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Must you finish every book you’re reading?
November 13, 2014 | 10:25 am

reading on a tabletI caught this provocative essay during my vacation and wasn't able to respond to it,  but since the fine folks at Book Riot are still talking it  I figure I am fair game to weigh in, even a few days late. The question: must you finish every book you're reading? The arguments Juliet Lapidos presents in the 'yes' camp are briefly, that finishing every book you read teaches you fortitude, persistence and respect. How can I rebut against that? With three words: life is too short. That's it. That's my answer. Life is too short to read bad books. On the 'fortitude...

Readers being ‘spread too thin?’
October 28, 2014 | 2:25 pm

readersHere's one I almost missed, from the fine, and prolific, folks at Book Riot. Josh Corman wrote last week about a topic I increasingly find myself relating to these days---the reader who is 'spread too thin.' We have differing definitions on what this means, I think. Corman explains his readerly anxieties thusly: "The problems isn’t that I haven’t had time to read or that I’ve let myself get wrapped up in other hobbies, work, distractions, etc. The issue is that I have so many quality choices and so much access to books that I’m paralyzed, unable to zero in on one...

Mintel research shows ebooks encourage reading
October 17, 2014 | 2:25 pm

eBooks should be more expensiveA just-published research study from Mintel, the London-headquartered consumer market research organization, demonstrates that ebooks are driving up reading levels in the UK. "One in four (26%) consumers who have bought an e-book in the past year say that they read more than they used to because e-books cost less than paperbacks, rising to as many as four in ten (38%) 16-24 year old-book owners," states the Mintel preamble. Cost seems to be one of the key grounds, as "over a third (36%) of UK book buyers buy both e-books and print books and 42% of these say that they...

Canada’s National Reading Campaign shows reading is good for your … body?
October 10, 2014 | 12:30 pm

infographic-reading-saves-lives Canada's National Reading Campaign has partnered with CBC to pull together an infographic to show the bodily benefits of reading, as if improving your mind wasn't reason enough. For most, I'm sure that point is obvious enough, but it's good to see - literally - graphic proof that a healthy mind means a healthy body - as well, apparently, as a healthier mindset and more socially responsible attitude....

Shock, horror: Techology doesn’t destroy reading habits, younger generation not cabbages
September 15, 2014 | 12:25 pm

reading habitsIn news that will come as no comfort to Jonathan Franzen and other Luddite technophobes, the Pew Research Internet Project has found that if anything, younger Americans are more likely to read books than their immediate seniors, have more respect for offline/dead-tree sources of knowledge, and are at least as involved with their local libraries as their elders. "Over three-quarters (77%) of younger Americans have a smartphone, and many also have a tablet (38%) or e-reader (24%)," says the Pew Research summary. "Despite their embrace of technology, 62% of Americans under age 30 agree there is 'a lot of useful, important...

Former GalleyCat Editor Dishes on Reading with Kids
August 19, 2014 | 12:17 pm

reading with kidsLaura Hazard Owen has a great review up at GigaOM on an intriguing new book on reading with kids, by former GalleyCat editor Jason Boog. The book, called 'Born Reading: Bringing Up Bookworms in a Digital Age — From Picture Books to Ebooks and Everything in Between,' has strategies for reading with your kids, no matter what the medium. Boog proposes that not all reading is created equal. He proposes a reading style he calls 'Interactive Reading' where parents, well, guide the reading process through use of prompting questions, highlighting ways your child can identify with the characters and so on....

My new digital-age mantra: everything is improvable
August 13, 2014 | 4:25 pm

readingAn article came my way this morning which shook me out of my digital-age complacency. I had spent my morning RSS checking filtering out much more of the same old, same old. Case study: this GalleyCat write-up on a study which 'proves' that reading comprehension is better when students read paper texts as opposed to digital ones. With no offence to our friends at GalleyCat, this article was typical of many in this genre in that it presented its conclusion as a fait accompli---the study said that the old way was better, the end. So I was grateful to Nate at...

Karen Brodie joins UK Reading Agency
August 9, 2014 | 10:33 am

According to a press release, Karen Brodie, a former British Council senior official in the field of arts and literature, has just joined the UK literacy charity The Reading Agency as its new new head of publisher partnerships. The Reading Agency states that Brodie began her professional career in the rights departments of Harper Collins and Penguin before joining the civil service, where "for the last five years, she has lead strategic programmes and partnerships for the Iran team at the British Council and she has recently returned from a two-year posting in Istanbul as head of arts." At The Reading Agency,...

Books you know you’re never going to read
July 18, 2014 | 2:25 pm

booksOur friends at Book Riot have another fun booklist up today---Susie Rodarme writes about the 12 books she knows she's never going to read. From the article: "Obviously, if I don’t think I’m going to like a book, I won’t put it on my TBR; sometimes, though, there are books that are super-popular and thought very highly of and that look really good that I will unfortunately never get around to reading. And sometimes? Even though the books and I match on paper (heh), I just don’t want to read them, for reasons. Maybe irrational reasons. Probably irrational reasons." She thing goes...

Balanced Bibliophilocy: a new paradigm for reading
July 14, 2014 | 4:25 pm

e-booksOur friends at The Passive Voice linked to another of those tedious 'smell of paper' screeds the other day. You know the kind of article I mean: she bought a Kindle (for work! It's totally defensible!) but got seduced but the feature set and the convenience aspect, and the free public domain books and the one-clickiness of it all, and now she feels guilty. She is single-handedly killing the bookstores of the world, her ability to focus has gone out the window, her cat doesn't love her anymore and so on... And I got annoyed. And then I got bemused that...

Kids vs Paper Books: Two Stories
July 4, 2014 | 12:25 pm

paper booksI have written about kids’ books more than once for this blog, and my feeling has always been that eBooks are fine for grown-ups like me, where how it looks doesn't really matter. But for kids, I still think that how it looks does matter. And while I have seen my share of them muck around with reading apps on the iPad, I think that there is still something special about bonding with a tiny child over a printed, paper book. And two book-ish encounters this past week have inspired me to start building up my paper library again, with...

2014 Reading Challenge: June
July 2, 2014 | 10:25 am

reading challengeWe are officially halfway through the year---and my challenge! Time for a reassessment of my goals. What is working for me? What is not? Are there any goals I need to modify so that I can make the most of of the rest of the year? Let's take these one by one... Goal 1: Read 100 Books I am way behind on this---about 20 books behind! I had assumed I would make it up over the summer, when I am working less, but making up 20 books is a bit of a daunting task. I am going to let this one stand...

iOS vs Android reading habits via Oyster
July 1, 2014 | 12:25 pm

ios vs androidOyster has published an infographic on their blog showing iOS vs Android reading habits. There are a few interesting observations. Android readers are fans of J.R.R. Tolkein while iOS readers favor C.S. Lewis. iOS readers are often reading at noon and midnight while 8:00 PM seems to be the favored time for Android. iOS users read slower than Android, and for shorter periods of time. Check out the rest of the infographic and feel free to make your own observations in the comments.  ...

Three very different booklists to start your summer reading with
June 26, 2014 | 6:25 pm

summer readingIt seems that someone has unofficially declared today 'booklist day' because trhee very different booklist posts crossed my RSS feed this morning. Happy reading to you, whichever list you prefer! 1) Amazon's Top 10 Books of the Year So Far For the more traditional types, GalleyCat has this eclectic yet somewhat predictable list, led off with a John Updike biography, then covering all the genre bases with a literary novel, short story collection, historical fiction, an account of the Edward Snowden affair and some genre YA. 2) Six Indie Titles About Baseball For a more specific genre focus, IndieReader has this round-up of six...

Are books substitutable?
June 24, 2014 | 2:25 pm

booksKaetrin at Dear Author poses an interesting question: are books substitutable? She discusses the example of a patron searching for a book to read at the library. Absent a special circumstance (such as a new release by a favourite author) would one do as well as any other? Kaetrin's conclusion---which I agree with, but for different reasons than she does, is yes. While she does ascribe a higher value to books she truly loves, she doesn't know that such books will have that value until she's read them already. So, at the browsing stage, they really are all truly equal to...

High school reading 2.0
June 23, 2014 | 4:25 pm

reading on a tabletI've been sitting on this fabulous post from Book Riot for a few days because I wasn't sure I was smart enough to respond to it. The several contributors, all Book Riot regulars, pose an intriguing question: what contemporary books would you add to the high school reading curriculum to round out the classics-laden choices being taught already? As a book-lover---and a teacher---I have struggled at times with the question of what the high school English curriculum should do. I was horrified when my then-16-year-old brother told me his class had foregone the original Shakespeare in favour of a graphic novel...

Only 17% of parents say reading is a top priority this summer
June 20, 2014 | 10:25 am

man reading on grassFrom GalleyCat comes this depressing survey, from a group called Reading is Fundamental, and Macy's. They surveyed 1,000 parents and found that only 17% of them feel that reading is a top priority this summer. I am not sure what to make of it. The sample size is pretty small for this one, and the survey does also point out that parents who do make reading a priority are more likely to have kids who read. But it stuck in my mind because I had read only yesterday a thought-provoking question on Ask Metafilter that struck close to home on this...

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