You might have noticed books on a shelf in your public library labelled “bibliotherapy.” You might have read about a bibliotherapy display in a bookstore. What the heck is this bibliotherapy again? Are you supposed to read books or attend group sessions? Lie on a couch? Would picking up a book help when your mind … Read More
Does a book’s main character always have to be likable? If you think back on your favorite main characters, many were almost surely ones you liked, or at least admired or related to on some level. Even villains are sometimes not totally unlikable, especially when they have a powerful quality or a character flaw that … Read More
The below was first written for a project funded by the American Library Association, for a pilot project using reading as a way to address issues of addiction. For more on the project, see here; for more information on bibliotherapy, see here. Addiction is, among many other things, bewildering and isolating. It’s an enormous and … Read More
Bibliotherapy, or guided reading, is defined as using books from a list created under the guidance of a subject expert in order to address a therapeutic need. It has been shown to help people when reaching a crossroads and facing critical decisions. A good book offering solace, enlightenment, and inspiration may become a factor in … Read More
If this story doesn’t speak to you, you are lucky. If this story doesn’t speak to you yet, it will. According to the Alzheimer’s Association, more than 6 million Americans are living with Alzheimer’s Disease, the most common form of dementia. A progressive brain disease, Alzheimer’s actually starts decades before the first signs appear. Symptoms … Read More
Matapris oli. The only sentence I remember from my one-semester course of an endangered Finno-Ugric language called Mansi, as part of the Master’s program at the Kossuth Lajos University (KLTE), Debrecen, Hungary at the end of the 1970s. To fulfill the requirements in diachronic linguistics, we had to pick one language from the Finno-Ugric language … Read More
It’s actually not that hard: find one and start reading! OK, that was a little glib––when we talk about how to read a poem, we’re talking about how to process a poem as we read it. Often people worry that they’re missing something when they read a poem, some decoder ring that would help them … Read More
Spring break and books? The idea of reading recommendations is so obvious that it really annoys me that it didn’t occur to me. Following Julie’s lead, we decided that, instead of adding another assignment to our hectic lives, we would choose to write about books we had recently read. I know, reading a new title … Read More
Note: we are reposting a series of pieces written to accompany the ALA-funded Reading for Recovery Project. The following was originally published in the March 2016 issue of the Information Services News, Rutgers Center of Alcohol Studies Author’s note: the following abridged essay is about a pamphlet published as A Present for Women Addicted to … Read More
Note: we are reposting a series of pieces written to accompany the ALA-funded Reading for Recovery Project. The following was originally published in the December 2015 issue of the Information Services News, Rutgers Center of Alcohol Studies The therapeutic process for alcohol addiction has a rich and longstanding relationship with narrative. Even the uninitiated know … Read More