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Bulletin Board
- This week I used two new resources for disposing of barely used books. Through Operation Paperback, I shipped 29 books off to a USO library in Kuwait. And thanks to Books for Soldiers, four history books are on their way to a member of the Air Force in Iraq and six relatively recent novels and a copy of To Kill A Mockingbird are heading for a camp in northern Afghanistan. I figure books are a welcome diversion for someone far away from home and family. Keep these organizations in mind if you have books (or money) to donate.
- While I’m not a particular fan of the genre, Lee Child, America’s current bestselling author, will be at the local B&N Tuesday evening for a reading and signing. Child’s 61 Hours, set in South Dakota, debuted this week at the top of the NYT fiction hardcover bestseller list and second on USA Today‘s Top 150 Best-Selling Books list.
Blog Headline of the Week
Interesting Reading in the Interweb Tubes
Bookish Linkage
Nonbookish Linkage
- It’s not official but I encourage people to support Simon Smithson’s proposal that Wednesday be the first annual Hey. Don’t Be An Asshole Today Day.
- While the UK finally recognizes it amounted to “serious professional misconduct” and yanks the license of the physician who claimed vaccines were linked to autism, the damage he caused is irreversible.
Breast enlargement is not a human right (at least in the UK).
About 40 percent of the cases in the court system of the Central African Republic are witchcraft prosecutions.
“A car insurer has asked a Canadian family to pay for repairing a broken bumper after their dog was struck by the vehicle and died.” (Overlawyered)
“Writing a bad brief takes preparation and practice.” So, lawyers and pro se litigants should take heed of the dozens of tips in “Writing Bad Briefs: How to Lose a Case in 100 Pages or More.”
Who’d a thunk you could get a patent on a redesigned hot dog.
…if there were no bad people, there would be no good lawyers.
Charles Dickens, The Old Curiosity Shop
What books do you have next to your bed right now? How about other places in the house? What are you reading?
This item comes late today because the answer isn’t that easy. It’s more a matter of numbers. My bed not onlyhas two small headboard shelves, there’s a small bookcase next to it. This generally holds the TBR books so between the two there’s enough that I don’t want to bore people with a list of titles. Suffice it to say that as of this posting there’s 57 books bedside.
Aside from the large bookshelves scattered throughout the house, there is also a bookshelf next to the chair in our front room that I usually read in. It tends to contain library books or newer books I intend hope to get to in the near future. It also usually contains the book I am currently reading, which is now Hans Fallada’s Wolf Among Wolves. Currently, there’s 17 books on those shelves, along with a variety of magazines.
Now particularly in light of my last post about reading challenges, this could be an appropriate time to whine about the number of books again far exceeding the amount of time available for reading. But I decided that I shouldn’t really complain given that the complete review‘s Michael Orthofer noted on the site’s blog that “3607 days passed between the time I received a review copy of [Mongo Beti’s The Story of the Madman] and when I finally got around to reviewing it.”
Thanks, Michael. Now I don’t feel quite so bad about all those books waiting for me. I’m hoping it won’t take me nearly 10 years to get through them. Then again, you never know, you know?
A bibliophile of little means is likely to suffer often.
Pablo Neruda, Memoirs
It looks like my reading challenge efforts are more than a little weak this year. If you take a gander at the list of them to the right, there’s two I’ve done nothing toward. And the others aren’t get much better.
In one — a challenge I came up with — I’ve only read one book (although I am reading another largely on my Blackberry during occasional down moments). When it comes to the Notable Books Challenge, I’ve only read two books. (Of course, that effort is hurt somewhat by the fact that I read more than a dozen of the eligible 2009 books before the various lists were announced but they don’t count toward my goal.) And while the Random Reading Challenge looks fairly good, it ends July 1 and only one-third of the books I’ve read toward it were this year.
I don’t have any good reasons excuses for my lack of diligence. It just seems that little of what I’m reading fits within the challenges. It also doesn’t help that the four or five books I’ve bought in the last couple weeks, the review copies I’ve received and the library holds probably aren’t going to fit either. In light of the shortcomings, don’t be surprised if a couple of the challenges disappear from the sidebar.
A man ought to read just as inclination leads him; for what he reads as a task will do him little good.
Samuel Johnson, quoted in
Boswell, The Life of Samuel Johnson
Although there’s undoubtedly a self-congratulatory element at play, avid readers will say they’ve long believed what a study across 27 nations has confirmed: having books at home is extremely important for children. According to the study’s abstract, “Children growing up in homes with many books get 3 years more schooling than children from bookless homes, independent of their parents’ education, occupation, and class. This is as great an advantage as having university educated rather than unschooled parents, and twice the advantage of having a professional rather than an unskilled father. It holds equally in rich nations and in poor; in the past and in the present; under Communism, capitalism, and Apartheid[.]”
The study, conducted by researchers at the University of Nevada, Australian National University and UCLA over a 20 year period and data from more than 70,000 people. It concluded that the difference between being raised in a home without books compared to being raised in a home with a 500-book library has as great an effect on the level of education a child will attain as having parents who are barely literate (3 years of education) compared to having parents who have a university education (15 or 16 years of education).
But a 500-book library isn’t necessary. Mariah Evans of the University of Nevada-Reno said that as few as 20 books in the home still has a significant impact on how far a child goes with their education — and the more books you add, the greater the benefit.
There is, of course, some variation among the nations studied. In some countries, such as China, having 500 or more books in the home results in 6.6 years of additional education. In the United States, that figure is 2.4 years, less than the study-wide 3.2-year average advantage but still an important gain. And, perhaps not surprisingly, the study found that children of lesser-educated parents benefit the most from having books in the home.
Still, the bottom line is that getting books into the hands and homes of children is crucial for educational success. Some of us are fortunate enough to grow up surrounded by books. Not all children are so lucky. Yet because the ultimate return on our investment is so enormous, we need to figure out more and better ways to get books into the hands and homes of children.
Wear the old coat, and buy the new book.
Austin Phelps, The Theory of Preaching
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Disclaimer 
Additionally, some links on this blog go to Amazon.com. As an Amazon Associate I earn from qualifying purchases. There is no additional cost to you. Contact me You can e-mail me at prairieprogressive at gmaildotcom.
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