Reading list
Shortform reading
This is an incomplete list of the shortform reading (and listening and watching) I’ve been doing lately.
Why "Book-Shaming" Won't Solve the Children's Literacy Crisis
Barnett’s concerns about literary merit and professional esteem may be timeless, but they are not terribly timely; they seem to float high above the current on-the-ground realities of what many educators and researchers agree to be a literacy crisis. In urging his audience to see children’s books as “real books,” Barnett skips over larger, more pressing questions about why so many children aren’t reading books at all, real or otherwise.
#books · #education · #reading
'What Dan Read': What a reading list of 3,599 books tells us about a library superfan
A public library in Ohio is celebrating the life of one of its most loyal patrons, a retired social worker named Dan Pelzer.
Robot Ghost Kitchens and Memory Capitalism: August's Best Sci-Fi and Fantasy Books
Humidity be damned, this month’s crop of books is sparking with exciting new premises and relationship dynamics. You’ve got robots-turned-cooks, an economy built entirely on mandatory memory collection, a polyamorous throuple romantasy, Practical Magic but make it a mother/daughter tale. And if you were a fan of Sideways Stories from Wayside School and/or Holes, have I got the adult fantasy debut for you…
More broadly, fiction can act as an antidote to authoritarianism. If authoritarianism thrives when people are isolated, fiction brings people together, she says. “In the most basic way, writing is about opening yourself to another person’s mind. The most intimate thing I do on a daily basis is pick up a book and open myself to another person.” And, while the Trump administration may be forcing one way of life on the world, fiction’s job is, as always, to remind people that there are “other ways of being”.
Allegra Goodman on the (Almost) Life-Saving Power of Audiobooks
I was jittery. Elijah was half-asleep. I was desperate for a new start. He hated change. But when I started the car and began our first audio book, someone new entered the conversation. Alexandre Dumas. Within minutes, we were transported to the world of The Three Musketeers. Duels and secrets and spies and stolen diamonds. Adventure and absurdity. Dumas carried us away. The humor in this book! We played one scene again and again, because it was so funny. I got distracted, missed my exit, and had to circle back, but we made it to school.
When I look back on those years, I remember I was always tired. High school had its challenges. Elijah did not magically transform into a happy-go-lucky teenager—but his school was a good fit. He went willingly and completed his assignments. And every day, twice a day, we listened to our books. In sun and wind, we listened to Pride and Prejudice and The Autobiography of Ben Franklin and Invisible Man. In heavy fog, we heard Beowulf. “Almost white out conditions” I wrote in my log. In snow we listened to The Iliad. I remember hearing David McCullough’s history of the Brooklyn Bridge in pounding rain. Stormy mornings when I listened hard to Moby Dick on icy roads. Bright afternoons when we laughed out loud at Don Quixote.