The Lumberjack



Students Serving The Cal Poly Humboldt Campus and Community Since 1929

Tag: Books

  • 14 Books to Read While Self-Isolating

    14 Books to Read While Self-Isolating

    There’s never been a better time to start reading books

    You’re stuck inside. You’ve already watched all the best shows on Netflix. You’ve already done your homework. Instead of wasting away the hours on social media, do something good for yourself and your mental state. Read a book.

    Maybe you’ve never read a book for fun, but don’t let that discourage you. Reading is for everyone. You don’t have to be an intellectual to enjoy books.

    Listed below are a few my favorite books—hopefully you can find something to check out.

    If: you want to read a dystopian satire set in a world eerily similar to our current pandemic-stricken one,

    Then read: Severance, by Ling Ma

    If: you want a thrilling, can’t-put-it-down time travel science fiction novel paced like an action movie,

    Then read: Dark Matter, by Blake Crouch

    If: you want to read a smartly plotted story of the very real lives of modern, urban Native Americans in Oakland,

    Then read: There There, by Tommy Orange

    If: you want a masterwork of combining science fiction and fantasy and also race relations in the first of a trilogy,

    Then read: The Fifth Season, by N.K. Jemisin

    If: you want the best damn story of friendship chronicling two women in Italy from the 1950s onward,

    Then read: My Brilliant Friend (and the next three books in the series), by Elena Ferrante

    If: you just want some relaxing, in-touch poems about nature,

    Then read: New and Selected Poems, Volume One, by Mary Oliver

    If: you want to experience Nobel Prize-winning literature mixed with a little science fiction fun,

    Then read: Never Let Me Go, by Kazuo Ishiguro

    If: you like history and want to reframe your perspective of society without feeling like you’re read a history book,

    Then read: Sapiens: A Brief History of Humankind, by Yuval Noah Harari

    If: you want to discover what it’s like to grow up without ever going to school and somehow ending up at Cambridge,

    Then read: Educated, by Tara Westover

    If: you want to read a saga about a Korean family living through multiple generations, spanning topics of love, family and history,

    Then read: Pachinko, by Min Jin Lee

    If: you want to get lost in the long, engrossing story of one kid’s slip into darker and darker rungs of society,

    Then read: The Goldfinch, by Donna Tartt

    If: you want some truly strange and original dystopian fiction with a giant floating bear,

    Then read: Borne, by Jeff VanderMeer

    If: you just want to read the words of a fearless, always-interesting filmmaker,

    Then read: Werner Herzog – A Guide for the Perplexed: Conversations with Paul Cronin

    If: you want to get existential and ponder how you experience life,

    Then read: Why Time Flies, by Alan Burdick

    Where should you buy a book if you want to pick one up?

    I always recommend supporting your local, independent bookstores, especially right now. Each book above is linked to Powell’s bookstore—probably the most famous independent bookstore, located in Portland, Oregon.

    If you’re in Arcata, you can order books online from Northtown Books and pick it up on the curb as of March 25. You can also order a book from Tin Can Mailman, which is shipping orders of $10 or more for free to anywhere in Humboldt, and orders of $40 or more for free outside Humboldt.

    Eureka Books and Booklegger in Eureka can also ship books to you.

    If you’re outside Humboldt, look up your local bookstore and see how to grab a book. More than ever, they could use your support.

    If you’d rather not have anyone handle your books, your alternative is to try the e-book versions. Happy reading!

  • Freedom to read

    Freedom to read

    For the fourth consecutive year, the Humboldt Center for Constitutional Rights and the Humboldt University Library came together to celebrate freedom of speech with a read-out of banned books on Oct. 4.

    Community members and Humboldt State University students gathered to read their favorite “dangerous” books.

    From classic literature to children’s books, titles such as “The Grapes of Wrath,” “The Kite Runner” and “Where the Wild Things Are” have been banned or challenged by various schools and public libraries for reasons such as profanity, explicit or sexual content and controversial themes.

    The American Library Association gathers a yearly list of banned books and keeps record of any challenges against the inclusion of books in libraries or school curriculum.

    Senior at HSU, Erika Delos Reyes, 32, says many of these banned books were introduced to readers as children. Delos Reyes, a Communication major, read an excerpt of a favorite book of hers, “Flowers for Algernon” by Daniel Keyes at the read-out.

    HSU alumnus Donald Forrest read part of the 1959 short story “The Time of Her Time” by Norman Mailer. Forrest says at 12 years old, this was the first piece of “dirty” literature he ever found in a banned place – his dad’s sock drawer.

    “It’s an artifact of a time; of defiant misogyny,” Forrest said

    Tommy Woodruff, a 20-year old junior, attended the read-out because he was interested to see the different banned books. Woodruff said it was interesting that so many children’s books have been banned, such as “The Lorax” and “And Tango Makes Three,” a book about a family of two male penguins based on a true story.

    “It’s ridiculous, you can’t hide information from people,” Woodruff said.

    The exhibit on banned books is on display at the HSU library until Monday, Oct. 9.

    *Marcy Burstiner, faculty adviser of The Lumberjack is the Chair of Humboldt Center for Constitutional Rights.

  • Floating Into a New Reality

    Floating Into a New Reality

    Q&A with author Jai Garbutt

    By Bryan Donoghue

    HSU student Jai R. Garbutt is a business major from Palmdale, California who uses part of his free time to explore his imagination in the form of writing. A fan of fantasy with a passion for writing, Jai is currently working on “The Floating Castle”, a fantasy series that latterly began with his first publishing. Garbutt’s novel “Troubled Child” is a story about 12-year-old Lokkiyama who travels around the country with her mother in the year 8077.  Along the way they eventually settle, but due to Lokkiyama’s reputation as a troubled child, the pair always finds trouble. Garbutt’s 155 page book was published on January 23 and is available now on Amazon.

    Jai Garbutt reads his work | Photo by Bryan Donoghue

    Q: When did you first start writing your novel?

    A: I don’t know the exact month. I know the year I started writing. It was 2013. That was because I graduated high school in 2013. Also, I had to go to college but there were some complications, so I ended up staying home for a year. So during that year my mom was like, ‘You and your brothers, I want you guys to write at least a 40 page book.’ So I started with the 40 pages. That wasn’t really enough for the idea I was going for, so I just went on from there.

    Q: I was also wondering, who are your role models in terms of writing? Who do you look for who? Are your favorite authors?

    A:I don’t have any that I know directly inspired me, but I like, I think his name is Christopher Paolini. He’s the author of Eragon Cycle, Eragon the dragons. I read all four of those in one sitting. I think he’s from, somewhere from Europe. I don’t know if I ever had like took anything from him, but I definitely like him and enjoy his books. His books are some of my favorite books. If I did have inspiration, it’s probably from those.

    Q: Along those lines, what inspired you to start writing fantasy?

    A: I don’t know actually, that one is actually a tough question. I’m not really sure. Especially because the characters for this book is based off the whole universe that’s in my head. It’s been in my head for awhile. I used to draw and just randomly draw in high school, and then I thought to put it in stories, just cause.

    So basically with my mom telling oh you gotta write a book. I’m like oh I have a perfect opportunity to bring these characters to life. So that’s I guess why that started too, I guess I’m just … fantasy is just one of those things that’s just like life, and not just with books but like games and movies and stuff.

    Q: Have you ever wanted to live inside the books that you write?

    A: I would not necessarily live inside them, but I have thought about what the characters might say to me if they were real. And I’ve had mixed feeling about whether or not I’d want them to be real.

    Q: I mean, where did you gather your inspiration? Because your main character sounds pretty fascinating.

    A: It was inspired partially by a song.

    Q: What song?

    A: Set Apart This Dream by Flyleaf.

    Q: How is it inspired by that song?

    A: Well, let me say this without going overly complicated. So basically this is that there’s this entire universe behind this book. I wasn’t entirely sure, I’m not sure if you’ll ask me this later, but when I wrote this book I wasn’t entirely sure where to start with the universe. I had the idea of the character already, but I didn’t really know what I wanted her motivation to be as far as her aspirations. That was part of it.

    I knew that I wanted it to be something not necessarily out of reach, but something she really has to work towards, that I didn’t know. I really like that song. That’s one of the inspirations.

    Q: Do you ever have writer’s block?

    A: Oh yeah, definitely. That happens a lot. Sometimes I’ll be like I’m fire for a while or something, or sometimes I’ll just give it a thought, and when that happens I’m just okay lets give it a break. If I do get writer’s block, I’m like okay it’s better to just not do anything right now, because if I try to work while I’m not really refreshed it makes the quality suffer. Yeah, definitely get a lot of writers block.

    Q: And just kind of waiting it out, is that kind of how you deal with the writer’s block? Just until you got that fire again kind of.

    A: Yeah, I’ll just put it down or whatever, I’ll just stop and just be like okay I’ll think of something eventually, or I’ll get inspired by something later.

    Q: Well that just kind of adds as a continuation to your novel, is it a series?

    A: Planning on it, I think I wrote half way through the second one right now.

    Q: Why did you decide to start a series rather than an individual novel?

    A: Because I don’t think one novel would be enough to say what I have to say.

    Q: Yeah, do you think you’re gonna do another series after this?

    A: I’m not entirely sure, depends on what happens with this, with this current one.

    Q: And my last question for you actually is what can fans and future readers of your series expect from you in the future?

    A: Oh well, it might be different depending on how high of a volume I get, but right now pretty much I have a Facebook page and a Twitter for the book. So if people ask me questions I’ll try to respond as fast as possible, and actually that’s one of the things with the tech input right now. I want to wait for feedback from the first one first to see what people are saying about it, because like this one I’m proud of it and stuff, it’s the first one. But I haven’t really gotten any … the last time I checked I didn’t have any reviews yet or anything on Amazon. So I don’t really want to just keep going without any feedback from people.

    Q: So, maybe give or take a few more months here, fan bases are gonna grow?

    A: Possibly. I think it will more once I start doing more advertising. Right now I haven’t really done much advertising, just because I’ve been busy with school and paying for stuff with school that I haven’t really had a chance to do that, but probably this summer I’ll do a lot advertising.