On Reading
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Christmas Books
There’s an opened jelly jar on the counter, dishes strewn on the table, toast crumbs everywhere. But outdoors, we’ve accomplished great things. 9″ of snow! That’s more than we ever got last year…
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BTT: Contemplation
So … you’ve just finished reading a book. For the sake of the discussion, we’ll say it was everything a book should be—engaging, entertaining, interesting, thought-provoking. The kind you want to gush over.…
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Book Sale Bounty
This week is the annual Penguin Putnam book sale here in my town. It means a whole warehouse filled with new books, sold at discount prices. I went on Saturday, the first day,…
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A culture of narrative deprivation
I heard this phrase on this story on NPR this morning, in which Yale graphic design critic Jessica Helfand discusses our “patterns of consumption” of media. Basically she critiques the short attention span…
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Guidelines in reading
Younger Daughter has been on a Disney books kick for… months now. It has brought these books onto my radar more, along with their frequent supernatural and occult ingredients: tarot cards, sorcerers, etc.…
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Library Action
I saw this at the library yesterday: A librarian action figure that features amazing push-button shushing action, a library backdrop, book truck, books, reference desk, and computer! Thank you for the smile, whoever…
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Books Read in 2011
It’s the season for lists, and here’s mine. It includes a few (4) of the chapter books I read to my daughters. Alcorn, Randy. Safely Home. Berry, Wendell. “Fidelity.” —. “The Boundary.” Blanchard,…
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Literacy and empathy
When we talk about the death of the novel, what we are really talking about is the possibility that empathy, however minimal, would no longer be attainable by those for whom the novel…
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The Lost Art of Reading
David Ulin’s Lost Art of Reading has been a thought-provoking little book. Described as a “ruminative essay,” this compact reflection on the distinctiveness of reading, and its role in an increasingly networked information…
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Recent reading: “the encroachment of the buzz”
I read this the other day in The Lost Art of Reading by David L. Ulin. I wonder if anyone else relates. This, I think, is something on which we can agree: to…
