Tag Archives: reading

News

Reading makes you happy

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The numbers have been tallied and it’s official, reading makes you happy (or was it you are happy so you read?). The December issue of Social Indicators Research contains the results of a 30-year University of Maryland study which kept up with 30,000+ adults. Their findings seem to be pretty straight forward:

…unhappy people watch more TV, while people who describe themselves as very happy spend more time reading and socializing.

Another interesting tidbit was that half of the unhappy television watchers felt they had too much time on their hands and the unwanted free-time just added to their woes. Whereas less than 20% of the happy reading socializers said they had extra free-time to fill.

I’m not real sure what all this says about our culture, but after studying it for 30 years, they should get some props. And to be honest, all these numbers and percentages make me grumpy. So I’m just going to go read.

Book Talk, On the Web

Check out this Reading Challenge

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I have signed up for my first ever book challenge (I feel like a grown up blogger now). I’m tossing my hat in the ring for J.Kaye’s 2009 Support Your Local Library Challenge. Basically, I’m committing to borrowing and reading 25 books from my local library. I check out a LOT of books from the library, that I almost feel like I’m cheating. I even started tagging all of my borrowed books with JCLC on LibraryThing.

Continue reading Check out this Reading Challenge →

Book Talk, On the Web

DIY Author Expo

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Ann, over at Books on the Nightstand, has produced a post that capitalizes on what I think is one of the coolest ideas floating around right now… build your own virtual book conference. Basically, she came up with a theme (books she likes right now) and she put together a collection of online videos with the authors, readings and other notes. So now you can click your way through her conference, titled Pixelated, at your own pace.

I want to do this. This could be really fun and you could tie in all kinds of content from various social media. All I need is a theme and some free time… hmmmm.

Authors, Book Talk

Looking Forward to Peter Vansittart

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I’ve never read anything by Peter Vansittart, but after reading his obit in the New York Times, I think I’m going to have to look him up (The Guardian‘s is good too). Nothing overly fancy, just sounds like good solid historical fiction writing. I mean, being compared to Golding’s Lord of the Flies is a good thing, I think.  It’s a shame that I only picked up on him due to his passing.