Food is legacy, history and culture – both personal and generational. It’s an invitation to link to other human beings across lines of difference: “breaking bread together” is as powerful an image of peace as the extension of the olive branch (wait … an olive branch?). But food (and its preparation) is work – real work – that connects the heart, the hands and the soul in the most essentially human of activities.
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Katherine Paterson, winner of two Newbery Awards and two National Book Awards, wrote, “When I read . . . John Fowles’ Daniel Martin, I hear a symphony orchestra. When I read my own Bridge to Terabithia, I hear a flute solo unaccompanied.” These flute solos are valuable material–entertaining, inspiring, uplifting and thought provoking–in and of themselves. This week, board member Karen Nestor writes about the 10 children’s books she would bring to a desert island.
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The work of art helps us see the world anew–this is no less true for books than it is for a painting or sculpture. Our Marketing and Communications Director picks 10 books that are rich in detail–books that think about flowers and bees, as well as human relationships. These novels will make you laugh as well as reflect on the harder points of being human. And they will certainly entertain you.
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Books do a lot for us. They entertain us and make us feel less alone. They illuminate larger truths about the human story. They are a connection to and depiction of those combined qualities–magic and messiness–that make humans, well, human (and wonderful). Our Operations Coordinator picks 10 books to befriend, to reread, and to help you appreciate what it is to be a person.
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What would you read if you were stuck on the proverbial desert island? What would make you laugh? What would sustain you? What speaks to your experience and reminds you who you are? Program and Curriculum Director Jessica Isaac lists her picks.
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It is a truth universally acknowledged that even book lists with titles like “100 Best Novels” must be incomplete. But what gets left out? And why? Our resident Victorianist takes on The Guardian’s recent “100 Best Novels” list, pointing out its dearth of early women novelists and offering some substitutes. Her favorites? Novels about slave rebellions, Regency scandals and shocking nineteenth-century sensations.
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“For years, Ann has been reading Robert McCrum’s series for Guardian Books, the 100 best novels written in English. He did an earlier list in 2003, available here, but has updated and modified his list more recently. Ann writes that “ What’s magical about his collection is less what he chooses than how much effort he goes into chronicling why a particular selection has made his list. Mixing current and classic, British, American and beyond, his series is a literary walk through a carefully curated library, complete with synopses, analyses and personal insights.”
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In which we welcome our new Communications and Marketing Director, Cecily Hill, to The Notebook and the Books@Work team. As Cecily writes: “Books@Work is a natural extension of the work I undertook while pursuing my PhD: exploring the impact books and narrative have on life-long opportunities and our interactions with others.” Please help us welcome her to the fold.
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As the first in a series of posts on books that have made a difference in our lives, our Academic Director reflects on three books for which she is profoundly grateful this Thanksgiving – books that got her thinking in new ways. What books are you thankful for this Thanksgiving?
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