My Summer Reading List

Occasionally, I get lost on the internet. Since Semester at Sea's MV Explorer is one of my favorite boats, I occasionally stalk it on its website and recently (May-ish) came across Dr. Toby Zinman's Book Club list. I set myself to reading it this summer.

Since the majority of the books are available for Kindle, I'm almost done with the list, excepting the classic Chronicle of a Death Foretold, which I have just now added to my wish list. The only book I have yet to read from the list is The Uncommon Reader, and it is waiting for me when I finish this post.

I did not enjoy Drown very much, perhaps because it is written a lot like I would write a book if I were ever to write one. However. Once I finished it, the Kindle revealed to me the titles of other books by Junot Diaz, and this is how I discovered Apocalypse: What Disasters Reveal.

Another bit of blog fodder delivered (this time by wireless whispernet) from the Universe.

Apocalypse is a 13-page document about the 2010 earthquake in Haiti. Diaz compares the earthquake to an apocalypse, deconstructing the Greek term and assigning it three criteria. The apocalypse has to be the end of something, look like the end of something, or reveal and/or clarify something about what has ended.

Disasters, Diaz claims, "...don't just happen. They are always made possible by a series of often-invisible societal choices that implicate more than just those being drowned or burned in the rubble."

Amen, brother.

He goes on: "We must refuse the familiar scripts of victims and rescuers that focus our energies solely on charity instead of systemic change."

Near the conclusion, he states: "...apocalypses like the Hatian earthquake are not only catastrophes; they are also opportunities: chances for us to see ourselves, to take responsibility for what we see, to change."

Like the trailer for a popular movie, I give you these quotes as teasers which will hopefully inspire you to read the full 13-page document. To sift, as Diaz would say, through the ruins, and to study them. It is only $2.99 for the Kindle.

Stumbling upon this gem of a paper was well worth the 1.5 days I invested in his novel.

More about my reading list, and the progress I am making, in the posts to come.