'18 Great Books You Probably Haven't Read'

A little while ago, John Green who is one of my favourite authors/vloggers/people ever made a video entitled '18 Great Books You Probably Haven't Read'. I watched the video enthusiastically and just as he said I haven't read any of them! But I want to and I thought you might want to as well.

I love John so I'm always going to take his book recommendations seriously and I've requested and several of the books on John's list. Unfortunately we don't have all of the books but we do have quite a lot of them so I've conveniently made a list for you below if you're interested in checking them out.

Round Ireland with a Fridge - Tony Hawks

Thirsty - MT Anderson

Boy Proof - Cecil Castellucci

Fly on the Wall - Emily Lockhart

Show Way - Jacqueline Woodson

The Enormous Room - E.E. Cummings

Regarding the pain of others - Susan Sontag

Death Comes for the Archbishop - Willa Cather

This Blinding Absence of Light - Tahar Ben Jelloun 

Will You Miss Me When I'm Gone: the Carter Family and their legacy in American music / Mark Zwonitzer with Charles Hirshberg

The last summer of reason / Tahar Djaout

(If you don't have the book you're after in our collection John has the Amazon links to the books in the description of his video).

And here is a link to John's books if you're interested in checking them out and I wrote a blog post about them a couple of years ago if you're interested. 

How I went from Rebel Wilson to North Korea in a few clicks of my mouse

I was browsing Youtube the other day when I cam across a video by Hank Green from Vlogbrothers about North Korea. Aside from the fact that the Vlogbrothers are my absolute favorite YouTubers I decided to watch the video because I don't know a huge amount about North Korea when I really should. It's a really great video so I encourage you to check it out:

In response to this video John Green (the other half of Vlogbrothers and the author I talk about all the time) made this video about the book Escape from Camp 14 : one man's remarkable odyssey from North Korea to freedom in the west which is about the only known prisoner to escape from a North Korean concentration camp called Camp 14. John does a much better job of explaining the book than I ever could so I've posted the video below. 

This is what I love about the internet. I go on YouTube so watch Rebel Wilson opening the MTV Movie Awards and end up learning about North Korean concentration camps. Thank you internet, you make me smarter. Obviously the videos/book that I stumbled across are much more important than the cast of Pitch Perfect gyrating. So I've requested this book in hope of educating myself about the world we live in. I encourage you to do the same. Check out the publisher's description of Escape from Camp 14 below:

"North Korea is isolated and hungry, bankrupt and belligerent. It is also armed with nuclear weapons. Between 150,000 and 200,000 people are being held in its political prison camps, which have existed twice as long as Stalin's Soviet gulags and twelve times as long as the Nazi concentration camps. Very few born and raised in these camps have escaped. But Shin Donghyuk did. In Escape from Camp 14, acclaimed journalist Blaine Harden tells the story of Shin Dong-hyuk and through the lens of Shin's life unlocks the secrets of the world's most repressive totalitarian state. Shin knew nothing of civilized existence - he saw his mother as a competitor for food, guards raised him to be a snitch, and he witnessed the execution of his own family. Through Harden's harrowing narrative of Shin's life and remarkable escape, he offers an unequaled inside account of one of the world's darkest nations and a riveting tale of endurance, courage, and survival."