How To Get Teens To Read (Tom Ashbrook, On Point)

In the age when everything is digital, quick and dazzling, what’s to engage an American teen in the world of a great book? Of deep reading? New Yorker writer David Denby set out to find out. It’s a real challenge. He worries that without meeting it we face a profound cultural loss. But he also found a way. In classrooms where passionate teachers open great books and young minds. This hour On Point, David Denby, and what it takes to make readers of the hyper-digital young. — Tom Ashbrook
Interview:
http://onpoint.wbur.org/2016/02/11/how-to-get-teens-to-read

The Best Books Of 2015 (Tom Ashbrook, On Point)

Every December we bring in book readers and sellers and critics and ask them to share their favorite books of the year. Some years there is lots of overlap on those lists. Some years, they’re all over the place. This is one of those sprawling years. Look around. Ta-Nehisis Coates makes lots of lists with “Between the World and Me.” Elena Ferrante is up there. Helen Macdonald, with “H is for Hawk.” Then it’s a free-for-all. But a rich free-for-all. Full of great reads. This hour, On Point, we put our net in the river for the best books of 2015. And it’s a good catch. Stay tuned. — Tom Ashbrook
Interview:
http://onpoint.wbur.org/2015/12/11/2015-best-books-list

How to Get Your Kindle Highlights into Evernote

Just follow these nine steps...
http://michaelhyatt.com/how-to-get-your-kindle-highlights-into-evernote.html

Banned In Boston (And Elsewhere): The American Tragedy Of Censorship

For many years, conservative religious leaders in Boston had the power to determine what people in that city could read. If a book offended the clerics' religious sensibilities, people had to go to another town to buy a copy.
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The Enduring Appeal Of The Quixotic Cervantes (Tom Ashbrook, On Point)

Four hundred years ago this year, in 1615, the Spanish writer Cervantes finished his great work “Don Quixote.” Within months, he would die. But Don Quixote has never died. The mock epic of the ramshackle knight on his bony horse tilting windmills has been one of the most durable and massively popular literary works in history. George Washington read it. And Melville and Mark Twain. Picasso. Dostoevsky. My guest Ilan Stavans calls it a cornerstone of Hispanic culture, and of the modern understanding of the human condition. This hour On Point, Don Quixote rides again.
Interview:
http://onpoint.wbur.org/2015/09/09/don-quixote-400-miguel-cervantes

The Next World War Will Be Digital (Tom Ashbrook, On Point)

It’s the classic lament of military historians. That armies are always training to fight the last war, when they should be figuring out what war will look like next time. Well, if that’s the case, a book called called “Ghost Fleet” may be the remedy. So vividly does it depict the shape of World War III — and how technologies that are part of our world already from wearable technology to driverless cars to Walmart’s cutting distribution system — may hold the keys to victory or defeat. It’s a novel by the way — fiction — but not really. That’s why it’s the novel everyone in the Pentagon is talking about. This hour On Point: “Ghost Fleet” and the face of warfare in the not so distant future. / John Donvan
Interview:
https://onpoint.wbur.org/2015/08/03/world-war-iii-cyber-war-ghost-fleet

Free book vending machines installed in low-income areas in an attempt to get books into homes.

Now, Jet Blue Airways is launching a pilot program in Southeast D.C. that aims to get books into homes. Starting Wednesday, July 8, their Soar with Reading program will stock three vending machines throughout the area with free books for kids.
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The Blistering Satire Of Jonathan Swift (Tom Ashbrook, On Point)

Jonathan Swift could wield satire like maybe no one else in the history of the English language. He put Gulliver in the land of the Lilliputians in “Gulliver’s Travels” and sent up the mean, absurd smallness of so much human nature. He put the bones of children in stewpots in “A Modest Proposal” and skewered human immorality. That essay, nearly 300 years old, still hurts to read today. Still cuts. “I hate and detest the animal called man,” Swift wrote. And what made him? This hour On Point: a new biography shares the life and times and view of Jonathan Swift. / Tom Ashbrook
Interview:
http://onpoint.wbur.org/2015/05/11/biography-jonathan-swift-leo-damrosch

TIL of a Malawian teenager who taught himself how to build a windmill out of junk

...and bring power to his village. He then went on to build a second, larger windmill to power irrigation pumps. He did this all from books he read in the library...
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Reader recommendation: All God's Dangers

Monitor readers share their favorite book picks. ... Read more

Remarkably easy ways to read more books in 2015

You've likely spent the last few days tossing around ideas for a New Year's resolution. If you've landed on something that involves reading more, writ...  Read more

10 excellent books you might have missed in 2014

Which 2014 books were so good that a critic would gladly read them again on his own time? Danny Heitman shares his list. ... Read more

Borrow free e-books from your library with OverDrive and 3M Cloud Library

"...Public libraries, centuries-long suppliers of physical books on loan, have in recent years also started lending out digital books for their patrons to read on their computers and mobile devices..."

http://www.macworld.com/article/2851914/borrow-free-e-books-from-your-library-with-overdrive-and-3m-cloud-library.html#tk.rss_all

Let's discuss literary science fiction. What sci-fi books would you consider to be "literary"?

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