Catching up on My Reading

[Y]ou cannot arrange your life around them and the small chance of the Dreamers coming to consciousness. Our moment is too brief. Our bodies too precious. And you are here now, and you must live. (Ta-Nehisi Coates)

Only moments ago, I finished Te-Nehisi Coates' Between the World and Me. I have numerous thoughts and opinions on the book that I'm not interested in discussing here. However, I believe it fair to say this is a beautifully crafted and sentimental work of Black Power apologetics. Times being as they are, I presume any number of you will take umbrage at this assessment without having read the book or checking to see if apologetics means what you feel like it probably means or not. Those of you wondering if you should add Between the World and Me to the stacks you're reading your way through the quarantine with, I'd say maybe. If you happen to be a young black man preparing to make his way in the world (as they say), or a middle-aged white suburbanite frustrated by the seemingly endless discussion of race in this country, definitely read it cover-to-cover. For everyone else, it's worthwhile but unlikely to change your worldview much.

I'm still reading my way through the following, far less controversial writings:

1. Value Sensitive Design: Shaping Technology with Moral Imagination by Batya Friedman & David G. Hendry
2. A Web for Everyone: Designing Accessible User Experiences by Sarah Horton & Whitney Quesenbery
3. Functional-Light JavaScript by Kyle Simpson
4. Art Fundamentals: Theory and Practice by Ocvirk, Stinson, Wigg, Bone, & Cayton
5. Ecology of the Planted Aquarium: A Practical Manual and Scientific Treatise for the Home Aquarist by Diana Walstad
6. 100 Poems by Seamus Heaney
7. A Saucer of Loneliness by Theodore Sturgeon
8. A bunch of Art in America and Buddhadharma magazines I fell behind on months ago when work got very busy.