Monday, December 5, 2011

A question for you...

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What was the most thought-provoking book or article you read this year?

Not the book you liked the most. The book that made you chew on ideas for a while, or think about life from a different perspective.

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20 comments:

  1. "Sincerely, Mayla," a novel by my friend Virginia Smith. It's older (2007, I think) but worth the search.

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  2. Reality is Broken by Jane McGonigal
    The virtual world of games and why playing is good for you, and for the planet. Absolutely the most thought provoking book I have read recently.
    xo
    R.

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  3. Funny. I read this post in Reader, looked at my Goodreads list as an aide memoire, clicked through to your site, and discovered that Rebecca had posted the very book I was going to say.

    Reality Is Broken is an oddly fascinating book. It's a taxonomy of games, mostly online games, but not all, with a methodical explanation of how games make us smarter and happier, and how we can collaborate - game-ways - to make the world better. Hugely ambitious, but largely successful, and definitely thought provoking.

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  4. Oh dear, hard to name just one.
    - Just finished The Hare with Amber Eyes. Sort of a family biography with very moving, personal descriptions of Vienna during WWI and the terror of the onset of WWII.
    - Read Emerson's Self-Reliance and wish I'd read it earlier, as a late teen or early 20s perhaps. A book/essay that could be re-read with value every few years I think. Language a bit old-fashioned, but still accessible.
    - No Logo, by Naomi Klein. Depressing, but helped explain a lot of what has happened in the US in the last 20-30 years, the move from a country that made something to one that makes only image and nothing tangible.
    - Last March I finished Our Oriental Heritage, the first volume of the Durants' story of civilization. This is part of a project to get all of this series read. (I'm now close to the end of volume two, Life of Greece, but might not get it finished this year.) Excellent look at the early origins of our civilization. (And I *do* wish I'd started reading this series earlier instead of toting the books around more or less untouched for umpteem years.)

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  5. An Unreasonable Women A True Story of Shrimpers, Politicos, Polluters and the Fight for Seadrift, Texas, by Diane Wilson.

    Not an easy read as it was written in Diane's particular style of speaking but riveting just the same. It is a story of how big industry got away with polluting the Gulf of Mexico and it's tributaries for years and how one woman worked to change things. Required reading for my college daughter's Women in History class.

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  6. Tough call. Andrew Solomon's _The Noonday Demon_ (though that may have been last year) or Kimberly Ruffin's _Black on Earth: African American Ecoliterary Traditions_, which I haven't finished but assigned part of to a class.

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  7. @Heide, I loved Noonday Demon up to about the midpoint, where he went into the stuff about how suicide was okay. Then I had to put the book down, thinking I needed a breather. And I just couldn't move past it. Never picked it up again. But maybe it's time to do that. I do some freelance work for the city's bipolar support group, and so some of my reading is always mental health-related.

    @Everyone else, keep the good suggestions coming! Some of these sound great.

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  8. When the Heart Waits by Sue Monk Kidd. The story of her spiritual mid-life crisis is helping me with the one I discovered last Febuary I was having. She got through hers and I am getting through mine.

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  9. Emmet Fox Sermon On The Mount, we have a weekly study group that reads this and his daily readings, Around The Year With Energy Fox. Sermon on the Mount covers the 7 clauses of the Lords Prayer. Once I read it it changed the prayer for me.

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  10. Unplanned by Abby Johnson tells a remarkable story of changed perspective. The Finkler Question by Harold Jacobson also good for life from another point of view.
    And funny that someone should say Emerson's Self Reliance would have been good to read as a teen since my 15 yr old just finished it in her English class. I don't think I saw it until college. I may need to go back to that one.

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  11. Billy Graham's Nearing Home.

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  12. akiane her life, her art, her poetry

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  13. One Thousand Gifts: a dare to live fully right where you are by Ann Voskamp.
    Ann Voskamp writes prose as if it were poetry, while still bringing out theologically sound points backed up by Scripture. Her main theme is eucharisteo, living life full of thanks for all of God’s gifts, and how a lifestyle of eucharisteo helps us feel God’s loving presence every minute, especially in the small moments of life. This book is not an easy read, partly due to Ann’s poetic style of writing. BUT . . . it was SO GOOD and SO FULL OF TRUTH. In a world where we are so often Marthas, this book brings out the Mary in us

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  14. This is an oldie, The Poisonwood Bible. My book club read it. I really identified with the older sister. I have a sickly, disabled sister and I was the the one always, and still, left to fend for myself. I'm sure there is a blessing somewhere in the situation, I just haven't found it yet. I could actually feel the pain this character felt in the book.

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  15. Reading Lolita in Tehran. An eye-opening view into the experiences of an educated woman, now denied the opportunity to reach the young women of her culture through literature, who chose to create an environment whereby freedom of thought was celebrated and renewed.

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  16. @Ellen, my book group at our homeschool co-op read One Thousand Gifts. The writing drove me crazy, but I agree there was lots to ponder. (I kinda wanted the urban edition, too!)

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  17. I guess I should name my own most-thought-producing reading. On the one hand I am leaning toward Twyla Tharp's The Creative Habit, which (aside from being full of interesting side stories) articulated and made do-able many thoughts that had been floating around in my head for years.

    On the other hand there are brain-stretching books on random topics that used perhaps more synapses than my poor brain is actually capable of firing. Right now I'm midway through a book called Epigenetics which, had I not coached Eldest through AP Bio five years ago, probably would have been beyond me. But it's good stuff in a mind-changing way that I don't usually attempt.

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  18. Huh, I don't remember him saying suicide is okay. I remember him talking about how attractive it could be from inside depression, and how important it was for him to have human connections that helped him through. Maybe time for another look.

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  19. Can't limit it to one, but here are 4 that made me think: 1 - Tiger, A True Story of Vengeance & Survival. It's about the far eastern part of the Soviet Union, about which I knew nothing. The central story is a hunt for a tiger that has killed 2 men. I also knew nothing about tigers. There's a Christian who is central to the hunt. 2 - Unbroken - what an awesome story. It made me think, "What has happened to us that we don't have that kind of resilience, grace, bravery or humor under appalling circumstances?" 3 - The Paper Garden by Molly Peacock, which I absolutely detested. However, her subject, Mary Delany, began her art at age 72, was a woman of strong faith, lived in the 18th century, and was so intriguing that I found an older book about her and read it - it was wonderful, as was Mary Delany. 4 - Keeping the Feast. Wonderful book about deliberately sharing at table as an anchor in a family where the husband is debilitated from depression.

    Thanks for saying that Voskamp's writing drove you crazy. It irritated me immensely, and her editor should have done a better job, which would have made for a much better book.

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  20. hat comes to mind currently is a sweet little book titled "Heaven is for real" by Todd Burpo.
    It talks about his young sons experience. When I finished the book, I longed for heaven.

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