Books do a lot for us. They entertain us and make us feel less alone. They illuminate larger truths about the human story. They are a connection to and depiction of those combined qualities–magic and messiness–that make humans, well, human (and wonderful). Our Operations Coordinator picks 10 books to befriend, to reread, and to help you appreciate what it is to be a person.
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What would you read if you were stuck on the proverbial desert island? What would make you laugh? What would sustain you? What speaks to your experience and reminds you who you are? Program and Curriculum Director Jessica Isaac lists her picks.
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We are all taught the classics in school, so what’s the problem with reading only canonical literature? What is the value in going outside of your comfort zone, literary or otherwise? And why might moving outside that zone be necessary to understanding the world in all its fullness and complexity? On stories and power, and how that power shapes us . . .
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I found myself becoming resentful of the little house and its unwillingness to adapt to the realities of the city growing up around it. I was frustrated that the house had to have it all quiet and peaceful in the country, like an idyllic pastoral life was the only life worth living.
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In our Required Reading this week, Ann discusses her struggles with meditation and mindfulness, and some tools that are currently working for her. Capria tells us about her recent 600+ mile motorcycle trip around Northern Michigan, which helped her think about some great literary journeys. Jessica, too, is thinking about journeys–in this case, the Great Migration. And then, how do stories shape our lives? How are bestsellers marketed? What separates human skills from machine skills?
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For Shklovsky, art extends life–by making the familiar unfamiliar, it invigorates our attention and in so doing ensures that even minor things make an impression on us. Who among us hasn’t driven or walked a familiar path, only to arrive at the destination with no memory of the trip? Art has the capacity to remind us of the curve in the road, even the sound of cars driving by.
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Tristram Shandy is preeminently concerned with the way storytelling conventions shape our self-perceptions and our perceptions of others, with the way narratives shape our lives. Nowhere is this more obvious than in Volume 6, Chapter XL, when Tristram attempts to sketch his story as he has told it thus far. Instead of the typical storyline we expect–shaped like an upside down ‘U’–Tristram gives us unusual loops and squiggles. Life isn’t neat and tidy–nor are the stories we tell about it. Laurence Sterne and Tristram Shandy recognize this.
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I’m less interested in these questions, however, than I am in what these concerns demonstrate clearly to me: how effectively novels help us learn and empathize. Studies have shown that reading literature helps us practice empathizing with characters and then leads us to better, more empathetic practices in our daily lives. To Kill a Mockingbird takes this a step further, making empathy a crucial part of its message.
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To say that we spend time reflecting on our reading experiences would be an understatement. But, when, at the beginning of the month I asked about experiences with audiobooks, everyone was surprised. Like myself, they hadn’t given much thought to their experiences with this medium, though, upon reflection, nearly everybody had something to say about it. For most of us, audiobooks were road trip staples, a necessary part of a family vacation that, in retrospect, seemed as integral to our experiences as the destination itself.
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In just seven pages of text, Argentine author Jorge Luis Borges raises profound questions about the meaning and value of knowledge in his 1941 essay, “The Library of Babel”: the timelessness of knowledge, its organization, the identity of its stewards and its accessibility. In this installment of “A Text at Work” we invite you to read Borges’ essay, consider the questions posed by Professor Peter Haas in a recent Books@Work seminar, and contribute to the conversation in the comments section.
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