Slammed PCC students struggle to find the fun in reading

Share: Required reading dredges up dark thoughts of stress-induced headaches, avoidable all-nighters, and hard-earned grades for PCC students, but leisure reading is something different entirely.  Extracurricular reading is an aspiration, a fantasy in which homework, jobs, and every other thing that fills up Google Calendars doesn’t exist, in which anticipated books don’t have to be things that will be finished when “someday” comes, and yet some students are still trying to make it a reality. One of these students is Bridget Perez, a third-year child …

Banning books: An undemocratic travesty

Share: Back in 380 BCE, Plato gave us the Allegory of the Cave, in which he discusses the effect of education, or lack thereof, on our nature. A better parallel could not be drawn regarding the impulse to burn and ban books than that of Socrates, Plato’s mentor, who was sentenced to die for ‘tainting’ the youth with education. In the Allegory of the Cave, Socrates illustrates the benefits of an illuminated mind through the parallel of a cave. In the cave there are men, …

The Last Bookstore: A literary labyrinth

Share: The hustle and bustle of Downtown Los Angeles faded, as the strumming of a guitar performed a soft rock song over the speakers and set the tone for the afternoon. People disappeared into aisles and others emerged from another section, scouring every shelf carefully, hoping not to miss something great. Some clutched their findings and sat in the main area, nestled into the leather chairs and couches of red, blue and green. A standstill wave, a living sculpture of books layered over each other, …