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A personal narrative is presented in which the author being a librarian, shares how her collection of books in her personal library including "The Book Thief," "The Catcher in the Rye," and "The Cheese and the Worms," has influenced her personal and professional life.

Schools are increasingly concerned with the promotion of student wellbeing, and relatively little is known about school libraries as wellbeing supportive spaces in contemporary schools. This article draws on qualitative interview data from students and library managers to explore how students make use of the school library, and how this relates to the library as a safe space. It finds that school libraries can be highly valued for their capacity to foster belonging and sanctuary and allow exposure to books and opportunities for reading. Students also appreciated how libraries provided a space for relaxing and recharging, supporting lively and social activities as well as quietude. There was recognition of the role of supportive library staff, who created inviting and supportive environments with careful selection of furnishings and decorations. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

The article focuses on the role of Sir Walter Scott's novels, with a particular emphasis on "Anne of Geierstein," in a subscription library in Wigtown, Scotland, during the late 1820s and early 1830s. It delves into how Scott's literary works influenced the reading habits, cultural landscape, and regional identity of the local community, highlighting their engagement with both local and transnational spaces.

The cross-sectional study explores the reasons behind students' avoidance of library reading. Of the 164 participants, the research uncovers a complex interplay between personal preferences, environmental influences, and social dynamics that shape reading behaviors. Contrary to expectations, students express a preference for classrooms settings and challenge the assumed importance of quiet library environments. The influence of strict regulations on library engagement also emerges as a noteworthy finding, suggesting the need for adaptable and welcoming spaces. The acceptance of digital resources among library avoiders reflects the growing role of online platforms in education. Design recommendations emphasize creating diverse reading spaces, balancing noise zones, and integrating nature-inspired environments. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

The article focuses on the theme of reading in Shakespeare's play Antony and Cleopatra, exploring different types of reading and their significance. Topics include the parallel between the parallel between different forms of reading, the interactions between various conceptions of reading in the play and the annotated editions by George Steevens, and the relationship between reading and interpretation.

The importance of reading for school and career success is well documented, but there are countless benefits to reading for quality of life. This column explores the goal of creating lifelong readers in school libraries, the characteristics avid readers share, and ideas to develop these readers. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Since the beginning of this century, academic libraries have been at the forefront of book digitization and access. During this same period, many individuals have made the transition from reading printed materials to reading on screens, which has led to profound shifts in how libraries conceive their mission, structure their spaces, organize their resources, and allocate budgetary funding. This article explores how e-resources impact reading habits and orient readers to approach texts with a mindset of efficiency rather than contemplation. The article proposes how academic librarians can leverage the unique qualities of the physical book to encourage contemplative reading. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

This article explores the way in which, beyond some platitudes about the isolation of Spain from the reign of Philip II and the work of the Inquisition, books circulated and crossed borders, fostering a critical and sharing reading among elite circles. Specifically, we focus here on the time of the «Novatores» --between the late seventeenth and early eighteenth centuries-- to demonstrate how none of the cultural changes that took place in that period would be understandable without the movement, circulation, and social enjoyment of reading national and foreign books. And even more specifically, we look at El hombre práctico as a case study that proves the vigor of this phenomenon. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

In this essay, I employ Saidiya Hartman's method of critical fabulation to read The Woman of Colour as a fictional archive, which brings Dido, the enslaved maid of protagonist Olivia Fairfield, to the forefront of the novel. Critical fabulation requires listening for both the silences of the novel and the moments when Dido speaks out. Dido's insistence on claiming her presence within a variety of spaces--a ship, a London household, a large English estate--represents an ontological alternative to traditional notions of agency inherited from the European Enlightenment. Recognizing that our present moment exists within the time of slavery, Hartman's critical fabulation invites us to consider what radical ways of being are contained within Dido's words as well as the gaps and opacities of The Woman of Colour. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

This review considers Columbia University Press's ongoing Rereadings —an ambitious series of short books that aims to rethink both individual novels and the larger question of what constitutes "academic" criticism. Focusing on three of the four current entries in the series—Peter Coviello's reread of Thomas Pynchon's Vineland , Ivan Kreilkamp's of Jennifer Egan's A Visit From the Goon Squad , and Kate Zambreno's of Hervé Guibert's To the friend who did not save my life— many of the pressing questions that arise from these books, seen together, ultimately reflect the institutional conditions of their writing and reception. "The university press is and must continue to be a space for new thought and forms of inquiry, but what happens when the university itself cannot or will not sustain the thinkers who produce this work?" [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Defining text as anything that can be read, self-identified learner and artist Kameelah Janan Rasheed explores reading as radical communion within her multifaceted textual practice. A 2021 Guggenheim Fellow, Rasheed's work spans vast bodies of knowledge and temporalities to interrogate both the aesthetic and the limits of the text. At times producing collages with letters cut out from books in her own expansive library, and at other times posting scans from various books that are marked up with her rigorous note-taking, Rasheed approaches the text as an invitation to commune with the author in order to collectively arrive at new ways of knowing and being. Rasheed's work maps both her own hypertextual engagements while simultaneously enacting a Black feminist approach to literacy, one that recognizes Black women's textual practices as mapping geographic, corporeal, and psychological sites of resistance. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

The life and works of the beguine Marguerite Porete were transformed by fire. In 1310 Marguerite was burned alive in Paris as the first recorded "mystical heretic" of the French Inquisition. A few years earlier her book, The Mirror of Simple Souls, had also been burned in Valenciennes, with Marguerite as a witness. Her use of fire as a metaphor to describe union with God foreshadows her death. Furthermore, The Mirror's emphasis on the insufficiency of language to describe the divine echoes Marguerite's silence during her inquisitorial trial. However, these complaints against language in her book and Marguerite's own refusal to speak should not be seen as an absolute rejection of text, body, and oral expression as vehicles of divine and human encounter. Instead, they reveal a theory of performance in which life and reading cannot be easily separated into different realms of experience. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

I The Giver of Stars i By Jojo Moyes Viking, 2019 During the Great Depression, the New Deal's Packhorse Librarians program brought books to more than one hundred thousand isolated rural residents in Kentucky. Graph Books I Fiction i I Aviary i By Deirdre McNamer Milkweed, 2021 In this mystery novel that tenderly explores the characters' emotional lives, both old and young try to maintain human connection even as their lives are disrupted by corporate greed and social breakdown. [Extracted from the article]

Research demonstrates strong associations between psychosocial factors (motivation, attitudes, beliefs), outside of class behavior, and second language (L2) learning, particularly reading achievement [Briggs and Walter 2016. Read On! Extensive Reading and Young Second Language Learners' Motivation and Attitudes; Masgoret and Gardner 2003. "Attitudes, Motivation, and Second Language Learning: A Meta-Analysis of Studies Conducted by Gardner and Associates." Language Learning 53 (S1): 167–210]. Fewer studies have explored the attitudes of students studying a heritage language (HL). Mandarin Chinese is the second most commonly spoken home language among dual language learner children in the U.S. [Park, Zong, and Batalova 2018. Growing Superdiversity among Young US Dual Language Learners and its Implications. Washington, DC: Migration Policy Institute] and increasing numbers of children receive explicit Chinese instruction. Comparatively less is known, however, regarding their attitudes toward Chinese maintenance and reading or the impact on intended effort. The current study addressed language learning attitudes and motivations, language specific reading attitudes, and out-of-school language use in physical and digital environments, among 58 children ages 10–18 enrolled in Chinese school. Findings revealed that ideal self accounted for significant variance in school effort (12%), but less than previously found in other contexts. L1/L2 reading attitudes had a significant negative relationship; the more enjoyable reading in English, the less enjoyable reading in Chinese. Chinese reading activity in digital environments uniquely accounted for significant variance in school effort. Results expand our understanding of motivation variability and underscore the importance of digital environments for young learners. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

This essay reflects on the well-established debates between critique and the various modalities of "post-critique" via a pairing of Stuart Hall's seminal essay "Cultural Studies: Two Paradigms," and Eve Kosofsky Sedgwick's equally influential piece on "Paranoid Reading and Reparative Reading." Juxtaposing the structuralist to the culturalist paradigms in cultural studies, Hall's essays argue for the necessity of a continuous critical movement between attending to the structures that subject us and attending to the terrain of concrete, tenacious, and improvised historical struggle. While Sedgwick's essay is routinely cited for its endorsement of reparative reading practices, I argue that her call is not to abandon suspicion, but to engage in a similar movement, or "oscillation," between the exhaustive alertness of paranoia and the small, but sustaining, world-building practices she associates with the "depressive" position. In the second part of the essay, I turn to Ling Ma's debut novel Severance (2018) as a literary text that hones this critical movement and, more particularly, invites us to think the value of routine, repetition, and drifting as something other and more complex than the erasure of agency. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

This essay argues for the value of psychedelic experience as a framework for amplifying the social and political impacts of literature on the affective lives of readers and viewers. Psychedelics are chemical compounds that induce a hypersaturated experience of life that re presents facets of the world to us in unfamiliar, intensified form. Neurochemical studies of the psychedelically "tripping" brain suggest that the experience can have wide-reaching, long-term positive outcomes including the expansion of one's sensory apprehension of the world, a stronger ability to grapple with life's contingency and human mortality, and the mitigation of depression, anxiety, and addiction. The author identifies several crucial ways in which literary criticism and pedagogy's enhancement of cultural meaning making dovetails with the best aspects of psychedelic states, including the activation of readers' and students' aesthetic sensibilities. A psychedelically inflected criticism aims to achieve the psychedelic experience's "blossoming of mental states" by revitalizing the literary text as a site for exploring, refining, and retuning the sensorium, thereby enriching one's perceptual and imaginative capacities. The author unpacks how the insights of psychedelic experiences can shape distinct pedagogical and interpretative practices that respond to our current global political crises. This can potentially revivify the therapeutic value of the humanities as an institution invested in honing the creative and ethical faculties of generations of youth while attending to their long-term affective well-being. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

London: Reaktion Books. London: Verso. The I Review of Radical Political Economics i ( I RRPE i ) welcomes and actively recruits reviews of significant books that are of interest to I RRPE i readers. Alpha City: How London was Captured by the Super-Rich. I RRPE i publishes three different types of reviews: Reviews of individual books, both books on the following list that have been received from publishers and books not on this list that are related to radical political economics. [Extracted from the article]

Background: Considering (1) that reading proficiency is fundamental for educational success, (2) the reciprocal relationship between affective aspects of reading (e.g., reading attitude and motivation) and reading behaviour and ability, (3) the alarming decline in students' reading attitude throughout primary and secondary education and (4) the rather large group of pre‐service teachers starting teacher education with a negative reading attitude, this study used a person‐centred approach to examine the development of pre‐service teachers' reading attitude throughout teacher education and how it relates to their perceived reading ability and reading behaviour. Methods: In a sample of 128 pre‐service teachers, cluster (movement) analysis was executed at the start of teacher education and near graduation to identify different reading attitude clusters and possible changes throughout teacher education. A distinction between purpose (recreational vs academic) and context (personally vs socially oriented) was made when assessing reading attitude components. Results: Three reading attitude profiles (i.e., personally oriented, socially oriented and low attitude) were corroborated at both measurement occasions. Cluster movement analysis identified that the majority remained in the same profile over time (53–62%). When pre‐service teachers did switch profile, they most likely evolved towards the personally‐ or socially‐oriented profile (reading as a mere personal activity vs willing to interact about reading, respectively). Convergent validity evidence was found in that pre‐service teachers in the low‐attitude profile (24%) were least likely to read and perceived themselves as least competent in reading. They further appeared to be least willing to invest in reading promotion in their future school(s) of all profiles. Conclusions: It may be worrisome that about one fourth of the pre‐service teachers in this sample enters the profession with a rather negative reading attitude. Encouragingly, the majority of pre‐service teachers either retained or increased their positive reading attitude throughout teacher education. Highlights: What is already known about this topicDifferences in reading attitude are related to differences in reading behaviour and perceived reading ability.There is a declining trend in primary and secondary school students' reading attitude, starting at the end of primary school.Nearly half of all pre‐service teachers start teacher education with a negative reading attitude. What this paper adds Person‐centred movement analysis provided a basis to map the stability and change of pre‐service teachers' reading attitude profiles' throughout teacher education.Pre‐service teachers' reading attitude remains rather stable throughout teacher education and is related to reading behaviour and perceived reading ability.Almost one fourth of the pre‐service teachers graduate with a quite negative reading attitude. Implications for theory, policy or practice The urgency to address reading attitude more adequately in teacher education and to attend more closely to pre‐service teachers' individual differences in reading attitude.The importance of using a longitudinal approach to gain insight into reading attitude development throughout teacher education and preferably also during the first crucial years in the profession.This longitudinal study could be a possible step in the process of (re)designing teacher education programs and continuing professional development trajectories in relation to reading attitude. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

An encyclopaedia of feminist economics was published in 1999 (Peterson and Lewis [5]), and a review of developments during the first ten years of feminist economics was published in 2003 (Ferber and Nelson [3]). Alessandro Roncaglia has given us fundamental reflections on the methodological and conceptual canons that should be the cornerstones of a realistic vision of how economic theories have developed through time. The introduction of a feminist perspective into economic theory during the last two or three decades can be regarded as part of a general project to rethink economics, either as a revised version of neoclassical economics, or as a deep heterodox critique to neoclassical economics. [Extracted from the article]

A literary criticism of the play "Henry V," by William Shakespeare is presented. It examines the inextricability of childhood from whiteness, the white racial assemblaging highlighted by the play, racial performance and surrogation as concepts that lay the groundwork for reading the play, and the privilege of the boy in the play.

• Long-term benefits from parent-child book reading with 1–2 year olds was examined. • Out of 3547 infants and their parents from a nationally representative study participated. • Book reading predicted reading, spelling, grammar, and numeracy skills at Grade 3. • Book reading predicted reading, writing, spelling, and grammar skills at Grade 5. • Higher levels of book reading each day supported long-term literacy development. Parent-child book reading with infants is widely recommended and considered one of the most effective parent-child activities for promoting language and literacy development; however, there is limited evidence that reading books with infants (1–2 years) strengthens later literacy skills. The present study examined the long-term impact of parent-child book reading at 1–2 years with literacy, language, and numeracy skills at 8–11 years. Participants were 3547 infants and their caregivers from a nationally representative study. The number of minutes caregivers reported reading books with their infants (1–2 year) were examined with literacy, language, and numeracy skills on a national assessment program in Grades 3 (8–9 years) and 5 (10–11 years). Covariates included sex, age, race, language background, socioeconomic position, and cognition. Small and positive relationships were found between parent-child book reading at 1–2 years and reading, spelling, grammar, and numeracy scores in Grade 3 (8–9 years) and reading, writing, spelling, and grammar scores in Grade 5 (10–11 years). Infants (1–2 years) whose parents read with them for 11 minutes or more per day had stronger reading, spelling, and grammar skills in Grades 3 and 5. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

This first novel of Mexican film director, scriptwriter, poet, multi-award-winning playwright, journalist, and political activist, Sabina Berman, appeared in English translation in 2012. Berman's autistic narrator, Karen Nieto, uses notebooks and diaries to produce a memoir-style narrative that undercuts Cartesian understandings of rational human(ist) subjectivity; Nieto is embodied, and embedded in the world, then she attributes meaning. This paper argues that Berman repositions readers in relation to standard human subjectivity and values by consistently calling attention to differences between (an assumed) neurotypical reader and the representation of a neurodivergent narrator. Taking a Disability Rights perspective, Berman refuses to subsume the narrator's neurodivergence to a neurotypical plot by representing her as an autistic savant or allowing her life story to be reduced to pain and suffering through social or medicalized deficits. An enactive reading of this autistic narrative highlights differences between neurotypical and neurodivergent positions without favoring the former as a point of origin or destination thereby facilitating a revaluation of what it means to be human. It highlights embodiment and embeddedness in environment. The paper also examines stylistic features of the text's materiality that engage with echolalia and alexithymia to analyze how they enable defamiliarization to reposition readers. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]