This is a book of ideas. A slight character story overlaid on a world of big ideas. Amusingly sad; sadly amusing. Consider, for instance, its beginning:
Sexual Responsibility is boring.
It isn't Ms. Brody's fault. She's a good teacher. She switches channels at appropriate moments, tases students who need tasing--zizzz-ZAAPPP!--and she only once got stuck in the garbage can beside her teaching station. She was a teeny bit weepy that day, but no drunker than normal . . .
"There were little white boys with complete collections of football cards, and their only want was a popular girlfriend, and their only worry was poison oak." - Ta-Nehisi Coates, 'Between The World and Me'
If science fiction isn’t your favorite genre, but you’re willing to dip a toe in, All Our Wrong Todays is a highly entertaining read about self-discovery, family and love; with a time machine and alternate realities.
Growing old isn't easy and caring for your loved ones as they grow old is even harder. The everyday stress of eldercare is beyond hard. How to Care for Aging Parents is considered the number one resource in print that will help with caring for a loved one and making decisions that are right for you.
Amy Engel was born in Kansas. Over the next couple of decades, she boomeranged around the world – to Iran and back to Kansas City, to Taiwan and back to Kansas City, from the University of Kansas to Georgetown University in Washington D.C., and finally back to Kansas City. Phew! With a law degree in hand, she worked for ten years as a criminal defense attorney.
Have you ever questioned the reliability of your own memory? Do you wish you had a record of everything you encountered so you could refer to it later? What if having this capability meant that other people had access to information about you without your consent?
Whether you love or hate Eat, Pray, Love—Gilbert actually addresses this dichotomy—Big Magic should not be ignored. She begins by defining creative living as “the hunt for the strange jewels the universe has buried in each of us,” and then provides examples of people she knows who have found their jewels.
We have all taken personality tests that put us into one box or another in an attempt to better understand ourselves. In Susan Cain’s book Quiet: The Power of Introverts in a World that Can’t Stop Talking, Cain analyzes the introvert/extrovert dichotomy with a particular focus on how introverts think and what motivates them. Cain argues that we live in an extrovert-centric society that values and praises the high achieving socialites over the less outgoing thinkers.
In this world of ever-increasing digitization, self-expression has largely gone online. Books and other artistic works are shared in electronic formats. Socializing happens through networked media. Magazines, newspapers, and other serial paper publications are struggling to maintain readership.
That does not mean that all forms of paper expression have disappeared, though. One form--that has always been an underground format--retains a thriving community in the Kansas City area: Zines.
