Book reviews/How to encourage reading/News from book business

Protecting Freedom of Speech: Banned Books Week 2017

Posted on by Julia Tomiak / 5 Comments

Graphic courtesy of American Library Association

If you pay attention to the news, you know that we are living in a world where we must balance the right of freedom of expression with the responsibility for respecting alternative viewpoints. When someone is murdered during a protest, as Heather Heyer was in Charlottesville, when the President of the United States suggests NFL players who exercise their right to protest should be fired, we must consider when, if at all, it is appropriate to set ground rules for public speech.

In this charged climate surrounding free speech, this week the American Library Association (ALA) highlights the danger of censorship with Banned Books Week. The ALA uses this annual September event to protect open access to information and the freedom of expression. It also upholds readers’ freedom to choose.

In honor of BBW, here are a few terms that I think Word Nerds and readers should know about:

  • Intellectual freedom: the American and democratic ideal that people should be able to hold, receive, and disseminate ideas
  • Censorship: the suppression of ideas that certain people or groups find offensive
  • Informed selection: an inclusive process, by which librarians, teachers, parents, and administrators gather information about materials and determine what is suitable for the readers they serve
  • Self-censorship: a exclusive process by which individuals or institutions try to deny access to or suppress ideas and information that they find offensive
  • A challenge is an attempt to remove materials from a library or school curriculum, based on the objections of a person or group.
  • A ban is a removal of materials based on the objections of a person or group.

Usually, individuals or groups challenge books with good intentions: to protect children.  However, according to the ALA’s Library Bill of Rights, parents should be the only ones with the right and responsibility to restrict access to reading material for their children, and only their own children.  I agree with this stand.

In years past, I have featured a book review of a banned book during this week.  My life has been a little crazy lately, so I don’t have a new review for you, but here are some links to some of those reviews, should you choose to exercise your right to “informed selection”.

Happy reading!

Who I Am/Words and Technology

How Facebook Can Be Used for Good

Posted on by Julia Tomiak / 7 Comments

I have a friend who says that puppies and babies should be the only things we see on Facebook, and I tend to agree. Facebook can be a petri dish for conflict and misunderstanding. I’ve heard too many stories of friends or family members fighting over a snitty comment or a passive-aggressive unfriending. I shy away from politically provocative posts or anything that feels “planted”.  (*Cough*. Russians.) But this week, Facebook did nothing less than facilitate a miracle, or at least it brought together people from many different places to witness one.

Now this is a puppy photo worthy of Facebook. It’s on my feed. 😉

It was Saturday afternoon, and I was hot and hungry, riding home from a cross country meet and thankful that the kids on the bus were tired enough to sit with their ear buds in and their mouths closed. As I bounced along on my brown vinyl seat, scrolling through the photos of puppies and babies and the previous night’s dinners, I came across a disturbing post. My cousin was, at the very moment I read the post, being flown to a Mayo clinic for intensive treatment. Her condition was critical, and her husband was desperate.

He created a Facebook page, even though he knew my cousin would hate such a public display of her medical issues, because he needed friends and family to know what was going on, and he needed a fast and easy way to communicate with all of us. He also needed prayers. As did she. I clicked my way to the beginning of the feed and read about how my cousin had gone from slightly ill to the ICU.

Suddenly, I was even more grateful that my runners were distracted with their devices, because I didn’t want them to see their coach crying. My cousin is my age, with two beautiful children aged 10 and 13 and a wonderful husband who was trying so hard to stay faithful and strong. I could not fathom that she was so sick or that her prognosis was so bleak.

As the weekend progressed, my cousin’s husband, let’s call him “Jack”, posted regular updates. (He’s already in enough trouble with his wife for the FB page; I’m not going to compound the issue.) I don’t know if he has any experience in writing, but the words he used to share his pain and concern and, yes, even a little bit of humor, brought me and hundreds of other loving friends and family right into the ICU with him. Here is a snippet of one of his heart-rending posts:

We are crushed right now. We are crushed emotionally. We are crushed spiritually. We are numb and everything is moving in such slow motion. I write this crying what I expect are the last tears I could possibly have. But then I look at my son and he’s writhing to the left and to the right playing Temple Run on his phone and I smile.
Again – thank you to each and everyone of you. Please pray for our “Jill”. Please pray.

In his posts, Jack balanced the hard reality with humor.

I’ve also learned you have to remind a ten year old to not only shower but to put on clean clothes. Turns out he has worn the same clothes for three days. Sorry about that.

On Monday, the children who go to school with my cousin “Jill’s” kids stopped midday to pray the Rosary. I shared the “Pray for ‘Jill’” FB page with a few close friends and prayer warriors and asked them to join in.  One mother posted a picture of the children pausing during their school day to pray for my cousin.

This FB photo made me cry

And now, almost a week later, “Jack” is still posting, but thank God it’s better news. My cousin got a much needed organ transplant.  That they found a donor so quickly is truly a miracle; that she is getting better, little by little each day, is too.

My friends who I invited to pray, who have never met my cousin, continue to read Jack’s posts and share in this journey with me. I am so grateful to them for caring so much. (I also think “Jack’s” writing skill has something to do with it.)

In a public statement related to the upcoming elections in Germany, FB founder Mark Zuckerberg stated that he created Facebook to give people a voice and to bring people together. As of today, 845 people are following the “Pray for ‘Jill’” page, and we are commenting and liking and giving “Jack” the support he needs in that ICU room.

So, yes, Facebook can cause turmoil, and is probably best used for pictures of puppies and babies, but maybe it’s the place where miracles can happen too.

Thank you to “Jack” for this excellent example of using words to bring people together for something good, and thank you to my friends who follow the Pray for “Jill” feed and who have shared my concern this week.

Word Nerd Workout

Hug someone you love today (Jack’s idea) and please share other ways you’ve seen Facebook used for good.

Thanks for getting nerdy with me.

How to encourage reading

Vandals Ordered to Read

Posted on by Julia Tomiak / 4 Comments

Sure, we’ve all had required reading in school, but have you ever heard of a judge handing down a sentence to read? Well, that’s exactly what happened last year in Loudon County, Virginia.

Last fall in Ashburn, VA (northwest of Washington, D.C.), five teens spray painted swastikas, the words “WHITE POWER”, and vulgar images on the walls of the Ashburn Colored School. Black students attended school there during the era of segregation. The Loudon School for the Gifted currently owns the site, and students from that school have been restoring the historic building.

One of the teens guilty of vandalism left the Loudon School for the Gifted on “unpleasant” terms, and three of them were minorities themselves. None of the teens had a prior record with the law. Considering these facts, Deputy Commonwealth’s Attorney Alex Rueda decided the boys acted out of teenage naiveté moreso than racial hatred, so she recommended an unusual sentence, one intended to educate the boys about hate speech and the effect of their actions on the community.

When the boys pleaded guilty, they were given a sentence that included reading several books by black, Jewish, and Afghan authors, visiting the Holocaust Museum in D.C., and writing a report on hate speech. Rueda compiled a list of books based on their literary significance and content regarding race, religion, and discrimination.  The list included:

  • Night
  • The Color Purple
  • My Name is Asher Lev
  • The Handmaid’s Tale
  • Black Boy
  • A Thousand Splendid Suns
  • Cry the Beloved Country
  • The Bluest Eye

I love that Rueda focused on making this a learning opportunity for the teens. Since none had previous issues with the law, and their actions didn’t cause physical pain to anyone, it seems appropriate to focus on education over punishment. Exposing the teens to other opinions and experiences hopefully did more to influence their future behavior than community service alone. Especially now, in an era when hateful speech seems more prominent in the media, we need do a better job of understanding the people we share our communities with, and reading books about them is a good place to start.

With books, the teens experienced new ideas and perspectives in a non-threatening way. I hope they wrote papers or discussed the books with someone not only for accountability but also to help them process and absorb the ideas in the novels. Judging from the other terms of the sentence, including a research paper on hate speech, I bet they did. A good follow up might have been to meet with real people from different ethnic backgrounds and cultures for a facilitated discussion. Unfortunately, I couldn’t find any follow up news stories on the case; I would love to know how these teens responded to their sentence.

When I first heard about this story, I had concern that reading used for punishment might turn teens off of books. Hopefully, the emphasis was placed on education and understanding and the books were interesting enough to the teens to keep them engaged. Again, the focus on learning is one we can all benefit from. The Washington Post banner that hovered over the news story seemed especially significant; it said, “Democracy dies in darkness.” Hate speech and all of its iterations is a language of darkness. We must always champion understanding and promote the language of light, even if that means utilizing unusual methods to do so.

If you want to learn more about this interesting case, read

The Washington Post

The New York Times

Thanks also to my friend Nan for sharing this story.  🙂

Do you think reading fiction is a useful tool for understanding? Should it be used more often for cases like this?

Thanks for getting nerdy with me.

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

Improving vocabulary

When to Use Denounce & Renounce

Posted on by Julia Tomiak / 7 Comments

Heated events like the repeal of DACA and the North Korean missile tests have people throwing around words like “denounce” and “renounce” in the media. But these words aren’t interchangeable, and the Word Nerd wanted to know the meaning of them and a few others (like enounce and pronounce).

Don’t forget to visit Kathy at Bermuda Onion for the WWW meme!

If you, like me, like to learn about the origin and definition of words, visit the Wondrous Words Wednesday meme at Bermuda Onion. There, bloggers share interesting words they’ve learned.

All four words- denounce, renounce, enounce, and pronounce- are verbs that come from the same Latin root, nuntiare to report. The differences in their meanings come from the prefixes.

  • Denounce– to publicly pronounce someone blameworthy or evil; this is usually a very serious action, like when a president denounces the leader of another country
  • Renounce-to give up, refuse, or resign usually by formal declaration; to refuse to follow, obey, or recognize any further; examples: to renounce war,  to renounce the authority of the church, to renounce the throne.  Although definitive, this is usually a quieter, less public action.
  • Enounce– to set forth or state something in definite terms, such as a proposition (Democrats enounce a contrary opinion); to pronounce distinctly (please enounce at the microphone); this might be more familiar as “enounciate”
  • Pronounce– to declare officially or ceremoniously; (pronounce man and wife); to employ the organs of speech to produce (pronounce your name slowly)

    Whew, got all that? I think the difference between denounce and renounce is the most important and the hardest to see. Basically, to denounce is a more serious and public action against someone or something than to renounce.

Thank you to Merriam Webster for the definitions and Dean Close for the suggestions.

Word Nerd Workout

Choose which one of the four- denounce, renounce, enounce, or pronounce- fits best in the following sentences.

1) If the prince decides to _____________ the throne, he will lose his right to be king.

2) The president will ______________ North Korea’s use of nuclear missiles during the speech.

3) The attorney general has reviewed the policy and is expected to ______________ it unconstitutional.

Thanks for getting nerdy with me today!

Awesome Young Adult Books/Book reviews/Favorite Characters

Why You Must Read Mosquitoland

Posted on by Julia Tomiak / 5 Comments
Mosquitoland by David Arnold

They say a great YA novel has amazing voice, with characters who speak and think in unique and entertaining ways. Mosquitoland by David Arnold is one of those books. I love its protagonist Mary Iris Malone (aka Mim) and her musings on life as much as I love Hazel Lancaster from The Fault in Our Stars.

Premise

As the story opens, Mim is traveling by bus from Mississippi (”Mosquitoland”) to Cleveland. Her mom is sick, she’s not sure with what, and she’s on a mission to help her. But, she might also be running from her dad (”a man who has succumbed to the madness of the world”) and his new wife, who have moved Mim from her childhood home near Cleveland to one they bought in Mosquitoland for the “low, low price of Everything She’d Ever Known”.

Chapter One opens with Mim proclaiming that she is not okay, and she repeats this refrain throughout her journey as she reveals her many idiosyncrasies and curiosities. Her companions on her trip include a kind old woman who smells like cookies, a boisterous boy with mental retardation and a love for his Rubik’s cube, and an attractive young man who becomes the “Africa” to Mim’s “Madagascar”.

What I liked

Mim has an engaging voice. She’s brutally honest about herself and the people she meets, and yet she seasons her commentary with such witty humor that you can’t help but laugh as you wince at her observations.  She uses unusual, almost archaic diction, saying things like, “blimey, [the guy in seat] 17C is good looking” or “’twas always thus”.

Mim is a collection of oddities, and although this makes her feel “not okay”, it makes her relatable to readers who also see themselves as walking freak shows. She is blind in one eye because during a solar eclipse, she stared at the sun when she shouldn’t have. This blindness gives her poor depth perception and provides an apt metaphor for her inability to see the big picture. Sometimes, when she’s by herself, Mim paints lines on her face with her mom’s lipstick, a habit she refers to as “putting on war paint”. It’s a ritual that connects her to her mother and is also a window into her crazy. But, don’t we all have that thing we do when no one else is looking that is probably a little wacko?

Mim is a bit unreliable as a narrator. Sometimes she lapses into her memories and loses touch with reality. She also may or may not be taking Abilitol for the psychosis she may or may not have. Early on, Arnold exposes readers to Mim’s occasional separations from the present; it’s not always clear what is real and what is not, which compels readers to keep turning pages.

Mim makes astute observations of life. For example, when her friend Beck is questioning a decision he made, she says,

I play the What If game all the time. But it’s rigged, is the thing. Impossible to win. Asking What if? can only lead to Maybe Things Could Have Been Different, via Was It My Fault?

Later, in that same chapter, she says,

Sure, I’d love to kiss-hug-marry-hold Beck, but for now, I’m happy just to be with him. Sometimes being with gets overlooked I think.

Wow. You nailed it Mim. (And Mr. Arnold.)

What I didn’t like

Very little. Sometimes the exploits of Mim’s journey felt unrealistic, but this is the story of an emotional journey as well as a physical one, and the emotional accuracy trumps any unlikely plot points.

Recommendation

If you like John Green’s novels, or books that are a clever blend of humor and harsh reality, than you will love Mosquitoland.  This is the best YA book I’ve read in a while.

Notes on content

Some swearing and reference to suicide and sexual assault. No graphic descriptions, although a near sexual assault is appropriately disturbing.

Have you read Mosquitoland or Arnold’s second book Kids of Appetite?  What did you think?  Can you recommend any other YA titles that tell the story of a physical and emotional journey?

Happy reading!

 

 

 

 

 

 

News from book business

Good News for Printed Books

Posted on by Julia Tomiak / 4 Comments
Printed books

Are you, like me, a reader who enjoys the weight of a printed book in her hands? Do you like to fold down corners and feel the grain of paper under your fingertips? Then I have good news for you!

When e-books first came out, everyone predicted printed books would go the way of cassette tapes and Blockbuster Video Stores. (There I go, aging myself again.) But a story I heard on NPR last week has me hopeful that printed books will be around for a long time. 😉

Good News Numbers

First, some statistics. According to an article on CNN.com, in the first nine months of 2016, e-book sales dropped 18.7% while paperback sales rose 7.5% and hardback sales climbed 4.1% Sales of e-readers reached their peak in 2011 and have been dropping ever since. A Pew Research study found that 65% of Americans had read a printed book in the past year, while only 28% had read a printed book. Experts explain the trend in sales a few ways:

  • Some genres do better in printed form, including children’s books, recipe books, and coloring books (which have been hugely popular in the last few years)
  • People are trying to decrease their screen time, and that includes time with e-readers
  • You can’t give e-books as gifts

Amazon Opens Bookstores

Another good sign for the print book business: Amazon, the online giant that made the “Kindle” a household appliance, has opened up several brick and mortar book stores in the US. The NPR story on this new Amazon venture says the stores are set up to replicate the online book shopping experience Amazon users have come to enjoy. Books are shelved with their covers facing out, so they are easy to see, and are organized in familiar sections like “Most Wished For”. Prices compare to the Amazon site, with discounts for Prime Members.

Wait- even more good news!  Small independent bookstores aren’t threatened by this new Amazon sales approach because they connect with their customers other ways, like community support and author events. The stores that survive often do so because they offer services besides book sales, including cafes/ restaurants, book festivals, and even wine sales. Yet it all comes back to the books and bringing people of all lifestyles together in one place to discover and explore.

Kindle e reader
It’s been a while since I used this baby.

My kids still use their Kindles, especially when we are traveling.  It is convenient for them to load several books on each device so they know they have a good stock for the trip. I have several friends who like to get free/ cheap e-books or check them out from the library.  However, it’s been a long time since I’ve read anything on a screen, and one of my favorite gifts to give is a book.  I’m not sad to hear about the drop in e-book sales one bit!

What is your experience with e-books? Do you and the people around you still use them a lot?

Thanks for getting nerdy with me.