Lifelong Bookworm, 幾本勵志書《我們的一生》等/Lost Prophet: The Life and Times of BAYARD RUSTIN/ Ex Libris: Confessions of a Common Reader

  《我們的一生》The Art of Becoming Human by Mary E. Mercer 嚴韻譯 台北:一方2005

 

Being a Lifelong Bookworm May Keep You Sharp in Old Age

 

Reading, an activity that stimulates mental processes, can help preserve memory skills as we grow older. Photo by Flickr user Spirit-Fire

To keep their bodies running at peak performance, people often hit the gym, pounding away at the treadmill to strengthen muscles and build endurance. This dedication has enormous benefits—being in shape now means warding off a host of diseases when you get older. But does the brain work in the same way? That is, can doing mental exercises help your mind stay just as sharp in old age?
Experts say it’s possible. As a corollary to working out, people have begun joining brain gyms to flex their mental muscles. For a monthly fee of around $15, websites like Lumosity.com and MyBrainTrainer.com promise to enhance memory, attention and other mental processes through a series of games and brain teasers. Such ready-made mind exercises are an alluring route for people who worry about their ticking clock. But there’s no need to slap down the money right away—new research suggests the secret to preserving mental agility may lie in simply cracking open a book.
The findings, published online today in Neurology, suggest that reading books, writing and engaging in other similar brain-stimulating activities slows down cognitive decline in old age, independent of common age-related neurodegenerative diseases. In particular, people who participated in mentally stimulating activities over their lifetimes, both in young, middle and old age, had a slower rate of decline in memory and other mental capacities than those who did not.
Researchers used an array of tests to measure 294 people’s memory and thinking every year for six years years. Participants also answered a questionnaire about their reading and writing habits, from childhood to adulthood to advanced age. Following the participants’ deaths at an average age of 89, researchers examined their brains for evidence of the physical signs of dementia, such as lesions, plaques and tangles. Such brain abnormalities are most common in older people, causing them to experience memory lapses. They proliferate in the brains of people with Alzheimer’s disease, leading to memory and thinking impairments that can severely affect victims’ daily lives.
Using information from the questionnaire
and autopsy results, the researchers found that any reading and writing is better than none at all. Remaining a bookworm into old age reduced the rate of memory decline by 32 percent compared to engaging in average mental activity. Those who didn’t read or write often later in life did even worse: their memory decline was 48 percent faster than people who spent an average amount of time on these activities.
The researchers found that mental activity accounted for nearly 15 percent of the difference in memory decline, beyond what could be explained by the presence of plaque buildup. “Based on this, we shouldn’t underestimate the effects of everyday activities, such as reading and writing, on our children, ourselves and our parents or grandparents,” says study author Robert S. Wilson, a neuropsychologist at the Rush University Medical Center in Chicago, in a statement.

Reading gives our brains a workout because comprehending text requires more mental energy than, for example, processing an image on a television screen. Reading exercises our working memory, which actively processes and stores new information as it comes. Eventually, that information gets transferred into long-term memory, where our understanding of any given material deepens. Writing can be likened to practice: the more we rehearse the perfect squat, the better our form becomes, tightening all the right muscles. Writing helps us consolidate new information for the times we may need to recall it, which boosts our memory skills.
So the key to keeping our brains sharp for the long haul does have something in common with physical exercise: we have to stick with it. And it’s best to start early. In 2009, a seven-year study of 2,000 healthy individuals aged 18 to 60 found that mental agility peaks at 22. By 27, mental processes like reasoning, spatial visualization and speed of thought began to decline.

Read more: http://blogs.smithsonianmag.com/science/2013/07/being-a-lifelong-bookworm-may-keep-you-sharp-in-old-age/#ixzz2YPEaggZG


Ex Libris by Anne Fadiman

 

Ex Libris: Confessions of a Common Reader

by Anne Fadiman (Author)

 Anne Fadiman is--by her own admission--the sort of person who learned about sex from her father's copy of Fanny Hill, whose husband buys her 19 pounds of dusty books for her birthday, and who once found herself poring over her roommate's 1974 Toyota Corolla manual because it was the only written material in the apartment that she had not read at least twice.

This witty collection of essays recounts a lifelong love affair with books and language. For Fadiman, as for many passionate readers, the books she loves have become chapters in her own life story. Writing with remarkable grace, she revives the tradition of the well-crafted personal essay, moving easily from anecdotes about Coleridge and Orwell to tales of her own pathologically literary family. As someone who played at blocks with her father's 22-volume set of Trollope ("My Ancestral Castles") and who only really considered herself married when she and her husband had merged collections ("Marrying Libraries"), she is exquisitely well equipped to expand upon the art of inscriptions, the perverse pleasures of compulsive proof-reading, the allure of long words, and the satisfactions of reading out loud. There is even a foray into pure literary gluttony--Charles Lamb liked buttered muffin crumbs between the leaves, and Fadiman knows of more than one reader who literally consumes page corners. Perfectly balanced between humor and erudition, Ex Libris establishes Fadiman as one of our finest contemporary essayists. 

*****歷史要從無名英雄處尋....60年的美國代表人士

Lost Prophet: The Life and Times of BAYARD RUSTIN by John D'EMILIO
 One of the most important figures of the American civil rights movement, Bayard Rustin taught Martin Luther King Jr. the methods of Gandhi, spearheaded the 1963 March on Washington, and helped bring the struggle of African Americans to the forefront of a nation's consciousness. But despite his incontrovertibly integral role in the movement, the openly gay Rustin is not the household name that many of his activist contemporaries are. In exploring history's Lost Prophet, acclaimed historian John D'Emilio explains why Rustin's influence was minimized by his peers and why his brilliant strategies were not followed, or were followed by those he never meant to help.



台大撿的 他們的故事多激勵一些人 不過我太老又定型了. 只能讀出一些社會史.



王智弘《一個臺灣小留學生到哈佛之路》台北市: 健行，1995

菜鳥醫生上前線一個臺灣小留學生到哈佛之路2

王智弘 - 健行，1999-10-10 出版

臺灣小留學生王智弘，不但獲得哈佛醫學院博士學位，實習後又當了主治醫師。他遇見了：捕鼠人、懺悔醫生...

哈佛醫師報到

王智弘 - 九歌，2002-08-10 出版

臺灣小留學生王智弘，不但獲得哈佛醫學院博士學位，實習後又當了主治醫師。他遇見了：捕鼠人、懺悔醫生...

黑幼龍《破局而出》台北市: 天下文化，2001

賴東進. 《乞丐囝仔》. 台北市: 平安文化. 2000年(2005年，賴氏受邀至泰國，參與其自傳《乞丐囝仔》泰語版的簽書會，時該書也已譯為簡體中文、韓文、日文。[2])

了解一些此行業的動態 .