TED is a global community, welcoming people from every discipline and culture who seek a deeper understanding of the world. They believe passionately in the power of ideas to change attitudes, lives and, ultimately, the world. We asked our staff to share their favorite TED Talks and paired them a few books that may help you expand your understanding on the topic. This is what they came up with. (Click on the book covers to find the books in our catalog)
Matt Walker: Why Sleep Matters Now More Than Ever
Wim Hof: Standing the Ice with Our Minds
Amy Tan: Where Does Creativity Hide
Rita Pierson: Every Kid Needs a Champion
Dr. Mark Holder: Three Words That Will Change Your Life
Pamela Meyer: How to Spot a Liar
Temple Grandin: The World Needs All Kinds of Minds
Other TED Talks We Like (With Dewey Locations of Books on Similar Topics)
Tsundoku (積ん読): A Japanese word and characters that translate as “pile up” + “read”. We asked our staff what has been piling up on their to-be-read list. Here are their answers.
Nonfiction
Tunnel 29: The True Story of an Extraordinary Escape Beneath the Berlin Wall By Helena Merriman
It’s summer, 1962, and Joachim Rudolph, a student, is digging a tunnel under the Berlin Wall. Waiting on the other side in East Berlin – dozens of men, women and children; all willing to risk everything to escape. Book
Hallucinations by Oliver Sacks
Have you ever seen something that wasn’t really there? Heard someone call your name in an empty house? Sensed someone following you and turned around to find nothing? Book/Audiobook CD/Overdrive eBook
Where the Deer and the Antelope Play: The Pastoral Observations of One Ignorant American Who Loves to Walk Outside by Nick Offerman
A humorous and rousing tour of America’s nature spots as well as a mission statement about loving, protecting, and truly experiencing the outdoors, inspired by three journeys undertaken by actor, humorist, and New York Times bestselling author Nick Offerman Book/Overdrive eBook/Overdrive Audiobook
Chloe Brown is a chronically ill computer geek with a goal, a plan, and a list. After almost—but not quite—dying, she’s come up with seven directives to help her “Get a Life”, and she’s already completed the first: finally moving out of her glamorous family’s mansion. The next items? Book/Overdrive eBook/Hoopla eBook/Hoopla Audiobook
The Library of the Dead by T.L. Huchu
When a child goes missing in Edinburgh’s darkest streets, young Ropa investigates. She’ll need to call on Zimbabwean magic as well as her Scottish pragmatism to hunt down clues. But as shadows lengthen, will the hunter become the hunted? Books
One Last Stop by Casey McQuiston
For cynical twenty-three-year-old August, moving to New York City is supposed to prove her right: that things like magic and cinematic love stories don’t exist, and the only smart way to go through life is alone. She can’t imagine how waiting tables at a 24-hour pancake diner and moving in with too many weird roommates could possibly change that. And there’s certainly no chance of her subway commute being anything more than a daily trudge through boredom and electrical failures.
But then, there’s this gorgeous girl on the train. Overdrive eBook
Walk on Earth a Stranger by Rae Carson
Lee can sense gold in the world around her. Veins deep in the earth. Small nuggets in a stream. Even gold dust caught underneath a fingernail. She has kept her family safe and able to buy provisions, even through the harshest winters. But what would someone do to control a girl with that kind of power? A person might murder for it. Book/Hoopla eBook/Hoopla Audiobook
Light from Uncommon Stars by Ryka Aoki
Shizuka Satomi made a deal with the devil: to escape damnation, she must entice seven other violin prodigies to trade their souls for success. She has already delivered six. Book
Little Fires Everywhere by Celeste Ng
Little Fires Everywhere explores the weight of secrets, the nature of art and identity, and the ferocious pull of motherhood–and the danger of believing that following the rules can avert disaster. Book/Audiobook CD/Overdrive eBook/Overdrive Audiobook
War and Peace by Leo Tolstoy
In Russia’s struggle with Napoleon, Tolstoy saw a tragedy that involved all mankind. Greater than a historical chronicle, War and Peace is an affirmation of life itself, `a complete picture’, as a contemporary reviewer put it, `of everything in which people find their happiness and greatness, their grief and humiliation’. Book/Audiobook CD/Overdrive eBook/Hoopla eBook/Hoopla Audiobook
1Q84 by Haruki Murakami
A young woman named Aomame follows a taxi driver’s enigmatic suggestion and begins to notice puzzling discrepancies in the world around her. She has entered, she realizes, a parallel existence, which she calls 1Q84 —“Q is for ‘question mark.’ A world that bears a question.” Meanwhile, an aspiring writer named Tengo takes on a suspect ghostwriting project. He becomes so wrapped up with the work and its unusual author that, soon, his previously placid life begins to come unraveled. Book/Audiobook CD/Overdrive eBook
Les Miserables by Victor Hugo
A thrilling tale of narrow escapes, romance in the midst of a revolution, and battlefield heroism, Victor Hugo’s sprawling 1862 novel focuses on the Parisian underworld. Book/Overdrive eBook/Hoopla eBook/Hoopla Audiobook
Young Adult
We are Inevitable by Gayle Forman
While his friends have gone to college and moved on with their lives, Aaron’s been left behind in the Cascade Mountains of Washington State, running a failing bookshop with his dad, Ira. What he needs is a lucky break, the good kind of inevitable.
Life in a small Appalachian town is not easy. Cash lost his mother to an opioid addiction and his Papaw is dying slowly from emphysema. Dodging drug dealers and watching out for his best friend, Delaney, is second nature. He’s been spending his summer mowing lawns while she works at Dairy Queen.
But when Delaney manages to secure both of them full rides to an elite prep school in Connecticut, Cash will have to grapple with his need to protect and love Delaney, and his love for the grandparents who saved him and the town he would have to leave behind. Book
Juvenile Fiction
The Girl Who Drank the Moon by Kelly Barnhill
Every year, the people of the Protectorate leave a baby as an offering to the witch who lives in the forest. They hope this sacrifice will keep her from terrorizing their town. But the witch in the forest, Xan, is kind and gentle. She shares her home with a wise Swamp Monster named Glerk and a Perfectly Tiny Dragon, Fyrian. Xan rescues the abandoned children and deliver them to welcoming families on the other side of the forest, nourishing the babies with starlight on the journey.
One year, Xan accidentally feeds a baby moonlight instead of starlight, filling the ordinary child with extraordinary magic. Xan decides she must raise this enmagicked girl, whom she calls Luna, as her own. To keep young Luna safe from her own unwieldy power, Xan locks her magic deep inside her. When Luna approaches her thirteenth birthday, her magic begins to emerge on schedule–but Xan is far away. Meanwhile, a young man from the Protectorate is determined to free his people by killing the witch. Soon, it is up to Luna to protect those who have protected her–even if it means the end of the loving, safe world she’s always known Book/Overdrive eBook/Overdrive Audiobook/Hoopla eBook/Hoopla Audiobook
The Amelia Six by Kristin L. Gray
Amelia Earhart’s famous aviator goggles go missing and eleven-year-old Millie has to find them before the night is over Book
The Beatryce Prophecy Kate DiCamillo
From two-time Newbery Medalist Kate DiCamillo and two-time Caldecott Medalist Sophie Blackall comes a fantastical meditation on fate, love, and the power of words to spell the world. Book/Overdrive eBook
January is National Hobby month! Looking for new ideas for your hobby or planning to try a new one? The library has many resources for you!
Check out some of our favorite eBooks and eMagazines from OverDrive covering all sorts of hobbies, or links for fun stuff like How to be a Comedy Writer available when streaming on Hoopla. Plus, there we’ve gathered links right here for hardcover books and great crafting sites for ideas as well as step-by-step instructions. There is something for everyone!
Don’t see a hobby you would like to try from our staff-picked OverDrive selections? Check out Hoopla for more e-options or to stream movies. Or scroll for books and crafting sites.
Hobsess find a new hobby, revisit an old hobby from your past, or even learn how to turn your hobby into a profitable business.
Discoverhobby – online directory of hobbies listed by categories such as collecting, arts and crafts, games, model and electronic, food and drinks, sports and outdoors, and spiritual and mental.
eHow – extensive site covering about 30 different how-to categories, chock full of articles and tutorials.
APL library catalog – our online catalog will take you to a plethora of materials such as books, magazines, and DVDs, including in electronic format about your favorite things to do or make!
The holidays are almost here so check out our staff’s favorite books and movies that have to do with the holidays and family. Also check out what holiday movies are available for Streaming on Hoopla.
If you haven’t been to the library in a while, you simply must come in now to see an amazing doll collection (and to check out a few books, audiobooks, eBooks, movies or music while you are here.)
Two local women, Harriet Backenstoe of Emmaus and Dorothy Knauss of Allentown, collected dolls from around the world, most of them made between the 1930s and the 1970s. Both women who are deceased, generously donated their collections to Allentown Public Library and you have a unique opportunity to get an up close look at many of them.
In her lifetime, Knauss was a harpist who performed with the Allentown Symphony Orchestra, Allentown Band and Allentown Municipal Opera Company. Backenstoe taught art at Hanover Township’s Hanover School, served as an art supervisor at Kutztown University and traveled to many foreign countries. Both collected dolls for years. The library had displayed the dolls annually as part of a holiday tradition, but it has now been a few years since the dolls were last shown publicly.
Combined, the full collection includes about 400 dolls, each a work of art representing a variety of countries from around the world with several from countries that today no longer exist. About 30 of the individual pieces will be displayed throughout the month of December 2021. They provide insight into many cultures with traditional and festive clothing styles, or snippets from the everyday life of the people from the country they represent.
Fascinating and beautiful as they are educational, these dolls are unique and certainly not what you might find as a child’s play toy today.
On display at Allentown Public Library now through December 30, 2021.
Hours: 12 p.m. – 8 p.m. Monday and Tuesday, 9 a.m. – 5 p.m. Wednesday through Friday, and 10 a.m.- 2 p.m. on Saturday.
Check out these links for more information about the dolls and the collectors.
This question, selected by a majority vote of participants at our most recent Socrates Café, highlights the importance of language in communication. Before we began to answer the initial question, we talked a lot about what we mean by language.
Do we mean English, Spanish, Korean, Dutch, Russian, American sign language, or some other form of the Latin based “lingua”? Or, do we mean the specific words that we use for expressing ourselves?
Thoughts we considered:
how the language that one speaks is based upon cultural or geographical experience
what effect politics have upon word use
how language changes over time
nuances of expression, interpretation and translation
how language, specifically one’s literacy, has a direct effect on whether they can be controlled by others
While these points are interconnected with each other, let’s take a quick look at how we unpeeled each point.
How is the language that one speaks based upon cultural or geographical experience?
One patron cited having read Trevor Noah’s bestseller Born a Crime: Stories from a South African Childhood. In it, the author noticed that apartheid in South Africa was more easily maintained as individual tribes continued to be separated by the many differing languages spoken. He believed it to be purposeful and for this reason he felt it important as a ticket to a better life to learn several languages.
And it stands to reason that it would be easier for any singularly focused group with a mind to subjugate another to achieve superiority if the smaller groups of potential adversaries are unable to easily communicate with one another. This underscores the importance of one’s ability to speak more than one language. But, speaking another language and understanding it well can be a challenge.
Geographically speaking, one participant used this example which she studied in college. Our world view, according to the Sapir-Whorf hypothesis (1929: Edward Sapir and developed by Benjamin Whorf) advances that the structure of a language determines a native speaker’s perception and categorization of experience. They gave, she said, an example that some native Alaskans have 14 different words for “snow” so they perceived snow in its many variations. Or the Hopi who use yokva, yooyangwl, or yoyañwe to say simply “rain,” whereas we would say “it is raining” thus introducing the subject-object relationship. Wow! So these two men suggested that the language we use forms how we think and view the world around us!
Our participant continued to explain the study’s relevance in her capacity as a therapist where cognitive restructuring is a helpful tool. Cognitive restructuring, according to Therapist Aid, is defined as “the therapeutic process of identifying and challenging negative and irrational thoughts.” This tool sometimes aids people who don’t have the language required to adequately identify or express their feelings.
What effect does politics have upon word use?
Here we considered how cultural sensitivities affect the words we choose to use in various situations. An example of is reflected in the pronouns used to assign gender. Do we use “he,” “she,” or “they” when referring to an individual? Those among us who have been teachers of English or concerned with using correct English grammar find the “they” in this case particularly jarring in the sense that the word “they,” until recently, has always referred to the plural rather than the singular “you.” We considered the possibility of coming up with a new word designation other than “they” such as “xe,” or resurrecting an older word that has fallen out of use like “thee” for gender assignment. In any case, we acknowledge that there are people who wish, for a variety of reasons, to be referred to neither as “he” nor “she.”
“So many things about changes in language can be either jarring or welcome,” one commented.
How does language change over time?
A book cited as an example of political change in word use is The Sound and the Fury, a novel by William Faulkner set in April 1928. Based on Shakespeare’s Hamlet, the tale is told by a mentally challenged person. The patron pointed out that when the novel was published (1929) it was commonplace to use the term “idiot” for such a person. But, given our current understanding about abilities, not only is this word not used for this purpose, but to use it is considered offensive, hurtful and cruel. The ways that we talk make a difference.
In the aforementioned example, language changes when words take on new meanings either by group consensus or government decree. When earlier we talked about the word “you,” someone brought up its history. Early on, “you” was used to refer to the king, while “thee” referred to everyone or anyone else. Later, “you” took on use among the commoners either singular or plural.
What are the nuances of expression, interpretation and translation?
Regarding translation, a patron mentioned experiences at her work with translating and interpreting and they discovered that the translations were horribly incorrect. This brought up the idea of apps and online translations that may not be perfect due to certain idiosyncrasies of a particular language or dialect. These might include idioms.
While there is always plenty to unpack from a single question at the Socrates Café, doing so is a fun way in which to broaden our view. It gives introverts the opportunity to have their point of view recognized as equally valid, and extroverts segments of time in which to contemplate the voices and experiences that they hear from other people. Though minds may not be changed about our position on a particular topic, the important part is that we hear others’ perspectives. This helps everyone to think about how we come to believe what we do and to consider new options or to make more informed decisions.
We meet every third Wednesday of the month at 10:30 AM.
Our first Socrates Café meet up of the season is on the books! <— See what we did there?
The Big Q: Which serves you better: being right-brained (visual/intuitive) or left-brained (analytical/methodical)?
True to form, after our group decided on this question of the day, one participant sought to clarify: is the “you” the personal you, or the collective one? Well, it could be either so we allowed answers to either version.
One of the first considerations came from one who had spent his career as a salesman being methodical and linear in his approach. Later he realized that to better connect with his potential customers required certain creativity. This idea led another participant to cite Leonardo da Vinci.
Da Vinci is an example of one person who gained notoriety in his time as a genius in the fields of art, architecture, anatomy and science, presumably utilizing both the right and left sides of his brain remarkably well.
Want to know how Da Vinci did it, and how you can too?
If so, there are two books in our collection that cover harnessing the power of both sides of your brain that you’ll find interesting. The first, by Michael J. Gelb, entitled How to think like Leonardo Da Vinci : Seven Steps to Genius Everyday, offers the reader thinking exercises. The flyleaf summarizes this book this way.
“Drawing on Da Vinci’s notebooks, inventions, and legendary works of art, acclaimed author Michael J. Gelb, introduces seven Da Vincian principles, the essential elements of genius, from curiosita, the insatiably curious approach to life, to connessione, the appreciation for the interconnectedness of all things. With Da Vinci as their inspiration, readers will discover an exhilarating new way of thinking.”
Another book suggested by a participant is [The New] Drawing on the Right Side of the Brainby Betty Edwards. Our copy of this book, originally published in 1979, is a 20th anniversary re-issue having sold 2.5 million copies of the former. With 50 percent more material than the original issue, it is not only a book about drawing but it is also a book about freeing your mind to draw.
Care to narrow your reading solely to the left and right brain thing? Check out Chapter 3; Your Brain: The Right and Left of It.
Conversation about this book led us to consider a well-known perception exercise where the subject uses a picture that is oriented upside down as a guide. The person then attempts to recreate a drawing of the picture. This exercise helps to train the person to draw what she sees rather than what she thinks she sees or what the picture “should” look like.
As is often the case at the Socrates Café, the dissection of an idea occasionally veers a little left or right in other ways.
We covered such topics as the power of dominant hands, and why some people who have brain-affecting diagnoses like ADHD or autism tend to do less well on IQ tests (which are designed for left-brain thinking.)
In a study under the NIH, IQ in children with autism spectrum disorders: data from the Special Needs and Autism Project (SNAP),researchers concluded, “ASD [Autism Spectrum Disorder] was less strongly associated with intellectual disability than traditionally held and there was only limited evidence of a distinctive IQ profile.” This study suggests that “different” thinking methodology does not presume a lack of intelligence.
If this assertion holds as a general baseline for most people who are diagnosed with ASD, we might consider that those so diagnosed have the ability to use the right side of the brain in ways others do not. A patron (whose particular form of autism is associated with left side thinking) cited her abilities as an example, and said that she felt odd knowing that while she is a left-brained thinker, she is also very creative. She believes that being left-brained, for example, helps her in her position as a stage manager because she can see small details in ways that others do not.
Every month we cover a new questionchosen by the participants and we attempt to answer that question both based on our experiences and by listening to others’ points of view. We look forward to next month’s Socrates Café meetup. We meet monthly (on Zoom for now). Register now and we’ll send you a Reminder Link to access the meetup the day beforehand. See you then!
