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. Never Look Away by Linwood Barclay
2. Embraced By the Light by Betty Eadie
3. The Black Dagger Brotherhood series (starts with Dark Lover) by J.R. Ward
4. Secrets of the Millionaire Mind by T. Harv Eker
5. Sweet Return by Anna Jeffrey
6. The Things They Carried by Tim O’Brien
7. Fire in the Ashes by Jonathan Kozol
8. Awakening the Buddha Within by Lama Surya Das
9. Fatelessness by Imre Kertesz
10. One Last Thing Before I Go by Jonathan Tropper

Monday Recommendation List

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. All I Ever Wanted by Kristan Higgins
2. Catch 22 by Joseph Heller
3. The Four Agreements by Miguel Ruiz
4. Villette by Charlotte Bronte
5. Fire in the Ashes by Jonathan Kozol
6. I Killed June Cleaver by Deborah Werksman
7. The Nazi Officer’s Wife by Edith Hahn Beer
8. Gabby by Gabrielle Giffords
9. The President’s Club by Nancy Gibbs
10. Love Wins by Rob Bell

Savage Inequalities

Savage Inequalities: Children in American Schools by Jonathan Kozol

Amazon Description:

“For two years, beginning in 1988, Jonathan Kozol visited schools in neighborhoods across the country, from Illinois to Washington D.C., and from New York to San Antonio. He spoke with teachers, principals, superintendents, and, most important, children. What he found was devastating. Not only were schools for rich and poor blatantly unequal, the gulf between the two extremes was widening—and it has widened since.  The urban schools he visited were overcrowded and understaffed, and lacked the basic elements of learning—including books and, all too often, classrooms for the students. In Savage Inequalities, Kozol delivers a searing examination of the extremes of wealth and poverty and calls into question the reality of equal opportunity in our nation’s schools.”

My Thoughts:

Another meaningful book by Kozol. I love how this author brings reality to the masses. It is impossible to deny the fact that children living in poverty are not given access to the same education as other children. Those who choose to ignore this fact should read this book! All children, absolutely, do not have an equal opportunity to education.

This book had me in tears…thinking of what these children experience every day. How does one overcome going to a school where no one cares? Where you don’t even have access to books? Where sewers are leaking into the bathroom? Where the best anyone thinks you can do is potentially graduate high school? Incredibly, incredibly sad.

Fire in the Ashes

Fire in the Ashes: Twenty-five Years Among the Poorest Children in America by Jonathan Kozol

I have immense respect and admiration for Jonathan Kozol. He supports a cause that is dear to my own heart…to lift up children living in poverty. Kozol pulls at the conscience of a materialistic society. In a country as wealthy as the United States why are so many children growing up in shocking conditions?

In this particular work, Kozel tells the stories of some children he has followed in poor communities. Some of these children never overcome being born into this class, but a few of them battle the system and achieve levels of success.

I felt horror and sadness, but also a spark of hope that more people like Kozol will take an interest in this issue and help pull children out of this black hole. An amazing man…an amazing book.