Reading

Why bother reading classics, fiction, anything really if it isn't going to give you money or a career? Because 'how to human' is difficult to learn and this is your most likely shot at learning it. Textbooks and nonfiction will make you smarter, but fiction will give you wisdom. Each book is the distilled wisdom of one person's mind, life, and ideas. If you really think you've got all the answers without even looking at or thinking about what they made, you've shut yourself in a cage and thrown away the key. Also, reading stuff expands your vocabulary, which is really important when you're looking at a dry textbook and now realize you have literally no chance of understanding it without spending the next five months deciphering it with a dictionary. Better to learn the hard words and their meanings through context, aka reading a lot of different books in different genres, than to have to find yourself shit out of luck later.

Helpful tip: if you have to write a book report, it will probably make you hate the book for life. Therefore, you might want to do the report on a stupendously bad yet kind of entertaining book. For instance, Hot Pterodactyl Boyfriend, the later books in the Twilight series, or perhaps an autobiography of a famous person that looks... intriguing. Or write the damn thing about a book that's supposed to make you miserable and teach you a lesson and then never read it again. For instance, stuff by Ayn Rand, Fahrenheit 451, Brave New World, 1984, Animal Farm, or anything by Kurt Vonnegut.

Helpful tip for people who want to start their own book club: Pick something really bizarre and mind-blowing that all of you are interested in, for reason of wanting to figure out what the heck the author meant and discover something wild and new at the book club, not upon reading the book for the first time. Or, bring a bunch of books on the same topic and swap. There's really not much point to bringing a book that is so formulaic everyone understands it from the get go so the "book club" is really just for refreshments and gossip, nay nay, ideally you would brainstorm and gain insight and ideas; new worldview and paradigm shifts. One good example is stuff by Ian Fleming or Richard Feynman. Or I suppose some really complicated fantasy novels. If you can't come up with serious original insights and additional info that makes you guys astounded with wonder, if you can't use your own brain and think for yourself and come up with your own ideas to share with the group, it's kind of pointless to have a book club. Just my two cents.

Check out your local library’s online reading access. If you have a library card, you can read books online. In fact this often works for all libraries in your state; try your luck with a library in the biggest metropolis in the state; check out their website at least. I must warn you however that the Axis 360 software used to read books is BAD, and ebook library access tends to be clunky and badly programmed. Looking forward to the inevitable tech upgrade.
How to get better at reading? In all honesty I don't think anything works better than reading a lot of stuff often, and lots of different kinds of reading material. Take up reading as a hobby and break out of your comfort zone with it. There's a reason dystopian governments like Soviet Russia and China like to ban books, and exile intellectuals to Siberia or summarily execute them, and it's not because books make you stupid.
If you have issues reading ebooks on a computer because the library loves Axis 360 software, try using Chromium instead of Firefox. It also helps a lot to log in, use the help guide in Axis 360 to download the book for offline access, and then when reading the book in the browser turn off your wifi. You'll still need to turn it back on and log in like every 20-30 minutes or so, but that is a lot better than waiting for each and every page to load for like 1-2 minutes per page.
Ask all of your friends and family, especially in other states, if you can use their library cards online. Their library systems likely have different ebooks, giving you a greater variety to choose from. This is a major reason I think the library system in the US needs to be made into one united system nationwide - your average small town library doesn't have much, and even big cities lack large chunks of important informative books, especially textbooks. A nationwide library could provide online and in-library reference access to textbooks, decreasing student debt everywhere.
The Scholastic book fair was the coolest thing about public school, so check out their website here Scholastic and maybe in the future we can make it so every last one of their books is in every public library. Good company, that one.
Museum gift shops can often have educational books that are hard to find in other places. See if you can find some good ones.
If you have access to physical library books then take advantage of a thing called interlibrary loan. You place an order for books located at another library in your library’s “family of libraries” in-state network, wait two weeks, and then your books arrive.
To find the best, most tantalizing books faster, first use search terms on your library's catalog online. Make a list using paper or using your library card and an online account; some library websites have this feature. Keyword searches are generally the best. Once you've made a list of these, check them out. Post-pandemic, don't check them out but instead go to the library, skim through them, discard the ones that are boring and keep the interesting ones and check only those out. Why do this? Because for some reason publishers have lowered their standards recently and absolute garbage is getting churned out in large amounts, filling library shelves with it and wasting your time if you're trying to actually find something worth the read. This way it's like using magnets to find needles in a haystack.
If you have a choice of books but aren't sure what to read, try asking a kind librarian or someone that you like talking to.
If you have required reading of “classics” in school, you can often find manga or zombie versions in your library. For instance, Pride and Prejudice and Zombies, or Manga Classics: Jane Eyre. This can really save you if you hate reading that crap.
Helpful for book reports: BookAMinute Ultra Condensed Classic books. Summarizes each one in roughly one page.
Generally speaking if you like one work by a specific author it's usually fun to read everything else they wrote, too. Especially helpful when you're supposed to get a certain number of books read for some reason.
Cheap places to get books/textbooks online: Amazon, Goodwill Books, Walmart.
To see if something is worth buying or checking out from the library first look it up on Amazon and use its "Look Inside" feature to flip through a few pages. Also see its reviews on Goodreads.
If you are looking for something specific bookwise, such as good books in a particular genre, browse the lists at Goodreads here.
To try to read books online check out Internet Archive
For historic or old books try Project Gutenberg
Harvard Classics at Project Gutenberg. You can read these in HTML online, and no library card needed.
Best Books of Project Gutenberg is the heading of this "bookshelf" there. Mostly classics.
Bartleby Another like Project Gutenberg but even more English, if that's even possible (apparently it is).
Here is a list of books reddit people say everyone should read Reddit thread and thankfully this thread provides reasons instead of just "read this it good"
Here is a list of books people claim changed their lives Reddit thread
Here is a list of books that are often required reading in high school Goodreads
Here is a list of the most influential books in history Goodreads
Here are a bunch of crowdsourced lists of the "best books" in various categories Ranker
Free Classic Kindle Books 5/28/23 Big thanks to https://bucketlistjourney.net for providing the link (which is on #57 of this list if you want to click that link and provide her with affiliate marketing benefits - seriously how does she find these things?!). These books are free to read not only on a Kindle but on any Internet browser if you have an Amazon account. Log in, use 1-click to "buy" the book for $0, and read it in the browser with what Amazon calls its Kindle Cloud Reader. 2/7/24 The address for that one is https://read.amazon.com/landing. In theory you do not need to own a Kindle, just whatever you're reading this web page on, but in practice, you could be SOL.
Barnes and Noble NOOK reading online 2/7/24 Can't afford a Nook? You might be able to read Barnes and Noble ebooks online. Here's the page.
1/25/24 Bet you've looked for a specific topic to learn before or just high quality information and went "what the heck?! it's all crap!" when you put your search query into a search engine or a library catalog or even browsed a bookstore. Well, a lot of unscrupulous individuals and publishing companies lately have been doing the sociopath of late, the whole "hey I can get passive income by churning out books or blogs that sell or affiliate market whether or not they are good, and then all I gotta do is rake in the dough while the idiots get ripped off by me." Thus it flooded the market and the Internet. There are a couple of workarounds. 1. Seek out people who self-publish stuff like ebooks and promote that kind of thing. 2. Experiment a little to see which publishers and authors tend to publish good things and then seek out more by those people. Anness Publishing is the best publisher I know, and it went out of business but the books still circulate, thank heaven. Like other publishing companies, you often have to seek for each individual imprint under the umbrella of the larger book label when searching for books made by the publisher on say, Walmart.com or some other bookseller, or the stream of books dries up prematurely. Here's their publisher imprint list page. Harper-Collins is another formerly good one though they have been sucking lately. Author-wise, depends on the topic. If they made one they will probably make another that is good. For instance, Theodore Gray made some great Chemistry books, if he publishes another, great. Authors also sometimes write under pseudonyms.

A list of books I've personally read that broadened my perspective on things, which you might like, or maybe not, listed by genre. In recent years a lot of stuff has become re-challenged, re-banned, or censored (canceled, it's the same thing) for the first time. This lights up in my mind in big klieg lights "hey TortillaTortilla, I bet these are really interesting or helpful books." Therefore am currently seeking these out. Would also suggest it for you. What doesn't "the man" want you to know?

The best list I could find on Goodreads for this kind of stuff Banned Censored and Challenged Books List

BANNED, CHALLENGED, OR CONTROVERSIAL - THE SURPRISINGLY TAME

The Wind in the Willows by Kenneth Grahame
Of Mice And Men by John Steinbeck
Fruits Basket, Vol. 1 by Natsuki Takaya
The Great Gatsby by F. Scott Fitzgerald
Bridge to Terabithia by Katherine Paterson - warning, like The Velveteen Rabbit and other such, you will probably cry
James and the Giant Peach by Roald Dahl, Charlie and the Chocolate Factory by Roald Dahl, also The Witches and Revolting Rhymes - would have made sense if they tried to censor Going Solo. This, though. Uhhh
The Captain Underpants series by Dav Pilkey - really?! this was censored?
Green Eggs and Ham by Dr. Seuss
Little House on the Prairie by Laura Ingalls Wilder
Little Women by Louisa May Alcott
The House at Pooh Corner by A.A. Milne - think they tried to censor this because of the whole Xi Jinping is actually Winnie the Pooh thing?
Ender's Game by Orson Scott Card
Twilight by Stephanie Meyer - I mean, I can sympathize with wanting to censor this not-even-close-to-Anne-Rice crap, but still, really?
A Light In The Attic by Shel Silverstein
Scary Stories Treasury by Alvin Schwartz - once upon a time, there was a kitchen sink whose garbage disposal malfunctioned. TERRIFYING! Now censor me for telling you this gruesome tale.
And Then There Were None by Agatha Christie
A Christmas Carol by Charles Dickens
A Midsummer Night's Dream by William Shakespeare

BANNED, CHALLENGED, OR CONTROVERSIAL - THE DEFINITELY WORTH READING

Civil Disobedience and Other Essays by Thomas Paine
The Age of Reason by Thomas Paine
Rights of Man by Thomas Paine
Uncle Tom's Cabin by Harriet Beecher Stowe - come on, Abraham Lincoln reputedly said to the author "So you're the little woman who wrote the book that started this great war!"
Huckleberry Finn by Mark Twain
The Adventures of Tom Sawyer by Mark Twain
Oliver Twist by Charles Dickens
The Girl With the Dragon Tattoo series by Stieg Larsson
The Lord of the Rings by J.R.R. Tolkien
The Outsiders by S.E. Hinton
Holes by Louis Sachar
Atlas Shrugged by Ayn Rand
Fahrenheit 451 by Ray Bradbury
1984 by George Orwell
A Clockwork Orange by Anthony Burgess
Catcher In The Rye by J.D. Salinger

BANNED, CHALLENGED, OR CONTROVERSIAL, WHICH I HATED

The Giver - FUCK the Giver. Worst book ever. Bah! Ecchhhh!!!
50 Shades of (you know) - just go watch Magic Mike and Magic Mike XXL, you'll feel better about yourself. Couldn't get through much of the book, although 50 Shades of Earl Grey, the knockoff novel this spawned, wasn't so bad.
Lolita by Vladimir Nabokov - aside from being creepy it's actually not that well written and the plot is dull.
The Complete Maus by Art Spiegel - because I lost too much family in the Holocaust and therefore it makes me sad
The Color Purple by Alice Walker - I know. I know!!! I just couldn't get into it! I know a lot of people love this book, though.
Lord of the Flies by William Golding - can't possibly describe how little I care about the plot
The Picture of Dorian Grey by Oscar Wilde - same deal
A People's History of the United States by Howard Zinn - just doesn't have enough detailed information, and its usefulness factor is pretty much nil
Charlotte's Web by E.B. White - I can't even tell you why. If you haven't noticed, it'll give you the big sad.
Candide by Voltaire - contrary to expectations, the opposite of tame, and that's all I'll say about that
The Giving Tree by Shel Silverstein - here's a tree that gives things. It gives too much. The end.
Howl and Other Poems by Allan Ginsburg - seems to be like a bad acid trip, though I have never dropped acid. Not a fun time to read, surprisingly enough.
Thirteen Reasons Why by Jay Asher - five-hanky story about a teen suicide. Doesn't actually have tips for preventing said suicide rate, and thusly was censored. You might as well just listen to Nirvana.
The Golden Compass series by Philip Pullman - the big idea here is that "hey, maybe blind adherence to religion is a bad thing." Okay then.
To Kill A Mockingbird by Harper Lee - if I can summarize the book in two words, you can bet I'll be pretty upset at having read it. Here's the summary of this one: "racism bad" Yes, Harper Lee, I know. Anyone with two brain cells to rub together knows that.

EVERGREEN

This is a classification for books I made up for myself. Some books remain so fresh and interesting that decades, even hundreds of years after they are written, they are still not only relevant but mind-blowing. So in other words I've been thinking "what books are my personal classics?"
To Sir, With Love by E.R. Brathwaite - haven't finished this yet, I'm only to like chapter four, but it was published in 1959 and it could have been written yesterday. That's freaky. 3/24/23 Done. Kept waiting for it to disappoint. It did not disappoint.
Meditations by Marcus Aurelius, Penguin version - included here because of its relevancy to modern life despite its age. Aged like a fine wine.
All the stuff by Shakespeare, included out of deference to my mother's lineage. Family heirloom.
Bowwow Powwow, bagosendije-niimi'idim by Brenda J. Child, Gordon Jourdain and Jonathan Thunder - added 6/24/23, if you can't get to a powwow, this can at least remind you of one. I know myself well enough to know that if I pick this one up in 20 years, I'll still love it just as much if not more.
A Year In High Heels by Camilla Morton - added 9/10/23. With each turning of the Wheel of the Year this becomes more relevant and the purpose behind each entry becomes clearer.
Are You There, God? It's Me, Margaret - added 9/18/23. Probably challenged, censored and/or banned because it points out that much of religion is teaching people how to lie to themselves and delude themselves and self-honesty cuts through all that hypocrisy like a hot knife through butter. It's odd reading something like this as an adult experienced with various religions, and knowing from experience as a good Witch that yeah, pretty much every religion probably has real spiritual truths to it, but only if people bother to be honest with themselves and bother to try to find it. And most would rather just pretend they have perfect faith cause it seems easier. Also likely challenged as a book because you can read it while being literally 12 and it won't scar you mentally but it'll still teach you about periods. Oh, shocking. Realistically speaking it's fluff but it's simple, gets to the point, timeless, and I wish I'd had it when I was younger.
Her Good Side by Rebekah Weatherspoon - added 9/21/23. Such an amazing romance novel that I hope it gets made into a movie. I stan this book as much as I stan Cherry Magic!! 30 Years Of Virginity Makes You A Wizard?!!, although I don't know for sure how well it'll hold up upon a re-read. Will try in a year or two. Still classified under "evergreen" in my notes because I think everyone would benefit from reading this book at least once