I read therefore I think.

Why read "Eyes of a Blue Dog?"

Unless we regularly read biographies, we often learn the most about a famous person on the day that they die.  I knew that Marquez was considered by many to be the one of the greatest writers of his generation, and perhaps the greatest ever in Spanish, but I did not know that his most popular novels outsold all other books in Spanish except the Bible. I learned that from NPR on my drive home. 

I knew that he was considered a master of weaving magical realism into his stories, but did not know that he was also one of the first writers of literary nonfiction, a genre that today is one of the only mainstream sources for in-depth journalism (and is tied with scifi as my favorite genre).  I learned that reading the NY Times online, cashing in on one of my 10 free articles per month.

Why read "The Lottery?"

I was fascinated to learn that no other magazine had received as much mail (most of it sent in from furious readers) for a piece of fiction as The New Yorker did after it published The Lottery in 1948. Although I struggle to see why there was such a fuss, I must admit the story haunted me for some time when I first read it--stories designed to reflect the darkness within humanity often do.    

Why did I read it again recently? Because I read The Hunger Games a few years ago. The foreboding build up to the annual reaping ceremony is very similar to that of the lottery drawing.  

Why read "Bloodchild?"

The other day, I came to the horrible realization that I had no modern science fiction books written by a woman on my massive bookshelf!  I own and love Frankenstein but that's all I got, and that was written ages ago.  Worse, I realized that I have never even read a modern ADULT science fiction book by a woman. I have read a few for young adults like The Giver, A Wrinkle in Time and The Hunger Games.  I was shocked and immediately moved to rectify the situation.  Three names dominated my search for top women in science fiction: Octavia Butler, Angela Carter, and Ursula K. LeGuin. Short stories by LeGuin are sprinkled throughout the various anthologies I own and so I am no stranger to her great mind, but I had never read anything by the other two authors.