One book. One week. One foot in the grave.

Last blog post, first and only play! "Enemy of the People" is a fascinating work that examines how people perceive truth, especially as it is presented by whistleblowers/those who go against the status quo. The play is centered around Dr. Thomas Stockmann, a Medical Officer who has overseen the development of the baths in his small Swedish town. The baths are set to employ many people and become a major source of growth. When he realizes that the water in the baths is contaminated and hurting those who touch it, he assumes the town will applaud him for his discovery. However, he finds many opponents to revealing the truth, including his own brother, who worries about the economic viability of the town and discredits Thomas on the basis of his own personal faults. Eventually, he finds many major sects of the town, including the press and common people, turning against him as well, and he must decide whether to stick with his convictions or dissent. This summary may make i...

I am a communications major, and this has led me to be introduced to a wide array of communications theories throughout my college career. In that time, I had heard the author of this book's name thrown around many times. Neil Postman was a famous media theorist and critic who was extremely critical of the advent and popularization of television, adopting the ideas of technological determinism (the belief that the popular medium in which messages are distributed determines a society's cultural values). Neil Postman In Amusing Ourselves to Death, Postman argues that television becoming the dominant medium of information in our society has caused us to become obsessed with entertainment. All information presented through television, he asserts, is skewed to entertain us first, thereby making it nearly impossible for people to prioritize being entertained in all aspects of our life. He believes this has major consequences to us as a society and will lead to the downfall ...

Sinclair Lewis's It Can't Happen Here is another work of political fiction that describes an alternate timeline in which President Franklin Delano Roosevelt loses the election for his second term to Senator Berzelius "Buzz" Windrip. He platforms on a populist and nationalist platform and promises to end the Great Depression and make all citizens rich. He wins the election and implements a fascist regime, including his own secret police called the Minute Men. The novel follows both Windrip's regime and the actions of Dormeus Jessup, a reporter from Vermont. Eventually, as Windrip's regime becomes increasingly authoritarian, Jessup joins an underground group that publishes anti-Windrip material. The novel ends with Windrip's regime ending after he is ousted by his Secretary of State, who is then ousted by another government official, leading into a state of rebellion and civil war. This novel was an interesting insight into how fascism takes a ...

My book this week is another nonfiction novel examining the issue of race relations in America, specifically the plight of the black and impoverished citizens of the American inner-city. In More than Just Race , sociologist William Julius Wilson attempts to identify the factors that contribute to the trend of joblessness, poverty, and non-nuclear family structures that characterize many poor urban areas. Wilson talks about the previous research surrounding poverty among black Americans and is very clearly able to dissect what conclusions seem to stick, which are only partially supported by other research, and which don't seem to hold up beyond the confines of that single study. In the end, he arrives at the conclusion that black urban poverty is a mix of both structural factors (the way social positions, social roles, and networks of social relationships are arranged in our institutions, such as the economy, polity, education, and organization of the family) and cultural factors...

This marks the first nonfiction book I've read so far in this blog. How the Irish Became White is an explanation by author and historian Noel Ignatiev's observations on how the Irish went from being seen as "nonwhite" and being treated inferiorly to those of western European descent to becoming identified as white today. I was interested to delve into this book because I knew vaguely of the issues that surrounded the Irish when they first emigrated to the United States to avoid the persecution they faced from the English: it was interesting to learn that the Irish were not only leaving because of the hopeless conditions caused by the famous Irish potato famine, but because Irish catholics had their rights severely stricken to prevent them from owning property, practicing catholicism, and holding certain jobs. The novel really drives the point in that they were effectively second-class citizens, making their actions as American citizens that more disappointing.  ...

I'm sure many people have already heard of The Handmaid's Tale  due to the recently popular Hulu series based on the novel. While I've read other books for this blog that have had TV/movie adaptations, none have been so popular in the modern day as this. The novel takes place in the United States, some unspecified time in the future, after the collapse of the United States. The U.S. is now the Republic of Gilead, which features a strict caste system for men and women centered around the tenets of Christianity. The novel follows Offred, who is a handmaiden, which means her job is to live with a family and copulate with the male head of household in hopes of producing a child. This is extremely difficult in this setting, as increased usage of birth control and environmental pollution has left many women sterile or unlikely to produce healthy children. Offred's perspective shows us how crushing this lifestyle is on the human spirit, not just for her and the other han...

It is in my nature to be candid, and that's exactly what I'm about to do. Forgive me if I hurt some of you, but I can't knowingly sit on a lie and betray the trust of those of you reading. The truth is... I didn't read anything this week. I read all the books in my blog because I'm assigned weekly readings in another class I have and we didn't have any assigned for fall break. Great in the context of that class, but what about my blog content? Must it suffer just so I can give my tired old eyes a break? No! That's why this week, I'm going to flip my blog theme right on it's head and talk about my favorite podcast instead. And if you're one of those people who likes to whine about the progression of technology, you might even think the audiobooks/podcasts are the modern version of books, so in that sense, I'm not really doing anything out of sorts. Your Kickstarter Sucks is a podcast derived from a Tumblr blog of the same name. Ev...

We're back with another historically-relevant graphic novel! Don't worry-I am ready and eager to read all different types of books in the future, but for now, follow on my journey through Marjane Satrapi's Persepolis. Persepolis is a nonfiction graphic novel that chronicles the youth of the author as she grows up during the Iranian Revolution. She is exposed to many awful components of the revolution, including watching her family and loved ones get sent to prison, where they are often tortured or killed. She also is subjected to the sexism and danger that comes with being a young girl living in a strict theocracy where women aren't allowed many personal freedoms. All the while, he experiences are illustrated through the eyes of a 10-year-old child, making each situation that much more jarring. There are many aspects about this book that leave me with the feeling that it is truly special. One is Marjane's conflict, even as a young child, of deciding between...

This marks my blog's first graphic novel! I had a class in high school where I had an entire graphic novel unit, which left me for a great appreciation for the medium, so I was excited to jump back into it. In that sense, it's fitting that I'm reading one of the most popular modern graphic novels, Maus by Art Spiegelman. This novel has transcended traditional attitudes about graphic novels ("they're just picture books!" cry the elitists) and has been integrated into many school curricula. I know my own brother read it in his middle school holocaust unit and enjoyed it very much. The word "enjoyed" might sound odd in the context of a book about the holocaust, but that enjoyment seems to come from the emotional resonance that arises from the personal testimony of the author's father. The story is told through the perspective of the author/illustrator's father, a jewish holocaust survivor named Vladek, as a series of stories he relates...

Anthem is the first novel so far where I have to admit that I held some sort of bias before going into the book. While I haven't read it before, I have some staunch opinions about the book's author, Ayn Rand. For those who are unfamiliar, Ayn Rand is considered a prolific author for her books Atlas Shrugged and The Fountainhead . She is famous for the highly individualistic messaging in her novels and rejects any forms of collectivism, attitudes which were inspired by her growing up in Soviet Russia. The situations she presents in her works have made her a staple reading for modern libertarians and conservatives, two groups whose values oppose mine. Rand was also publicly homophobic, arguing that homosexuals were immoral and shouldn't receive equal employment rights under the law. Suffice to say, we have very different views of the world, and I didn't want to get my opinions down without acknowledging that. Walking in with knowledge of Rand's political philosophy...

There have been multiple periods in history where man had to wonder if the convenience of technology had superseded his own wellbeing-when we made machines that could mine coal, the coal miners were out of work, and we questioned if automation could hurt more than help. In 2018, we face the same question, this time with many aspects of the food service industry. Is replacing human cashiers with kiosks detrimental to our society as a whole? Are we, like the old adage goes, just replacing unskilled labor? Or could this continue to happen for any number of jobs we couldn't imagine? These are the questions posed by Player Piano, Kurt Vonnegut's first novel. In this novel, machines have replaced nearly every form of work, leaving the elite class as simply those who can create more of them. Those without a job get assigned to the reeks and wrecks (essentially manual labor), the army, or remain jobless. This doesn't mean many people are left unemployed: the government sets up...

This week I read Aldous Huxley's Brave New World . Published in 1932, this novel is set in a jarring utopia inspired by Ford manufacturing in which a stringent caste system dictates the lives of all citizens. People are no longer born and raised in a familial setting, but grown through artificial means, potentially in batches of thousands of twins, in amounts that perfectly satisfy the necessary working needs of each caste. The story follows young John, who was raised apart from this civilization and is now in his early adulthood. The world he grew up in (a society similar to the Native Americans in New Mexico at the time the book was written) valued religion, domestic partnerships, and individualism, concepts the new world has discarded. The novel largely consists of his antagonistic relationship with the new world. This novel is often compared to the book I read last week, 1984 . Both were written around the same time and center around the workings of a frightening futuristic ...

This week, approximately 10,000 years after everyone else in my age group, I read 1984. I've always known this book was a seminal piece in every student's high school english career, but it's somehow escaped me all these years until now. I entered the reading with some vague knowledge of the content: I'd heard the phrases big brother, memory hole, and orwellian used many times in popular culture. Besides this, I knew the story took place in the alternate reality of hyper-surveillance state in the year 1984 (dare I say, "duh"). Let me start by saying I really enjoyed this book: I read it voraciously (or as voraciously as I could as a student with a busy schedule) and finished in just a few days. I was continually drawn in by the multiple mechanisms of citizen surveillance Orwell presents in Oceania. Every time a new mode of surveillance was presented, I became both more fascinated and appalled. I realized how little room the public had to breathe, and how fr...