Our (Bare) Shelves, Our Selves | New York Times
Perhaps the strongest case for a household full of print books came from a 2014 study published in the sociology journal Social Forces. Researchers measured the impact of the size of home libraries on the reading level of 15-year-old students across 42 nations, controlling for wealth, parents’ education and occupations, gender and the country’s gross national product. After G.N.P., the quantity of books in one’s home was the most important predictor of reading performance.
My sister posted a link to this article on Facebook, and it was interesting. I have often wondered myself whether how I consume books will impact my kids. I do most of my personal reading on a Kindle these days, so if Emma sees me reading, to her it probably looks like I’m using the equivalent of an iPad, and therefore she may assume I’m watching or playing something instead of reading.
The good news, I guess, is that we have a ton of books in our house, and we read with Emma on a daily basis. (We’ll start including Charlotte pretty soon; we started reading to Emma daily around the 6-month mark.)
Our Year of Living Airbnb | New York Times
While I would probably strongly dislike this type of nomadic living, I think it’s a cool concept. (The husband, and writer of this article, seems to like that lifestyle much more than his wife. I felt sympathy for her.) However, as I read through some of the comments on this article I was also clued in to the fact that Airbnb is extremely controversial in New York because of its effect on the real estate market. Interesting.
The 58 most commonly misused words and phrases | Independent
Eek! I usually pride myself on getting things (mostly) correct in the grammar department, but I’m totally guilty of misusing or misunderstanding a few of these — like disinterested, enormity, homogenous (apparently that’s not even a real word) and luxuriant. And whenever I hear people at work say “just give a verbal update,” that’s possibly an incorrect use of the word “verbal.”
Also, while I knew that the word “data” is technically a plural…I feel that like that’s an outdated use.
The article about the books and CDs is really interesting and I feel torn. We have been on a major declutter kick and have eliminated most of our books and I don’t regret it. I do read a lot of e books but also read nearly exclusively library books and plan to take our boys to the library weekly, where they can browse books and CDs. Or maybe as our boys grow we’ll start to amass a library again. I felt like our books were from a different phase of life and really random, not really the books I love. Oh and when our boys are a bit older we plan to subscribe at least to the Sunday NYTimes. And a good point to pick up actually books from the library and not just e books so they see you reading. great link, thanks!
This is a great reminder that I REALLY need to start taking more advantage of the library, particularly for kids books. (I use the library for e-books for me already.)
As for the clutter issue, I don’t usually consider books as clutter unless it’s just a really excessive amount. We probably have on the order of 1000 books in our house, mostly contained on 3 large bookcases in our bonus room and on the kids’ bookshelves. We periodically purge to make room for new items. So while 1000 seems like a LOT, I feel like it is stable and well contained.
I would say the majority of my co-workers use data correctly as a plural word. I used to use it incorrectly, but I was eventually shamed into switching. I couldn’t help but notice the involuntary shutter of the guy who sat next to me every time I said something like, “The data is . . .”
I just have to share my personal pet peeve. Babies are jaundiced or have jaundice. You cannot say a baby is jaundice. I saw and heard that all the time when I was on the internets after B and L were born – drove me nuts!
Funny, I’ve never heard that! It would bug me too.
My husband and I are in discussion about that very NYT article – mainly because we both remember being able to surf the family bookshelves as kids, dipping in and out as we pleased. It taught us to not be intimidated by books, to not be afraid of “adult” concepts that we came across, and to value the worlds that books held. As a result, he and I are both book hoarders (it doesn’t help that he’s an historian, either) and our space is fairly bursting at the seams. And I look forward to our kids reading any and all of it.
The NYT is very interesting, but I find it a glaring omission that they did not control for how often the parents read or how often they read to their children. Like Kelsey, we have gotten rid of almost all of our books. We have perhaps two dozen left. But my husband and I are both avid readers, almost exclusively in hard copy from the library. At any one time we have dozens of books out from our library–both for the kids and for us. I feel like the author was reaching when he stated that “The implications are clear: Owning books in the home is one of the best things you can do for your children academically.” Really? One of the best? Better than reading to your child? Better than creating an environment that encourages curiosity? Better than your kids seeing you read on a daily basis? If someone loves having a large home library–great!, but there are many things that would encourage reading and readers in the home that are perfectly free (and were not measured in this study). I think I am particularly sensitive about this topic because I so strongly resist the idea that we should own more things to be successful/happy/fill-in-the-blank.
Even if I don’t agree with some of the recommendations, the issues raised in the article are fascinating. What does it mean for our kids to be raised in a digital society where music and books are not material objects, but part of electronic devices? So interesting.
Thanks for sharing!
I totally, totally agree that actively reading and other things like you mentioned are way more important than just having the books. The article could and probably should have touched on that more — if someone reads it and their takeaway is that buying books and putting them on shelves will equal smarter kids…well, I think they’ll be disappointed. I do think behaviors are way more important than stuff.
I think about the implications of our digital society a lot and yeah, I find it interesting to think about digital media vs. physical. I feel like my generations (20s and 30s) was the last to only have physical media available.