Since:
(1) I have chosen to take on the burden of my grandpap's legacy (aka, reading widely and intensely and frequently in order to keep our country up in the air with the rest of the balls) and
(2) I love lists and
(3) I love challenges...
I was intrigued by 50 Books for Our Times put out by Newsweek this week.
I've read ten of the books: Underground, Gilead, Things Fall Apart, Random Family, The Looming Tower, Why Androids Dream, The Dark is Rising, Year of Wonders, Elegance of the Hedgehog, and Good Man is Hard to Find. All were nines or tens on my rating scale except Underground (which I read in the middle of the night during a readathon...maybe not the best time to read a book like Underground).
My Friend Amy has created a great challenge, perfect for our Web 2.0 world. She has invited fifty bloggers to each choose one of the titles, read it, and report back to the group on its merits.
I picked The Looming Tower, but I hope to read several that sound promising: Night Draws Near, The Big Switch, Predictably Irrational, Among the Thugs, Disrupting Class, and City: Rediscovering the Center.
I have requested some from the library. I think these could fit in nicely with this theme: The Lonely American, The End of Poverty, Dreams and Shadows, Prisoner of the State, Strength in What Remains, A Meaningful Life, Play, and Worldchanging.
I wonder if others have read books that they feel should have been on this list....
I'm hoping this new challenge won't conflict too much with my personal happiness project. Surely some of these books will inspire optimism as well as revealing truth.
I'll report back as I complete these.
Looming Tower is really good but really dense! Night Drawns Near is an awesome book, and it's much more readable. I hope you enjoy the ones I recommended! :)
ReplyDeleteThe Looming Tower is a wonderful book. I guess it is dense, as Eva says, but I found it read like a thriller. It was hard to put down.
ReplyDeleteI will give you a greater understanding of current events, but it won't make you happy.
That's a surprisingly good list, better than most Top 50 books lists which are always exactly the same.
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