Friday News: new words, benefits of bedtime reading, book babies, and the “Lord of the Books”
Publishing Newsauthors / Books / Columbia / dictionary / learning / Libraries / OED / reading / science of reading2 Comments
From mic drops to manspreading: an Oxford Dictionaries update -Well, it’s that time again – new words have been added to the Oxford Dictionaries, including the OED. There are some pretty good ones this year, depending on your definition of good. Manspreading might be my favorite, although butt-dial is pretty awesomesauce, too (and WTF is swole?).
You may remember mansplain from last year’s update. It’s now joined by the noun manspreading: ‘the practice whereby a man, especially one travelling on public transport, adopts a sitting position with his legs wide apart, in such a way as to encroach on an adjacent seat or seats’. If you’re a gentleman reading this on the bus … can we suggest you arrange your legs considerately? Rly.
Manic pixie dream girl has been added from the world of film criticism: find out more in our video post.
Other informal terms in this update include brain fart, bitch face, bruh, butthurt, fur baby, MacGyver, mkay, rando, and swole. –Oxford Dictionaries Blog
The Science Behind How Bedtime Stories Help Kids – I don’t think it’s a secret that reading to kids has intellectual and emotional benefits. But apparently scientists are only now really looking at what kind and how these benefits work. The short answer is that reading to kids helps build their vocabulary and helps their brain become better at learning in the future.
The left side is where word comprehension, language, and imagery are processed. The study suggests that the more kids are read to, the more connections they make between words and objects. These new connections literally change their brain, preparing them academically and socially, Tzipi Horowitz-Kraus, study coauthor and program director of the Reading and Literacy Discovery Center at Cincinnati Children’s Hospital Medical Center, told Yahoo Parenting earlier this month.
Story time has nonacademic benefits, too. Reading helps relax kids (hence the point of reading to them at bedtime), and the close physical interaction of lying on or near a parent helps them feel secure and connected. –Yahoo! Parenting
My unloved ‘book children’: A writer’s lament – Novelist Andrea White’s essay on how her “book children” are her “flesh and blood,” with an equally complicated relationship to them as parents often have with their human children. It’s an interesting piece, because the way she runs with the metaphor seems to expose its hyper-invested, hyperbolic perversity. But it also makes me wonder how many authors share some of the feelings White gives voice to, and how much these emotional ties shape the way authors respond to reader reception, both good and bad.
I will love my biological children forever, but some of my book children, I no longer love. I keep these under the bed. That sounds horrible, but they live happily as far as I can tell, existing not even on bread and water but simply on dust balls. The few times I have taken them out over the years, a single minute spent in their company is too much. They tend to overuse adjectives, run on and on, and not have a clear point. I shove them roughly back under the bed for another decade or so.
Good mothers love all of their biological children the same, but not so, book mothers. I love my successful book children best. Although they’ve mostly retired now, these children have met people and accomplished things without my help. Strangers occasionally compliment me on how interesting these book children are or how fun they are to be with. I wish all my book children could be like these three.–Houston Chronicle
Colombian garbage collector rescues books for children – Get your hankies out for this one. Jose Gutierrez, who has only a second grade education, is an avid reader of authors like Gabriel Garcia Marquez and Victor Hugo, and such a lover of books that he has spent almost 20 years saving thrown-away books for children who might not otherwise be able to afford them. They call him “Lord of the Books,” which sounds like a pretty nifty name for a Romance hero.
Gutierrez started rescuing books from the trash almost 20 years ago, when he was driving a garbage truck at night through the capital’s wealthier neighborhoods. The discarded reading material slowly piled up, and now the ground floor of his small house is a makeshift community library stacked from floor to ceiling with some 20,000 books, ranging from chemistry textbooks to children’s classics.
He says books are luxuries for boys and girls in low-income neighborhoods such as his, with new reading material at bookstores too expensive. There are 19 public libraries in Bogota, a city of 8.5 million, but tend to be located far away from poorer areas. –AOL
Awww… that garbage collector story really moved me. What a generous soul!
As for book children…
Do I love my successful stories more than my unsuccessful stories (and by successful, I mean better selling)?
Hmmm… I think I do, merely because I tend to associate the unsuccessful stories with frustration. It is challenging to write a story, thinking I’ll change lives, and then to find out no one cares.
The King of Books story is amazing, thanks for sharing. The thought of throwing away books hurts…I’ve always donated ones I don’t want — friends, libraries, goodwill etc — so other people can enjoy them. And this is so true: “There’s nothing more beautiful than having a book in your pocket, in your bag or inside your car,” he says.