What are you reading?

[salsabike]

I read We Are All Completely Beside Ourselves over the winter, and really loved it..

OH! I just finished it. What an extraordinary, wonderful book.

I would just add: to those who haven't read it yet, it is better if you can read it without having read any reviews, interviews or other spoilers. It really does make a difference--so don't read these interviews yet.

[OakLeaf]

If you're interested, it was this interview with Karen Joy Fowler that originally led me to that book.

[Pax]

My ex's mom was highly educated, corporate VP, and very snobby... but she devoured romance novels. She called them "literary palate cleansers"; always made me crack up.

I'm a big fan of read whatever you want, but please read something! It forces our minds to think differently than images do, different is good.

[salsabike]

I couldn't get your link to work, Oak, so I went hunting. Was it this interview? http://karenjoyfowler.com/books/we-a...-ourselves-qa/

[OakLeaf]

No, though it covers a lot of the same ground. I see now the link was censored. The domain name is "books-l-u-t.com" without the dashes ...

[Catrin]

Witthim - thanks for the recommendation for The Bellringers Quite a good book, and I am not usually one for political thrillers that aren't set in current times.

I did look at Goodreads, and there IS an option to start up a group. I could do that if there is enough interest, but that is probably overly complicated since we have this thread.

[Catrin]

Curious what people are reading right now.

I went to the library today and walked out with quite the eclectic collection:

Terry Pratchett's Raising Steam
Virgil's Aeneid (translated by Robert Fagles)
J.R.R. Tolkein's version of The Legend of Sigurd and Gudrun

Thankfully these books can be renewed, and will need to be - especially the second two. It's been years since I've gotten into epic verse however, and I've not read the Aeneid before. I figure since I am challenging my body as I've already begun training/preparing for GS (kettlebell sport) competition that it is a good time to also challenge my brain. Epic verse is almost like another language. It is captivating in a different way than prose when it is done well. I really want to read Tolkein's translation of Beowulf but my library still has it on order. Pratchett is for lunch-time reading :-)

I also checked out a CD version of Pratchett & Gaim's Good Omen. I spend 30 minutes in the car every morning and evening and am so tired of the local radio stations and the repetitive content on NPR. I've not listened to a book for a long time.

[OakLeaf]

It forces our minds to think differently than images do, different is good.

Which of course brings up this article that's gotten so much play in the last few days.

I'd always been skeptical of Leonard Shlain's scholarship in The Alphabet vs. the Goddess - as appealing to me as many of his ideas are - but this latest research kind of reinforces it in a sideways fashion.

My attention isn't what it used to be, but I'd attributed that to other things. To reference the other thread ... might be a good reason to go back to reading on the Kindle and not having all the distractions quite so close to hand ...

[Veronica]

That's a really fascinating article.

I've been doing a lot of testing this year on the computer, it's the direction high stakes testing is going. But a few of the tests the students did paper pencil in class first. Their paper pencil grades were almost always better than those on the computer.

The testing the students have to do is crazy. Fifth graders - 10 and 11 year olds - watch a video on a topic and take notes on the computer, read two articles on the computer about the same topic and then compose an essay. The practice tests are available here. Check out the ELA performance test. It's ridiculous!

Veronica