Recently in Reading Category
The US Read for Fun group will meet September 23 in the Loeb Room for lunch. One book has been nominated so far: I Am Number Four. There are also several new series out and doubtless some other nominations will come forth.
The LS Guys Read group will meet on September 28 during LS lunch, and there will be an interesting discussion about all the series that have added titles over the summer. Check the new library newsletter for updates on when some other books are appearing.
Mrs. Crosby and Mr. Reese have big plans for their groups this year, too. Check with them to find out!
School is up and running, and our library has seen a transformation over the summer, with new lights, ceilings, carpet, and reference shelves. We plan to add more furniture over the next two summers and remodel the computer classroom, but the biggest effort is over, and it's been well received by the community.
Book clubs will be starting in September, and we encourage anyone who is interested to join and attend. New installments of several series are out, and some major authors have published new books, so be thinking about what you'd like to read!
We saw a lot of action today: both book clubs met, we looked at our new e-readers, had a channel 13 TV crew film the US group using the e-readers, looked at the Volunteer State Book Awards ballot, talked about our books, and picked new books for next month. Whew.
The US club talked about Incarceron, which had some similarities to The Maze Runner and Hunger Games, but took on its own mythology and philosophy. The sequel, Sapphique, also sounds good based on the review of a couple of members. For next month, we chose Dark Life by Kat Falls, a book about an undersea bastion of civilization where some sinister events are occurring. Unfortunately, I can't find an e-book version (Scholastic needs to get on board!), so I'll get extra copies and have a couple at the front desk so they can be checked out over spring break.
The LS group went over Maximum Ride: The Angel Experiment and got a preview of the other books in the series from one guy who has read them all several times. We chose Incarceron, which some of the group had already started reading, for April. The Maximum Ride series and Incarceron are on the Sony e-readers but not available yet on the Nook, and we have the regular books also.
Hope everyone has a great spring break, and happy reading!
We had a good meeting today, with a lot of discussion about our book, Drums, Girls, and Dangerous Pie by Jordan Sonnenblick. The consensus was that it was a good decision to take on a realistic but funny fiction book for a change, and several of us are planning to read the sequel, After Ever After.
James Patterson has come out with a new book in the Maximum Ride series entitled Angel, so we decided to read the first book in the series, called Maximum Ride: the Angel Experiment. Our next meeting will be in March, but we'll need to meet on the 23rd, since the 16th falls during Spring Break.
We revealed our new e-reader project. We now have two Nooks and two Sony Readers, and our book should be available on both (probably). We have two copies of the selection as well, so everyone should have a chance to read it in plenty of time.
On Friday, January 7, Frank Beddor came to MUS to speak, meet with students, and sign copies of his books. He gave a rousing performance in chapel and got several students up on stage to read for movie parts. I must admit that when I arranged for Mr. Beddor to visit, I had no idea that he is a world champion freestyle skier, an actor, a stuntman, and the producer of a major comedy hit movie. I just thought his Looking Glass Wars series was creative, well-written, and intelligent, and our book clubs had enjoyed reading his trilogy. Well, it was even more entertaining and enlightening than I had imagined to hear him talk about developing the idea for his books, spending five years writing the first one, and finding a variety of ways to tell the story, including the novel, the movie (which is awaiting production), an interactive computer game, a card game, and now a Broadway musical that's in development. Mr. Beddor spent hours talking with students, faculty, and library staff. He discussed one student's writing project with him and the requirements of fantasy writing: how you have to come up with a workable means to help the reader suspend his disbelief. He said he spent about two years creating the backstory and the invented world for his vision of Wonderland and pointed out that J.R.R. Tolkien had hundreds of boxes of supporting materials for his Lord of the Rings books. He encouraged the boys to explore different ways to tell their own stories through art, music, theater, and writing. Beddor was impressed with the personalities and ideas of the MUS students and said, "I like this school--I want to stay here!"
The Lower School Club met Friday, October 15. We discussed The Merchant of Death by D.J. MacHale. Only one person was almost injured during the discussion, but everything turned out fine. (We were getting animated while talking about the action in the book, and we may have had too many doughnuts and chocolate chip cookies!) We had already picked Anthony Horowitz's Stormbreaker for next month, but in addition to that, we decided to read the new Rick Riordan book, The Lost Hero. When we start a book in a series, members can choose to continue the series on their own, or not.
We also talked about what we like and don't like about audiobooks. The voice can add to or detract from the experience, particularly when the reader has to mimic different genders, ages, and accents.
I also was lucky enough to live across the street from my parents’ college and have access to the children’s reading room, set up for teachers in training, and filled with books for all ages. My friend Debra and I spent one summer, when we were 9 or 10, riding our bikes to that library every day and reading right there in that room—no need to check anything out! We had a good public library in town and we used it too, but the college library was right there and the reading room was a little hideaway we had all to ourselves.
When I try to imagine a world without physical books, where everything is digital and electronic, I always wonder how our kids would be exposed to the stories? Would they choose to pick up an e-reader and scroll up and down on a tiny screen, or would they just default to the video game and television set sitting right in front of them? How would they be aware that the books exist? I know they say that a person’s educational success can be predicted by the number of books in their parents’ house,* so what would happen to the kids’ intellects if there were no physical books to look at? That’s one of many reasons I think the physical book will never go away, although e-books are fine for some purposes.
Wal-Mart is said to have a display system called “Actionality” where likely impulse purchases are put right out in front of the consumers in order to attract their attention and sell more items, whether they were intending to get those things or not. Books need to be out in front of kids, where they can see them, pick them up, and flip through them. Else they will probably never know that a lot of these books ever existed.
*“Home library size has a very substantial effect on educational attainment, even adjusting for parents’ education, father’s occupational status and other family background characteristics,” reports [a] study in the journal Research in Social Stratification and Mobility. “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."
