Themed Recommendation List: Cultural Memory

One of my favorite by-products of Themed Readings, is when a series of books align on an idea I’d never even considered before, creating a through-line that is resonant and significant, but had since gone unnoticed. My best example of this was when I started considering the implications of ‘cultural memory.’ I hadn’t thought about

My Top 50 Favorite Nonfiction Books (Ranked)

Collecting my top 50 favorite nonfiction books took a long time. I only add books to the list when I give them a 5-star rating. And I had to read a lot of nonfiction before I found 50 that felt worthy of a 5-star ranking.  I thought a lot about why this might be. One

Ishiguro’s Unreliable Narrators [Klara And The Sun]

A lot has already been said about Ishiguro and his new book, Klara and the Sun– the consistency of his tone and theme, the simplicity of his prose, his foray into many literary genres, and his return to science fiction, the role of inconsistent or conflicted narrators in complicating his stories. And this last point appears

Captain Beatty’s Style Of Governance: Suggesting To The Highly Suggestible [Fahrenheit 451]

If you have been following along with this three-part series about reading and literacy as reflected by dystopian novels, we have already established a couple points. I recommend you go back and read those posts (here and here).  But if you want the TL/DR, I established that Orwell and 1984, although the go-to expression of our

Empathy Through Reading: Recommendations During Racial Unrest

“Many of our white brothers, as evidenced by their presence here today, have come to realize that their destiny is tied up with our destiny. And they have come to realize that their freedom is inextricably bound to our freedom. We cannot walk alone. And as we walk, we must make the pledge that we

Quaid Reads [The Right Stuff]

A while back I read an excerpt from Stephen King’s On Writing (I didn’t read the whole thing until much later) that said he reads around 60-80 books a year. The stat staggered me. I considered myself an avid reader but was getting nowhere near that number. I reinvested myself in reading and took one piece of

Reticence and Memory, a Beautiful Duo [Kazuo Ishiguro]

Kazuo Ishiguro won the Nobel Prize for literature in 2017. On that date, I put him on my to-read list, and since that date I have read every one of his novels. I couldn’t stop. I found the author that wrote the way I wanted to read. At first, I sat back and enjoyed it,