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This next week or so my plan is to review all the books/films I’ve read in the first three months of 2011.

For today, I’ll post my nonfiction reads/views.

1. Aurora: The Mysterious Northern Lights by Candace Savage

Did you know that for every time there are Northern Lights they are mirrored by coordinating Southern Lights over Antarctica? Or that in some mythologies, if you disturbed the Northern Lights people believed the lights might decapitate you or whisk you away?

To me, this is the ideal for nonfiction–educational and entertaining. A mix of science and mythology, of past and present. It’s filled with great photography and has a beautiful layout. And the writing is stellar. My favorite quote from the book:

By rights, we humans ought to live in constant wonderment, amazed by every star, cloud, tree, leaf, feather, fish and rock. Amazed by the supreme improbability of our own intricate existence. But except for a gifted few (artists and mystics), we lack the stamina for so much mystery. It takes a shock–a sudden burst of beauty–to wake us to the wonder of our reality.

I loved reading this book. It really just made me want to learn again, about everything from astronomy to electromagnetics to Aristotle to mythology. And if something can reinvigorate my love for learning, it’s well worth the read.

2. 49 Up

I admit, a couple years back I went through a marathon, watching almost every documentary in Michael Apted’s Up series. The gist is that every seven years, the same (charmingly British) individuals, from all arenas of life, are interviewed and then edited into a documentary. (Roger Ebert has reviewed each of the film’s–read Ebert’s review of the whole Up series.)

I admit, 35 Up is still my favorite in the series–perhaps because I saw it first, and it’s the only Up film I’ve seen multiple times. But 49 Up maintained the quality of the other films, reforming a mosaic of individual lives by refitting together the pieces of their pasts in extraordinary new ways in an attempt to capture the present.

In the documentary, one of the character’s says something along the lines of, I know this series is entertaining, but the question is, does it have value?

I think so. Every time I watch an Up film I reevaluate where I am and where I want to be in 7 years time.

3. The Remarkable Soul of a Woman

I always find myself uplifted by Dieter F. Uchtdorf, and this was no exception. His Latter-day Saint take on the role of women was both motivational and comforting. He focuses on compassion and creation as keys to life’s happiness. I love his focus on how creation is God-like, and how we create any time we write, re-see something, inspire a smile, bring order to chaos, and through so many other things. I find this is true–when I’m creating and adding to the world, rather than just consuming its products, I find so much greater joy in day-to-day living.

4. Waiting for “Superman”

Well-edited, heart-wrenching documentary that reaffirms, our educational system can be fixed. It works so well because of its focus on individual hopes, dreams, and aspirations.

I mentioned this documentary to a friend and she expressed strong feelings that our educational system is not broken, that we do provide a strong educational system to most people. Yet 5 minutes later she was talking about problems with a school principal, children with special needs and interests not being taken care of, and other problems she and her family have experienced. To me, our educational systems may not be broken in the sense that they are still usable, but that doesn’t mean we don’t need to fix them.

5. Babies

This was a fun documentary that followed four babies from different parts of the world–Namibia, the US, Japan, and Mongolia–during the first year of their life. It’s not one of those documentaries that’s out to change the world. Rather, it’s a poetic celebration of life itself and the common humanity we share no matter where we’re from.

In conclusion…

I think I’ve done a good job of choosing my nonfiction reads/views this year–I’d strongly recommend each of these books/films.

Look for my upcoming reviews later this/next week, on these categories (links will be added as I get the posts up):

• Parenting Nonfiction
• Literary, Adult, and Film Fiction
• YA and MG Fiction (including a few graphic novels)
• Crafting
• Picture Books

Creative Commons Credits:
Northern Lights image by Beatrix Rose Photography

I may be unusual, but my favorite Academy Awards are Best Foreign Film, Best Documentary, Best Short Documentary, Best Short Film, and Best Animated Short Film. Because people will go see The King’s Speech and Inception anyways, but having awards for shorts, docs, and foreign films brings broad recognition to forms that, unluckily, are often ignored.

This year I was blown away by the Oscar winner of the Best Animated Short film, Shaun Tan and Andrew Ruhemann’s “The Lost Thing.” You can view “The Lost Thing” on Indie Movies Online or buy it on itunes. Here’s the trailer:

It’s a film that invites you to wonder again, to notice things, to slow down, and it does so by capturing a sense of wonder over its 15 minutes. Here’s a few of my thoughts on the film:

Introduction to the Lost Thing

I love the way that we as an audience meet the Lost Thing. Without using the Blair Witch project hand-held look, we go into the Point of View of the narrator, seeing first a bell, then circling the Thing, then seeing the whole creature from a low angle looking up. While we never get into the main character’s head–we never find out why he cares enough to take care of the Lost Thing–the camera angles and cuts create a close psychic distance to the narrator, and because he cares about the Lost Thing so do we.

The Solution to a Soul-Less World:

As is common in literature and film, we’re presented with a fallen, perhaps soul-less world, a world full of technology and progress, that has (in Shaun Tan’s film) literally lost much of its color, its life.

But rather than the archetypal move to return to Walden’s pond, cast away technology, and embrace nature, Tan does not condemn technology. The world of wonder we’re presented with has nothing purely natural about it. Like the Lost Thing it is somewhat mechanical, somewhat natural. But if we pay attention to it, it will change the way we look at the world.

This solution is a lot more realistic than casting off our technologies so we can raise crops in solitude. Rather than posing the question of technology vs. nature, Tan and Ruhemann pose the question of the normal, rushing rhythms of our lives (which may happen to be technological) vs. the awareness, the wonder that make life worth living. Perhaps it’s not a surprise that this film is adapted from a picture book, because what is lost in this film is not really some sort of strange red creature, but rather an essential, childlike part of ourselves. A part of myself that I personally rediscovered because of this delightful, animated short.