Tag: library communications

Don’t Sleep, There are Snakes: Life and Language in the Amazonian Jungle
Daniel Everett

His original goal was to learn the Piraha language to translate the Bible in order to convert them; however, by the end of his long sojourn in the Amazon, Daniel Everett found himself not only with a new understanding of language but also with a different view of life and spirituality which, ultimately, brought him to abandon his faith.

The book has three different currents running through it and mixing through the pages. It’s a memoir describing the events in the author’s life–his struggles both practical, due to living in minimalist environment with his family, but also, increasingly as time goes by, emotional and spiritual as he starts to question beliefs he had long held. It’s an anthropological study reporting the habits, beliefs, and culture of a isolated, very small community of natives in the Amazon. And it’s a study on a language that defies the linguistic theories that Everett knew and which put him on a collision course with his MIT colleague Noam Chomsky.

GIULIA HILL
Programmer Analyst
UC Berkeley Library

Dhalgren
Samuel R. Delany

A young man, “the Kid,” walks into the perpetually burning city of Bellona somewhere in middle America in the not so distant future–or is it the past, or an alternative present? An epic, oneiric tale that explores race, sexuality, gender, and class, written by the one of science fiction’s most famous authors.

DEAN SMITH
Library Assistant IV
Bancroft Public Services

This book is part of the 2019 Berkeley Summer Reading List. Stay tuned for more weekly posts!

The Reluctant Fundamentalist
Mohsin Hamid

Moshid’s fascinating and insightful 2007 novel narrates the complex reaction of a Princeton-educated Pakistani to the 9/11 attack on the World Trade Center.

LISA GOLDBERG
Adjunct Professor of Economics and Statistics
Co-Director, Consortium for Data Analytics in Risk

This book is part of the 2019 Berkeley Summer Reading List. Stay tuned for more weekly posts!

Everything Here is Beautiful
Mira T. Lee

This story is Ecuador and New York and Switzerland and Israel and China.

This story is sisters and lovers and friends and mothers and doctors and shop owners.

This story is today and a long time ago and maybe hopefully even the future.

This story is people entirely whole and entirely broken.

This story is all of us.

CHRISTINE MULLARKEY
Undergraduate Major Advisor
Psychology Student Services

This book is part of the 2019 Berkeley Summer Reading List. Stay tuned for more weekly posts!

The Overstory
Richard Powers

I loved this novel even though reading it was bittersweet. It tells a narrative about several different people and families through the nearby trees that are important to them. There is a nice comparison of people-years vs. tree-years, people’s needs vs. nature’s needs. The book spans many years in these narratives though much of it takes place in the present day. The messages in the book will really resonate, I think, for those of us that feel a special kinship with the natural world.

MICHELLE DOUSKEY
Lecturer
Department of Chemistry

This book is part of the 2019 Berkeley Summer Reading List. Stay tuned for more weekly posts!

Killers of the Flower Moon
David Grann

Killers of the Flower Moon: The Osage Murders and the Birth of the FBI is a must read for all. David Grann traces a disturbing history of murders in 1920s Oklahoma revealing an institutionalized form of decimation of Native peoples. Simply stated, Killers of the Flower Moon presents a chilling chapter of US history and the Native struggle to survive in American society.

LISA C. PIERACCINI
History of Art
Ancient History & Native American Archaeology

This book is part of the 2019 Berkeley Summer Reading List. Stay tuned for more weekly posts!

Austerlitz
W.G. Sebald

This is a fantastic read for the theme of “between worlds” as it is an unconventionally formatted novel (the novel itself lies between the worlds of fiction and non-fiction) and it recounts a man’s search for his lost early childhood–where he was an orphan sent to Great Britain from Prague via the Kindertransport movement. It’s an extremely well-written and evocative novel that recreates, via history, not just the character’s past, but the past of Europe and the repercussions of the Holocaust.

LISA C. PIERACCINI
History of Art
Ancient History & Native American Archaeology

This book is part of the 2019 Berkeley Summer Reading List. Stay tuned for more weekly posts!

The Displaced: Refugee Writers on Refugee Lives
Edited by Viet Thanh Nguyen

In Spring 2019, the LEP Global Book Club read The Displaced, an anthology of personal stories by refugee writers, collected and edited by author Viet Thanh Nguyen. Reading their stories allows us greater insight into the often painful realities of millions of people in our current moment, enhancing our empathy towards others, while also challenging us to reflect on questions of our own identities, belonging, and our understandings of home.

MAYA MAHAJAN
Coordinator
Language Exchange Program
Student Learning Center

This book is part of the 2019 Berkeley Summer Reading List. Stay tuned for more weekly posts!

The Woman Warrior: Memoirs of a Girlhood Among Ghosts
Maxine Hong Kingston

For our first LEP Global Book Club read in Fall 2018, we selected Maxine Hong Kingston’s debut novel. Kingston illustrates her struggle of existing between worlds as the American-born daughter of Chinese immigrants. She expertly weaves together scenes from her own life growing up in America with her mother’s stories from China, providing insight into how culture, language, and family bonds shape our own identities.

MAYA MAHAJAN
Coordinator
Language Exchange Program
Student Learning Center

This book is part of the 2019 Berkeley Summer Reading List. Stay tuned for more weekly posts!