How Long Will It Take Me to Read This Book
Welcome to your weekly roundup of book news and literary highlights from The Thread.
This week, fans of Maya Angelou got a take a chance to browse the poet's estate sale; McDonald'south in Australia is calculation books to Happy Meals; and a new tool could help you figure out exactly how many books to bring on vacation.
A literary icon's estate sale
Maya Angelou, iconic poet, author and activist, is considered to exist one of most influential authors of the 20th century. And terminal week, you could browse her household goods.
Angelou, the recipient of the National Medal of Arts and the Presidential Medal of Freedom, died concluding May at the age of 86, in her Winston-Salem, N.C., dwelling house. In the process of cleaning out her business firm, Laster's Fine Art & Antiques held an manor sale at the business firm. It was a rare opportunity to view the personal belongings of a literary legend.
Co-ordinate to Laster's, the auction included books, paintings, furniture, handbags and other household items. Pictures from the sale prove everything from coffee mugs to Christmas ornaments.
Many who came to browse were looking for a connection to Angelou.
One shopper, Pam Casstevens, told Time Warner Cable News, "I've always admired her work. I've admired her as a woman. It just brings me joy to have some of her items now."
The items, Time Warner reported, were surprisingly affordable: Prices were as low as $x. Proceeds benefit one of Angelou'due south foundations.
How long will it take me to read that?
There'south a website for everything.
HowLongToReadThis.com can estimate your personal reading speed, and tell you how long information technology will take yous to read almost any book. The site'due south database has more than 12 1000000 titles, so chances are your current reading material is in there.
How does it work? The site times y'all while y'all read a sample of the volume, then refers to the book's page count to give you an estimated reading time.
An example: Next up on my listing is Marlon James' "A Cursory History of Seven Killings." It's a hefty volume at 704 pages. HowLongToReadThis.com thinks I tin put information technology downward in five hours and 24 minutes. We'll see.
This might seem like a frivolous tool, but when it's time to make up one's mind how many books to pack for vacation, it could come up in handy. Some e-readers already offer similar tools, only if you lot're a paper book hold-out, here you go.
Drinkable books
Each page in The Drinkable Volume has the potential to filter up to 26 gallons of water.
Brian Gartside | Courtesy of The Beverage Book
It turns out books really can save lives. Chemist Teri Dankovich has created "beverage books," a tool for filtering drinking water in developing countries.
Co-ordinate to BBC News, each page contains nanoparticles of silver and copper, which kill bacteria when the water passes through it. In early on trials in South Africa, Ghana and Bangladesh, the paper removed more than 99 percentage of leaner.
"All you demand to do is tear out a paper, put it in a simple filter holder and pour water into information technology from rivers, streams, wells etc., and out comes clean water," Dankovich told the BBC.
Each page tin filter up to 26 gallons; the whole book could filter up to four years' worth of water for a single user.
Dankovich said her squad still has more than work to do before the drinking books tin can be widely distributed, but here'due south hoping information technology's an international bestseller.
Happy Meals with books?
In Australia, kids can get a volume with their burgers or chicken nuggets — but not all parents are happy about it.
McDonald'south stores down under are offering paperbacks and due east-books instead of the usual plastic toys in Happy Meals. The books range from non-fiction titles like "Wild Baby Animals" to digital books inspired by "Aroused Birds" or "My Piddling Pony," according to the Los Angeles Times.
Then what'southward not to like nearly more books for kids? An Australian organisation called The Parents' Jury is arguing that the marketing entrada will encourage unhealthy eating habits for children. The theory is that parents will accept a harder time proverb "no" to child'south asking for a Happy Meal if there's a book involved.
The fast-food giant tried a similar programme in the United States last Jan. They gave away more ten million books in ii weeks, which presumably all ended upward with some greasy French fry fingerprints.
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Source: https://www.mprnews.org/story/2015/08/19/thread-books-briefs