December 3, 2014
January book group
To start off 2015 with levity, Dad is Fat by Jim Gaffigan is the book selection for January.
You can get a taste of his humor by listening to his video below about kale.
November 26, 2014
December book group meeting
Because of ice and illness, the November book group was changed to Wednesday, December 3 at DeDe's. It will be fun to have this Christmas get together and discussion. Be thinking of a month you would be available to host this winter.
Here's post bonus: I'm currently baking the crust to my sister-in-law's divine Coconut Crust Chocolate Pie baking for Thanksgiving. Click here if you'd like the recipe. See you next Wednesday!
Here's post bonus: I'm currently baking the crust to my sister-in-law's divine Coconut Crust Chocolate Pie baking for Thanksgiving. Click here if you'd like the recipe. See you next Wednesday!
October 2, 2014
free reads this week
Lia London Gubelin's books are free this week on Clean Indie Reads this week! Check them out!!!
http://cleanindiereads.blogspot.com/p/free-this-week-from-cir.html
http://cleanindiereads.blogspot.com/p/free-this-week-from-cir.html
Lia London
(satirical fairy tale)
10/1-10/3
Lia London
(satirical fairy tale)
10/1-10/3
September 30, 2014
fall reading update
October—Cleaning House: A Mom's 12-Month Experiment to Rid Her Home of Youth Entitlement
by Kay Wills Wyma
by Kay Wills Wyma
Tuesday, October 28 @ Renae's
November—The Christmas Train by David Baldacci
Wednesday, November 18 @ DeDe's
September 29, 2014
a selection of library resources
Open Access e-Book and Downloadable Audiobook Resources
In addition to all the free e-books you can enjoy from the library, there are several web sites that provide access to out of copyright or open source e-books and you can access them any time without your library card.
Project Gutenberg provides access to over 45,000 free e-books that you can download for offline reading in either ePUB or Kindle formats, or simple read online through any internet browser. They've digitized all the books themselves, including titles from Jane Austen, Mark Twain, William Shakespeare and many many more.
The Internet Archive and Open Library offers over 6,000,000 public domain e-books, including over 500,000 eBooks for users with print disabilities. You first have to register with the Open Library web site, but then you can "borrow" and read as many e-books as you like. Featured authors include Charles Dickens, F. Scott Fitzgerald and many modern authors, too!
Open Culture features access to 600+ e-books and so much more, including audiobooks, free online courses and movies.
HathiTrust is a partnership of academic and research institutions that offers millions of titles digitized from research libraries around the world. You can browse through the collection and read e-books in both desktop and mobile browsers.
Google Books allows for full text searching and browsing through millions of books and magazines that have been digitized by Google.
Books Should Be Free has e-books and audiobooks from the public domain in English and many other languages. Titles work on Android, iOS, and Kindle.
Free e-books in other languages can be found at these sites:
The International Children's Digital Library contains nearly 5,000 children's book titles in 59 different languages. It also features a kid-friendly search interface, with facets like book cover color and what type of characters the book features.
For Spanish titles, try El Libro Total, which features Spanish classics and Latin American works.
For free French downloadable audiobooks, look no further than AudioCite.
VietMessenger features Vietnamese ebooks from many genres. Simply register with the web site and download away.
September 4, 2014
fall reading selections
September—YA "Back to School" choice - Wonder by R.J. Palacio (see video in last post)
October—Cleaning House: A Mom's 12-Month Experiment to Rid Her Home of Youth Entitlement by Kay Wills Wyma
November—The Christmas Train by David Baldacci
September 30 @ Amanda's
* Bring ideas for 2015 book group reads! *
October—Cleaning House: A Mom's 12-Month Experiment to Rid Her Home of Youth Entitlement by Kay Wills Wyma
October 28 @ ?
November—The Christmas Train by David Baldacci
November 18 @ ?
May 27, 2014
Summer Reading
June—Happiness Key by Emilie Richards (or read another book by the author)
June 24 @Renae's
July—Fearless: The Undaunted Courage and Ultimate Sacrifice of Navy SEAL Team SIX Operator Adam Brown by Eric Blehm
July 29 @ Dulsanna's
August— Exodus by Leon Uris
September 2 @ DeDe's
June 24 @Renae's
July—Fearless: The Undaunted Courage and Ultimate Sacrifice of Navy SEAL Team SIX Operator Adam Brown by Eric Blehm
July 29 @ Dulsanna's
August— Exodus by Leon Uris
September 2 @ DeDe's
May 4, 2014
Great Expectations
If you'd like a little help along the way with Great Expectations,
Or you can just click through from here.
Feel free to just skip to the quiz and see how you do!
General Info
Summary & Analysis
Study Tools
April 6, 2014
April book group
The book group will meet at DeDe's on April 22. Heaven is Here is the title that will be discussed.
Here's a link to the book, and to the blog by Stephanie, the author. Also, here's a bit about her as given by Elder Jeffrey Holland in his General Conference talk October 2013:
But to her eternal credit, and with the prayers of her husband, family, friends, four beautiful children, and a fifth born to the Nielsons just 18 months ago, Stephanie fought her way back from the abyss of self-destruction to be one of the most popular “mommy bloggers” in the nation, openly declaring to the four million who follow her blog that her “divine purpose” in life is to be a mom and to cherish every day she has been given on this beautiful earth."
January 19, 2014
The Science Of Literary Escape
Here's an article you might find interesting!
The Science Of Literary Escape
JAN 17 2014 @ 8:29PM from here
Nick Carr investigates what’s going on in our brains when we read deeply:
What is it about literary reading that gives it such sway over how we think and feel and maybe even who we are? Norman Holland, a scholar at the McKnight Brain Institute at the University of Florida, has been studying literature’s psychological effects for many years, and he offers a provocative answer to that question. Although our emotional and intellectual responses to events in literature mirror, at a neuronal level, the responses we would feel if we actually experienced those events, the mind we read with, Holland argues in his book Literature and the Brain, is a very different mind from the one we use to navigate the real world.
In our day-to-day routines, we are always trying to manipulate or otherwise act on our surroundings, whether it’s by turning a car’s steering wheel or frying an egg or tapping a button on a smartphone. But when we open a book, our expectations and our attitudes change. Because we understand that “we cannot or will not change the work of art by our actions,” we are relieved of our desire to exert an influence over objects and people and hence can “disengage our [cognitive] systems for initiating actions.” That frees us to become absorbed in the imaginary world of the literary work. We read the author’s words with “poetic faith,” to borrow a phrase that the psychologically astute Samuel Coleridge used two centuries ago.
“We gain a special trance-like state of mind in which we become unaware of our bodies and our environment,” explains Holland. “We are ‘transported.’” It is only when we leave behind the incessant busyness of our lives in society that we open ourselves to literature’s regenerative power.
That doesn’t mean that reading is anti-social. The central subject of literature is society, and when we lose ourselves in a book we often receive an education in the subtleties and vagaries of human relations. Several studies have shown that reading tends to make us at least a little more empathetic, a little more alert to the inner lives of others. A series of experiments by researchers at the New School for Social Research, reported in Science in 2013, showed that reading literary fiction, in particular, can strengthen a person’s “theory of mind,” which is what psychologists call the ability to understand what other people are thinking and feeling. “Fiction is not just a simulator of a social experience,” one of the researchers, David Comer Kidd, told The Guardian newspaper; “it is a social experience.” The reader withdraws in order to connect more deeply.
JAN 17 2014 @ 8:29PM from here
Nick Carr investigates what’s going on in our brains when we read deeply:
What is it about literary reading that gives it such sway over how we think and feel and maybe even who we are? Norman Holland, a scholar at the McKnight Brain Institute at the University of Florida, has been studying literature’s psychological effects for many years, and he offers a provocative answer to that question. Although our emotional and intellectual responses to events in literature mirror, at a neuronal level, the responses we would feel if we actually experienced those events, the mind we read with, Holland argues in his book Literature and the Brain, is a very different mind from the one we use to navigate the real world.
In our day-to-day routines, we are always trying to manipulate or otherwise act on our surroundings, whether it’s by turning a car’s steering wheel or frying an egg or tapping a button on a smartphone. But when we open a book, our expectations and our attitudes change. Because we understand that “we cannot or will not change the work of art by our actions,” we are relieved of our desire to exert an influence over objects and people and hence can “disengage our [cognitive] systems for initiating actions.” That frees us to become absorbed in the imaginary world of the literary work. We read the author’s words with “poetic faith,” to borrow a phrase that the psychologically astute Samuel Coleridge used two centuries ago.
“We gain a special trance-like state of mind in which we become unaware of our bodies and our environment,” explains Holland. “We are ‘transported.’” It is only when we leave behind the incessant busyness of our lives in society that we open ourselves to literature’s regenerative power.
That doesn’t mean that reading is anti-social. The central subject of literature is society, and when we lose ourselves in a book we often receive an education in the subtleties and vagaries of human relations. Several studies have shown that reading tends to make us at least a little more empathetic, a little more alert to the inner lives of others. A series of experiments by researchers at the New School for Social Research, reported in Science in 2013, showed that reading literary fiction, in particular, can strengthen a person’s “theory of mind,” which is what psychologists call the ability to understand what other people are thinking and feeling. “Fiction is not just a simulator of a social experience,” one of the researchers, David Comer Kidd, told The Guardian newspaper; “it is a social experience.” The reader withdraws in order to connect more deeply.
January 4, 2014
January host + lending library
Amanda volunteer to host book group on January 28. Please let her know then if you'd be interested in hosting during other 2014 months.
Also, click on the "lending library" tab for information on a service the book group is launching in 2014!
Also, click on the "lending library" tab for information on a service the book group is launching in 2014!
January 3, 2014
January host?
We need to schedule hosts for winter book groups. If you are interested in hosting any month January through April, please let Dulsanna or Amanda know. The dates are listed under the schedule tab. Thank you! It would be great if we could have these done at least a month in advance, so the information could go in the RS bulletin as other than TBA.
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