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Reading reduces stress levels by 68%
I agree it reduces stress. It definitely helps but sometimes I find reading takes too much concentration when stressed and I just can't get into it. Good article though, thanks :)
Victoria, I agree. When I am really stressed it is hard to concentrate but when I finally get into a book I just drift away and am totally absorbed. I guess that's stress relief, although it seems hard on my body to just sit and read. I guess the key is moderation--something I'm not very good at. I was surprised by this article as I thought walking would be best. I wonder if this will be supported by other studies.
Mod
Lori, you seem stressed by that...need a book?
hahahahahaha! that's how I'm reading 100 books right now. Just picture them Lori -- 100 books folded back like that! LOL
Val wrote: "hahahahahaha! that's how I'm reading 100 books right now. Just picture them Lori -- 100 books folded back like that! LOL"You are going to give Lori a heart attack and then where would we be without our fearless leader? THINK!!!!! LOL
Lori - I'm sure that girl bought the book used, and the spine was already broken--she's not doing any more damage.How many of you wear pretty scarves and have your hair all done when you read? That's what I want to know... If I'm reading in public, I MIGHT, but usually I'm in my pajamas and snuggled on the couch or on the bed.
*to the article* Do British people still write the word 'percent' as two words? How fun is that? I don't drink coffee, so I should ask my boss if I'm allow to take a 10-minute reading break. ;)
hey, back off - - I posed for that picture, that's the real me
Not sure if you're being sarcastic or not (who can tell on these things), but the girl is really cute... I just never look that good when I read! ;)
Sara wrote: " Do British people still write the word 'percent' as two words?"lol!!! Yes!
oh, I forgot to add LOLI sadly am not that cute
That's awesome! I read 'percent' as two words in books sometimes, but I just assumed it was the "old" way to write it--from back before the two words finally just decided to stick together permanently... ;) British people are so fun, with their different spellings... like colour and theatre and aluminium... I love it! :)Ooh... which reminds me of this time when I was in Korea (where I lived during my senior year of high school) talking to this Korean guy. He was telling me about how he wished he could speak English just like an American. And I was like, "WHY???!??!?!?? We're so sloppy in all our pronunciations--we slur everything together...." I don't have anything against American English (I mean, that's my native language), it's just that Americans LOVE accents. Or the ones I know do. British accents, Australian accents, New Zealander accents.... They're all just so great!
You're right, Sara. We even love American accents! Don't you ever try to hear the nuances in vowel sounds when someone is from Minnesota, or the differences between Georgia and Texas, and then there's Maine and Boston, to say nothing of New York or Iowa.
Oooh.. Minna-SO-da... :) I have a coworker from Minnesota... it's great fun. And Canadians... with their 'aboot's... :) And BAH-ston... It's all so fascinating! People in Utah say 'Fark' instead of 'Fork'... It's funny. My dad is from Washington (State), and he says something that drives me crazy (that I find myself doing also), but I can't for the life of me remember what it is........ Something about adding an 's' onto the end of a word that shouldn't have one on it.I'm from Texas, but I grew up in the city, so I don't have an accent, but I spend a lot of time with people who do. We DO say "fixin' to" a lot though. As in "I'm fixin' to go to the store--do you want anything?"
Elizabeth (Alaska) wrote: "You're right, Sara. We even love American accents! Don't you ever try to hear the nuances in vowel sounds when someone is from Minnesota, or the differences between Georgia and Texas, and then ther..."I'm from New Yawk! (New York), and there are variations of accents here, for instance people from upstate, i.e. Albany speak differently than people from the city and people from Long Island have way different accents. I never really thought there were much variations in NY accents before coming to college. But now, I am able to whip out an NYC/lawn-guy-land accent when I want to sound tough, and do things such as changing coffee to cawfee.
Mod
One thing that always hangs me up tho...
Dog, log, and frog do not rhyme (to me).
Dawg is on its own.
frog and log are rhymy...
AM I the only one who sees this?
LOL, sorry Lori but to me dog and log are rhymes.on the other hand I was stunned to hear my chidren pronouncing the word shone so that it rhymed with known -- in Canada where I am from we pronounce shone so that it rhymes with gone.
Mod
Lori wrote: "Im a new yawka too! Although I was upstate, so there is really none of that Long Island or Brooklyn speak in my vernacular.....One thing that always hangs me up tho...
Dog, log, and frog do no..."
Whereabouts upstate? Binghamton? Buffalo? Rochester??
I'm glad we can claim supermod as one of our own!! :-D
Yep, dog, log, and frog definitely rhyme. When I was volunteering to help kids read, one of them had a paper he was working about homophones (we called them homonyms, times change). He had to pick out the correct word in the sentences and the options were "are" and "our". How could they be teaching that these words sound the same? I pronounced them correctly, and asked him if he that changed things for him. He then had no problems with the exercise. Of course, I don't have an accent. ;o) OK, if I went to England, I'll bet they'd think I had an accent.
I could have sworn that reading only reduced my stress levels by 66%.
Dog, log, and frog all rhyme... Known and shone, too.
Are and our do NOT rhyme!! Hour and our are homonyms to me.
You can take accent tests on the internet, to see which accent you have (in case you don't already know). They ask you questions like this--about which words rhyme. My husband is soooo funny. When he took it, he was saying the words all strangely (not at ALL like he normally says they), and it said he had a Canadian accent. (He's from Texas.) It was hilarious. He's really bad at analyzing the meter of a poem, also, because he will read the lines of a poem all weirdly, and not be able to tell where the accents are in the line. It was really hard not to ROLL MY EYES at him when he was taking his Fiction/Drama/Poetry class is college.
Here's an American accent quiz: http://www.gotoquiz.com/what_american...
(Possible categories: West, Midland, Boston, North Central, Inland North, Philadelphia, South, Northeast)
My accent is the West. "Your accent is the lowest common denominator of American speech. Unless you're a SoCal surfer, no one thinks you have an accent. And really, you may not even be from the West at all, you could easily be from Florida or one of those big Southern cities like Dallas or Atlanta."
I'm from Fort Worth. (We're the FW in the DFW airport near Dallas.)
Aw, that quiz looks good. I did it even though I'm Welsh (lol, I'm weird) and apparently my accent is mostly 'northeast'! Lol - I know I am British so it might not count but the questions are peculiar - I haven't heard any of those words as rhyming!I moved to England for a while though and everyone made fun of me for rhyming "here", "hear" and "year" - and depending on the context, "ear" lol!
I took the test and came out "west" as expected. But I wonder what "lowest common denominator" means in this context?
Lori wrote: "oh my god, did you see the way that woman in the photo was holding her book? She should be smacked! Shes ruining the cover and creasing the spine! ACK!"I thought I was the only one that noticed that! I loved this article and I completely agree! I, lately, have been having to deal with alot of medical issues, and that is my saving grace! I would go crazy if it weren't for my books! :)
Ed, that is too funny! only 66% huh? maybe you need to be blonde
Lori wrote: "oh my god, did you see the way that woman in the photo was holding her book? She should be smacked! Shes ruining the cover and creasing the spine! ACK!"Lori, there is a woman on the bus I read to work in the morning who apparently has torn pages out of her book in order to read on the bus... without, I guess, the difficulty of carrying the actual book? It's so distracting to me, I consider it a form of cannibalism. :) I'm sitting there with my book and there she is beside me with only 50 pages torn out of a book and I can barely focus on my own reading!
That makes my stress level go up. And so early in the morning!
I used to work for a used bookstore and occasionally people would try to sell us books like that, where they had clearly torn the pages out, then put them all back in between the cover and then gave us sass when we couldn't buy them from them. Bah!
Back to the article however, I find it's so true. Reading is absolutely relaxing, so I try to do it as often as I can on my lunch break... but I find myself on this page more often than not while I'm scarfing down lunch. :)
I'm always amused by those tests online - I always come out "Southern" on vocabulary and "standard American" on pronunciation.
There is a "standard" American pronunciation? What asylum did they come from?By the way, we watch Nascar. Well, I mostly listen because it's on. I love hearing all those different southern accents. You can really hear the different regions of the south, and there are many.
What a fun quiz! My result was ""You have a Midland accent" is just another way of saying "you don't have an accent." You probably are from the Midland (Pennsylvania, southern Ohio, southern Indiana, southern Illinois, and Missouri) but then for all we know you could be from Florida or Charleston or one of those big southern cities like Atlanta or Dallas. You have a good voice for TV and radio." Very funny since I come from Alberta, Canada.
I think they meant "US Broadcast Standard" by "standard American." That's my guess, anyway.
Elizabeth (Alaska) wrote: "I took the test and came out "west" as expected. But I wonder what "lowest common denominator" means in this context?"If I had to guess, I'd say they meant that "lowest common denominator" meant the most common accent.
Mod
Lori, there is a woman on th..."
OH no! Eeeeekk! Actually RIPPING the PAGES out?
I think my heart just stopped!
My result on the quiz was that I sound like I'm from the Northeast. Judging by how you talk you are probably from north Jersey, New York City, Connecticut or Rhode Island. Chances are, if you are from New York City (and not those other places) people would probably be able to tell if they actually heard you speak.According to wikipedia (lol so reliable I know), The Eastern New England dialect has in some respects more similarities with British English than many other dialects of American English have.
Val wrote: "Ed, that is too funny! only 66% huh? maybe you need to be blonde"My blond hair is now gray.
Lori, there is a woman on the bus I read to work in the morning who apparently has torn pages out of her book in order to read on the bus... without, I guess, the difficulty of carrying the actual book? It's so distracting to me, I consider it a form of cannibalism. :)Are you kidding or what? I've torn pages out of paperback books to reduce the weight of my luggage. I do it with heavy magazines all the time.
I also heard of a classics professor at Harvard, whose name I cannot recall. Anyway, he was retiring and spent time during his last term, sitting on a bench in the quad, reading the "Aeneid", in Latin and tearing out each page as he finished it, as a statement, I imagine. I also suspect it was a hardcover book.
You might want to check with the woman who is so disturbing as to why she's doing that. She may have a good reason.
Ed wrote: "Lori, there is a woman on the bus I read to work in the morning who apparently has torn pages out of her book in order to read on the bus... without, I guess, the difficulty of carrying the actual ..."Ed, you'll find that I don't have much tolerance for the defacement of books in any form, whether it's taking pages out or dog-earing the pages. I'm sure everyone has a "good reason" but to me it's like watching someone kick a dog. I'm not saying that I'm right or that you're wrong, but for me personally it's traumatic to see.
One of my favorite things to do while traveling is to leave books in my wake as I finish them as a means of reducing the weight in my luggage - in airports, train stations, on the trains themselves. I love to spread the joy of books wherever I am.
And please tell me that you've never tried to sell one of those paperback books back to a used bookstore after tearing pages out! :)
El wrote: "And please tell me that you've never tried to sell one of those paperback books back to a used bookstore after tearing pages out! :)"I don't sell books I no longer want I give them away, lately on Bookmooch.
P.S. Please don't ever look at my MM Paperbacks. I dog ear them, though, I can't bring myself to dog ear a hardback. Thank goodness for dust jackets.
Different strokes....
different strokes is right -- I don't enjoy reading a book if I have to be careful about it. I totally immerse myself when I am reading something I love and in order to experience that I can't be cognizant of the physical book I'm reading. I don't dog ear books, I use some sort of bookmark -- toilet paper sometimes. But I am not careful about turning pages and my books are often wide and fat after I read them -- not thin and neat as they were before I got them. That said, I mostly try to read library books because I don't have room for books in my house anymore and I do feel bad if I spill something on one or turn the pages too roughly. I don't feel bad for the book but for the next person who wants to read it.The one thing we all have in common, however, is our love of books!
val
Val wrote: "different strokes is right -- I don't enjoy reading a book if I have to be careful about it. I totally immerse myself when I am reading something I love and in order to experience that I can't be c..."Another reason I read mostly library books. I'm OCD about keeping my books in pristine condition (even the paperbacks), but with library books, I can read without having to be SO SO careful.
Sara wrote: "Another reason I read mostly library books. I'm OCD about keeping my books in pristine condition (even the paperbacks), but with library books, I can read without having to be SO SO careful. "
I'm just the opposite. A library book belongs to someone else, so I need to be careful with it, trying to return it in the same condtion it was when I borrowed it.
When I was in college I had an English prof who encouraged us to write comments in our books!!. I don't know if he was hoping for another Fermat's Last Theorem, or what. I found him hard to take seriously after that...
I always wrote comments and underlined in my college texts -- I bought them afterall!
I just couldn't do it. I felt like leaping to my feet in the lecture hall and yelling BLASPHEMER!!!Although I've read some funny comments in used books. I remember one book with a long scientific explanation, and at the end someone had written "What?!?" in pink highlighter.
I still recall vividly the lecture one English professor gave us in our first class on HOW WE WERE ALL GOING TO HELL if we wrote, underlined, or otherwise defaced our books. It was quite a speech!
that's so wrong. textbooks are for learning not saving. literature, if you want, you can handle with white gloves, but not text books. How can you concentrate on what you're supposed to remember if you have to worry about the source of the info. I honestly don't get it. I do appreciate people's OCD -- I have enough of my own just not in that way. I guess I'm too practical as a learner.
http://www.marieclaire.co.uk/news/314...