The Biblio Blogazine

The graphic to the left is taken from stupidest.com. The caption is, “See how dangerous it can be when you replace an adjective with a verb?”

It’s supposed to be funny, but I see people posting signs like this all the time. I’ve seen it in stores and restaurants. I don’t read newspapers as much as I used to. It’s too maddening.

Why? The increasing amount of people who suffer from functional illiteracy.

What is even more scary are the young adults (and even some older ones) who can hardly put together an effective resume, let alone make it through the interview process coherently and with professionalism.

I never realized how bad it was until I worked at the book store. We’ve hired several times over the last year and the process was an eye opener. And not a positive one.

It is not enough to know how to read and write. To function in our society, we require the ability to be proficient with language.

Comprehension and critical thinking skills are decreasing to the point many job seekers need help to make a resume and then counseling to help them through the interview process because it isn’t enough to look good on paper – you have to back it up in person.

Whether we like it or not, we are judged on how effectively we can communicate. Through proper use of language, we instill confidence in others that we can understand and complete complex tasks, as well as capture and express ideas necessary for success.

Learning the mechanics is not enough. Learning to understand the context of what is read and how it applies to life, both personally and professionally, is as important. And we must start with our children.

Check out this study by RIF (Reading Is Fundamental).

The meta-analysis found that access to print materials:

• Improves children’s reading performance.
  Among the studies reviewed, kindergarten students showed the biggest increase in reading performance.
• Proves instrumental in helping children learn the basics of reading.
  Providing children with reading materials allows them to develop basic reading skills such as letter and word identification, phonemic awareness, and completion of sentences.
• Causes children to read more and for longer lengths of time.
  Giving children print materials leads to more shared reading between parents and children. Children receiving books also read more frequently and for longer periods of time.
• Produces improved attitudes toward reading and learning among children.
  Children with greater access to books and other print materials—through either borrowing books or receiving books to own—express more enjoyment of books, reading, and academics.

Children need as much access to printed material as they can get. Thus, families need to build and maintain a diverse home library. And remember is it not just for show. It should be one of the most visited and active parts of your home.

If there are children in your community who don’t have the means to build such a library, then check out organizations such as RIF and First Book. We all need to help each other, and our children, on the proper path to success.

It saddens me to think of what our society will be like if literacy skills are not improved. All it takes are books, and allowing children to explore their world through print as much as they do through toys.

Yep, I am going to attempt some challenges (again) this year. I couldn’t resist, and really, what bibliomaniac in their right (i.e. crazy) mind could turn down some of the gems being proposed this year.

If you haven’t checked out A Novel Challenge, you should. It’s the go-to blog to find out about challenges from all over the blogosphere.

A few of my challenges are actually projects as they are long term and/or perpetual. However, I have a couple of favorites that I’ve tried nearly every year I’ve blogged, so those are the ones I’m going to try and complete this year.

First of all, the Chunkster Challenge. I’m usually hesitant getting books over four hundred pages. Not because of the length, but because I’m unsure the author can keep me interested in their story and characters for that long. I will read them if they are highly recommended by someone I trust. I’m going to try and read four, and these are the ones I hope to get to:

• Rot & Ruin by Jonathan Maberry. Young Adult Fiction/Fantasy/Horror. 458 pages.
• Marjorie Morningstar by Herman Wouk. Literature/Fiction. 584 pages.
• Jonathan Strange and Mr. Norrell by Susanna Clarke. Historical Fiction. 800 pages.
• Ladys Maid by Margaret Forster. Historical Fiction. 558 pages.

I used to read more essays than I do now. Since I’d like to get back to adding them to my reading repertoire, I joined the Essay Reading Challenge. I still have collections from college and will be revisiting them this coming year.

A lot, if not most of the fiction I read is Historical Fiction. So this is pretty much a no-brainer to join and succeed in completing. I’ll be “Struggling With The Addiction” with 10 books. If you dare doubt me, just look at my Chunkster list. Half of them are historical fiction, and guaranteed there will be cross-overs with the other projects. The genre is my weakness.

As a personal challenge, I want to read more non-fiction this year. My goal is to read at least five: one autobiography or one memoir, two history, one in current affairs, one other which is not any of the previous listed. For the latter, I have two great books in mind, and I might just read both:

• The Barbary Plague: The Black Death in Victorian San Francisco by Marilyn Chase
  I’m a native San Franciscan, and any history related to my home town is fascinating to me. I thought I knew a lot, but never knew about this episode. AIDS wasn’t the first epidemic that affected, and were affected by, the city’s politics and culture.
• The Ghost Map: The Story of London’s Most Terrifying Epidemic–And How It Changed Science, Cities, and the Modern World by Steven Johnson
  I’ve always loved reading history books as much as historical fiction. But I haven’t read much scientific history, so I think that’s why I ended up getting both these books within a week of each other. Both of them having to do with plagues? Well, that is kinda creepy, but sometimes that’s how my reading preferences roll.

Another challenge I always have good intentions on completing, but rarely have, is to read a pre-determined amount of books that have been sitting on my shelves for an embarrassing long time. I’m going out on a limb and hoping I can read fifteen. Appropriately, this challenge is called Off The Shelf.

A new one to me this year, and the one I’m most excited over, is the Get Steampunked! challenge. I love steampunk. I do, I do, I do. I’m going for the “Geared” level at five, which should be no problem since I have that and more on my shelf. Here is a list of five, although none of these are set in stone. Except maybe the Parasol Protectorate books.

• Soulless by Gail Carriger
• Changeless by Gail Carriger
• The Affinity Bridge by George Mann
• Warlord of the Air by Michael Moorcock
• The Anubis Gates by Tim Powers

As for the remainder, they are the perpetual and long term ones I mentioned earlier:

• 1001 Books To Read Before You Die (I’ve read 53)
• Award Winners (other than the Pulitzer)
• Challenged Books
• Fill In The Gaps (a 5-year project to read 100 books)
• Notable Books
• Pulitzer Project

Whew!! What a way to set myself up for the upcoming year. Of course, whatever happens, I will continue to make reading for pleasure my first consideration and priority. Just like the pirate code, these are not as much rules as “guidelines”.

That’s my story and I’m sticking to it.

What’s yours?

Everywhere I have sought rest and not found it, except sitting in a corner by myself with a little book. – Arthur Helps

Several times this year, I found that solace; moments stolen from the hectic outside world through reading a good book.

If there are times you need to be taken away from it all, forget the bath salts and pick up one of the following. These are the books that kept the world at bay, even for just a little bit.

General Fiction/Mystery/Thriller

Don’t Breathe A Word by Jennifer McMahon
Room by Emma Donoghue

Literature/Classic

East of Eden by John Steinbeck
The Old Man And The Sea by Ernest Hemingway

Horror

The Strain by Guillermo Del Torro & Chuck Hogan
Zone One by Colson Whitehead

Fantasy

Monster by A. Lee Martinez
The Minotaur Takes A Cigarette Break by Steven Sherrill

Science Fiction

Boneshaker & Dreadnought by Cherie Priest

Juvenile Fiction

Hieronymus White: A Bird Who Believed That He Was Always Right by Jeff Ross
The Undertakers: Rise of the Corpses by Ty Drago
The Atomic Weight of Secrets by Eden Unger Bowditch
The Graveyard Book by Neil Gaiman

Young Adult Fiction

The Declaration by Gemma Malley
Delirium by Lauren Oliver

Non-Fiction

Triangle: The Fire That Changed America by David Von Drehle
Anything by Anthony Bourdain (A Cook’s Tour, Kitchen Confidential, Medium Raw, etc.)

If you don’t have these on a wish list or your TBR shelf, take a look at the links and see if they should be. I’d call myself an enabler, but hey, I read your blogs too. I owe ya.