Yesterday's #happything was sneaking an hour reading in bed after lunch yesterday, before heading out to do the round of the bike shops. I could get very used to this time off business!

Here's a #happything I think everyone on my flist will share. It's an old one, but someone's just re-linked to it on Twitter (because Neil Gaiman has a new book of collected non-fiction out, yippee! which includes it ( Read more... )

I think we all knew this anyway, but this is a pleasing example of a rigorous scientific study which provides some convincing evidence:

Reading to and with small children - and just having lots of books at home - really does lead to greater brain development.

In this study, which was published in Pediatrics last year, small children were put in ( Read more... )

Yesterday's #happything: starting to pack up boxes of books in our bedroom for the move, and discovering in a pile under the bed several really interesting-looking ones the RG gave me for my birthday and which I'd forgotten about and have not had time to read yet!

I helped (as I do each time it happens) with Second Small Person's twice-termly class trip to the local library. The class teacher, a teaching assistant, and one or two mums ensure that 30-odd children walk safely the half mile from school to the library, and back: they all sit quietly (we hope!) on the carpet while the lovely librarian reads them ( Read more... )

I just came across this moving blog post on BookTrust's website about the power of words - both reading and writing - to help us work through the most difficult times in our lives, and thought it might resonate with some of my flist as well.

( Read more... )

Hopeless about posting at the moment (RL, RL, RL) but I absolutely had to dive in and share this.

There are many reasons why Neil Gaiman is one of my cultural heroes.  Here, in an edited version (of a lecture he gave in London on Monday night for The Reading Agency) is yet another...

Why our future depends on libraries, reading and daydreaming

( Read more... )

Second Small Person has been having The Hobbit read to him - by me, the Resident Geek, and occasionally First Small Person - at bedtime for the last few weeks. Two nights ago he went up to bed in a state of great anticipation, announcing that "The Battle of Five Armies is about to commence!A little while later, I went up to say it was time for ( Read more... )

Well, that was enormous fun.  It also bears the distinction of being the first book I have read entire on the Kindle!

(We grabbed it in Amazon's Kindle sale after Christmas, and on Friday evening we had a three-hour drive up to our in-laws in Cheshire, and it wasn't really practical to read my current paper tome while the Resident Geek was taking ( Read more... )

I rather enjoyed this article from today's Times Higher Ed:

"Baffled by the ease with which titles promising to turn world history on its head have won huge audiences despite defying logic and lacking proof, Daniel Melia laboured to divine the hidden secrets that allow anyone to identify truly 'bad books'"

Particularly interested, though not entirely ( Read more... )