“Before you speak, listen. Before you write, think. Before you spend,
earn. Before you invest, investigate. Before you criticize, wait. Before
you pray, forgive. Before you quit, try. Before you retire, save.
Before you die, give.”
~ William A. Ward
Nielsen Book recently surveyed "a nationally-representative sample of 1,000 UK adults" and now report thatReading Increases in Lockdown (warning ! dreaded pdf format !), as:
Two in five UK adults said they were reading more books since the lockdown began, with just 10% of adults reading less, while the nation as a whole has almost doubled the amount of time it spends reading books
Sounds good ! -- but:
However, the increase in time spent reading has not necessarily led to an increase in book sales. Of the consumers surveyed, 25% said they had bought more books since the lockdown began, compared to their normal buying habits, but 18% had bought fewer books.Crime/thrillers and popular fiction are the kinds of books respondents expressed the most interest in; surprisingly: "There is currently little appetite for dystopian fiction" (as apparently, at least in this case, people are finding: if you're living it you don't need to read it ...).
“BuzzFeed Books recently asked Goodreads about the historical fiction books that its users have been loving lately. [Here] are 17 titles that have been getting high ratings and ample attention from the site’s many lovers of history…”
Most of us are content to avoid the underground unless we’re riding the subway or driving around in circles in a parking garage. But 21st-century explorers love to explore the secret worlds below us.
For enthusiasts like journalist Will Hunt, the darkness also offers something else: a sense of spiritual transcendence.
Hunt chronicles his travels in one of the quirkiest and most captivating books of the year: Underground: A Human History of the Worlds Beneath Our Feet.
Companies Have Figured Out It May Be Cheaper (And Easier) To Work From Home. So What Happens To Cities?
Companies are considering not just how to safely bring back employees, but whether all of them need to come back at all. They were forced by the crisis to figure out how to function productively with workers operating from home — and realized unexpectedly that it was not all bad. If that’s the case, they are now wondering whether it’s worth continuing to spend as much money on Manhattan’s exorbitant commercial rents. – The New York Times
Monday musings on Australian literature: On the Run (Aussie crime writers in America)
In yesterday’s post on the Yarra Valley Writers Festival (YVWF) crime panel, I mentioned Sulari Gentill’s intitiative which saw four Australian crime writers taking Australian crime to the USA last year. Called On the Run: Australian Crime Writers in America, it’s such an inspired project that I thought it deserved its own post, a Monday Musings post, in fact. The writers were Sulari Gentill, Robert Gott, Jock Serong and Emma Viksic, and the tour took place from over October-November last year.
MICE GET ALL THE BEST TREATMENTS FIRST: Experimental gene therapy prevents obesity, builds muscle, without exercise or dieting. Of course they also get the worst ones first.
Photographer Astrid Kirchherr, who helped create the Beatles’ image, dies at 81
The German photographer's early portraits of the Beatles in Hamburg helped define their tough but sensitive image.
11-year-old skateboarder Gui Khury has become the first person ever to land a 1080 on a vert ramp. That’s 3 full spins.
More than two decades after Tony Hawk completed the first 900-degree turn, Khury shattered a long-standing record by flying off the top of a ramp and completing three full spins in the air before landing cleanly and skating off. The manoeuvre has long been one of the holy grails of skateboarding.
