delia Owens, a wildlife scientist with well-regarded nonfiction books to her credit, lifts this book up from the scrum of coming-of-age tales through her descriptions of the wild coastline and its birds and wildlife. Her descriptive prose sings in a decidedly traditional way. The story itself often creaks on the edge of predictability – think “Marsh Girl falls for two boys, one good, one bad” – but is always wonderfully rescued by the lush details of isolated Kya’s life and her network of occasional friends. And I was most delighted that the backbone plot of murder (maybe), investigation, and court room scene, works like a treat. Three quarters of the way through “Where the Crawdads Sing,” an echo of a much-loved book surfaced. Yes, I whispered, this is the new “To Kill a Mockingbird“! That realization helped me fall into easy sentimentality over the final, satisfying quarter of the book. Transcending itself, Delia Owens’ novel deserves a huge readership.

I was drawn to “How to Train for Aging: The Ultimate Endurance Sport” by its relevance at my time of life, but in spite of good intentions, Kevin Thomas Morgan flails at his topic without persuading. A veterinarian (that is, with some rationality) who has had heart problems, he exhorts, preaches the concept of entropy, and in general encourages systematic physical activity (he does Ironman competitions) as the antidote to aging’s retrogressions. That much I knew from the book’s title, and the concept appeals to me, but I expected sagacity and rewarding tales from the front line. Instead the book offers a few relevant insights but exaggeratedly limps from cover to cover.