Latest books ~ reading ruminations

My most recent acquisitions all look serious:  three are nonfiction, and the fourth is a YA novel with lots to think about.

The Trouble with Diversity: How We Learned to Love Identity and Ignore Inequality ~ by Walter Benn Michaels, 2006

When I brought these first three books home from the library this afternoon, I flipped open this book and had read four or five pages, including flipping to the back to read a couple of end notes (yes, this is a two-bookmark book), before I caught myself.  "Wait!  I don't have time to read this today!"  I reluctantly put it down and glanced at the other library books.  This from the inside cover is what compelled me to select this one:

"Walter Benn Michaels argues that our enthusiastic celebration of 'difference' masks and even contributes to our neglect of America's vast and growing economic divide.  Affirmative action in schools has not made them more open, it's just guaranteed that the rich kids come in the appropriate colors.  Diversity training in the workplace has not raised anybody's salary (except maybe the diversity trainers'), but it has guaranteed that when your job is outsourced, your culture will be treated with respect."

This I Believe II: More Personal Philosophies of Remarkable Men and Women ~ edited by Jay Allison and Dan Gediman, 2008

I have requested a copy of This I Believe, which I have obviously not yet read.  But seeing this at the library, I got it to read while waiting for the first collection of essays.  These books are based on the NPR series of the same name.  From the three or four essays I've already read this afternoon (yes, I had to force myself to put down two out of two books that quickly pulled me in), I can see that I'll really enjoy these short pieces by such varied people.

According to the dustjacket, the YA novel Feed by M. T. Anderson (2002) is about

"Titus, whose ability to read, write, and even think for himself has been almost completely obliterated by his 'feed,' a transmitter implanted directly into his brain.  Feeds are a crucial part of life for Titus and his friends.  After all, how else would they know where to party on the moon, how to get bargains at Weatherbee & Crotch, or how to accessorize the mysterious lesions everyone's been getting?  But then Titus meets Violet, a girl who cares about what's happening to he world and challenges everything Titus and his friends hold dear.  A girl who decides to fight the feed."

The Brief Wadsworth Handbook, 2009 MLA Update Edition / Edition 6  ~ by Laurie G. Kirszner and Stephen R. Mandell, 2010

And, it says -- or rather, &.  I'm curious about the symbolism and why an ampersand was chosen to grace the cover.  This, of course, is for the courses I'm teaching in developmental writing this semester at Chattanooga State.  Here's a look at the sections:

Writing Essays
Critical Thinking and Argumentation
Writing in the Disciplines
Doing Research
Documenting Sources: MLA Style
Documenting Sources: APA and Other Styles
Creating Documents in a Digital Age
Strategies for Success in College and Beyond
Revising Common Sentence Errors
Writing Grammatical Sentences
Improving Sentence Style
Understanding Punctuation
Understanding Spelling and Mechanics
Resources for Bilingual and ESL Writers

I am most fascinated by the stuff on the digital age.  It's a whole new world at the college now, with students doing assignments on computers, even in the classroom.  Both classrooms I use have a computer at each seat, and I am able to monitor what's on each computer from the one I use.  Everything was done with pen and paper when I last taught there in 2006, a mere four years ago.  Now I won't have to lug slippery piles of papers to the car, mark them up with red ink, and lug them back to school to be returned to the students.  Once I master the technology, grading should be easier (I hope).

On an orange sheet among multi-colored handouts given to adjuncts last month, we were told:  "Instructors should familiarize themselves with up-to-date MLA formatting and ... ensure students' papers meet these guidelines."  Knowing my thin MLA booklet from 1970 (how could it be 40 years?) was extremely out of date, I asked for a copy of the latest MLA booklet -- and was given this 607-page handbook.  I'll probably use the others sections more than the MLA bit; this is, after all, a remedial writing course and our relatively short research paper won't require the same documentation as a doctoral dissertation.
__________

Have you read any of these?  What are you reading these days?