Here are 100 books that Strange News from Another Star, and Other Tales fans have personally recommended if you like
Strange News from Another Star, and Other Tales.
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I have learned about the nature of magic and the mythical firsthand. I have always been a seeker, fiercely curious and an avid reader to try to understand the world so as to find myself and my destiny. Wise women appeared to guide my path as I quested the heroine’s journey with its many helpers and spirits, its coincidences, and its marvels. When I dreamt about the Roma, I knew the story was important; I attended UCLA and got to work. My passion has never dwindled during the 20 years it took to manifest the Destiny's Consent book series.
I so loved and continue to love this book because I love heroines who embody wisdom and pass it on to others. Isn’t this really the whole point of life? Any chunk of learning needs to be shared, especially by women for women who come after them.
As far as heroines are concerned, there are so many to choose from in this book. It begins with Lily, a girl, who decides to run away to find out about her mother; she has reason to leave her violent home with an abusive father. But then Lily has the opportunity to safeguard Rosaleen, her ‘stand-in’ black mother, who has made the serious mistake of standing up to legendary racist bullies. Lily is white but understands Rosaleen's peril in terms of danger. Lily is hardly fierce. This is when real courage becomes poignant…taking action in spite of immense fear.
The multi-million bestselling novel about a young girl's journey towards healing and the transforming power of love, from the award-winning author of The Invention of Wings and The Book of Longings
Set in South Carolina in 1964, The Secret Life of Bees tells the story of Lily Owens, whose life has been shaped around the blurred memory of the afternoon her mother was killed. When Lily's fierce-hearted Black "stand-in mother," Rosaleen, insults three of the deepest racists in town, Lily decides to spring them both free. They escape to Tiburon, South Carolina-a town that holds the secret to her mother's…
When I realized years ago that the universe isn’t merely a concrete reality, I turned to metaphysical/visionary books to understand my experience. There weren’t that many books, but the ones I found became dear friends. Now, after decades as a freelance editor, I am writing fiction in this genre because I believe stories can be as powerful as expository writing for awakening consciousness. However, I’ve noticed many metaphysical writers discourage the engagement and commitment needed to make this world a better place. For this reason, I seek to gather—and contribute to—writing that is visionary and also advocates for democracy and social justice.
Although this collection of short stories can be generally categorized as speculative fiction—and most are more specifically science fiction—there is nevertheless a strong visionary element in many of them. As I would expect when reading any book that has many authors, I relate to some stories more than others.
I particularly loved how they collectively built on the amazing legacy of Octavia Butler and did so by explicitly uniting around the social justice theme.
Whenever we envision a world without war, prisons, or capitalism, we are producing speculative fiction. Organizers and activists envision, and try to create, such worlds all the time. Walidah Imarisha and adrienne maree brown have brought 20 of them together in the first anthology of short stories to explore the connections between radical speculative fiction and movements for social change. These visionary tales span genres—sci-fi, fantasy, horror, magical realism—but all are united by an attempt to inject a healthy dose of imagination and innovation into our political practice and to try on new ways of understanding ourselves, the world around…
Coming-of-age stories fascinate me because they are all so different. While we each experience many of the same events, each person’s story is unique. I like to read about how they first understood love or how they met their best friend. I like to try on their life for a bit, walk around in their shoes, and then return to my reality with the person I’ve worked so hard to become. The more I read other people’s stories of growing up, the more I feel we all harbor the same worries about ourselves and our future. We all struggle with similar problems while becoming who we’re meant to be.
I was completely enthralled by Levithan’s main character, A, and how they become a different person every day. The idea of falling in love or having a career or even pursuing an interest—a sport, an instrument, an art form—becomes impossible when you live a life like A does.
I related to the idea that A couldn’t present as an individual, that they could only be whoever they ended up being for the day. Starting over every 24 hours was worse than waking up every morning as the same wrong person. At least I had the benefits of making friends, learning guitar, and having a family. The story made me so sad for A’s loneliness yet made me feel much less alone.
Every day a different body. Every day a different life. Every day in love with the same girl.
There’s never any warning about where it will be or who it will be. A has made peace with that, even established guidelines by which to live: Never get too attached. Avoid being noticed. Do not interfere. It’s all fine until the morning that A wakes up in the body of Justin and meets Justin’s girlfriend, Rhiannon. From that moment, the rules by which A has been living no longer apply. Because finally A has found someone he wants to be with—day…
When I realized years ago that the universe isn’t merely a concrete reality, I turned to metaphysical/visionary books to understand my experience. There weren’t that many books, but the ones I found became dear friends. Now, after decades as a freelance editor, I am writing fiction in this genre because I believe stories can be as powerful as expository writing for awakening consciousness. However, I’ve noticed many metaphysical writers discourage the engagement and commitment needed to make this world a better place. For this reason, I seek to gather—and contribute to—writing that is visionary and also advocates for democracy and social justice.
This is the best book I read in 2023. If you’d asked me if it was possible to write a book entirely in second-person voice and poetic form, I would’ve said it’s impossible. Yet Ani Tuzman has done exactly that and done it with perfection and passion.
Tuzman writes as the daughter of Holocaust survivors, something I personally relate to. Even though she doesn’t shy away from describing intergenerational trauma, her words continually uplift through remembrance of the highest truths.
The weight of grief, fear, and bigotry. The imprint of trauma. The inner wonder and light that no measure of darkness can extinguish.
The daughter of Holocaust survivors and recent immigrants, Ani Tuzman grows up in a world darkened not only by her parents’ unfathomable grief and rage, but also by the bewildering bigotry of her American neighbors, schoolmates, and teachers. Yet on the farm that is her home, Ani can’t help but find beauty and joy.
Ani doesn’t tell her parents that every day on the school bus her hair is searched for her Jew-Devil horns. She also doesn’t…
I am a teacher, a mom, a bubbe, and a writer. I taught elementary school and college courses, directed a daycare, and owned a children’s bookstore, but my favorite job is scribbling words on paper. I have two grown children and four wonderful granddaughters who love to listen as I read to them. Many of my ideas come from my experiences with my granddaughters and from their questions. Our family and friends are a mix of religions and cultures, and most of my books reflect the importance of diversity, acceptance, and knowledge.
Even though this book is really for adults, I am recommending it to parents because I love to have meaningful conversations with my kids and grandkids.
This book helps me answer their hard questions on race, God, sex, punishment, gender, and truth. The author, Scott Hershovitz, also suggests ways I can keep our conversations flowing with questions like: What do you think? Why do you think so? Can you think of any reasons you might be wrong?
'Witty and learned ... Hershovitz intertwines parenting and philosophy, recounting his spirited arguments with his kids about infinity, morality, and the existence of God' Jordan Ellenberg, author of Shape
A funny, wise guide to the art of thinking, and why the smallest people have the answers to the biggest questions
'Anyone can do philosophy, every kid does...'
Some of the best philosophers in the world can be found in the most unlikely places: in preschools and playgrounds. They gather to debate questions about metaphysics and morality, even though they've never heard the words, and can't tie their shoelaces. As Scott…
I’ve always had equally balanced interests in the arts/humanities and the natural sciences. I started as a physics major in college but added a second major in philosophy after encountering the evolutionary theories of Hegel, Bergson, Alexander, Whitehead, and Teilhard de Chardin. This interest continued in graduate school at Northwestern, where my first year coincided with the arrival of Prof. Errol E. Harris, who had a similar focus and would direct my doctoral dissertation in philosophy, whose title was From Ontology to Praxis: A Metaphilosophical Inquiry into Two Philosophical Paradigms. One of the “paradigms” was reductionist; the other was emergentist.
Mario Bunge’s study is notable for the variety of its analyses of various diverse phenomena in which emergence is evident: in general systems theory, for example, as well as in language systems, social analysis, theories of holism, social systems, biology, epistemology, and biomedical sciences.
Bunge singles out a sense of “convergence” that highlights the integration of multiple sub-processes. It’s not just the specific relation between distinct parts that is a hallmark of emergence, but the integrated relation among these sub-processes. This book certainly broadened my perspective of the whole subject area.
Two problems continually arise in the sciences and humanities, according to Mario Bunge: parts and wholes and the origin of novelty. In Emergence and Convergence, he works to address these problems, as well as that of systems and their emergent properties, as exemplified by the synthesis of molecules, the creation of ideas, and social inventions.
Along the way, Bunge examines further topical problems, such as the search for the mechanisms underlying observable facts, the limitations of both individualism and holism, the reach of reduction, the abuses of Darwinism, the rational choice-hermeneutics feud, the modularity of the brain vs. the unity…
I am a classically and formally trained philosopher. I have a Doctorate in Philosophy from Duquesne University (2011). I've been interested in philosophy for as long as I can remember; however, I began formally studying philosophy when I first discovered the work of Friedrich Nietzsche. I began teaching philosophy at the university level in 2004. I've taught over 100 university-level courses, including graduate-level courses in both philosophy and psychology. I'm presently finishing my tenth philosophy book, along with over 50 professional peer-reviewed articles in philosophy. These days my attention is devoted to sharing philosophy on the internet through The Philosophemes YouTube Channel, @Philosophemes on Instagram, and the Basic Philosophical Questions Podcast.
Immanuel Kant is one of the most important figures in the history of philosophy – specifically regarding metaphysics – because he discovered the internal logic and organization for all of philosophical metaphysics. The book with which Kant accomplished that monumental feat is extremely difficult to read and understand. Therefore, Kant wrote an easier-to-read version, and that is the book that I am recommending: Philosophy of Material Nature. This book is highly affordable and readable.
The book that thePhilosophy of Material Nature paraphrases is, of course, the Critique of Pure Reason. What all of these works show us is that philosophical metaphysics naturally divides into theological metaphysics, cosmological metaphysics, and psychological metaphysics. Kant’s achievement is standardly characterized as the articulation of philosophical metaphysics as a science. The general term for such a science is “transcendental philosophy.” Thus, the rest of the books in this recommendation list relate to…
This volume combines two of Kant's key works on the metaphysics of nature--the Prolegomena to Any Future Metaphysics That Will Be Able to Come Forward as Science and Metaphysical Foundations of Natural Science --in the preeminent translations of James W. Ellington. Each work is preceded by an expert Introduction by Ellington and is followed by a German-English List of Terms and an Index.
That’s the eternal question, isn’t it? Out here in the manifestation, I am Duff McDonald, author and journalist, father of Marguerite, husband of Joey, and general man about town. I’m a Canadian who moved to the U.S. to go to college and never went back. But who am I, really? I am the same thing as everyone else, a speck of consciousness in the possibility machine, a perfect creation. This whole thing has divine origins, something I only realized not that long ago, and it set me free. I can’t wait to see what happens next. I have, of late, discovered that maximizing one’s awareness is the main quest of a human life.
Sri Aurobindo is, in my opinion, the greatest writer of them all. His poetic prose hypnotizes while swirling around the most profound ideas of all — What is the divine? How can we know the truth? What is the best way to live? The Life Divine is Aurobindo’s magnum opus, his articulation of the path to self-realization and how to use it to make the world a better place. In other words, it’s everything you need to know.
The Life Divine explores for the Modern mind the great streams of Indian metaphysical thought, reconciling the truths behind each and from this synthesis extends in terms of consciousness the concept of evolution. The unfolding of Earth's and man's spiritual destiny is illuminated, pointing the way to a Divine Life on Earth. Index.
For as long as I can remember, it has been of the utmost importance to find meaning in life—both for myself and for everyone else. I have spent much of my time in the past few years pushing for continued discourse in the fields of philosophy and psychology. I have studied at various educational institutions in these fields, and have thus used that knowledge to discuss topics relating to such on my podcast, Think More, which can be found on Spotify. I founded an online journal titled Modern Rebellion in the hopes of assisting contemporary artists and intellectuals with getting their work out there into the public eye.
Dante Alighieri’s Inferno, by many accounts, is the most accurate and true portrayal of Hell. It has been long speculated whether or not Dante, by means of dreaming or some other metaphysical affair, was truly able to visit Hell—the ways in which he describes the deadly sins of human life proves to be both very emotional and very comprehendible, in a way that can push one to both care more for the way that they choose to live, care more for the ways that they treat others, as well as understand the burdens of life and thus realize that it could, in some way, be worse off than it presently seems.
I boast a two-decade-long career in the software industry. Over the years, I have diligently honed my programming skills across a multitude of languages, including JavaScript, C++, Java, Ruby, and Clojure. Throughout my career, I have taken on various management roles, from Team Leader to VP of Engineering. No matter the role, the thing I have enjoyed the most is to make complex topics easy to understand.
Naming and Necessity had a profound impact on my understanding of the importance of using proper names in programming (for functions, variables, etc.). I was fascinated by Kripke’s exploration of the usage of names in our day-to-day language. His arguments challenged my thinking and introduced me to new ways of considering reference and meaning.
The clarity and rigor of his analysis pushed me to refine my reasoning skills. Despite being a challenging read, I found it incredibly rewarding.
'Naming and Necessity' has had a great and increasing influence. It redirected philosophical attention to neglected questions of natural and metaphysical necessity and to the connections between these and theories of naming, and of identity. This seminal work, to which today's thriving essentialist metaphysics largely owes its impetus, is here reissued in a newly corrected form with a new preface by the author. If there is such a thing as essential reading in metaphysics, or in philosophy of language, this is it.
