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Thursday Blinks

March 16th, 2006  |  Published in books  |  4 Comments

WNED lands new partner for ‘Reading Rainbow’:

“Our partnership with will preserve the educational legacy of Reading Rainbow for future generations of kids,” said Donald Boswell, president and CEO of WNED. “It brings happy closure to the long struggle to secure the funds needed to sustain the series. From this point on we can focus all of our attention on producing engaging programs that help all children develop a love of reading.”

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According to two Stanford researchers, their study links reading skills and aggression. “Students who are relatively poor readers during their first years of elementary school are more likely to show aggressive behavior later on.”
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StoryCode.com offers a novel approach to book reviews:

Here’s how it works:

Every time you finish a book, tell us all about it.
Our questions will code your experience of the story.
Our system finds matches and makes recommendations.
Books found through StoryCode will surprise and delight you.

Okay, I realize that sounds lame, but some people might like it. Personally, I don’t need any help finding new books to read.
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Speaking of new books to read, Slate is offering an exclusive online novel: The Unbinding by Walter Kirn.
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For reading or just décor, books can smarten up a room:

Books are so popular in home décor that even people who don’t read acquire them. They buy volumes by the yard at Half Price Books. They send orders off to a California book-décor specialist, who ships Danish-language books by the foot.

Yikes.
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Johns Hopkins has been awarded a $500,000 challenge grant from the National Endowment for the Humanities that will provide the Sheridan Libraries an endowment for collections and a librarian to support the university’s Leonard and Helen R. Stulman Jewish Studies Program.

Very cool news (via Rare Book News).
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Jesus must be a Victor Hugo fan: Moldy books pulled from a trash pile turn out to be rare first editions.
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Boston’s Gallery of Superb Printing is planned for May 9th.
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Everything old is new:

Don’t sound the death knell for the dying arts just yet. To paraphrase Marshall McLuhan, the guru of the electronic age: When a technology becomes obsolete, it becomes an art.

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(via the Pencil Revolution)
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Brooklyn Boy Makes Good: Charles Reznikoff, the Poet of New York:

In his moving introduction to the 1974 reading, George Oppen complains about “the length of time it has taken to notice Charles Reznikoff, not that Charles Reznikoff so far as I know cares.” Indeed, faced with the massive indifference of Official Verse Culture, Reznikoff published many of his books by himself, handsetting the type on his own letterpress. But perhaps this is finally the time for Reznikoff to be noticed; if so, that can only be a good sign for our literary culture.

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Lennart Meri, 76, of Estonia, Dies. He was trained as an historian, but known primarily as a filmmaker, writer, translator, and first post-Communist president of Estonia.

Responses

  1. Slywy says:

    March 18th, 2006at 7:21 am(#)

    Most people whose homes I’ve gone into don’t have any books, or if they do, it’s perhaps five or six coffee table art books that they’ve clearly never touched. It’s just weird.

    Of course, books are piling up in my bedroom, so maybe I’m the opposite extreme . . .

  2. theorist says:

    March 18th, 2006at 12:06 pm(#)

    I actually become depressed when I walk into someone’s home and there are no books around. I have five large, completely packed bookshelves and books are piling up in the bedroom, office, beside the bookshelves, in the living room, and in the dining room. It’s been suggested to me that I get rid of some of my books, but the fact of the matter is that I need a bigger home. Maybe I could do a home swap with non-book people?

  3. Domain says:

    October 6th, 2007at 1:53 am(#)

    I am making a point to make sure my 5 year old daughter spends at least an hour a day with me reading books. I want her to know and understand how important it is to take the time to read. The real problem for me and most of my friends is that I literally no time left in the day to do any reading for myself. I think this is why you don’t see many books in homes these days. Unless you are retired, who has time to read them.

  4. theorist says:

    December 8th, 2007at 9:11 pm(#)

    An hour sounds like a long time for a 5-year-old! But I agree that it’s an important activity.

    Honestly, I think if people don’t take the time to read, it’s a choice. We spend a lot of idle time every day that we’re not even aware of. If I’m watching tv, I read during the commercials. I read in the bathroom, at red lights, while waiting in line when running errands, while eating, and always before bed (even if only 2-3 pages). Everyone’s busy and everyone is able to make time for their priorities. Not preaching… just sayin’!

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