Empty Suit 1: I'M RIGHT. YOU'RE WRONG!
Empty Suit 2: NOOOOOO....I'M RIGHT. YOU'RE WRONG!
Token Minority or female: Well...actually...
Moderator: You've got 10 seconds to prove why Empty Suit 1 is wrong.
Empty Suit 1: I'M THE RIGHTEST!!!!!!!
[Commercial Break]
Deep Voice: Buy Now! Call 1-800-Buy-Useless-Shit. Now. Or you'll lose this once-in-a-lifetime opportunity.
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It's no wonder we seem like such a divided country. Our news is a shouting match reality TV show and it's also no wonder that our current President's only success has been as a reality TV star. I actually don't think we're nearly as divided as the media portrays us to be. Of course, the division sells. Creating false controversy wins eyeballs, which is the name of the game in our (dis)Information Age.
Still the media by which most people get information is predicated on being RIGHT-ER than anybody else. It's a zero-sum game. There's zero room for nuance. All you have to do is shout louder than the other guy.
The information they give you is designed to tell you what to think rather than how to think.
This is why I like our library.
I realized that I'm deluged with information...most of it poor information as cited above. The only way I can remember the good stuff is to write it down with a good old fashioned pencil and paper.
So I made a reading list of print books I've read over the past year and a half or so. And have come across quotes like the following, which is a gem for this day: "Perhaps travel cannot prevent bigotry, but by demonstrating that all peoples cry, laugh, eat, worry, and die, it can introduce the idea that if we try and understand each other, we may even become friends." -Maya Angelou, poet (4 Apr 1928-2014)
Granted, I'm a slow reader and I'm quick to quit books that I'm not getting into. But I've accumulated a pretty good reading list since I started writing this stuff down:
Dance Dance Dance Murakami
Putas Asesinas, Bolaño
All the King’s Men--Robert Penn Warren
Never Let Me Go--Ishiguro
The Agony and the Ecstasy: Biographical Novel of Michelangelo--Irving Stone
Da Vinci Code--Dan Brown
The World Without Us--Alan Weisman
“Without us, Earth will abide and endure; without her, however, we could not even be.”
The Year of Magical Thinking--Joan Didion
Covered Waters--Joseph Heywood
The 40-Fathom Bank, Les Galloway
The Boys in the Boat
Beyond the 100th Meridian: John Wesley Powell Biography, Stegner
Desert Solitaire, Edward Abbey
House of Owls, Tony Angell
Anatomy of a Murder, Robert Traver
All the Wild that Remains: Abbey and Stegner, Gressner
Winter Brothers: A Season at the Edge of America, Ivan Doig:
Wild Idea: Buffalo and Family in a Difficult Land; Dan O’Brien
Gods and Generals, Jeff Shaara
Juan de Fuca’s Strait, Gough
My journey to Lhasa, Alexandra David Neel
Lord of the Flies, William Golding
The Spirit Catches you and You Fall Down
El año de Gracia, Cristina Fernández Cubas
Cannery Row--John Steinbeck
The Goldfinch Donna Tartt
Leaving Alaska by Grant Sims
In the Heart of the Sea, Nathaniel Philbrick
Great Expectations, Dickens
When We Were Orphans, Ishiguro
The Little Friend, Donna Tartt, Here's a nugget of a quote on page 146 that explains 240+ years on this land:
“You would think that Negroes and poor whites would not hate each other the way they did since they had a lot in common--mainly, being poor. But sorry white people had only Negroes to look down upon. They could not bear the idea that the Negroes were now just as good as they were and in many cases, far more prosperous and respectable. ‘A poor Negro has at least the excuse of his birth,’ Edie said. ‘The poor white has nothing to blame for his station but his own laziness and sorry behavior. No, he’d much rather stomp around burning crosses and blaming the Negro for everything than go out and try to get an education or improve himself in any way.”
The Secret Chord, Geraldine Brooks
Sputnik Sweetheart, Murakami
The Sailor Who Fell From Grace From the Sea Yukio Mishima
Seveneves Neal Stephenson
Bel Canto Ann Patchett
The Island Within by Richard Nelson
Our Only World Wendell Berry
Out of Africa Isak Dinesen
The Lover Margarite Duras
My Struggle Karl Ove Knausgard
One Flew Over the Cuckoo’s Nest by Ken Kesey
The Alaskan Laundry by Brendan Jones
The Invention of Nature Andrea Wulf
King of Fish:
24 Hours in the Life of a Woman--Stefon Zweig
Bel Canto, Ann Patchett
Barbarian Days: A Surfing Life, William Finnegan
The Plague of Doves, Louise Erdrich
All the Light We Cannot See, Anthony Doerr
Wolves in the Land of Salmon, David Moskovitz
My Struggle: Vol. 2 Karl Ove Knausgard
20,000 Leagues Under the Sea, Verne
Sirens of Titan, Vonnegut
Steppenwolf, Hermann Hesse
Purity, Jonathan Franzen
Jerusalem: The Biography. Simon Sebag Montefiore
Deep River, Shusaku Endo
In the Kingdom of Ice: The Grand and Terrible Polar Voyage of the USS Jeannette. Hampton Sides
Heart of Blood, Richard Nelson
Máscaras, Leonardo Padura Fuentes
Sea of Cortez, SteinbeckMáscaras, Leonardo Padura Fuentes
