【推荐1】During my first decade in prison, I busied myself with exercising and hanging out in the big yard. I hardly grew as a person. It wasn’t until I began college in prison in my 30s that I started to realize my full potential.

Through my journey in college, I became a keen reader and writer, striving to escape prison life by expanding my mind beyond the toxic (有毒的) environments I’d been confined to. I started studying feminism and restorative justice. One concept that really hit home for me was toxic masculinity (男子气概). I come from an abusive home and a neighborhood consumed by gangs, drugs and gun violence. I wanted to understand better why I had used violence to solve my problems.

I have found, however, that strangers stand between me and many of the books I want to read.

Books, like everything an imprisoned person receives— personal mail, emails, photos, news and education materials — are evaluated by prison officials and rejected or shared with us. Corrections departments typically claim they ban books that contain sexual content, racial hatred or depictions of violence, criminal activity, anti-authority attitudes or escape. In practice, PEN America wrote in a 2019 report on prison book restriction policies, the restrictions “have been wide-ranging, from perverse to absurd to constitutionally troubling, with bans being applied in ways that are against logic.”

In Texas, books by Alice Walker, Pablo Neruda and even the former senator Bob Dole have been banned. Throughout the country, prison officials have rejected or tried to ban books about biology (too much nakedness in the anatomical drawings), the Holocaust (some of the victims were pictured naked), sketching, dragons and even the moon (it could “present risks of escape,” according to one New York prison). At one point, Colorado prison officials blocked a prisoner from reading two of President Barack Obama’s memoirs because they were “potentially harmful to national security,” although they later reversed that decision.

Claiming such bans are necessary for the safety and security of prisons seems ridiculous. If anything, many banned books could contribute to a safer environment in prisons and in the societies imprisoned individuals are released into. Practically every author I have encountered while in prison, from Don Miguel Ruiz to Angela Y. Davis, has played a role in my efforts to grow and become a better person— someone who can live in society by adding to it, as opposed to taking from it.

Without college and without access to books and materials that expanded my mind beyond the razor wire (钢丝网) and towering concrete walls, I might still be wasting my time on the yard. My worldview would still be dictated by toxic masculinity and the violence and harm that surround it. That’s not who I want to be when I leave this prison. It’s not who I want to see sent back into society.

【推荐2】In recent years, there has been a rise in the volume of audiobook sales, which is easily aided by the dominance of the smartphone. Other contributors to the rise beyond technology?

One thing is obvious: Reading even a short book involves a significant investment of time and prevents any other activity. You can’t drive or garden while reading. Andy Miller, the author of The Year of Reading Dangerously, said: “I was hunting for a book to read.” Kit Waal, my friend, said, “you should get the audiobook Old Filth; it’s fantastic.” She was right. I could walk the dog and still be reading a brilliant novel, or have one read to me brilliantly. I loved that book and I loved that way of reading it. So I’m a recent convert.”

Does he worry audio provides too different an experience to reading itself? “Clearly on audio you are at the mercy of the reader’s skills,” he says. “But then , ego (自己) aside, the same is true of reading a book on the page. We’re all at the mercy of our own skills and tastes, aren’t we? But on audio you are influenced by someone else’s interpretation. And you might simply dislike the voice of the reader. But at its best audio offers a complementary (互补的) experience to the actual book.”

Will audiobook distract us from the page before us? Better to focus on what we might gain. As someone who frequently interviews authors on stage, I'm aware of the unique insight to a text produced by hearing someone read their own work; I’ve frequently re-interpreted a passage after such an experience. But that has had no impact on whether or not I'll read a book by a writer I will never hear reading.

I once met the writer Don Delillo. In response to a question about the process of writing, he remarked that he sometimes became attracted by the shape of particular letters, by the way individual words appeared before him, their beauty beyond meaning and the relationship to meaning. He sounded hippy-dippy; then it made perfect sense. Reading does start with shapes, which slowly resolve to make a certain meaning, filtered through our own subjectivity and our senses. That will never change.

【推荐1】For humans, adapting to (适应) climate change will mostly be a matter of technology. More air conditioning, better-designed houses and bigger flood defenses may help reduce the effects of a warmer world. However, animals will have to rely on changing their bodies or their behaviour.

In a study done by Trends in Ecology & Evolution, a team led by Sara Ryding, a PhD at Deakin University, in Australia, shows that is already happening. And climate change is already changing the bodies of many animal species, giving them bigger beaks (鸟喙), limbs and ears.

In some species of Australian parrot, for example, beak size has increased by between 4% and 10% since 1871. All that is nicely in line with evolutionary theory (进化论). “Allen’s rule”, named for Joel Asaph Allen, who suggested it in 1877, holds that warm-blooded animals in hot places tend to have larger appendages (附肢) than those in mild regions.

Such increase in an animal’s surface area helps it release (释放) extra heat. For example, being richly gifted with blood vessels, and not covered by feathers, beaks make an ideal place for birds to release heat.

It seems clear that the world of the future is not just going to be hotter than humans are used to. These animals living in it will look different, too. Studying a larger range of animals will help figure out what is exactly happening. Much of Ms Ryding’s data is about birds, however, with less information available for other animals.

【推荐2】The whole world knows them: actors, singers, models, athletes and TV personalities. If I use social media, I get too familiar.

I have nothing against the entertainment industry and celebrities. The problem is that by idolizing the entertainment industry so much, we sometimes completely forget about the things that are truly important and that are changing our world. You probably know who Leonardo DiCaprio is—a very talented American actor and film producer. But then you probably don’t know who Cori Bargmann is. Bargmann is a scientist who is uncovering the causes of Alzheimer’s and autism, which have been unknown for years.

What I think is wrong is that DiCaprio’s net worth is $260 million dollars, while Bargmann’s is less than $l million dollars. DiCaprio is definitely talented and has worked hard to give us good films, but Bargmann is working for something that can save thousands of humans who are suffering. And just because our society prefers to idolize the entertainment industry instead of science, she gets paid much less than she deserves.

But if it would benefit the world to invest all of our time and attention toward scientists, why don’t we make scientists our new “celebrities”?

First of all, we like being entertained. We love pretty faces and easy-to-digest information. It’s easier to care about simple stuff rather than scientific, complicated things. Another reason is that most scientists don’t like being in the spotlight. They’ re mostly reserved and like to have privacy. They’ re busy people, which explains why they haven’t attracted the media the same way that performers have. Also, people have free will and the right to be interested in whatever they want to be.

However, studies have shown that young people are more interested in a scientific career as a result of COVID-19. The pandemic has also made known some scientists who have suddenly started appearing on TV and guiding us on how to get protected from this deadly virus. Maybe that is the start of the development of a different point of view which will be in favor of science for future generations.