New from Booklist, several titles of note:

Sag Harbor by Colson Whitehead: "MacArthur fellow Whitehead follows three inventive, satirical, and reverberating novels with a classic entering-manhood tale framed within the summer of 1985. Benji, 15, skinny, nerdy, well-meaning, and wry, reports on life in a legendary African American enclave in Sag Harbor, Long Island. He and his brother, the sons of a doctor and a lawyer, attend private school in Manhattan and spend each summer here with a circle of friends, this year moving on from bicycles to cars, arcade games to ogling girls. Benji muses over the fact that he and his friends, “black boys with beach houses,” define paradox, and frets over myriad anxieties, including his inability to keep up with the “new handshakes.” Whitehead’s ardor for pop culture launches exuberantly caustic ruminations on music, fashion, and TV, while he goes overboard describing Benji’s ice-cream-shop job. Benji’s stipulations of what is cool and uncool create a moral equation, while the buzz of summer delights conceals the pain of racism and class bias, which lurk like jagged rocks beneath the sun-dazzled sea. Yet, just as Benji can’t swim, Whitehead sticks to the frothy shoreline and avoids the deep. Caution lowers the resonance of this masterfully told tale, but ups the pleasure, making for an unusually generous, wisely funny novel about good kids and a society’s muddled attempt to come of age."

Hmmm. The thing about Colson Whitehead is he is so hard to explain or categorize or even recommend. None of his books are the same and all of them have their own share of quirkiness. I'm not surprised to hear that he goes heavy on the ice cream job here though - apparently that was Whitehead's first job and he hated it. This is probably revenge.

City Kid by Nelson George: "'Suddenly black nerds were chic'—not just athletes, musicians, and activists. The award-winning author of hip hop America (1998) and other books and films on popular culture writes about his coming-of-age in his Brooklyn inner-city neighborhood. Rooted in George’s personal experience, this memoir is also a lively look back at historical changes in popular music, film, and writing. A voracious reader, George was thrilled as a kid by Wright and Baldwin but also by Hemingway and Fitzgerald. As a music critic at Billboard, then the Village Voice, he charted the journey from segregation to integration via popular music, connecting the established world of rhythm and blues with the still relatively underground world of rap. His moving family story grounds the book—accounts of his still-troubled relationship with his druggie dad and his adult reconciliation with his sister—but it is the wry, sharp, unpretentious cultural analysis that is at the core here, especially what he calls the exhilarating mix of fear and freedom that comes with listening to music."

This one sounds like an excellent choice for high school readers, especially boys. Hopefully it will find its way to Guys Lit Wire at some point...


The Carbon Diaries 2015 by Saci Lloyd: "In the way that Cory Doctorow’s Little Brother (2008) was a tale of national security run amok, this is a similar cautionary look at global warming. Laura Brown, a 16-year-old Londoner and punk rocker, documents a year in the very near future, 2015, in diary form. She refers to recent massive storms brought on by climate change that have ravaged the planet and led Britain to be the first country to try “carbon rationing.” Each person is allotted a prohibitively small measure of carbon points to be used each month, essentially obsoleting such luxuries as air travel or even heating one’s home. Laura navigates the increasingly punishing circumstances with a perfectly intoned half-bitter, half-astonished teenager’s voice, complete with strains of near-future slang, and punctuates her diary with newspaper clippings and other taped-in bits of cultural detritus. As she weathers staggering uncertainty, kill-me-now family crises, and a timelessly confusing dating scene, she finds a release valve in music and her mates. Lloyd’s immersive first novel, if a bit overlong, is transformative without ever being didactic and teases out information with remarkable restraint that never feels like withholding. While the book ends without a clean resolution, that only adds to a realism that, while certainly alarmist, could well be prophetic. Deeply compulsive and urgently compulsory reading."

Sounds less tech focused than Little Brother, and less involved in a good vs evil scenario (two aspects of that book which I think weakened it somewhat). I also like the collage sounding aspects of the book's design; all in all this one sounds very good.

Eco Barons by Edward Humes: "An eco baron is the opposite of a robber baron, using talent, gumption, and wealth not for personal gain but for environmental good. Award-winning journalist Humes brings a fluency in complex issues and a love of David-Goliath stories to this illuminating group portrait of embattled visionaries who “are showing the world that nature can be nurtured.” Douglas Tompkins, a Mayflower blueblood, dropped out of high school, cofounded the Esprit clothing empire, then abandoned corporate life to devote himself to preserving the wilds of Patagonia, in spite of vehement resistance. Roxanne Quimby, the artist who founded the company Burt’s Bees, faced vicious opposition to her efforts to preserve the Maine Woods. Carole Allen, a citizen of modest means but immense passion, received death threats for her volunteer advocacy on behalf of endangered sea turtles. Eco-philanthropist extraordinaire Ted Turner has been harshly criticized for his part in re-wilding the West. The most maddening tale of derailed eco-ingenuity is the sabotaging of Andy Frank’s plug-in hybrid car; the most encouraging story is that of a gutsy not-for-profit, the Center for Biological Diversity. A dramatic, insightful history of environmental conflicts and breakthroughs threaded through timely and inspiriting profiles in courage and creativity."

After the book I just got done reviewing for Booklist I am desperate - desperate - for some good news on the environment. Eco Barons sounds perfect (and also a good source for teens writing reports?)

Going Green: True Tales from Gleaners, Scavengers and Dumpster Divers by Laura Pritchett: "When readers are weary or leery of environmental books full of data and doom, they can turn to novelist Pritchett’s spiky collection of personal essays about going green the old-fashioned way. Thrift used to be the guiding principle in nearly every household. Clothes, jars, bags, string—everything had multiple lives. But with the rise of consumerism, household ecology was largely abandoned. Not so for Pritchett, who, from childhood, has been an avid alley cruiser and Dumpster diver, finding treasures in trash. Proud of her gleaning ways, and certain that reclamation and recycling are essential practices in this time of bursting landfills and oceanic trash islands, she invited fellow garbage-pickers to share their views of the waste-not, want-not life, and the result is a lively and provocative assemblage. Kathy Lynn Harris pays tribute to her tough rancher grandmother, the queen of reuse. Eliza Murphy’s beachcombing essay reveals the terrible truth about the marine plastic plague.Others share stories of flea markets, garage sales, and roadkill. These tales from the scavenging front are unexpectedly philosophical, confiding, funny, and affecting."

A funny book on roadkill, people. I'm looking for humor anywhere these days..........