Books & titles

Have you ever thought of a better title for a book, than what it received from its author? Well, people behind this site certainly have. Check it out for some (funny) alternatives.

Quote of the day

‘what you have at work is a whole range of people coming together who didn’t choose to work together. Of course there will be differences. Now, I hope I am the type of boss who appreciates differences, but not everyone has the same attitude.’
‘Isn’t that a pessimistic view of work?
’Not at all. Just realistic. And if it’s realistic, you just need ways to cope with different situations.’

(The Boss by Andrew O’Keeffe, 2006, p.55)

Goodie! Book list!

…and since I more often borrow (from the library) then buy, I need options – in case the one I wanted in the first place is not on the shelf when I need it.
So thanks to Execupundit for posting Amazon’s list of 100 best books of 2010 here.

Bookless libraries (responding to Cultural Offering.com)

What makes a library? The building? The signage maybe? Neither.  It’s the books, because a container is defined by its contents. And if books are offered in a digital format on platforms such as the Kindle or the iPad, it’s not a library anymore, rather a memory farm…

How about the home? With the arrival of various digital platforms what benefits could it possibly have to still keep collecting real books in the home? Check out this article from USA Today for some very interesting facts on those benefits…

‘The U.S. Department of Education recently undertook a monumental project called the Early Childhood Longitudinal Study, which tracks the progress of more than 20,000 American schoolchildren from kindergarten through the fifth grade. Aside from gathering each child's test scores and the standard demographic information, the ECLS also asks the children's parents a wide range of questions about the families' habits and activities. The result is an extraordinarily rich set of data that, when given a rigorous economic analysis, tells some compelling stories about parenting technique.

A child with at least 50 kids' books in his home, for instance, scores roughly 5 percentile points higher than a child with no books, and a child with 100 books scores another 5 percentile points higher than a child with 50 books. Most people would look at this correlation and draw the obvious cause-and-effect conclusion: A little boy named, say, Brandon has a lot of books in his home; Brandon does beautifully on his reading test; this must be because Brandon's parents read to him regularly.

But the ECLS data show no correlation between a child's test scores and how often his parents read to him.’

Convinced about the goodness of owning/ having books yet?

Cultural Offering.com: Bookless libraries

If you haven’t read it yet…

Do read the Millennium Trilogy by Stieg Larsson. If you want to find out more before you do, read this. 
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