"The clocks were striking thirteen" *



"The very concept of objective truth is fading out of the world. Lies will pass into history." >>George Orwell


The literary world has a new rock star - George Orwell. Specifically, Orwell's masterpiece, 1984, is an Amazon bestseller. The book, originally published in 1949, is selling so well that as of this afternoon, it's temporarily out of stock. If you skipped reading it in high school or college (CliffsNotes do NOT count) or if you can't recall the story, I recommend you dust off your old copy or quickly get on the library's hold list, and read this classic. 

Words matter. Books matter. And in a confusing and fast-changing world filled with Orwell's newspeak and doublethink, we need all the help we can get.  


"Panem et Circenses translates into 'Bread and Circuses'...in return for full bellies and entertainment, people had given up their political responsibilities and therefore their power." >>Suzanne Collins, author of The Hunger Games 


                                    Nonfiction

Between the World and Me - Ta-Nehisi Coates
Hillbilly Elegy - J.D. Vance
White Trash - Nancy Isenberg
Bad Feminist - Roxane Gay
We Should All Be Feminists - Chimamanda Ngozi Adichie
Another Day in the Death of America - Gary Younge
David and Goliath - Malcolm Gladwell
Autobiography of Ida Tarbell - Ida Tarbell
Collapse: How Societies Choose to Fail or Succeed - Jared Diamond
A Vindication of the Rights of Woman - Mary Wollstonecraft
America's Women - Gail Collins
The Feminine Mystique - Betty Friedan
Free to be...you and me - Marlo Thomas


                                 Fiction (also known as alternative facts)

Grapes of Wrath - John Steinbeck
The Tortilla Curtain - T.C. Boyle
The Hunger Games - Suzanne Collins
It Can't Happen Here - Sinclair Lewis
The Jungle - Upton Sinclair
Catch-22 - Joseph Heller
Children of Men - P.D. James
The Handmaid's Tale - Margaret Atwood
A Clockwork Orange - Anthony Burgess
The Emperor's New Clothes - Hans Christian Andersen
The Awakening - Kate Chopin
The Man in the High Castle - Philip Dick
The Women's Room - Marilyn French
A Room of One's Own - Virginia Woolf
Brave New World - Aldous Huxley 


"Whoever is careless with the truth in small matters cannot be trusted with important matters." >>Albert Einstein

  
*It was a bright cold day in April and the clocks were striking thirteen is the first line of Orwell's 1984.  

              
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