{"id":24,"date":"2012-04-23T13:05:00","date_gmt":"2012-04-23T17:05:00","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/library.brown.edu\/firstreadings2012\/?page_id=24"},"modified":"2012-04-23T13:05:00","modified_gmt":"2012-04-23T17:05:00","slug":"past-readings","status":"publish","type":"page","link":"https:\/\/library.brown.edu\/create\/firstreading2012\/past-readings\/","title":{"rendered":"Past Readings"},"content":{"rendered":"

2011:\u00a0Factory Girls<\/em><\/strong>\"\"<\/a>
\nIn 2011, incoming students explored\u00a0Factory Girls: From Village to City in a Changing China<\/a> <\/em>by\u00a0Leslie T. Chang. This book is told primarily through the lives of two young women, whom Chang follows over the course of three years as they attempt to rise from the assembly lines of Dongguan, an industrial city in China’s Pearl River Delta.\u00a0A book of global significance that provides new insight into China,\u00a0Factory Girls<\/em>\u00a0demonstrates how the mass movement from rural villages to cities is remaking individual lives and transforming Chinese society, much as immigration to America’s shores remade our own country a century ago.<\/p>\n

 <\/p>\n

2010:\u00a0The Dew Breaker<\/em><\/strong>\"\"<\/a>
\nThe First Readings selection for 2010 was\u00a0The Dew Breaker<\/a><\/em>\u00a0by Edwidge Danticat. This work of fiction explores the life of a \u201cdew breaker\u201d\u2014a torturer\u2014a man whose brutal past in Haiti lies hidden beneath his the new life he found in America.\u00a0The Dew Breaker<\/em>\u00a0is the winner of The Story Prize, a PEN\/Faulkner Award Finalist, and a\u00a0Washington Post Book World<\/em>\u00a0Notable Book.The San Francisco Chronicle<\/em>,\u00a0Chicago Tribune<\/em>, and\u00a0Detroit Free Press<\/em>\u00a0honored it as Best Book of the Year,<\/em>\u00a0and it was a finalist for the National Book Critics Circle Award for Fiction.<\/p>\n

 <\/p>\n

 <\/p>\n

\"\"<\/a>
\n2009:\u00a0The Beak of the Finch<\/em><\/h2>\n

The text for 2009’s First Readings was\u00a0The Beak of the Finch<\/a><\/em>\u00a0by Jonathan Weiner. The book relates the story of biologists Peter and Rosemary Grant, whose ground-breaking study of the finches of the Galapagos Islands extends Darwin’s thinking about evolution into a new century.<\/p>\n

 <\/p>\n

 <\/p>\n

\"\"<\/a>
\n2008:\u00a0The Places in Between<\/em><\/h2>\n

In 2008, incoming students read\u00a0Rory Stewart’s<\/a>\u00a0The Places in Between<\/em>, which relates the author’s journeys through Asia between September 2000 and March 2002. Stewart’s original plan was to walk a more or less direct route from Iran to Nepal, but he changed course when the Taliban barred his entry into Afghanistan. Restarting his journey in Pakistan, he reached eastern Nepal in December 2001, where he learned that the Taliban had fallen. He then decided to retrace his steps, covering the ground he had missed in his first walk. His journey through Afghanistan\u2014”the place,” as he put it, “in between the deserts and the Himalayas, between Persian, Hellenic, and Hindu culture, between Islam and Buddhism, between mystical and militant Islam”\u2014turned out to be the most compelling walk of all.<\/p>\n

 <\/p>\n

\"\"2007:\u00a0How Proust Can Change Your Life<\/em><\/h2>\n

The text chosen for First Readings’ inaugural year was Alain de Botton’s\u00a0How Proust Can Change Your Life<\/em>. Marcel Proust was a Parisian writer who lived at the turn of the twentieth century. His literary reputation emerged from a single work that took a lifetime to finish\u2014A La Recherche de Temps Perdu<\/em>, which translates “in search of lost (or wasted) time.” De Botton’s book is not about Proust per se, but rather uses Proust’s observations to provide modern readers with a “How to…” guide to life. Readers of de Botton’s book learn\u2014among other things\u2014how to love, how to take their time, and how to suffer successfully, all while getting a fascinating glimpse into Proust’s character and life.<\/p>\n

 <\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

2011:\u00a0Factory Girls In 2011, incoming students explored\u00a0Factory Girls: From Village to City in a Changing China by\u00a0Leslie T. Chang. This book is told primarily through the lives of two young women, whom Chang follows over the course of three years … Continue reading →<\/span><\/a><\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":6,"featured_media":0,"parent":0,"menu_order":5,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"closed","template":"","meta":{"footnotes":""},"class_list":["post-24","page","type-page","status-publish","hentry"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/library.brown.edu\/create\/firstreading2012\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/pages\/24","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/library.brown.edu\/create\/firstreading2012\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/pages"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/library.brown.edu\/create\/firstreading2012\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/page"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/library.brown.edu\/create\/firstreading2012\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/6"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/library.brown.edu\/create\/firstreading2012\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=24"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/library.brown.edu\/create\/firstreading2012\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/pages\/24\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/library.brown.edu\/create\/firstreading2012\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=24"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}