Friday Reads: A Libertarian Walks Into a Bear

 Happy Friday! This week, Public Services Librarian Kelly Clever wants to tell us about the audiobook she's been listening to recently: A Libertarian Walks Into a Bear: The Utopian Plot to Liberate an American Town (And Some Bears) by Matthew Hongoltz-Hetling.

This book sat on my Audible wishlist for a year or so before I finally decided to give it a listen. I don't remember howI first heard of it, but I do remember that the title made me laugh. In 2004, a group of libertarian-minded people identified the small town of Grafton, New Hampshire, as the perfect location for a libertarian society. They spread word of their plan through websites and message boards, and soon liberty-lovers from around the nation began moving there with the intent to vote out the existing local government and to install no government at all in its place. 

Unfortunately for the libertarian colonizers, however, Grafton was already home to an impressive population of particularly bold black bears. The bear situation was not improved by the sudden influx of people living in the woods and disposing of their garbage in any manner they chose. 

The book is filled with memorable characters, both human and ursine. In the audio version, the narrator's deadpan delivery adds to the drama and hilarity. We meet a woman known as Doughnut Lady who began feeding doughnuts to the bears several times a day. We learn about an eccentric preacher from decades gone by who built a towering outdoor pulpit to preach above the treetops. My personal favorite anecdote so far is about an old farmer and her guard-llama, who gave one cow-hunting black bear the butt-kicking of its life. 

I expect this book would be enjoyable for people from any political orientation who appreciate oddball history and dry humor. And bears. 

Friday Reads: Dandelion Wine

Most people have heard of Fahrenheit 451, but today Interim Library Director Adam Pellman tells us about one of Ray Bradbury's other books: Dandelion Wine.

 

I first encountered Ray Bradbury's stories as required reading in high school and college, and he's been a favorite of mine ever since. I've read most of his story collections, and novels like Fahrenheit 451 and Something Wicked This Way Comes still stand out as classics. For some reason, it's taken me this long to get to one of his most beloved books, Dandelion Wine, his semi-autobiographical novel about a childhood summer in a small town. This feels like the perfect time for me to read it. With school back in session, I need something to help me hold on to these last summer days, and this book fits the bill.

The novel takes place over the course of the summer of 1928, in fictional Green Town, Illinois (a setting modeled after Bradbury's own hometown of Waukegan). While the narrative returns time and again to the activities of twelve-year-old Douglas Spaulding and his brother Tom, many other townspeople get their time in the spotlight, and Bradbury does a marvelous job of fleshing out these characters, even if it's only for a single chapter. As much as he excels at capturing the rhythms and concerns of childhood, Bradbury is equally adept at fashioning the town's adult citizens, whose joy, sadness, fear, hope, and reminiscences create such an affecting collective portrait. As grounded as much of the novel is, there are still the darker elements and sense of magic that I often associate with Bradbury's work, whether it's the brothers' fascination with a fortune-telling arcade automaton, or the series of local murders thought to be carried out by an otherworldly creature known as the Lonely One. It's been a real treat to revisit Bradbury's work after such a long time away.