2011 June - Better World Books Blog - Book Reviews, Author Interviews, Community Outreach & more

Funds Raised for Global Literacy:

$10,184,799.20

Books Re-Used or Recycled:

63,271,794

June Book Club

Posted by Erin on 06.29.2011 at 10:04 am

Still Alice by Lisa Genova

About the Book

Still Alice is a compelling debut novel about a 50-year-old woman’s sudden descent into early onset Alzheimer’s disease, written by first-time author Lisa Genova, who holds a Ph. D in neuroscience from Harvard University.

Alice Howland, happily married with three grown children and a house on the Cape, is a celebrated Harvard professor at the height of her career when she notices a forgetfulness creeping into her life. As confusion starts to cloud her thinking and her memory begins to fail her, she receives a devastating diagnosis: early onset Alzheimer’s disease. Fiercely independent, Alice struggles to maintain her lifestyle and live in the moment, even as her sense of self is being stripped away. In turns heartbreaking, inspiring and terrifying, Still Alice captures in remarkable detail what’s it’s like to literally lose your mind…

Reminiscent of A Beautiful Mind, Ordinary People and The Curious Incident of the Dog in the Night-time, Still Alice packs a powerful emotional punch and marks the arrival of a strong new voice in fiction.

Read more…

4 Comments » | Tagged Better World Book Club, Uncategorized

TOP 1O REASONS TO CARPOOL

Posted by Erin on 06.29.2011 at 8:45 am

10. It’s more entertaining to ride with friends than alone
9. You have someone to help you carry your books to the BWB Drop Box!
8. Group lunches out of the office
7. You have a live music DJ sitting right next to you
6. You can split the cost of gas and save money
5. The Earth will hug you
4. Waving at other drivers looks more sane when there’s more than one person doing it
3. Keeps you from staying at work late because you have to get your carpoolers home.
2. There is more room in the parking lot for a BWB drop box!
1. You may get to be on TV!

1 Comment » | Tagged In the News, Uncategorized

Even Better than Narnia

Posted by Erin on 06.27.2011 at 3:57 pm

*Note* The below blog post is a guest blog from our Twitter friend, Josh Starkey. This content does not necessarily reflect the views of Better World Books. We love sharing book reviews from our friends and fans and invite you to email 11@betterworldbooks.com if you are interested in covering a book or topic on the BWB Blog. Thank you, Josh!

Why is C.S. Lewis so great? It might prove difficult to answer this question in one blog post, but here’s to the ol’ college try. It helps that I get to focus on one work, Surprised by Joy. And there is really no other book by Lewis that I would rather write about.

4 Comments » | Tagged From our Friends, Uncategorized

On the Ground in South America

Posted by David on 06.23.2011 at 11:49 am

Twice a year, Better World Books sends a group to visit the people and programs that benefit from literacy funds raised. It’s a chance to see their impact firsthand, and to bring the story back to the BWB community. The next trip is about to depart – headed to South America with Worldfund where a group of BWB employees and student book drive winners will visit Peru and Chile.

2 Comments » | Tagged Literacy Trips, South America 2011, Uncategorized

Teach Twice

Posted by Erin on 06.22.2011 at 10:00 am

Check out this guest blog from our friend Trevor Burbank, Co-Founder of Teach Twice…

Books are an essential part of education and here at Teach Twice our books serve a double purpose. Imagine one book providing an education for two children, worlds apart. Teach Twice captures cultures of the world in children’s books, by partnering with community authors and illustrators from developing nations and publishing their renditions of local folklore and legends. The children’s books are then sold in the U.S. with the hope that our consumers get a glimpse of life in these vibrant cultures. The book revenues are then cycled back into the education systems of the developing community from which the stories originate.

Have your say » | Tagged From our Friends, Uncategorized

Training Teachers in Rural Guatemala

Posted by Erin on 06.20.2011 at 10:00 am

Can you imagine growing up with no electricity or running water? With parents and older siblings who do not know how to read? Needing to drop out of school as a child to work? Having teachers relatively untrained for the few years you are in school? Without adequate reading skills, children all over the world remain targets of exploitation and injustice, and the cycle of poverty continues for them and their families.

2 Comments » | Tagged LEAP, Uncategorized

Everything I know about life, I learned from (Literary) Dads.

Posted by Tommy on 06.17.2011 at 1:15 pm

June 19 is coming up, and that’s easily one of the most fatherly days of the year, if not the fatherliest. So let’s talk about lessons learned from patriarchal parental units — specifically, the ones in books. Here is a handful of Life Takeaways gleaned from dads of the printed page.

Be a good role model.
If there is one nugget of wisdom that lawyer and superdad Atticus Finch imparts to his kids by way of his actions in To Kill A Mockingbird, it’s to do the right thing no matter what. Even in the face of cantankerous townspersons and societal prejudice, Mr. Finch insists on taking the high ground instead of the easy road.

1 Comment » | Tagged holidays, Uncategorized

From our Fabulous Intern

Posted by Erin on 06.15.2011 at 10:00 am

My name is Becky Cressy, and I am the Better World Books/ Sigma Tau Delta Summer Intern of 2011! I am a rising senior at Plymouth State University, in Plymouth, NH, and have lived in New Hampshire all of my life! At PSU, I am an English Major, with an option in Teacher Certification in grades 5-12, and am also pursuing minors in both Religious Studies and Women’s Studies. When I am not in class at PSU, I am the student employee of the Women’s Studies Council, a Peer Educator and office worker at the holistic health “Wellness Center”, and a member of Sigma Tau Delta, the International English Honor Society. PSU has a “Freshman Abroad” program, and so I spent my first semester of my freshman year studying at Limerick University in Limerick, Ireland! I am the youngest of five children, and my favorite book is The Giver by Lois Lowery.

7 Comments » | Tagged From our Friends, Uncategorized

ONE SONG. ONE BOOK. ONE WORLD

Posted by Erin on 06.08.2011 at 9:00 am

Can one song change a life? Yes, it can! I have even seen a single song change a nation. Number one selling Indie rock band, Dispatch, galvanized hundreds of thousands of youth across the world to raise awareness about the injustices in Zimbabwe though their song “Elias.” (Performed below at their Dispatch:Zimbabwe benefit concert at Madison Square Garden in July 2007 with the African Children’s Choir).

“Elias” also personally changed my life. Thanks to the creative community work I led at the University of Virginia, Dispatch asked me to work with them that summer. The people I met around New England the summer after graduating have made a lasting positive impact on my life. Through Dispatch that summer, I met the African Children’s Choir and later produced a documentary on them for CNN, launching my career and achieving my dreams. I also befriended a filmmaker who I later collaborated with on “Rescued” after the devastating earth quake in Haiti.

Thanks to one band and one song, there are hundreds of thousands of young people out there just like me who have decided that we can make this world a better place. That vision is what brought me to Better World Books. Just like a song, I’ve learned, one book can make a world of difference in the life of a person, a country and our whole universe! Read more…

4 Comments » | Tagged Our Partners, Uncategorized

Celebrating Books to Africa

Posted by Erin on 06.07.2011 at 9:11 am

This weekend Better World Books (BWB) and Books for Africa (BFA) celebrated the final shipment of the successful “BWB Fund for BFA”, a ‘sub-program’ within our larger partnership. The BWB Fund has now paid for the shipment of 1.4 million books to Africa in 58 sea containers (valued at $10.9 million in books).

The “BWB Fund”, though, is just the tip of the iceberg. BWB has raised a total of over $2.3 million in funding for BFA and directly donated over 2 million books, mostly college textbooks to their efforts. So while the “BWB Fund for BFA” is concluding, BWB continues to raise funds for BFA and other non-profit literacy partners with every book sold.