We are more than five years into the Books@Work journey and we learn so much from our participants, professors and partners as they share their personal and collective experiences with the program. But as we shape and evolve the program, certain themes persist – as if to remind us of how far we have come and how far we still have to go. We wrestle with one such theme often as we offer new books and stories to teams and groups: whether “liking” or “disliking” a particular text affects its ability to generate and support a rich and engaging discussion. In exploring this idea, we return to a post I wrote a few years ago on this very topic. In short, we at Books@Work want all of our participants to be enriched, inspired and transformed by a text and, more importantly, the discussion. We continue to believe that there are boundless learning opportunities in each and every text – even when it’s not your cup of tea.
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My first college-level literature class was called “Writing the Essay,” a required seminar meant to teach the basics of crafting an argument rooted in textual evidence. We would write three essays over the course of the class in response to novels, essays and plays we read. I entered the seminar with a chip on my shoulder. I’d always been a bookworm; I knew how to read closely, and I was confident in my writing. It’d be an easy A.
Oh, how wrong I was.
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At first glance, Maria Semple’s Where’d You Go, Bernadette might not seem like it would merit four weeks of discussion. The novel has a bright cover, featuring a sunglasses-bedecked woman and blurbs from the New York Times and young adult author John Green. “Divinely funny” and “A moving, smart page turner . . . the funniest novel I’ve read in years,” these two sources respectively proclaim. A “funny” story told from the perspective of a fifteen-year old girl, Where’d You Go, Bernadette seems like it is more appropriate for a day at the beach than a law firm’s meeting space or a college course.
And yet, the novel is much more than a coming-of-age comedy. What can popular literature teach us about self-reflection and connection with others?
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At Books@Work, one of our greatest pleasures is our discovery of books and stories that inspire vibrant conversation, different perspectives and metaphors to life and work. Here are a few we and our participants have been enjoying recently. Why not try one and start a conversation yourself?
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“I was not sorry when my brother died.” So begins Tsitsi Dangarembga’s semi-autobiographical novel Nervous Conditions, the story of Tambudzai, a teenage girl in the former Rhodesia (now Zimbabwe) who lives in two worlds: that of her parents, poor farmers who earn a meager living, and that of her aunt and uncle, whom the British colonists have chosen to receive an education in England and eventually to run the missionary school. I fell in love with Tambu in the first few pages, and as I introduce her to more readers, I have discovered that they take her to their hearts as well. This includes participants in a Books@Work group as well as college students in a “Questions of Identity” seminar.
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At Books@Work, we enjoy a great deal of exposure to wonderful books—and to the conversations and insights those books inspire.
In the spirit of summer reading, here are a few we and our participants have been enjoying recently. Why not try one and start a conversation yourself?
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When it comes to teaching, I confess that I’m a sucker for iconic texts: Shakespeare’s Othello, Mary Godwin Shelley’s Frankenstein, and Robert Louis Stevenson’s Dr. Jekyll and Mr. Hyde. Frankly, it bothers me that these authors’ fame derives from ubiquitous cultural allusions so divorced from their work. Boris Karloff immediately comes to mind when people hear the name Frankenstein. People blithely characterize someone as a “Dr. Jekyll and Mr. Hyde-type” without knowing the original story. And they refer to a talented person as a Shakespeare without having read enough of the Bard to know why he’s a genius. With the mission of connecting cultural allusions to their sources, I have introduced these texts to Books@Work readers, and several anecdotes will tell that tale of how well my approach has worked.
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Looking for something to read this weekend? We are intrigued by recent research on the importance of groups to happy, healthy workplaces. What’s more, we’re celebrating spring with reflections on literary essays and sports, sharing a favorite Books@Work book, and thinking about the relationship between language and our lived experience.
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I’ve been leading seminars at Books@Work for a couple of years now, and the book I always find myself using is Learning to Swim by Sara J. Henry. It is a great book, a rich book, and I’m teaching it for the third time. Depending upon who is reading it, the book prompts discussions about intimacy, friendship, trust and compassion—and each time I share it with a different group, I see it anew. In fact, teaching this book three times has been enlightening, as it gives me a fascinating glimpse at how our own experiences frame the way we read and interpret a story. As a result, I’ve been privy to remarkably different conversations each time.
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