Why We Read Fiction, by Lisa Zunshine
Erm. It took me an embarrassingly long time to get through this book. If cognitive literary theory interests you, this is the book for you. I'm imagining you figuring out what I actually thought about it (in-joke :-)
Nebula Awards Showcase 2007, by Mike Resnick
Blindsight, by Peter Watts
It's a complete coincidence that I read this one in the same month I finished Why We Read Fiction. Theory Of Mind is everywhere in this book. Right up to the last line.
Infidel, by Ayaan Hirsi Ali
Since this is Canada Day, I want to mention that this book makes me extraordinarily grateful for the accident of birth that has me living in Canada, enjoying my rights and freedoms as a woman and a professional.
This passage also reminds me how important fiction and writing can be:
But the spark of will inside me grew even as I studied and practiced to submit. It was fanned by the free-spirited novels, the absence of my father, and the frustration of watching my mother's helplessness living in a non-Muslim country. Most of all, I think it was the novels that saved me from submission. I was young, but the first tiny, meek beginnings of my rebellion had already clicked into place.
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