Books
Books
Dennis lahane on a given day
Sci fi
Ndedi Okafor, nk jemisin, Octavia butler
Philip k dick, William Gibson, Neal Stephenson, Kim stanley
to read
Horse Geraldine brooks
Consolation David white
White fragility
from Meg
- Giver of stars
- The Educated
- Where the Crawdads sing
phillip k dick bladerunner, do androids dream of electric sheet Louise erdrich
James McBride
been read
zorrie by laird hunt
Midwestern radium dials women farmer
The promise by dalgut hamat
South Africa white family wh own a "farm". Aside from the Ashton they all suck and resist implementing the promise made by the father to the dying mother. Yet somehow it got to me. It was well written, sometimes the author presents 2 versions of a scene, both of which work to carry the story forward.
Michael Strogoff by Jules Verne
This is a travelogue of a trip across Siberia by a hero and his cohorts. Michael poses as a merchant but he is really a courier on a mission from Got(). He helps and is helped by a young damsel and a telegraph operator. His arch enemy Ivan is a traitor, general in the uprising and an impersonator of Michael to the Duke. Michael pretends he got blinded but didn't since he was crying at the time the sword cut his eyes.
Hyperion by Dan Simmons
Dan Simmons uses a cool device of a pilgrimage with pilgrims who don't really know each other. So they tell their stories along the way as a way to build a world and story. The AI concepts are pretty advanced considering that the book was written in 1986. But you can't know everything if the past and future can change.
Beta Ball by Eric Malinowski
Not so much "How Silicon Valley and Science Built One of the Greatest Basketball Teams in History" more a retelling of playoff game accounts. Story of LA Warriers framed as a high tech data driven success, but not really. Just a pretty good book on the rise of this team.
Wonderland: How play made the modern world by Steven Johnson
Kavelier and Clay
elevator pitch- A story of escape from Prague before the war, guilt at being the family member that got away, of cousins who share their unique talents to create art, get ripped off of their ideas, one realizing he can feel love with another man, the other realizing that he can feel love instead of perpetual grief about his families loss in the holocaust. The desire for revenge and the abhorrance of killing. Societies oppression of comic books and homosexuality. Love and family, and being a different kind of kid.
white boy shuffle
told in the first person, I am the 7th son of the seventh son , no not really. -> family history. so white mom moves them back to the ghetto -> finds friend reading Othello in class, "Psycho Loco has planned to steal the safe for nine years in retribution for the department store's having moved a race-car set the young Psycho intended to steal on the day he was to steal...""He visits a wealthy, African American Harvard graduate in his large home, which overlooks Hillside, realizing that years earlier he and his Holligan friends had stolen a security sign out of the front lawn and destroyed the man's RV."
house of sand and fog
trying to reclaim a home lost in forclosure bought by Iranian immigrants.
Swing Time by Zadie Smith
of the type of novel where the characters are purposely unsympathetic; the narrator her mother Tracey, Aimee, Lamma, Hawa they are all not loved by the reader, each represnting a part of human character. Fern, arguably the only heroic character, betrays bhis friend by ratting her out to Aimee.
book recommendations for Manny
If I were to hazard a guess based upon Boston Public High School seniors, these young people may still be a ways from having developed a love for reading. The following is a rather random list of books that, for at least a couple of kids, kickstarted that love.
- Drown, Junot Diaz
- A book of short stories about a Dominican kid growing up in the DR and then New Jersey. For my students it broke them from the mold of a stale personal narrative (we arrived, we struggled, I will be a doctor) reformulating it into tales of the moral and emotional challenges they faced in the playground and on the streets of their childhood.
- The White Boy Shuffle, Paul Beatty
- This book about a young man growing up in California. It taps into that street smart sensibility and gives the reader a great sense of place. It suceeded in developing and ironic sensibiliity in my students that served them well.
- The Absolutely True Diary of a Part Time Indian, Sherman Alexie
- An interesting view of the world, with brillaint little character sketches of grandmas or the guy on the corner and funny descriptions of the old ways interacting with the modern world. For my readers, they came away empoweered and more confident in exploring and putting down how they see their world.
- 1984, George Orwell
- A rather long and challenging book for a young person not versed in reading but very rewarding for those who persevered. We were able to combine it with Shepherd Fairey's work. He is a artist (those "Obey" grafitti posters used to be all around town) and there seems to be some connection to hip-hop and grafitti that works to draw in the reader.
- The Girl With All the Gifts R. M. Carey
- A different type of science fiction in which first the reader feels overwhelmed and lost and slowly the reality emerges. The characters are figuring things out as you are and their responses are heroic. The girl is an engaging character but so are the soldiers.
- The Grapes of Wrath, John Steinbeck
- To be able walk in someone elses shoes is easy to do in this book. Take yourself back 90 years. You've just gotten out of prison, you are walking down the road headed home. Things are looking really dry. Everything is different...
- Mountains Beyond Mountains, Tracy Kidder
- By the time you are in your twenties you can already be pretty cynical. You have been subjected to all manner of bullshit and have seen through the lofty words of the man. Is anyone doing it right? Can anyone make a difference? Tracy Kidder gives us a pretty convincing answer in this story about the work of Paul Farmer.
- Zeitoun, David Eggers
- You think you got a bad deal. Check out what went down after Katrina. We have all seen the images of New Orleans after the hurricane. Maybe you have seen Treme. Check this out.
