INTRODUCING THE 2024 AVID READERS CHALLENGE! Have you ever participated in a reading challenge? I used to avoid them because they seemed too constricting . . . or competitive . . . or weird. However, I finally realized that I could design my own challenge that would be manageable and customizable for a wide variety of … Read more
Do you want to read through the Bible in a year? Or maybe you want to read the Bible daily, but you want to move through it more slowly. Justin Taylor points out that it takes the average person less than 10 minutes a day to read the entire Bible in one year. He also … Read more
Back when sports fans were filling out their college basketball brackets, I wrote on Facebook that these were the only brackets that interested me: [ ] ( ) { } < > I was wrong. Even better than punctuation brackets is a book bracket. Now this is a competition I can really get into! Voting … Read more
GOOGLE the banished words list for 2011. It really has the WOW FACTOR and will surely go VIRAL when THE AMERICAN PEOPLE FACEBOOK it. I had an A-HA MOMENT when my friend Jay Ryan posted it before I did. EPIC FAIL. What’s the BACK STORY to this competition? It’s not like we’re BFFs. Guess I … Read more
The Richard A. Gleeson Library in San Francisco displays a Christmas tree made out of the National Union Catalog. Read the story here. Merry Christmas, and may there be many books under your tree!
I’m heading to New York City for the IBPA Publishing University, where Seth Godin will be keynoting, and Book Expo America, the publishing industry trade show. Basically all of publishing in one huge place. I’ll have a day and a half to see the sights of New York, so I asked my Facebook friends for … Read more
Dixie the Philosopher: The claw marks in the dust jacket of “The English Philosophers from Bacon to Mill” were left by her late brother Frodo, previous occupant of the top of the bookcases. Dixie took over the role of Guardian of the Books after Frodo’s death. Occasionally she branches out and explores the shelf of … Read more
My webmaster has just redesigned this site. I love the new look! We’ve been transferring posts from my old blog, and there have been a few tech glitches, so if you run into links that don’t work or mismatched fonts, etc., that’s why. We’re continuing to update and polish. Meanwhile, just think of this as … Read more
You may have tangible wealth untold: Caskets of jewels and coffers of gold. Richer than I you can never be– I had a Mother who read to me. from “The Reading Mother” by Strickland Gillilan Happy Mother’s Day, everyone!
Researchers who studied statistics from 27 nations confirmed what book lovers have long known: a home library gives children an educational advantage. “Growing up in a home with 500 books would propel a child 3.2 years further in education, on average, than would growing up in a similar home with few or no books.”