News from the Department of the Obvious: Being Surrounded by Books is Good for Kids

April 5, 2011 — 4 Comments

Your collection doesn't have to look like this. Though I wish mine did.

Surprise! Having books around makes your kids smarter. They do better in school. They’re more empathetic human beings.

After examining statistics from 27 nations, a group of researchers found the presence of book-lined shelves in the home — and the intellectual environment those volumes reflect — gives children an enormous advantage in school.

It’s so sad that it takes a study to tell us having books around makes a kid a smarter, better person. I don’t know very many people I respect who admit to never, ever reading a book. I know a few. They have their reasons. But the smartest, best people I know all read.

I have a little nephew, my husband’s nephew, actually, and his mom recently posted pictures of him “reading” books on Facebook. His parents read all the time. They say that although he’s not even two, he loves books already–loves to look at them, touch them, hold them. I’m sure he’ll love to read, when he’s ready. I’m sure he’ll be a smart kid who’ll love learning, because he’ll have grown up in an environment when reading is valued. I feel sorry for all the little kids who haven’t got a single book in their house to inspire them toward the intellectual life themselves, toward a wonderful second life in books that can’t be replicated anywhere else.

China Mieville and “Genre” Fiction

September 9, 2010 — 8 Comments

Bill Morris has a great piece up at the Millions looking at Mieville’s books and his embrace of his status as “genre” writer, while attracting many fans outside the genre world as well.  As somebody who reads both genre and lit fiction with equal pleasure, I loved this especially:

By the time I finished reading Miéville’s novels I had come to understand that what matters most about fiction is not somebody else’s idea of what’s great, what’s good or, worse yet, what’s good for you. What matters is a writer’s ability to create a world that comes alive through its specifics and then leads us to universal truths. Miéville engages me with his writing because he is brilliant and because he cares about me as a reader, and this, I’ve come to see, is far more precious than a book’s classification, its author’s reputation, or the size of its audience. As the late Frank Kermode said of criticism, Miéville understands that fiction has a duty to “give pleasure.”

Read the whole thing here.