Monday Recommendations

Monday Recommendation List

Random list of 10 books Monday! I have read and enjoyed each of these enough to flag for a potential personal library purchase.

Be bold and just choose randomly, stick to your normal genre...or step outside of your normal reading zone and try something you usually wouldn’t. You can look up the descriptions at Amazon.com, or search my blog for old posts by entering the title in the little search box in the top left-hand corner and clicking the magnifying glass.

This week-- 10 recommendations (in no particular order):

1. Super Sad True Love Story by Gary Shteyngart
2. A Long Way Gone by Ishmael Beah
3. Lies My Teacher Told Me by James Loewen
4. Cat’s Cradle by Kurt Vonnegut
5. 1984  by George Orwell
6. The Book Thief by Markus Zusak
7. The Blue Zone by Andrew Gross
8. Dream a Little Dream by Susan Elizabeth Phillips
9. The Four Agreements by Miguel Ruiz
10. Off Limits by Sawyer Bennett

Monday Recommendations

Monday Recommendation List

Random list of 10 books Monday! I have read and enjoyed each of these enough to flag for a potential personal library purchase.

Be bold and just choose randomly, stick to your normal genre...or step outside of your normal reading zone and try something you usually wouldn’t. You can look up the descriptions at Amazon.com, or search my blog for old posts by entering the title in the little search box in the top left-hand corner and clicking the magnifying glass.

This weeks 10 recommendations (in no particular order):

1. Sweet Romance: It Had To Be You by Susan Elizabeth Phillips
2. Heart Wrenching Memoir: They Cage the Animals At Night by Jennings Michael Burch
3. Spirit Stirring: Bhagavad gita
4. Dramatic Mother/Daughter: One True Thing by Anna Quindlen
5. Classic: 1984 by George Orwell
6. Parenting Help: Raising Your Spirited Child by Mary Kurcinka
7. Steamy, Action packed, Emotional: The Black Dagger Brotherhood Series (starts with Dark Lover) by J.R. Ward
8. Wrenching: 102 Minutes by Jim Dwyer
9. Amazing Author: The World According to Garp by John Irving
10. Hilarious: My Horizontal Life by Chelsea Handler

1984

In High School one of the mandatory reads was “1984” by George Orwell. At 16 years old, while I vaguely liked the book, I couldn’t really appreciate it. I recently re-read it and from an adult point of view was able to better grasp Orwell’s intentions.

This novel, while often coined as satiric, doesn’t have the funny edges of a satire that I usually enjoy. It is scary and made scarier by the fact that one can see how it could become real. Orwell draws a totalitarian state and while it is obviously a book about the dangers of Communism, it is also about not letting any government have too much power. And not only the government, but the media, as well. In “1984” it is impossible to be an individual. In modern society this is also an issue. While it isn’t always politically based, people are expected to fit into a box. And is “Big Brother” today’s mass media? I see so many people utterly brainwashed by what they read or by what another person tells them. So few people ask “why” anymore.

I wonder, if I read this book again in 20 years, what the state of our society will be.