Book Circle: Getting on The Tip

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Back in the day, there was a saying that used to go around: “If you want to hide something from Black people, put it in a book.”  Could this be true in the digital age well into the 21st Century?  Unfortunately, even more so.

I know, I know.  You don’t have the time to read, and stay with a book.  However, if you commute by public transportation, your excuse becomes flat.  Moreover, as we model behavior for our youth, what better way to set the example by picking up a book, and getting engaged.

Besides, think of the possibilities.  Another old saw:  “What you don’t know, can kill you.” 

Or what about accessing some knowledge you would not otherwise have–about health, prosperity, happiness, spirituality & metaphysics, or hundreds of subjects and things-to-do that can make not only for a better day, but a better week, month, or life.  And who doesn’t love a mystery, real or imagined; and the strange, bizarre, puzzling questions that science can’t quite answer.

Or enter a dream-world of the novel, where you live in another’s shoes of a sort.

Or envision the future that might be landing at your very door, through what used to be called the science fiction genre, but perhaps more appropriately should be called speculative fiction. If you haven’t read 1984 by George Orwell as pseudo-name for Eric Blair, or Brave New World by Aldous Huxley; you might not have a clue as to what is really going on in your very midst, and certainly needs your strong resistance.

Remember the back-in-the-day movie, recently on the TCM cable channel, The Time Machine?  Remember it was crafted from a book–a novel by H. G. Wells.  The book and film of course presuppose that time travel is possible, and the scientist played by actor Rod Taylor creates a working time machine, and effects such travel.  After passing a myriad of mankind’s wars, he lands many centuries into the future.  While it seems to be a peaceful world, that is only facade.  There is a horrid world of dumbed-down citizens, without empathy for each other, and under strict domination and mind control.  (Sound familiar?)

When Taylor’s character asks a fellow in this seeming paradise to see some of the books of their civilization, he gets a slamming shock.  On being taken to the remains of what used to be a library, he extracts a book that dissolves into dust as he opens it.

After much adventure, and saving the denizens from both their own worst instincts and the predatory rulers-in-charge, he is able to finally secure his time machine, and return to his home base to relate such tales to his circle of friends and colleagues.  However, his love interest from the future, does not quite make it into the time machine for his exit.

However, although being advised against it, Taylor’s character, decides to both return to his love interest, and to build a strong and compassionate civilization in that era.  At the end of the movie, and after Taylor’s hasty departure, his housekeeper and close friend speculate as to what 3 books he decided to return with in his journey back to the future, with little else.  Which books would you choose to jump-start a civilization?

This column will whet your appetite for reading and the sharing of your reading with others.  Please share your response in the comments section below.

 

Copyright (c) 2015 ALH and The 21 Report

 

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