Reading Opens Our Minds To The World Around Us, Taking Us To Places Even Though We're Only Within Four

Reading opens our minds to the world around us, taking us to places even though we're only within four walls.

One real benefit of reading I rarely hear anybody mention is how much more interesting life becomes when you read a lot. It depends what you’re reading, of course, but most (good) books will teach you something you didn’t already know, and even if you have to give the book back to the library, you get to take that much with you. A lot of people talk about things they wish they’d studied in school–I’ve done it, too–but it’s a nice consolation prize that you can always pick up a book and learn something new. And as that library in your brain collects more volumes, everything around you gains new resonances, new context, and new connections which make your lived experience richer. In quarantine alone I’ve read about religion and politics and history and evolution and computer science and astrophysics without even leaving my house and it’s already a more interesting world. 

"Stories can cross the barriers of time, past, present and future, and allow us to experience the similarities between ourselves and through others, real and imagined."

— Andrew Stanton, PIXAR screenwriter, from his TED talk: The Clues to a Great Story

Trivia Tuesday #3

Bookworm vocabulary: Abibliophobia is the fear of running out of reading material. Bibliosmia is the love of the smell of old books. Tsundoku (Japanese) means to let reading materials pile up in one's home and never read them.

In fact, it's the best way of living life

Strolling aimlessly in a bookshop is selfcare

do you have any wlw books that star women of colour?

i do!

girls of paper and fire by natasha ngan

girl serpent thorn by melissa bashardoust

take a hint, dani brown by talia hibbert

the bone shard daughter by andrea stewart

the space between worlds by micaiah johnson

the true queen by zen cho

empress of forever by max gladstone

falling into place by sheryn munir

waiting on a bright moon by jy yang

the avant-guards by carly usdin & noah hayes

that could be enough by alyssa cole

abbott by saladin ahmed

a dead djinn in cairo by p djeli clark

the stars and the blackness between them by junauda petrus

the henna wars by adiba jaigirdar

you should see me in a crown by leah johnson

burning roses by s l huang

yellow rose by yoshiya nobuko

don’t date rosa santos by nina moreno

clap when you land by elizabeth acevedo

shatter the sky by rebecca kim wells

the good luck girls by charlotte nicole davis

in the vanishers’ palace by aliette de bodard

once ghosted, twice shy by alyssa cole

afterlove by tanya byrne

buuza!! by shazleen khan

motor crush by brenden fletcher

not for use in navigation by iona datt sharma

ninefox gambit by yoon ha lee

a blade so black by l l mckinney

mangos and mistletoe by adrianna herrera

patsy by nicole dennis benn

escaping exodus by nicky drayden

we set the dark on fire by tehlor kay mejia

the weight of the stars by k ancrum

Trivia Tuesday #1

My biggest bookworm pet peeve is when other people open their books way too wide. I weep over white lines in the book's spine.