The Highs and Lows of Travel (installment eleventy-something)
This isn't even this week's travel, as last week's fun-and-games really precluded getting anything written here. So I'm now behind this, the promised second "How Mad Are You?" episode tally, and a write-up of Ann Lawrence's Between the Forest and the Hills, recommended by ![[livejournal.com profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/external/lj-userinfo.gif)
intertext . (And enjoyed, in case you're wondering!)
( A sad story of stupidity, must-go-down-with-consequences-of-my-stupid-blunder honourableness, traffic and toilets. Skip at will )
Having put all that behind me, I settled down for the usual boring wait (with the hysterical edge to it that is travel on Ryanair these days). I had Nancy Werlin's Impossible for reading, though I just couldn't bring myself to finish it, despite being more than three-quarters of the way through. (Luckysteepholm got much 'sharing' of passages over the weekend. And they weren't shared in an admiring fashion.) I always check the bookshop in airports, as the betterment of airport bookshops is one of the life-enhancing changes I've noticed over the last couple of decades. Nothing of interest until I happened to spot something on nearly the bottom shelf of the small YA section - The Carbon Diaries 2015 (Saci Lloyd). I'd heard nothing about it, but was very taken with the blurb on the back: "It's 2015 and the UK is the first nation to introduce carbon dioxide rations, in a drastic bid to cut greenhouse gas emissions." and the cover, which is recycled and unbleached. Very cleverly - all the copyright material and all is at the back of the book, so what you see on opening is a little schematic of the damage done by the Great Storm and a news clip describing the carbon rationing scheme.
I really, really liked this book so much. I thought the combination of smart-arsed teen writing about her barking mad family, the huge changes forced on everyone by the carbon restrictions and typical school/crush woes, with an entirely credible and quite frightening picture of how things could be only 7 years from now, worked brilliantly. And it's really funny - which makes it even more effective than a totally somber and serious prediction of future crisis would be. I was often laughing out loud in the airport (and on the plane, and bus back home), but found the ending very moving. The thing which I found really impressive too was that it was giving this grim picture of the effects of climate change while still avoiding a complete One Message messagery. Laura goes through the usual "we're so messed up" lines - and resents adults having handed her generation the crap they have, but she also thinks about the differing reactions of people around her. At one point, someone's said that their black market business in carbon points (so rich people can still have their holidays in Tuscany and drive their Jeeps) is "kind of underground, y'know, like two fingers up at the state" and though she's sort of swayed, and is horrified by how brutally the government has responded to protestors, Laura thinks that right now she is the state: "I don't want spoilt pigs to go to Tuscany, I want them to clean up and sort their shit out once and for all." Not preachey and more effective for it.
The only thing that made me laugh out loud in a not-good way was when Laura and the others in her band, dirty angels, get a lift from a friend of a relative of a friend from Ireland. One of the girls gives him a right set-down for being so late and when he looks very taken aback, Laura thinks that girls don't talk like that in Ireland. Uh, right. Never mind, it's a tiny criticism, and I'm very much looking forward to The Carbon Diaries 2017.
Quick question: is it SF? Is 7 years far enough into the future to make it qualify? The cause of the societal changes are surely scientific enough for anyone, except a rabid climate change denier....
intertext . (And enjoyed, in case you're wondering!) ( A sad story of stupidity, must-go-down-with-consequences-of-my-stupid-blunder honourableness, traffic and toilets. Skip at will )
Having put all that behind me, I settled down for the usual boring wait (with the hysterical edge to it that is travel on Ryanair these days). I had Nancy Werlin's Impossible for reading, though I just couldn't bring myself to finish it, despite being more than three-quarters of the way through. (Lucky
steepholm got much 'sharing' of passages over the weekend. And they weren't shared in an admiring fashion.) I always check the bookshop in airports, as the betterment of airport bookshops is one of the life-enhancing changes I've noticed over the last couple of decades. Nothing of interest until I happened to spot something on nearly the bottom shelf of the small YA section - The Carbon Diaries 2015 (Saci Lloyd). I'd heard nothing about it, but was very taken with the blurb on the back: "It's 2015 and the UK is the first nation to introduce carbon dioxide rations, in a drastic bid to cut greenhouse gas emissions." and the cover, which is recycled and unbleached. Very cleverly - all the copyright material and all is at the back of the book, so what you see on opening is a little schematic of the damage done by the Great Storm and a news clip describing the carbon rationing scheme. I really, really liked this book so much. I thought the combination of smart-arsed teen writing about her barking mad family, the huge changes forced on everyone by the carbon restrictions and typical school/crush woes, with an entirely credible and quite frightening picture of how things could be only 7 years from now, worked brilliantly. And it's really funny - which makes it even more effective than a totally somber and serious prediction of future crisis would be. I was often laughing out loud in the airport (and on the plane, and bus back home), but found the ending very moving. The thing which I found really impressive too was that it was giving this grim picture of the effects of climate change while still avoiding a complete One Message messagery. Laura goes through the usual "we're so messed up" lines - and resents adults having handed her generation the crap they have, but she also thinks about the differing reactions of people around her. At one point, someone's said that their black market business in carbon points (so rich people can still have their holidays in Tuscany and drive their Jeeps) is "kind of underground, y'know, like two fingers up at the state" and though she's sort of swayed, and is horrified by how brutally the government has responded to protestors, Laura thinks that right now she is the state: "I don't want spoilt pigs to go to Tuscany, I want them to clean up and sort their shit out once and for all." Not preachey and more effective for it.
The only thing that made me laugh out loud in a not-good way was when Laura and the others in her band, dirty angels, get a lift from a friend of a relative of a friend from Ireland. One of the girls gives him a right set-down for being so late and when he looks very taken aback, Laura thinks that girls don't talk like that in Ireland. Uh, right. Never mind, it's a tiny criticism, and I'm very much looking forward to The Carbon Diaries 2017.
Quick question: is it SF? Is 7 years far enough into the future to make it qualify? The cause of the societal changes are surely scientific enough for anyone, except a rabid climate change denier....