Category: Reading Lists
We’re excited that you’ve joined the conversation! At HMU, we want to continue the great authors’ conversations in a contemporary context, and this blog will help us do that. We look back to Aristotle and the early philosophers who used reason and discourse to gain wisdom and now we endeavor to do the same every day.
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June 12, 2026
Thanks to Alissa Simon, HMU Tutor, for today’s post.
It’s been a few years since I have posted a summer reading list, so I thought it would be a great way to transition into this year’s summer recess. I often compile a summer reading list for myself. Sometimes I get through it and sometimes I don’t. These lists are not meant to be assignments, so I always shrug off any books that didn’t get to the top,
July 12, 2019
Thanks to Laken Brooks, a 2019 Harrison Middleton University Fellow in Ideas recipient, for today’s post.
Melissa Hart’s Better With Books is a crash-course in diverse young adult literature. The book suggests preteen and teen reading lists in the following categories: adoption and foster care, body image, immigration, learning challenges, LGBTQ+ youth, mental health, environmentalism, physical disability, poverty and homelessness,
March 31, 2017
Thanks to Alissa Simon, HMU Tutor, for today’s post.
“The word saguaro originated in Ópata, a language spoken by peoples of the Sonoran Desert region of Mexico. It came into English by way of the Spanish spoken by the Mexican settlers of the American West. The very saguaros we see today may well have been around when the word was first noted, some 150 years ago –
December 30, 2016
Thanks to Alissa Simon, HMU Tutor, for today’s post.
“The best nonfiction books add up to a biography of our culture.” – Robert McCrum
It is difficult to determine what falls within the bounds of the nonfiction genre. Can we include cookbooks or dictionaries? Reading the dictionary is certainly a different type of reading than a chapter book or a textbook. And yet, all of these are meant to give us a better understanding of factual information.
January 22, 2016
If we frame literature as a body, then it follows that literature functions as a system, much like a human body. Within this frame, it is relevant, then, to address literature through the analogy of a healthy biological system, such as the human body. In Aryuvedic teachings, each individual body is made up of three elemental substances called doshas. Doshas fluctuate in a unique percentage within each individual. The goal is to maintain a personalized balance within these doshas,
December 18, 2015
In the Preface to Genius, literary critic and professor Harold Bloom asserts the existence of and need for a discussion of genius. In the book, Bloom describes one hundred different voices in which he finds an element of genius, of creation. He writes, “Talent cannot originate, genius must.” These authors are considered geniuses because they created something where nothing existed before. Vergil, for example, ordered the Roman world,
August 28, 2015
If you have played the game “Apples to Apples”, then you will be familiar with the type of associations suggested in today’s blog. A few weeks ago, we wrote about the ways in which the field of Comparative Literature and the educational style of Harrison Middleton University overlap. Today, we add to that a list of possible pairings – two different pieces of art that connect through an unlikely association.
Good Friday is coming up. Easter is coming up. July Fourth will be here before you know it…which means that you just might have a day of rest all to yourself! Which means, maybe you will have time to read a new website…so, some of the HMU tutors shared a short list of recommended websites. These span the spectrum from informational (like bioparks and events calendars) to favorite blogs and editorials. We hope that you will enjoy some of these,