Helen's Reads » Health and Lifestyle

A Summer Toast to the Fall Reading Season

helen — Mon, 12 Sep 2011 18:16:00 +0000

My Facebook friends know that I have been chronicling a backyard vegetable garden project that a friend and I collaborated on. Of course, all summer long we’ve been bragging to friends that we would host a harvest garden party to celebrate all the wonderful produce we were sure to grow. What we didn’t expect was a lousy, cold, wet summer that never got above 70 until early August and the bugs, mildew and disease that got most of us buying our veggies in a super market in the first place. We did have some successes. The lettuce, arugula, shallots, french beans, beet greens and chard love wet cool weather. The tomatoes did not. We kept our word, however, and held our farm potluck (my friend Linda’s term for it) last weekend. Lots of great food and one very delicious signature drink Vodka With Lemon & Rosemary (from the garden) that proved to be a hit. So as summer winds down, and with all the crazy summer weather everyone around the country has had to endure, CHEERS! Here’s to family, friends and a fall of wonderful reading ahead!

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The recipe is from Food Network hottie Dave Lieberman‘s 2006 cookbook Dave’s Dinners: A Fresh Approach to Home-Cooked Meals which I found online courtesy of the blog site Well Fed.

Literary Tattoos

helen — Thu, 11 Nov 2010 21:15:37 +0000

Just had to share this photo of a tribute tattoo sported by a librarian in honor of Seattle’s own Nancy Pearl and her Book Lust series. It was part of a piece promoting the book The Word Made Flesh: Literary Tattoos From Bookworms Worldwide by Eva Talmadge and Justin Taylor on Earlyword‘s website.

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More about literary tattoos? Check out how some Boomer’s are soothing their midlife crisis angst.

April Is National Poetry Month

helen — Tue, 06 Apr 2010 17:48:07 +0000

It’s National Poetry month people. So get out there and celebrate. Not sure how? Poets.org lists 30 ways that you can slip poetry into your daily activities. I’ve posted before about the heart healthy benefits of reading poetry. Other studies suggest that reading poetry can boost the immune system and also reduce the severity of symptoms in arthritis and asthma sufferers. So do your body AND soul some good. Read a poem, share a poem, write a poem. You owe it to yourself and the ones you love.

Open A Book
by Jane Baskwill

Open a book
And you will find
People and places of every kind
Open a book
And you can be
Anything that you want to be:
Open a book
And you can share
Wondrous worlds you find in there
Open a book
And I will too
You read to me
And I’ll read to you.

Via Reading Lady

How Not To Act Old

helen — Thu, 06 Aug 2009 17:11:29 +0000

Reading a review of How Not To Act Old by Pamela Redmond Satran (the follow up to How Not To Look Old) revealed the fact that young people don’t wear watches. Is that true? Maybe just the fact that I have to ask that question makes me a member of the old team. I already knew one of the book’s hottest tips for getting a young person (i.e. my son) to return a cellphone call “hang up without leaving a message.” I would like to add my own tip. Skip the cellphone call all together and learn to send a text message. It works. I promise. As for the book promo video below…at least my generation knows how to count back change. Enough said.

Voracious Reader Lucas Glover Wins U.S. Open

helen — Tue, 23 Jun 2009 22:37:04 +0000

The following is one of the questions posed to Lucas Glover during his post tournament interview and courtesy of the U.S. Golf Association Web site.

Q. Talk about how much you love literature and how much you’re doing reading; tell the fans some of your favorite authors so they can go read some of the stuff you’re reading.

LUCAS GLOVER: Any murder mystery. I read any of them. It’s like watching TV; you can read them in one day. Clive Cussler is probably my favorite. Daniel Silva. There’s two.

Focus In On These Two Books….IF You Can

helen — Sun, 03 May 2009 18:21:07 +0000

At last month’s book club meeting, the question was asked, “Is anyone else feeling overwhelmed by all the new technology that’s out there?” What followed was a very animated discussion of Who had a Face Book page and why? and What was Twitter and why did anyone use it?. One of our members told of attending a career event at a local University where she met a professor who taught a class on Solitude and highly recommended a book she used in class Distracted by journalist Maggie Jackson. She then told us that she immediately put a hold on the book at her local library all the while pondering why the idea of solitude sounded so appealing? Apparently, she is not alone. Another book just out, Rapt by Winifred Gallagher, believes the key to happiness and fulfillment is through skillful management of attention and not through Twittering, browsing, Face-booking, emailing, texting, IPoding and computer gaming our time away. OK, we’ve been warned now watch this. An email is going around stating that Sony played this at their executive conference this year. Where’s my yoga mat?

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Girlsfriends And Aging

helen — Wed, 22 Apr 2009 00:53:54 +0000

Tomorrow I’m headed off to San Francisco to spend the weekend at the beach with ten plus fabulous friends. It’s an annual event. We call ourselves the Stinson Beach Babes. Each year I go, I return home with aching cheek muscles from all the talking and laughing. Our friendships go back some 30 years. Back when we were newly married career gals just starting our families and hoping it was true that we could have it all. It doesn’t surprise me then that a new book about female friendships is striking a chord with a lot of women. The folks at Earlyword reported that The NY Times most emailed story this week is What Are Friends For? A Longer Life which mentions the book and focuses on research that shows people with close friends do better at fighting illness and depression, have speedier recoveries, and age slower. Read my review of the book.

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It’s Heart Healthy To Read A Poem

helen — Mon, 06 Apr 2009 15:40:47 +0000

What better way to celebrate National Poetry Month and do your body some good, than to receive poet.org’s poem a day in your inbox. Poetry has been used for therapeutic purposes in health and healing for centuries. One of the more interesting studies is the effect that poetry has on blood pressure. Apparently, rhythmic vocal recitations enhance cardiovascular activity, especially hexameter verse found in epic poems.

Sing, O goddess, the anger of Achilles son of Peleus, that brought
countless ills upon the Achaeans.
The Iliad by Homer, translated by Samuel Butler

A Book For The Aging & Those That Care

helen — Wed, 04 Feb 2009 01:13:15 +0000

The last few weeks my siblings and I have been consumed by helping our 93 year old mom move from her home into an apartment inside the retirement community where she has lived ever since our dad passed away ten years ago. Besides the sorting, tossing, moving and giving away of her things that there is no longer room for, we faced addressing some very personal issues as well. Mom’s loss of memory has us questioning her check writing habits and I found myself googling topics like “How to discuss incontinence with a parent.” Then I came across Virginia Morris’ book ‘How to Care for Aging Parents’. I bought four copies. One for myself and the others I sent to my brother and two sisters. Now, whatever else comes up, we can all be on the same page.

Take Your Brain On A Walk…Read A Book Online

helen — Wed, 03 Dec 2008 01:21:47 +0000

I feel better already. Happy with the knowledge that reading book-like text on my computer screen and surfing the web for story ideas is like taking my brain for a walk. The study was done on middle age volunteers ages 55 to 76. Online reading stimulates regions of the brain controlling language, reading, memory and vision while Internet searching or “Googling” stimulates neural circuitry activation such as complex reasoning and decision making.