Not sure what to read this summer? The Cherry Hills branch library has you covered.
Next to the information desk is a slew of reading lists covering everything from New York Times bestsellers to Manga and anime. On the Manga/anime list there are classics like “Ghost in the Shell,” which inspired the filmmakers of “The Matrix,” as well as historical works like “Golden Kamuy,” a story about a Russo-Japanese War veteran in search of the Ainu people’s gold. “Golden Kamuy” was adapted into an anime television series in 2018 and, according to Anime News Network, is set to be produced as a live-action film in the near future.
The antiracist reading list includes titles like “Asian American Dreams: The Emergence of an American People” by Helen Zia and “Slavery by Another Name: The Re-Enslavement of Black People in America from the Civil War to World War II” by Douglas A. Blackmon. Atop the reading list is a quote by Ibram X. Kendi which reads, “This anti-racist syllabus is for people realizing they were never taught how to be anti-racist. How to treat all the racial groups as equals. How to look at the racial inequity all around and look for the racist policies producing it, and the racist ideas veiling it.”
Other suggested titles include books by 2021 Pulitzer Prize winners Louise Erdrich, Les Payne, Marcia Chatelain and David Zucchino. Erdrich won the fiction category prize for her book “The Night Watchmen” while Payne won the biography category prize for the book “The Dead Are Arising: The Life of Malcom X.” The late Les Payne co-authored the book with his daughter Tamara Payne. According to pulitzer.org, “The Dead Are Arising” is “a powerful and revelatory account of the civil rights activists, built from dozens of interviews, offering insight into his character, beliefs and the forces that shaped him.”
For those interested in something a little more light-hearted, there is the humorous fiction reading list. The list includes titles like “The Hitchhiker’s Guide to the Galaxy” by Douglas Adams, “Clown Girl” by Monica Drake, and more than a dozen more, “running the gamut from black humor to slapstick!”
