Bookish Resolutions for the New Year

Are you hoping to improve your reading goals in 2024? I’ve compiled a few simple ways to kickstart your reading habits in the New Year!

1. Join your local public library!

Public libraries are your best (and freest) friend! If you haven’t already, you can sign up for a Brooklyn, New York, or Queens Public Library card today!

2. Try audiobooks

Audiobooks still count as reading! Audible is super popular, and you can also find free audiobooks through your local library. I use the Libby app with the Brooklyn and New York Public Libraries.

3. Check out Goodreads to find honest reviews of books

Sometimes it’s nice to see other’s opinions on books you’re thinking of reading. It can save you from buying a book you won’t end up reading.

Goodreads is also great as many reviewers recommend similar books.

4. Reread a book you remember from school

Often we don’t appreciate the classics we read in high school. Revisiting old books can kickstart your reading journey.

5. Share books with friends

Starting or joining a book club can be overwhelming. Asking a friend for a good book recommendation is less intimidating and gives you someone you discuss the book with!

6. Start with short stories

Reading a 300-page book is daunting. Short story collections will give you the satisfaction of completing a story in a much shorter time frame.

You can find short stories on practically anything, from memoirs to sci-fi, so it’s perfect for any reader’s taste.

7. Remember that all books are books.

Don’t be embarrassed by your preferred genre! Some people may enjoy Dostoevsky, but if you’d rather read romance, do it! You’re still reading!

Happy 2024 and happy reading!

[Post by Emma Larson-Whittaker, library and outreach assistant, Starrett City]

Give Thanks for Books

Thanksgiving is a special time when Americans gather with their families to reflect on what they have to be thankful for. This year especially, we have learned that each and every one of our blessings is special. 

Books play a special role in many American’s Thanksgivings experiences. Over the Thanksgiving holiday, three-fourths of Americans will read at least one book, newspaper, or magazine. And, on the busiest travel of the year, over half of Americans will be taking something to read as they travel. According to a Barnes & Noble survey, more than a quarter of Americans are taking a book as a means of getting out of those awkward conversations we often find ourselves in over the holiday.

Photo by Gabby K on Pexels.com

Whatever the reason, Americans turn to books to make their Thanksgiving extra special. Check out a book from your campus library or find an eBook to download before Thanksgiving to make your holiday a little more special. 

From our Touro Libraries family to you and yours, we wish you a Happy Thanksgiving!

This post was contributed by Michael Kahn, Librarian, Touro College School for Lifelong Education

Touro Faculty Poet Series–Part IV

We end our Faculty Poet blog series for this year with Professor Baruch November. Professor November has an MFA in poetry from Sarah Lawrence College and has taught courses in Shakespeare, poetry, and writing at Touro College in Manhattan for more than a decade. His poems and short fiction have been featured in Paterson Literary Review, Lumina, New Myths, The Forward, Jewish Journal, Poetica, and Jewish Literary Journal, and his collection of poems entitled Dry Nectars of Plenty co-won BigCityLit’s chapbook contest in 2003. His newly released full-length collection of poetry is entitled Bar Mitzvah Dreams on which he gave an interview recently.

Cover of Bar Mitzvah Dreams by Baruch November

 

What prompted you to write poetry?

My mother says I wrote a poem as early as first grade about a chicken or turkey. I have no idea what prompted that, but I wish I still had the poem because it is not easy to write a poem about a chicken or turkey. However, I didn’t start writing poetry seriously until college where I took creative writing classes with teachers who encouraged me to take my writing seriously. They made me feel like I had a talent for writing that was worth pursuing. This was a different feeling than succeeding in other types of classes because it felt like I was creating something, instead of responding to class materials. It made me feel like what we were doing in those classes was unique and individualistic, rather than conforming to the concepts experts had written in a textbook.

In what form/style do you compose your poems?

My poems are written in free verse. I need the freedom. I never write in form. I am not attracted to form but someday I might be. Now, I really don’t even read poems in form anymore, except Shakespeare’s sonnets. Furthermore, I feel like my poems tell a story or share an idea. When I was younger, I explored language more. Now, I am more interested in telling a story and sharing something meaningful. However, the effective and creative use of language is still integral to my poetry– I just feel like it has to be the delivery system for powerful ideas or narratives.

What is the role of poetry in your teaching? Or how do you think poetry has an impact on students and their learning?

Well, since I teach both Introduction to Poetry and Shakespeare, poetry has a major impact on my students. I love interpreting poetry with students. It is always interesting to hear their analysis of a poem, even if I don’t agree with it. I think the close analysis of a poem– done word by word– helps students think more carefully about their own word choices and the ideas they are sharing in their writing. I hope it makes them realize the value of each written word.

Because of the nature of the poetry in my courses, it also allows me to delve into major philosophical questions about death, genocide, and how we treat our fellow man, among other things. Death and genocide are pretty grim, but I think in order to really understand the value of life such things need to be faced, and poetry is an arena for bringing up such matters, because, as Wallace Stevens explained, the job of poetry is to intensify life. What can be more intense than those topics? I think some students cringe at talking about death, but in order to truly live a meaningful and explored life, we have to delve into all parts of it. Furthermore, I hope those poems about death affect my students in such a way that they find more value in each day they live, knowing death is there lurking in the shadows somewhere in the distant future.

Contributed by Professor Baruch November, Language & Literature, NYSCAS, Touro College.

Professor November at the 6th Annual Festival of Touro Faculty & Student Poetry Reading on April 16 at Touro’s Main campus (31st Street)

For more information on Professor November’s poems, please go to Touro Scholar.

 

Contributed by Baruch November, professor of Languages and Literature at the New York School of Career and Applied Studies (NYSCAS) at Touro College.

 

 

Best books to read on your summer vacation!

For the upcoming summer break, we asked two of our librarians to give some recommendations for thought-provoking and engaging books, all of which are available at one or more branch of the Touro College Libraries. Here’s what they had to say.

Have You Heard Any Good Books Lately? (Part 2)

Audiobooks Can Be Moving

I am a late adopter of all things technological. I am not saying I am opposed to it; it’s more like I’m not exposed to it. So when Dr. Marianne Cooper, Professor Emeritus of Queens College Graduate School of Library and Information Studies, insisted that listening to audiobooks is considered “reading”, I insisted otherwise.  I refused to believe that listening to a book was more than a shortcut taken by those either unable or unwilling to read an ACTUAL book.  Despite this, an online search revealed that while some believe listening to a book is cheating, the brain processes audiobooks and text similarly.  Good to know!  So, for the purpose of this blog posting, I decided it is time for my brain to give audiobooks a chance, and to recount my experience with them to you.

The Passover Haggadah

An Italian Haggadah

A children’s Haggadah

On Passover night we read the Haggadah. The Haggadah sets forth the order of the Passover Seder and tells the story of the Jewish Exodus from Egypt.  Haggadah comes from the Hebrew word le-hagid (“to tell”); we are commanded in the Bible to “tell” over the story of Exodus from Egypt. The Haggadah is the most popular Jewish book. There are more than 3,000 Haggadot to date and every year there are between 6 and 10 new ones, not to mention all the reprinted ones. The Haggadah has been written in many languages, including Hebrew, German, Yiddish, Spanish and Ladino. We at Touro College are fortunate to have in our collection 249 Haggadot. Most of them are located in the Women’s building (where I work), and we have some in Kew Garden Hills and at the Lander College for Men. 

November is a month to celebrate authorship

November 1st was National Author’s day. Officially adopted by the Department of Commerce in 1949, the idea for the day originated with teacher and avid reader Nellie Verne Burt McPherson, but its observance was popularized by McPherson’s granddaughter, Sue Cole, after McPherson’s passing in 1968. Cole urged people to write a note to their favorite author on the 1st to “brighten up the sometimes lonely business of being a writer.”1 These days you’re probably more likely to tweet an author you admire (official hashtag: #NationalAuthorsDay), but showing your appreciation is still encouraged.

Staff Profile: Kirk Snyder

Greetings Touro community! I would like to introduce myself. My name is Kirk Snyder, and I am the new afternoon and evening Librarian at Touro College Midwood/Flatbush. I come to Touro from New York Public Library’s Harlem Library. Though I love public libraries, I am very excited to be in an academic library where I can help facilitate students’ and professors’ research.

The Poetic Art of Weeding Books

No, not that kind of weeding! (CC image by Barbara Carr)

At the Lander College for Women’s library, an ongoing weeding project is in effect to withdraw books. This reevaluation accomplishes a number of goals. It allows the library to make room on the shelves for new materials and to recycle books to where they will do the most good, either by reassigning them to a new location or donating them to Better World Books.

Books On The Move

Empty books shelves—but not for long!

Over the summer we did a total library book “shift” at the library for the Lander College for Men.

You might ask: “Why would you do that?”

Or “Wasn’t that a lot of physical work?”  (Yes, it was.)

Or “How many books did you move?” (Over 15,000 books.)

So here is the story of why…