Announcing Our First Digital Badge Earner

Announcing Our First Digital Badge Earner

To certify her learning in a Books@Work program, Patti Doud completed the requirements for a digital badge, part of Mozilla’s Open Badge system. The experience of the learning itself, along with the opportunity to reflect on that learning through the digital badge program, was extraordinary for Patti. It not only exposed her to new books, created lasting relationships with colleagues and gave her access to professors with whom she otherwise wouldn’t have interacted; Books@Work changed the way that Patti reads.

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The Beauty of the Paperback

The Beauty of the Paperback

There is something compelling and enduring (even if not literally!) about the paperback. It is the affordable, reliable, available book for the everyman. While serialized literature was a feature of nineteenth century newspapers, and while the concept of the free public (and sometimes lending) library dates to even earlier, the mass availability of serious literature in book format largely came with the advent of the paperback.

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Reasons to Read

Reasons to Read

Capria Jaussen, our Operations Coordinator, reflects on her history with books and the power of reading a variety of interesting texts. She writes, “What I hear from people participating in Books@Work seminars continues to solidify my belief in the power of a book’s great characters, meaningful concepts and challenging writing to transform readers.”

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Books for Which I Am Thankful

Books for Which I Am Thankful

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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The Nobel Prize’s Power to Lift Authors From (Relative) Obscurity

The Nobel Prize’s Power to Lift Authors From (Relative) Obscurity

Regardless of the focus of their coverage of the Nobel Prize announcement, most American news outlets mentioned Patrick Modiano’s relative obscurity outside of France. Obscurity does not always – or generally – make great literature, and well loved and well known works often have considerable value. But literary prizes like the Nobel have the power to change what we read, rescuing titles that may have been previously inaccessible to us, and empowering us to consider new points of view.

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A Text at Work: “The Secret Life Of Walter Mitty”

A Text at Work: “The Secret Life Of Walter Mitty”

To add to your summer reading, we are offering James Thurber’s “The Secret Life of Walter Mitty” as our latest text at work, a tale of an “everyman” who escapes from his daily life through elaborate fantasies of bravado and adventure. This story was recently part of a seminar at the Maple Heights City Schools in Maple Heights, OH. When discussing the story, program participants explored the role of fantasy in their own lives, realizing that Walter Mitty may not be as strange as he first appears.

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Meet Your New Trainer

Meet Your New Trainer

Athletic victories do not come easily, as we all know. Performing requires countless hours of practice, conditioning, and hard work. In his 1854 Walden, Henry David Thoreau made an impassioned plea for what we might call the athletic reading of challenging books. For many people, Thoreau is remembered as the lone cabin-dweller enjoying direct contact with nature. If we remember Thoreau only for his ecological consciousness, however, we miss one of the most compelling defenses of active literacy in American literature.

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A Text at Work: Kurt Vonnegut’s “2BR02B”

A Text at Work: Kurt Vonnegut’s “2BR02B”

Kurt Vonnegut’s satirical, often dark and usually humorous novels are both popular and complex. His somber yet fantastical vision of the world was born out of harsh personal experience. Most notably, as a young man Vonnegut enlisted to fight in World War II, where he was captured by the German army. As a prisoner of war, he survived the fire bombing of Dresden. This experience would become the source material for Slaughterhouse Five, one of his most important works.

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How Does Reading Affect the Brain?

How Does Reading Affect the Brain?

There is nothing quite as engaging as getting lost in a good book. We talk about becoming one with the characters, absorbed in the story – even feeling an odd sense of loss when we have finished the book and our lives move on. As we absorb ourselves in the story, what is really happening inside our brains?

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