Kindle e-reader: A Trojan horse for free thought

By Emily Walshe

from the March 18, 2009 edition

Brookville, N.Y. - All you really need to know about the dangers of digital commodification you learned in kindergarten.

Think back. Remember swapping your baloney sandwich for Jell-o pudding? Now, imagine handing over your sandwich and getting just a spoon.

That's one trade you'd never make again.

Yet that's just what millions o… Continue

When browsing through Powell's bookstore, this book caught my eye. It's called the Ministry of Pain, and is about immigrants from the former Yugoslavia who have ended up in Amsterdam. The narrator of the story is a Croatian woman who teaches Yugoslav literature at a local college. She and her class don't speak about literature very often except when they are talking about what it means to be Croatian, Serbian, Macedonian, etc. They indulge in what she calls "Yugonostalgia," where they discuss th… Continue

The Feminine Mystique by Betty Friedan, (R.I.P Betty) is changing my life and is changing (challenging) the ways in which I conceive of my own identity and femininity. Already. I have been thinking about how the ways in which women's roles have been shaped are different from the reality of being a woman. For instance, in the 1960s when this book was first published, it was considered uncommon for a women--not only to be a part of… Continue