One of the ideas Read the Rainbow has, is that those who say they do not like to read have not yet read the right type of book. Though this is not always the case, I am posting occasional suggestions for books for those who they might suit. This time's topic...
So, National Coming Out Day is October 11th. Whether or not you agree with homosexuality, this is a struggle many people young and old face. Here, at Read The Rainbow I urge people to find comfort and strength for the challenges they face in life through stories of others and fictional inspiration. Thus, in spirit of Coming Out, I have included a reading list for those who identify as LGBT and their families. speaking specifically to parents, if you wish to educate your child on the existence of different life styles, Read the Rainbow proposes using books to communicate those difficult messages through books.
Many People Would Tell ME that they don't Have the Time To Devote to Reading, That They Don't Have THe patience For A Novel.
It's an indisputable fact that books can be expensive...unless they aren't.
But, Gracie, what do you mean? Well, reader of my blog, did you know that there are free books everywhere? By registering for a free Google, Kindle, iTunes, etc. account you can have access to thousands of free books. Many of them are classics beloved by the human race! You don't say... "I am a camera with its shutter open, quite passive, recording, not thinking," writes Christopher Isherwood in his novel Goodbye to Berlin.
As many of you may know, this past week was Banned Book Week where readers across the world protest the banning of literature by reading those works that have been banned. My university hosted a banned book reading. My selection was the opening few paragraphs from Christopher Isherwood's Goodbye to Berlin "A Berlin Diary (Autumn 1930)". Fans of Isherwood know that his fictionalized re-telling of his life experiences as a young, gay man in Wiemar Berlin on the cusp between World Wars inspired numerous other works such as the play I Am A Camera and the musical Cabaret. I chose to read Isherwood because I feel that his work embodies not only why books are banned but why they should not be. Chris, the narrator and protagonist of these stories, is a young man who left his well-off life in England to party in the roaring party scene of Berlin. Though the extremity varies from derivative to derivative of the original Isherwood story, Chris's homosexuality is a clear reason for the book's banning. In addition to homosexuality, the character of Sally Bowles, a 19-year-old club singer, and her sexual promiscuity and eventual aborted pregnancy again embody to so-called sin of the Wiemar Golden Age. Along side a cast of characters who drink, dance, smoke, and enjoy casual sex and gold-digging is the rise of the NAZI party in Germany . In fact, in the Broadway version of the musical Cabaret, Alan Cumming, who stars as the Emcee, removes his coat at the end to reveal the striped pajamas of a concentration camp prisoner in a powerful coup-de-teatre. With all of this, there is no wondering why the book was banned. Of course, looking not only at the story itself but at cabaret in the early Twentieth Century, one can see the great shame and disaster it is to ban books. Like Socrates's gadfly, cabaret was not just a club for music and dance, it was a theater for social commentary and governmental critique. It was here performers, musicians, comics, a whole menagerie populated the seedy night life demi-monde and exposed the wrongs of the powerful. It is only natural that with the rise of Nazi totalitarianism, the works of cabaret artists were among the first thrown into the fires, silencing the music and the message carried within it. This is the same that occurs when we ban books. Though we do not take the step of physically burning books, by discouraging certain works from being read we are not allowing humans access records to previous accounts of the human experience, accounts we can cherish and learn from. So, I leave you with this. When someone tells you not to read something, read it. I spent My summer TRavelling Across England And Scotland Studying Literature and British Culture. What I Discovered Was The Truly Amazing Connection Between The Work Of Fiction And The Place where the Author, some Long Dead And Gone, Had Once Walked and Pondered. It Instills In Me a Desire To Dig Into these Stories. So For the Literature Enthusiast and TRAVELER Alike, Here is A Reading List That May Interest YOu.
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