Take a break today from obsessively scrolling Huffington Post and consider some escapist reading instead. How about:
1. The just-released paperback about Big Sur’s Esalen Institute. From the San Francisco Chronicle: “Esalen: America and the Religion of No Religion … the definitive intellectual history of the ideas behind the institute. … All sorts of psychologists, spiritualists [...]
Stories in Literacy:
Election Day distractions
Bringing books to the poorest corners of the globe
Embedded video from CNN Video
CNN’s Road Warriors series features
Gioia: Why having books at home matters
The Indianapolis Star features an interesting column about Dana Gioia, the Los Angeles-born poet who has dedicated his NEA tenure to getting American’s reading again. Russ Pulliam writes:
With his working-class background in California, Dana Gioia didn’t look destined to lead a national literacy movement. Of Sicilian descent, his father seldom read books. Nor did his [...]
Notebook: fREADom, “real” literacy and black humor
About Uncle Bobby: In Uncle Bobby’s Wedding a niece worries that her uncle’s upcoming wedding will change her relationship with him. P.S. The characters are guinea pigs. P.P.S. Uncle Bobby is gay. One Colorado library patron wrote the local paper to say the children’s picture book was a “slap in [her] face” and urged other [...]
Paging the new American Idol
How cool that self-described “word nerd” rocker David Cook claimed the American Idol crown last night. Remember when Simon Cowell rolled his eyes and berated Cook back in February after the singer revealed that he enjoys crossword puzzles in between performances?
Last night the smart kid with a heart of gold pulled off the biggest upset [...]
More on Literacy Month
Donna’s update: I spent Monday evening at the Downey Public Library talking about My California with a very enthusiastic group that included many of the city’s volunteer reading tutors.
Librarian Claudia Dailey mentioned a surprising statistic: that 27 percent of adults in Los Angeles County are not fully literate. So Claudia and her wonderful [...]
No magic spell
In a story on the popularity of Harry Potter, The Boston Globe previews an upcoming fall report on children’s reading by the National Endowment for the Arts that offers dismal news on the state of teen reading.
“Reading scores and rates seem to be going up in the age 7-11 range,” NEA Chairman Dana [...]
Election Day distractions
Bringing books to the poorest corners of the globe
Embedded video from CNN Video
CNN’s Road Warriors series features
Gioia: Why having books at home matters
The Indianapolis Star features an interesting column about Dana Gioia, the Los Angeles-born poet who has dedicated his NEA tenure to getting American’s reading again. Russ Pulliam writes:
With his working-class background in California, Dana Gioia didn’t look destined to lead a national literacy movement. Of Sicilian descent, his father seldom read books. Nor did his [...]
Notebook: fREADom, “real” literacy and black humor
About Uncle Bobby: In Uncle Bobby’s Wedding a niece worries that her uncle’s upcoming wedding will change her relationship with him. P.S. The characters are guinea pigs. P.P.S. Uncle Bobby is gay. One Colorado library patron wrote the local paper to say the children’s picture book was a “slap in [her] face” and urged other [...]
Paging the new American Idol
How cool that self-described “word nerd” rocker David Cook claimed the American Idol crown last night. Remember when Simon Cowell rolled his eyes and berated Cook back in February after the singer revealed that he enjoys crossword puzzles in between performances?
Last night the smart kid with a heart of gold pulled off the biggest upset [...]
More on Literacy Month
Donna’s update: I spent Monday evening at the Downey Public Library talking about My California with a very enthusiastic group that included many of the city’s volunteer reading tutors.
Librarian Claudia Dailey mentioned a surprising statistic: that 27 percent of adults in Los Angeles County are not fully literate. So Claudia and her wonderful [...]
No magic spell
In a story on the popularity of Harry Potter, The Boston Globe previews an upcoming fall report on children’s reading by the National Endowment for the Arts that offers dismal news on the state of teen reading.
“Reading scores and rates seem to be going up in the age 7-11 range,” NEA Chairman Dana [...]
Meet the authors of the California Authors Directory. Visit the directory to discover writers like Andrew Sean Greer, a San Francisco novelist whose latest book, 
You can shop online from your local independent booksellers.