A Blog on Books

The Handmaid’s Tale by Margaret Atwood ended up being one of the most surprising and engaging reading experiences I’ve had in a while—and it’s a reminder of why going into a book with an open mind is so important. When this book was assigned for an English class I took last semester, I wasn’t particularly enthusiastic. By the time we got to The Handmaid’s Tale , I was still wrapping up the previous reading and hadn’t yet started it. The class discussions had already begun, and hearing everyone talk about the book without having read it made it hard to connect. The conversations themselves didn’t help much either—they felt predictable and surface-level, mostly revolving around modern politics and women's rights. These are obviously important topics, but the way they were being discussed felt like something I’d already heard many times before in previous English classes. At that point, I hadn’t cracked open the book, so I wasn’t giving it a fair chance. Eventually, I caught up and...

Reading The Cancelling of the American Mind was an experience that genuinely challenged me and deepened my understanding of today’s cultural climate. The book explores cancel culture and how it’s transformed public discourse, especially in education, science, and media. What makes it powerful is that it’s co-written by two authors from different sides of the political spectrum. That balance is crucial—it’s not a one-sided political rant but a thoughtful, well-researched look at how ideological conformity harms our ability to talk, learn, and even disagree. One section that stood out the most for me was the chapter on science and medicine. These fields should be grounded in objectivity, data, and care, but the book shows how they’ve been increasingly shaped by fear and ideological pressure. The JAMA (Journal of the American Medical Association) incident was shocking: the editor-in-chief resigned not for something he said, but because of a podcast someone else hosted, where the mere su...