Latest news with #reading


The Guardian
7 hours ago
- Entertainment
- The Guardian
‘Literature has completely changed my life': footballer Héctor Bellerín's reading list
Héctor Bellerín's summer holidays look a little different from your typical footballer. Rather than pictures from a recent jaunt to Ibiza clubs such as Ushuaia or questionable birthday parties, his Instagram is dominated by books. Images of paperbacks he's read are all over his feed, a mix of classics and contemporary novels, with a majority from Spain and South America. Alana Portero's celebrated (and Pedro Almodóvar-approved) novels about queer life in 80s Madrid feature on his read pile, alongside the Mexican Juan Rulfo's classic surrealist novel Pedro Páramo, which inspired a young Gabriel García Márquez to write One Hundred Years of Solitude, and Federico García Lorca's Gypsy Ballads. Bellerín, who played for Arsenal for nine years before moving back to his native Spain with Real Betis, talks about literature's transformative power. 'Literature has become something that has – and I know it's a cliche – but to me, it has completely changed my life,' he said from a Betis training camp in Portugal. Bellerín's love of literature was sparked during the Covid-19 lockdowns, when the young full-back was isolating in his home in St Albans, Hertfordshire. He began reading the novels of Charles Bukowski while he was still playing for Arsenal. He made his way through Hollywood and Post Office, the American writer's autobiographical debut, which follows the life of the sardonic anti-hero Henry Chinaski. 'I was miserable in quarantine,' said Bellerín. 'I didn't know when football was going to come back. I was even drinking a lot … I had a bit of a tough time. Literature, I'm not gonna say made me survive, but it made my life way easier.' Some footballers might shy away from sharing their love of reading, especially in a climate when anything outside the football bubble is deemed a 'distraction', but Bellerín has made no secret of his interests beyond sport. He's flirted with fashion, and even started his own label. He loves photography, and believes passionately in the power of art to help with mental health. He has been a vocal advocate for sustainability in football, and in 2022 he criticised the lack of media coverage of conflicts in Palestine, Iraq and Yemen compared with Ukraine. Bellerín grew up in a house of books. His father had a passion for ancient Greece, which inspired Bellerín's first name. But between the ages of 19 and 26 he read mostly nonfiction (mirroring the habits of many young men). Reading was something he did to learn something, rather than for pleasure. 'When I read something, it had to have a purpose and then I realised it was the other way around,' he said. The work of the German-Swiss novelist Hermann Hesse followed Bukowski, but after making his way through 10 books, the Spaniard realised that he'd only read male writers and made a conscious decision to read more women. He moved on to The Vegetarian by the Nobel prize winner Han Kang, and Naomi Klein's Doppelganger, while cool, contemporary Spanish writers such as José Luis Sastre, Adrian Daine, Marta Jiménez Serrano, Carolina Yuste and the Granta young writer Cristina Morales dominate his book piles. Sergio C Fanjul, a culture writer at the Spanish daily El País, said the list showed Bellerín was 'closely attuned to the pulse of the publishing world', with writers such as Portero, Leila Guerriero, Marta Jiménez Serrano, Juan Tallon and Alejandro Zambra being some of the 'most critically acclaimed writers' of recent years. 'I think Bellerín is a reader who doesn't simply follow mainstream trends,' Fanjul added. On his Portuguese training trip he's brought a book of Leslie Jamison essays, Mary Karr's Art of Memoir, Sara Mesa's Cara de Pan, Simon Critchley's What We Think About When We Think About Football and Samanta Schweblin's Little Eyes, which the Guardian called 'ingenious'. The footballer gets recommendations from a writing group he attends every Tuesday night in Seville. Made up of students, doctors and engineers, the group has introduced him to the contemporary Spanish literary scene. 'We feed off each other, recommending books and movies. My taste has also changed, because the people I've got around me have great taste and give great recommendations, new names and new faces and new ways of writing.' There's only one book that's defeated him. He tried Emily Brontë's Wuthering Heights in the original English before reverting to the Spanish translation, titled Cumbres Borrascosas. 'I couldn't get through that in English,' Bellerín confessed. 'I tried it, but couldn't.'


CBS News
8 hours ago
- Entertainment
- CBS News
Metro Detroit nonprofit sharing free books to children, teachers at book bank
A Metro Detroit nonprofit organization is expanding its services. Birdie's Bookmobile is on a mission to end book deserts and improve literacy across the area. A few weeks ago, the organization opened a book bank. Nestled on the corner of Fischer Street and Mack Avenue on the east side of Detroit is Birdie's Book Nest. "I just wanted to make sure that if I was setting up a brick-and-mortar, if I was setting up a book bank, that it was here in the community that has supported me," Alyce Hartman, Birdie's Bookmobile's founder & executive director, said. Unlike a bookstore, the literature at the book bank is free. There's a large variety, including picture books in different languages, chapter books and graphic novels. "I think that having a love of reading, and being able to be transported into other worlds and to use your imagination and creativity in those ways, that's what was so important to me," Hartman said. By registering for Birdie's Book Nest, kids get three free books a month, and teachers get 12. "You have to read in order to be anything you want to be," Chanelle Draper, first-grade teacher at Detroit Prep, said. "I've been here every Saturday since she started it, and I absolutely loved it." Every Saturday at 10 a.m. is storytime. This weekend, kids are learning about Miss Betti, a former lunch lady who improved the quality of food at schools in Detroit. Everyone who attends Detroit's Bookfest this year can help the nest continue to grow. "Birdie's will be at Bookfest with a variety of yellow bins stationed all over the market," Ryan Place, founder of Detroit Bookfest, said. "People who want to donate new or gently used kids books can put them in the bins, and birdies will collect them and take them all over the city to kids who need them." With books for all ages from infants to teens, plus a bookcase for adults, Birdie's Book Nest is a haven for beginners and avid readers alike. "I enjoyed reading as a child, and I wanted children to have that same experience," Hartman said. The hope is to open a second location on the west side of Detroit in the future. Detroit Bookfest is Sunday, July 20, at Eastern Market.


The Guardian
19 hours ago
- Entertainment
- The Guardian
‘Literature has completely changed my life': footballer Héctor Bellerín's reading list
Héctor Bellerín's summer holidays look a little different from your typical footballer. Rather than pictures from a recent jaunt to Ibiza clubs such as Ushuaia or questionable birthday parties, his Instagram is dominated by books. Images of paperbacks he's read are all over his feed, a mix of classics and contemporary novels, with a majority from Spain and South America. Alana Portero's celebrated (and Pedro Almodóvar-approved) novels about queer life in 80s Madrid feature on his read pile, alongside the Mexican Juan Rulfo's classic surrealist novel Pedro Páramo, which inspired a young Gabriel García Márquez to write One Hundred Years of Solitude, and Federico García Lorca's Gypsy Ballads. Bellerín, who played for Arsenal for nine years before moving back to his native Spain with Real Betis, talks about literature's transformative power. 'Literature has become something that has – and I know it's a cliche – but to me, it has completely changed my life,' he said from a Betis training camp in Portugal. Bellerín's love of literature was sparked during the Covid-19 lockdowns, when the young full-back was isolating in his home in St Albans, Hertfordshire. He began reading the novels of Charles Bukowski while he was still playing for Arsenal. He made his way through Hollywood and Post Office, the American writer's autobiographical debut, which follows the life of the sardonic anti-hero Henry Chinaski. 'I was miserable in quarantine,' said Bellerín. 'I didn't know when football was going to come back. I was even drinking a lot … I had a bit of a tough time. Literature, I'm not gonna say made me survive, but it made my life way easier.' Some footballers might shy away from sharing their love of reading, especially in a climate when anything outside the football bubble is deemed a 'distraction', but Bellerín has made no secret of his interests beyond sport. He's flirted with fashion, and even started his own label. He loves photography, and believes passionately in the power of art to help with mental health. He has been a vocal advocate for sustainability in football, and in 2022 he criticised the lack of media coverage of conflicts in Palestine, Iraq and Yemen compared with Ukraine. Bellerín grew up in a house of books. His father had a passion for ancient Greece, which inspired Bellerín's first name. But between the ages of 19 and 26 he read mostly nonfiction (mirroring the habits of many young men). Reading was something he did to learn something, rather than for pleasure. 'When I read something, it had to have a purpose and then I realised it was the other way around,' he said. The work of the German-Swiss novelist Hermann Hesse followed Bukowski, but after making his way through 10 books, the Spaniard realised that he'd only read male writers and made a conscious decision to read more women. He moved on to The Vegetarian by the Nobel prize winner Han Kang, and Naomi Klein's Doppelganger, while cool, contemporary Spanish writers such as José Luis Sastre, Adrian Daine, Marta Jiménez Serrano, Carolina Yuste and the Granta young writer Cristina Morales dominate his book piles. Sergio C Fanjul, a culture writer at the Spanish daily El País, said the list showed Bellerín was 'closely attuned to the pulse of the publishing world', with writers such as Portero, Leila Guerriero, Marta Jiménez Serrano, Juan Tallon and Alejandro Zambra being some of the 'most critically acclaimed writers' of recent years. 'I think Bellerín is a reader who doesn't simply follow mainstream trends,' Fanjul added. On his Portuguese training trip he's brought a book of Leslie Jamison essays, Mary Karr's Art of Memoir, Sara Mesa's Cara de Pan, Simon Critchley's What We Think About When We Think About Football and Samanta Schweblin's Little Eyes, which the Guardian called 'ingenious'. The footballer gets recommendations from a writing group he attends every Tuesday night in Seville. Made up of students, doctors and engineers, the group has introduced him to the contemporary Spanish literary scene. 'We feed off each other, recommending books and movies. My taste has also changed, because the people I've got around me have great taste and give great recommendations, new names and new faces and new ways of writing.' There's only one book that's defeated him. He tried Emily Brontë's Wuthering Heights in the original English before reverting to the Spanish translation, titled Cumbres Borrascosas. 'I couldn't get through that in English,' Bellerín confessed. 'I tried it, but couldn't.'


Fast Company
20 hours ago
- Entertainment
- Fast Company
A new generation of magazines is getting kids to put down their phones
On a recent Saturday afternoon, I noticed an unusual silence from my 9-year-old's room. I was surprised to find she wasn't taking advantage of her allotted two hours of screen time; instead, she was curled up on her chair reading a magazine. Three decades ago, when I was her age, this wouldn't have seemed strange. Starting in the late 1800s, the United States had a thriving culture around children's magazines. Young children would get Jack and Jill, Turtle, or Sesame Street Magazine in the mail; teens would graduate to Sassy, Tiger Bea t, or Teen People. But as the internet emerged—with blogs, streaming sites, and online games competing for young people's attention—magazines lost their luster. Although there are a few legacy magazines that still publish, like Sports Illustrated Kids, National Geographic Kids, and Highlights, most have gone out of business over the past 15 years. In a strange twist, however, kids' magazines are making a comeback thanks to a new flock of startups. My daughter, for instance, was pouring over Anyway, a magazine for 9- to 14-year-olds that debuted in 2023. Jen Swetzoff and Keeley McNamara launched the magazine with a Kickstarter campaign to see whether there was an appetite for a publication that deals with the issues tweens are facing, from understanding body hair to developing personal style. The founders reached their funding goal within days, and hundreds of families now receive their quarterly magazine. Anyway is part of a broader wave of new publications that began nearly a decade ago with Kazoo, a quarterly magazine for 5- to 12-year-old girls that features contributors like Ruth Bader Ginsburg and Jane Goodall, and has won a slate of awards. There's Honest History, which makes history engaging to elementary school kids. And Illustoria, a kid's magazine for children up to 14, meant to encourage creativity and imagination. One of the more recent entries is Spark, a monthly activity magazine for kids between 4 and 8. Subscribe to the Design latest innovations in design brought to you every weekday SIGN UP Privacy Policy | Fast Company Newsletters The super-early-rate deadline for Fast Company's Most Innovative Companies Awards is Friday, July 25, at 11:59 p.m. PT. Apply today.
Yahoo
a day ago
- Entertainment
- Yahoo
'The Summer I Turned Pretty' to 'We Were Liars' — Canadian 'BookTok' expert on fandom of book-to-screen adaptions
While we're all still reeling from the first two episodes of The Summer I Turned Pretty Season 3 (particularly Team Conrad fans), the popularity of the show, along with others like We Were Liars and Culpables films, are part of the intensely successful book-to-screen adaptation trend. Working alongside the creation and release of these shows and movies is the "BookTok" boom, as fans of the on-screen stories go back to read the books, and vice versa. In Canada, Morgann Book went from gaining an online following as a teenager posting cake design videos from the Ontario Dairy Queen her parents own, to leaning into her love of reading by drawing book covers on cakes. And yes, her last name also happens to be "Book." Five years later, Book is among the most followed and trusted BookTok voices. So much so that you can see her at the one-day only free, immersive pop-up event in Toronto on July 19, part of Prime Video's Prime Book Club. "I think one thing I didn't do early on, and it was COVID so we couldn't, but I couldn't engage much with my audience in person," Book told Yahoo Canada. "I did a previous event with Prime Video back in December and that was one of the first times I had met a large number of my audience, ... my followers, friends, in person. And I'm still connecting with those people today." "I think it's really incredible to see the community that BookTok as a whole ... has just fostered because readers, we're introverts, but you get us talking about books, and it kind of just opens people up in a brand new way." How book fans evaluate screen adaptations For Book herself, even she finds inspiration in the larger BookTok community, including for her successful podcast, "Off The Shelf," diving into both novels and book-to-screen adaptations, part of her Bookish Media company. "I've really been inspired this year through authors and BookTokers that I've gotten to connect and meet with through my podcast," Book shared. "This is another year where I'm like, I love YA [young adult] and romance and romantacy, but ... I really want to branch out my reading taste this year, and I felt like that has kept me inspired." But when it comes to book-to-screen adaptations, many of the most recent hits have found their home on Prime Video. And what Book believes makes a great one is when there's "respect" for the source material, while also being crafted in a way that appeals to a new audience. "We Were Liars, for example, was published in 2014. I've known about this book for 11 years now ... and I think when the show finally came out they really did a good job at saying, yes this is a new show coming out, but they included specific lines of dialogue and scenes that connected the original audience to this new show," she said. "Certain lines, like there was a mention of Johnny not wearing sunscreen, and ... that immediately clicked as like, OK someone on this team read this book, knows what they're doing." With these adaptations also comes more BookTok content. In the case of The Summer I Turned Pretty, it reignites conversations like whether Belly should choose Conrad or Jeremiah. "I haven't seen a Team Conrad, Team Jeremiah feud since the whole Twilight thing, which was a very long time ago," Book said. "No one knows what's coming in Season 3 of The Summer I Turned Pretty, but those who have read the books know how the other books translated on screen, and can kind of hypothesize where Season 3 is going." Reflecting on her impressive career to date and that initial connection to social media, Book highlighted that her journey has allowed her to become more comfortable in her self, particularly in more public spaces. "The people who I grew up with and the person that I was growing up would not recognize who I am today," Book said. "I can be a shy person, but I think BookTok and content and social media and doing interviews like this and doing the podcast has allowed me to become, not even like an extrovert, but just comfortable in what I'm saying and what I'm speaking about." "I used to be a terrible public speaker. It made me so nauseous. And I think going to events and hosting all these things has just changed who I am inherently as a person, which I didn't even think was possible." But what's next on Book's reading list? In the spirit of The Summer I Turned Pretty reaching its last season, Book said she's planning on pickingThe Summer of Broken Rules by K.L. Walther. "This is supposed to be like a really good YA summer romance," Book highlighted. "Then if you want something like a little bit spicier, Meghan Quinn also has really great summer rom-coms that I love." The Prime Book Club Toronto Pop-Up takes place July 19 from 1:00 p.m. to 5:00 p.m. at Mandy's at The Well. Activities include customizing your Kindle case, an on-site artist for a custom rendering of your ultimate book crush, and more.