Your TEDxSalem summer reading list

It’s hard to believe it’s already August. On the one hand, it means that sum­mer is wind­ing to a close. On the oth­er, it means we are just that much clos­er to TEDxSalem 2014!

To get you through these last few weeks and make the most of your remain­ing sum­mer, we reached out to our bril­liant group of speak­ers from last year’s TEDxSalem, to ask them the very sim­ple ques­tion: What are you read­ing?

If you need ideas on the best books to feed your brain, look no fur­ther:

What Kel­ly Williams Brown is read­ing: Amer­i­can Nations: A His­to­ry of the Eleven Rival Region­al Cul­tures of North Amer­i­ca, by Col­in Woodard.

As some­one who has moved around the coun­try a LOT, I real­ly love this book — it’s a cul­tur­al his­to­ry of the 11 sep­a­rate cul­tur­al nations that make up North Amer­i­ca. It’s a fas­ci­nat­ing his­to­ry book and, I think, does a great job of explain­ing how and why, say, Louisiana and Ore­gon are such dif­fer­ent places. I high­ly, high­ly rec­om­mend it!

(Revis­it Kel­ly’s TEDxSalem talk about mil­len­ni­als here!)

What Chris Hahn is read­ing: Cir­cuit-Bend­ing: Build Your Own Alien Instru­ments, by Reed Ghaz­a­la.

It’s about tak­ing old elec­tron­ics and hack­ing the cir­cuit­ry to make it do things that it was nev­er intend­ed to do, most­ly for the pur­pose of sound design and exper­i­men­ta­tion. The idea of pick­ing up used bat­tery-pow­ered toys at Good­will and then pok­ing around the insides with wires and con­nec­tors to make strange sounds is odd­ly appeal­ing.

(Chris Hahn and Dick­ie Adams intro­duced us to Luma Infi­na­ta, which you can re-watch here!)

What Elaine Sanchez is read­ing: The Hare With the Amber Eyes, by Edmund DeWaal.

It is a fas­ci­nat­ing biog­ra­phy of an extreme­ly wealthy Jew­ish fam­i­ly with roots in Rus­sia, Paris and Vien­na pre-World War I through World War II. It is long, dense and over­ly descrip­tive, but now that I’m more than halfway through it, I’m very inter­est­ed to see how it’s going to end. I’m read­ing it because it is one of my book club selec­tions.

I often read books I would­n’t oth­er­wise select because of the book club. There are a lot of books they chose that I don’t like, but I always learn some­thing new.

(Relive Elaine’s hilar­i­ous TEDxSalem talk, ‘Hav­ing the Sex Talk with Dad’, here!)

What Eric Howald is read­ing: The Mas­sive, by Bri­an Wood.

A post-apoc­a­lyp­tic graph­ic nov­el focused on a rogue team of envi­ron­men­tal­ists still fight­ing the good fight after cli­mate change has flood­ed much of the plan­et’s coastal areas and sunk entire nations. I love every­thing about this com­ic and each new col­lec­tion gets bet­ter and bet­ter as they explore aspects of human­i­ty as much as the threats of cli­mate change.

(Revis­it Eric’s TEDxSalem talk about com­ic books and social jus­tice here!)

What about you, Salem? What books have you been read­ing this sum­mer?