Featuring a few brief but illuminating anecdotes and explanations, This is Water is a distillation of the same themes and ideas David Foster Wallace explores in his longer novels and essays. Originally presented by the author himself as the 2005 Kenyon College commencement speech, This is Water shares with readers the author’s concerns and over compassion and decency, both of which he sees as ideals threatened by the 'me first' operatives of 21st. century American culture and society. D.F.W. contends though it is easy to get caught up in the rat race that seems to have become the dominant story of many people’s everyday life, it is possible for each person to perform the extraordinary act of bucking the default, self-centered norm by acknowledging the fact that one can choose to think and live otherwise, which is to say one can choose, in the author's words, "to care about other people and to sacrifice for them over and over in myriad, petty, non-sexy ways every day." This is one of the books I recommended the most for a billion and one good reasons, one of them being that it’s just one of those books that get you thinking not just about the good life, but what it means to live a life of good.

Recommended by Dale