New Media

We stopped at a bookstore after dinner on Friday, which had its fun moments. Just when I think I've forever passed on to the side of matronly, some stranger tries to pick me up in the science fiction section. He seemed like a nice guy and I thought he was just making conversation until my husband breezed by with an obnoxious smirk on his face. He didn't stop - just rolled by like a freight train and slammed a book into my hand - leaving an awkward silence in his wake. The stranger and I just stared at each other for a few seconds until I thanked him for his suggestions and moved to the next aisle. We avoided making eye contact after that. Thank you for your suggestions, strange SciFi Man.




He suggested China Mieville's Perdido Street Station and The Scar. I'd already picked them up because of their covers, and he gave me a glowing recommendation. I've not read enough to give a full report, but I am enjoying the dense, rich prose and unique, dark world.




On my very own, I picked up The Children's Blizzard by David Laskin, indulging my morbid fascination with natural disasters. Like most books of this sort, this is an easy, fast read. But the story is amazing. In January 1888, one of the worst blizzards in the history of the US hit the praries of the Dakotas, Kansas and Nebraska. It was a fast storm, moving 60 mph, and what made it particularly lethal was that it hit on the first balmy morning after a severe cold spell. The day started at 20 degrees, and by the time school was dismissed, the storm hit and left many of children stranded on their way home. One record shows that the temperature dropped 18 degrees in three minutes, eventually falling to a windchill of 40 below that night. You can imagine that many of these children had traveled to school that day in their lightweight coats, not to mention the farmers who were probably working their fields in their shirtsleeves. It is called the Children's Blizzard because many of the fatalities were schoolchildren.

Also noteworthy was the snow. Because the temperature was exceedingly cold within the storm, the snow was the texture of fine sand, getting into every crack and crevice and reducing visibility so that people could not see their hands in front of their faces, even if their eyes weren't frozen over.

This book underscores the harshness of life on the prairie for settlers. Grasshoppers descending like locusts and eating an entire crop in minutes, prairie fires that spread across thousands of acres, and the crippling isolation. For any of you who have read Laura Ingalls Wilder, I would recommend this book as well.

posted by Zippy Buggleshorts @ Monday, February 27, 2006