What Are You Reading? | Swilley Library's Book Club

Anne Page Mosby is reading "When Languages Die"

noreply@blogger.com (Swilley Library) — Fri, 18 Apr 2008 17:00:00 +0000

Harrison, K. David, When Languages Die: The Extinction of the World’s Languages and the Erosion of Human Knowledge, New York: Oxford, 2007.

The author of When Languages Die is a linguistic anthropologist who writes descriptively about the scientific research being done with some of the 3500 “small languages” in the world, and what may be lost if or when they completely disappear. A few statistics give an overview:

In 2001 6.34 billion humans spoke 6912 languages.
Half of the world’s languages have fewer than 5000 speakers, and these are spoken by only 0.2% of the world’s population.
In 2005 204 languages had fewer than 10 speakers each, and 344 languages had 10 to 99 speakers each.
The last speakers of probably half the world’s languages are alive today. Many of them are elderly, and they live in an environment where the younger generations have decided to speak dominant languages like English, Spanish or Russian.
It is estimated that by 2101, in just 100 years, half of these minor languages will have disappeared.

This is fascinating to me because I am interested in why education is important for people, and what it means to be a literate person. Education—the gathering, use and production of data, information, knowledge, wisdom—is usually seen as improving the life of an individual. It is even thought by many to be the way out of many social difficulties such as poverty. To be educated is to be literate, commonly meant to be able to read and write. However, other types of literacies are widely discussed, for example: numerical literacy (the opposite of innumerancy), computer literacy, library literacy, health literacy, and more. So, as we contemplate “education,” why not explore “indigenous literacies,” especially when there is much value in these realms that is eroding? What is being lost involves human cultural heritage: poetry, oral history, epic tales, creation stories, jokes, riddles, wise sayings, lullabies, word play creativity, and environmental interaction.

Harrison is a professor at Swarthmore College, and you can see more of his work and teaching described at: http://www.swarthmore.edu/SocSci/dharris2/. For a visual understanding of what is happening with major and minor languages as globalization affects our lives, you may be interested to see one project that he contributes to, Enduring Voices. The project, at http://www.nationalgeographic.com/mission/enduringvoices/ displays a map of endangered and disappearing languages. It proclaims that about every two weeks a language dies, taking with it unique human knowledge that has been encoded in that language over millennia. This author, as well as other scientists, is active in the effort to record and glean information from our spoken human record, especially those that are quickly vanishing from the face of the Earth. What an intriguing book.

Anne Page Mosby, Swilley Library

Peter Otto on "Walk Two Moons" by Sharon Creech

noreply@blogger.com (Swilley Library) — Wed, 16 Apr 2008 17:29:00 +0000

You don’t think you’re too old or too wise to read a book categorized as “children’s literature,” do you? Why, after all, do people read fiction? Partly to encounter richly-developed engaging characters whose perspectives and experiences can enrich our own. Walk Two Moons, by Sharon Creech, is written from the point of view of a 13-year-old girl, Sal, who travels on a long car trip with her vibrant grandparents in search of Sal’s mother, who has left the family. Sal is at the point in her life when she’s struggling to expand her understandings of people’s complicated motivations, and we watch during the course of 280 pages as she succeeds. Parallel to Sal’s story about reconnecting with her mother is the tale she tells her grandparents about her experiences with her friend, who also has a mother who has left her family for complicated reasons that slowly emerge. The girls’ adventures as detectives lead them to meet very interesting characters as they pursue clues in mysterious Zen-like notes left for them by someone they call “the lunatic.”

The highlight of the book for me was the grandparents – how they show their love for each other and Sal, how they embrace life’s unexpected moments and turn them into happiness (at one point Grandma winds up in the middle of a jubilant Indian dance circle), and how they cope with their own past losses. I so wish these two people were real and I could enjoy their friendship and wisdom.

Walk Two Moons was awarded the 1995 John Newbery medal as the most distinguished contribution to American literature for children published in English in the United States during the preceding year.

People and scenes from the book have come to mind, sometimes unbidden, in the weeks since I finished it; I feel richer and wiser for having met these people. No words of encouragement to read this book could be too strong – and the Mercer libraries have six copies.

Peter Otto, Swilley Library

Jim Westbrook on "Killer Angels"

noreply@blogger.com (Swilley Library) — Tue, 15 Apr 2008 18:20:00 +0000

Years ago the name Michael Shaara on the Book Nook shelf caught my eye. He was my professor at Florida State University. He wrote a book titled Killer Angels, which is about the Battle of Gettysburg. It's told from very personal points of view of four of the main participants. You may have seen the TV movie Gettysburg - it is still hard to take Martin Sheen as Lee after reading the book!

Jeff Shaara, Michael's son, has picked up the formula and has written several books, including a prequel and a sequel to Angels. Jeff has also written a pair of books about the American Revolution, one about the Mexican-American War, etc. Good stuff, but does not flow as fast as a Robert B. Parker novel.

Jim Westbrook, Stetson School of Business & Economics

Roy Cummings is reading: Technical Communication by Mike Markel

noreply@blogger.com (Swilley Library) — Tue, 15 Apr 2008 15:07:00 +0000

Based on what I've read so far, I think this is a pretty good book. I appreciate the fact that it's written so most people can actually understand it, which is a far cry from most textbooks I've read... well, browsed.

I also like that it has lots of real-world examples to supplement the lessons, so much of what's discussed is not just theoretical. Many of the illustrations are excerpts from actual business documents. I feel if the author's principles are being used everyday with results, they must be good.

I know the subject won't interest many people, but the book is a good investment for people interested in the method of the madness of technical communication.

Roy Cummings, Swilley Library

What are YOU reading?

noreply@blogger.com (Swilley Library) — Fri, 11 Apr 2008 04:38:00 +0000

Are you reading something that's too good to keep to yourself? Well, share it with us here!

Whether you're reading about dinosaurs or the mating habits of South African Humming Beetles, if you like it, we want to hear about it!

Please email the title of the book and your thoughts to cummings_r@mercer.edu, and they'll get published here!