Chaparral 2021-2022: 30.5 What Are You Reading?

Eating to Extinction by Dan Saladino (2021)

Would you recommend it? Yes

This is a very readable, well-researched, important, and deeply interesting survey of plants and animals and their derivatives used as human food worldwide (e.g., Oloton maize from Mexico, bison from the U.S. Great Plains, vanilla orange from Sicily). Its thesis is that the rarity and potential loss of these crops, animals, and varieties is a loss for human health, livelihoods, and culture as well as biodiversity and ecosystem health. It is also an excellent account of domestication and artificial selection and weaves in an appreciation for indigenous knowledge and local/traditional food-making. It has changed the way I think about food. Highly recommended!

Jann Vendetti
Biology
 

I am reading Dear Freedom Writer: Stories of Hardship and Hope from the Next Generation that comes from the authors of the #1 New York Times bestseller, The Freedom Writers Diary. I would encourage everyone to purchase the book and pass it forward to family members, teachers, students, neighbors, and friends. Don’t just pass it on, incorporate it in your lesson plans, and discuss with the people around you. The stories in the book are raw, authentic, thoughtful, open, and hopeful.

The book features 50 letters from young authors/students writing about their challenges and asking advice about how to face those challenges. The letters are paired with 50 responses providing guidance, assistance, and hope. The responses are written by either an original Freedom Writer or a Freedom Writer Teacher. Each letter is unique, genuine, and thrilling and each response are empathic, full of authentic and real action steps students can take to overcome the challenges they write about.

This book fits in with all our efforts in DEIA and finding new ways in engaging students in-person and online. This is a great book for young adults and their parents to read together and discuss. The book features young authors from ages 10-19, from all across the nation and various countries as well.

Great book for spring break!

Nare Garibyan
Counseling

For years she was only known as Emily Doe of the Stanford University sexual assault case. In Know My Name: A Memoir, sexual assault survivor Chanel Miller tells us not only her name but her powerful story of surviving one of the most publicized US sexual assault cases of our generation. Miller's writing is poignant and raw, dripping with hard-won wisdom from the double trauma she experienced: first at the hands of Brock Turner and then in the US court system. Her 2016 survivor's statement went viral, which gained additional momentum after the convicted attacker was given only six months with three years of parole because the judge said, "A prison sentence would have a severe impact on him." Chanel Miller reads her memoir in the Audible version, which adds great depth and even greater emotion to her story. This is a gut-wrenching book, but the resilience of Chanel Miller provides both hope for a different future and a warning about the much-needed changes to the way sexual assault cases are tried.

Michelle Stonis
History

I’m reading The 5 AM Club by Robin Sharma

Would you recommend it? Yes if you want more time for yourself and work/life has become routine and monotony.

What do you like or find interesting about it? Finding time for yourself no matter how crazy life gets.

Gary Karen Shamoyan
Student Outreach Services

Wolf in White Van by John Darnielle
Really haunting and beautifully written. One of those novels I’ll remember forever. Highly recommended. Fun fact: the author is also the lead singer/lyricist for The Mountain Goats.

The Poet by Michael Connelly
I had trouble getting into Connelly’s first Bosch novel, The Black Echo, but I’m enthralled with this one. Highly recommended if you’re in the mood for a page-turning, crime thriller.

Andy Stires
Learning Center

The Greatest Invention: A History of the World in Nine Mysterious Scripts by Silvia Ferrara
A quirky first person, highly readable account by an Italian linguist. She describes decipherment of ancient scripts for insights about what is writing all about.

Free: A Child and a Country at the End of History by Lea Ypi
Fascinating memoir about growing up in Albania as a child under Stalinism, as a teen in the post-1990 transition, and now as professor of philosophy

Mark Maier
Economics

The Debt Trap: How Student Loans Became a National Catastrophe by Josh Mitchell

Would you recommend it? Yes.

Anyone working in higher education, or any student thinking about taking out a loan for school, should read this book.

Student loans have a complicated history. While loans are supposed to increase access to higher education, poor regulation and risky lending practices have put millions of borrowers a total of billions of dollars in debt. Mitchell details the well intentioned history of student lending, and how banks, schools, and politicians have turned student lending into a systemic problem. The book is also personal, as Mitchell shares the stories of students who have taken on mountains of debt, and their struggles living with debt.

Richard Neufeld
Mathematics

I'm rereading Dial A for Aunties by Jesse Q. Sutanto.

I highly recommend this book. I needed something to cheer me up with everything going on in the world and this book did it for me. I was laughing nonstop. I finished it within a few days and I'm rereading it again. The author is Asian-American and me being Filipino-American, I could relate to some of what the characters were going through. Even if you're not Asian, you will enjoy this book.

Marissa Pico
Economics

I am reading Abolition. Feminism. Now. by Angela Davis, Gina Dent, Erica Meiners and Beth Richie.

Shatha Sbeta
Political Science

I haven't been reading much, but I listened to a great podcast the other day about our current obsession with self-improvement – really interesting 3-part series: Obsessed with Self-Improvement podcast link.

Erin Calderone
Kinesiology

I’m reading Einstein’s Dreams by Alan Lightman.

I definitely recommend it! Each chapter is a small book about a world where time behaves differently. For instance, in one world, scientists discovered that time moves slower the farther we are from the center of the earth, so people who long to stay young build houses with high stilts on top of mountains so they could live in the sky!

Arthur Kayzakian
English

I read and loved Clark and Division by Naomi Hirahara, a work of historical fiction that follows a young woman, Aki Ito, and her family, who are released from Manzanar before the end of WWII. Originally from Los Angeles, they relocate to Chicago where Aki's sister has mysteriously died in a subway accident. Aki takes it upon herself to try and solve the mystery of her sister's death, which is wrongly ruled a suicide. Determined to find her murderer, Aki faces challenges as she navigates a new city, while missing her home and her beloved sister. I recommend this book to fans of crime fiction or historical fiction.

Margaret Lopez
Library

There Is Nothing For You Here by Fiona Hill, a biography cleverly outlined by Fiona's beginnings in the Coal House growing up in an oppressed area of coal mining resources in the UK, continues onto A Divided House describing her early experiences through her immigration to the US and moves into her higher education and political involvement in The White House. The final chapter, Our House, refers to the relevancy of her Russian studies to our current circumstances concerning Ukraine.

Here is an article written about Fiona's book, which is available through our library at GCC.
Particularly, reading Fiona's biography emphasizes the personal and political implications of the acquisition of higher education and creating opportunity for breaking down barriers and leveling the playing field for disproportionately impacted students. If you attended the DFA today, you may see a common thread in this book as well.

Theresa Lorch
Kinesiology

I read and highly recommend The Last House on Needless Street by Catriona Ward. A twisty psychological thriller, this novel delves into some very dark places of the human psyche, identity, and monstrousness. It follows a peculiar man named Ted who lives in his boarded-up house by the woods with his daughter Lauren and his cat, Olivia. But are any of them really free here, or they all prisoners in some way? I don’t want to say too much so as not to spoil it, but it’s a captivating read.

Joanna Parypinski
English