Poetry and Perception

I just wrote this to my poetry analysis students:

Hi All,

Don't forget the close reading notes in the resources folder on smartsite.

To get an A grade, you need to talk about interactions between levels. In a way, you are starting to reassemble the poem after having broken it down.

This is congruent with what we know about perception, in which objects seem to appear as manifolds, not as pixels that are then scanned. Some researchers at Berkeley recently reconstructed brain images from brain wave scans using a computer that searched YouTube for similar images based on interpretations of the wave patterns. You can see them on YouTube, it's rather uncanny.

What we learn from this is what some philosophy (phenomenology) already knows: you perceive things as a whole, in a single shot. You don't assemble pixelated breakdowns of things. You see a cup of coffee: the whole cup is right there, in your mind.

It's a bit tricky doing this with a poem--or with anything--because we tend to be unconscious of the physical level(s) of reality. We just want to walk through it, drink it, allow it to work on us unexamined.

Yours, TM

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My New Year’s Resolution: Read More

Posted by Cheryl Pon, Strategist, Google eBooks

One of the best things about winding down the holidays is looking forward to ushering in a new year with a fresh outlook. Whether you’re planning to spend more time with family and friends, improve your wellbeing, learn something new, or make use of your brand new PC, smartphone, tablet or e-reader, you might put reading more books at the top of your New Year's resolutions like I did.

If you’re resolving to add more smiles to your daily life and another spring in your step, take a gander at Shawn Achor’s seven core principles of positive psychology in his book, The Happiness Advantage. If you’re looking to tap into more positive energy, discover how to achieve fulfillment and success in Daniel G. Amen’s Change Your Brain, Change Your Life.

If you’re aiming for healthy eating or to get fit in 2011, the Google eBookstore has an abundance of books to help you well on your way. Try out a nutrition program based on lean meats and fish and other foods that made up the diet of our Paleolithic ancestors in Loren Cordain’s The Paleo Diet, or learn how to balance your metabolism in Mark Hyman’s Ultrametabolism. Run faster and farther with less effort with Danny Dreyer’s ChiRunning: A Revolutionary Approach to Effortless, Injury-Free Running.

You can also start the new year off right by catching up on popular 2010 titles. Check out life, Mark Twain-style, in Autobiography of Mark Twain: The Complete and Authoritative Edition, Volume 1, read up about the recent economic crisis in Michael Lewis’s The Big Short, or immerse yourself in a coming-of-age story with Patti Smith’s memoir Just Kids.

As you dive into the new year, delve into some New Year's resolution Google eBooks.

From all of us on the Google Books team, Happy New Year!

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Google Books at the Boston Book Festival

Posted by Abe Murray, product manager, Google Books

Tomorrow, Sat. 10/16, the second annual Boston Book Festival is expected to attract more than 25,000 attendees to celebrate, discover and learn about books. We’ll be there to celebrate with them because we see books as important keys to human culture, knowledge and progress.

Bostonian Googlers will be there all day, hosting book sales and author signings in our booth in Copley Square outside of the Trinity Church alongside an Internet lounge for people who want to share their experiences with the rest of the world.

We hope those of you nearby can attend the Boston Book Festival -- which is free and open to the public -- and drop by our booth anytime between 10 AM and 8 PM.

Here’s the book sales and author signing schedule. Happy reading!

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My New Toy

I got a new toy. Well, actually, it is a reading accessory. I was reading blogs and saw a bookmark that could keep track of the time spent reading mentioned. That intrigued me.

I recently participated in a couple of read-a-thons when knowing how much time I actually spent reading would have been useful. I wandered over to Amazon and searched. This is what I found: The Mark-My-Time digital bookmark.

This bookmark will either count up time or count down time. It is actually advertised as a way for kids (and parents) to keep track of time spent reading because research has shown that 20 minutes a day of reading time for kids has measurable benefits in school performance.

I will certainly be using the count up function much more frequently since I have no problem reading at least 20 minutes a day. I used it today for the first time when I read The Time Weaver by Shana Abe. I learned that I read the book in 4 hours and 4 minutes of actual reading time. I first set the mode to count up. Then I just pressed the red button each time I began reading and pressed it again each time I stopped. I also found that I started and stopped reading a lot. I would go off for a drink of water or check out an inning of a baseball game or go check on the laundry.

The Mark-My-Time bookmark comes in a variety of cool colors and is quite inexpensive. I paid $8.45. I chose hot pink for mine because sometimes I want to be a girly-girl.  I recommend it for both reluctant readers and avid readers who want to know how much time they are really spending reading.

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My Bookshelves

After seeing the wonderful vlog that The Story Siren did of her bookshelves, I was inspired to do something similar of my own. I have been teaching my students how to use Photostory 3 for Windows so that is the tool I used. I decided to go without my narration (because I can't remember where I put my microphone and didn't want to go looking for it.)

I hope that you enjoy it.



In case you are wondering why we start and end in the office. Here is the story.

The authors starting with A used to be in my Family room, letters continued into the Master Bedroom, and the end of the alphabet was in my Office. However, the Family Room shelves were overcrowded and I needed to shift books around.

After packing away the very old TBR books (which are more the 8 years old), I had space in my Office.  I could have moved everything backwards but decided to work smarter, not harder. I shifted the leftover recent TBRs that didn't fit in the two bookcases in my living room to the end of the Office shelving. Then I shifted from the end of the alphabet until I had filled two of the three bookcases there. The first bookcase in my Office now holds the As and some of the Bs which gave me room to spread out the rest of my crowded Family Room shelves without greatly disturbing the books in the Master Bedroom.

BTW, I am not a big beer drinker. We had to pack up my HS Media Center last fall so that the ceiling could be repaired and new carpeting laid and a local beer distributor gave us bunches of boxes to use. They are really a perfect size for loading with books. You can get lots of books in a box and can still lift the box. I brought some home when we unpacked because I knew I had to reorganize my book collection.

The plastic crates in the closet (and a few more) used to hold my recent TBR books but I could never find anything. The crates weren't well organized and what I wanted was usually in the bottom layer.

I do have all my books listed on my LibraryThing account (username kmartin802) and I have set up a collection for those books that are in storage by box. So, if I decide I need one of those books, I can find out just which box it is in.

I am feeling so organized. What do you think?

Edited to add:

Oops, I forgot about this pile. These are new adult books that arrived during my Christmas Break and unread story collections. They will not be sitting on that chair in my living room by Monday but right now I don't know where I am going to pile them.

Ok, got it! Here is a revamped picture of the top of my entertainment center in the living room. I hate blocking my boy and girl reading but that will encourage me to read those books faster.

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The Journey of Reading

http://dearauthor.com/wordpress/2009/02/10/the-journey-of-reading/

This entry really describes my relationship with reading only in much more fluent and lyrical language than I could ever use. Check it out.

I have heard Lois McMaster Bujold talk about, and read her thoughts about, the author/reader relationship too and thought her ideas were also very insightful. I just wish I could remember where I read it!

I agree with both.

Successful readers must have active participation in what they are reading. The author puts the words on the paper and they mean something to them. The reader reads the words and they mean something to them. The somethings aren't always the same or even similar. It is part of the wonder of reading for me.

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Summer Days

I love summer!! Summer gives me a chance to try to catch up on the books I have been adding to my ToBeRead baskets during the year. Summer gives me a chance to spend time with my family. Summer gives me a chance to think and reflect on the past year. And later in the summer, gives me a chance to plan for the up-coming year.

Thus far, I'm still in the wind-down stage of summer. I've been buried in a book most of my days off so far and have read 18 books already since June 6. I have been using the LibraryThing 50 Book Challenge group to keep track of my summer reading. I have been averaging about a book a day so far this summer which should mean I'll pass 50 in mid-July if I keep reading at this pace.


I've made a couple of trips to my favorite casino. That looks like it will be a once a week thing to do. It is a fun way to spend a few hours while my brother is at work. Of course, I have to fit in my casino time around another favorite activity. I watch the Braves play baseball on my computer thanks to MLB.TV.


I've slept in late and stayed up late too. Because my brother generally works from 2 to 10, my brother's schedule is regularly staying up late and sleeping late. I find I adapt very easily to the same schedule. The thing I hate most about the school year is the alarm going off at 6 AM.

I love summer!!

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Area Eccentric Reads Entire Book

Area Eccentric Reads Entire Book

Hooray for eccentrics! And hooray for The Onion.

And now to practice my own eccentricity and finish reading Inda. I even brought it with me to my tax appointment and my preparer wrote down the author and title to check out for her own reading. NOTE: I am a pusher and darn proud of it!

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