My Head Is Full of Books: Six Degrees of Separation from -- Empathy Exams ...

"Outside a dog a book is man's best friend, inside a dog it is too dark to read!" -Groucho Marx========="The person, be it gentleman or lady, who has not pleasure in a good novel, must be intolerably stupid." -Jane Austen========="I don’t believe in the kind of magic in my books. But I do believe something very magical can happen when you read a good book."-JK Rowling========"I spend a lot of time reading." -Bill Gates=========“Ahhh. Bed, book, kitten, sandwich. All one needed in life, really.” -Jacqueline Kelly=========

Monday, February 5, 2024

Six Degrees of Separation from -- Empathy Exams ...

Six Degrees of Separation

We begin with

↓

The Empathy Exams: Essays by Leslie Jamison
↓

These Precious Days by Ann Patchett
Like Empathy Exams, These Precious Days is a collection of essays. I find Patchett to be a very kind and empathetic writer, especially evident in the essay, "These Precious Days", about her life-altering friendship with Sooki, the gal who painted the art on each side of the cover.
↓

The Anthropocene Reviewed: Essays on a Human-Centered Planet by John Green
Another collection of essays which really touched my heart, head, and sometimes my funny-bone. The anthropocene is the geologic Age of Man, which makes for a very clever title.

↓

The Sixth Extinction: An Unnatural History by Elizabeth Kolbert
In this fascinating and understandably depressing book about the extinction event we are living in right now in the Anthropocene period on Earth.

↓

Dinosaur Lady: The Daring Discoveries of Mary Anning, the First Paleontologist by Linda Skeers, illustrated by Marta Alvarez Miguens
A children's nonfiction book about Mary Anning, the first person to identify dinosaur bones for what they were. Dinosaurs, we know, lived during the Age of Dinosaurs. We also know that they went through an extinction event in what is known as the 5th extinction event on earth, 65 million years ago.
↓

All Thirteen: The Incredible Cave Rescue of the Thai Boys Soccer Team by Christina Soontornvat
I read this Middle Grade nonfiction book in January 2021 as part of my role as Round 2 judge for Cybils Book Awards. I also read Dinosaur Lady the same January as part of my same role.
↓

This is Your Brain on Stereotypes: How Science is Tackling Unconscious Bias by Tanya Lloyd Kyi, illustrated by Drew Shannon
Another MG nonfiction title I read as part of my role as a Cybils judge. We need to have empathy toward people who are different than us, not stereotype them. That brings back around to...
↓