Extensive Reading in Bergamo Italy

Read the Guardian article for the reasons why reading is on the decrease in Britain.

More than a third of UK adults have given up reading for pleasure, study finds Social media distraction, lack of time and difficulty focusing are factors in the decline of leisure reading

Hope is not a feeling of certainty that everything ends well. Hope is just a feeling that life and work have a meaning.

Václav Havel - (5 October 1936 – 18 December 2011) was a Czech statesman, author, poet, playwright and dissident.
Havel served as the last president of Czechoslovakia from 1989 until 1992, prior to the dissolution of Czechoslovakia on 31 December, before he became the first president of the Czech Republic from 1993 to 2003. He was the first democratically elected president of either country after the fall of communism. As a writer of Czech literature, he is known for his plays, essays and memoirs.

Havel's political philosophy was one of anti-consumerism, humanitarianism, environmentalism, civil activism, and direct democracy. He supported the Czech Green Party from 2004 until his death. He received numerous accolades during his lifetime, including the Presidential Medal of Freedom, the Gandhi Peace Prize, the Philadelphia Liberty Medal, the Order of Canada, the Four Freedoms Award, the Ambassador of Conscience Award, and the Hanno R. Ellenbogen Citizenship Award. The 2012–2013 academic year at the College of Europe was named in his honour. He is considered by some to be one of the most important intellectuals of the 20th century. The international airport in Prague was renamed Václav Havel Airport Prague in 2012.

It's called mind over matter. If you don't mind, it doesn't matter.
Emma Donoghue

Emma Donoghue (born October 1969) is an Irish-Canadian playwright, literary historian, novelist, and screenwriter. Her 2010 novel Room was a finalist for the Booker Prize and an international best-seller.[2] Donoghue's 1995 novel Hood won the Stonewall Book Award and Slammerkin (2000) won the Ferro-Grumley Award for Le***an Fiction.[3][4] She is a 2011 recipient of the Alex Awards. Room was adapted by Donoghue into a film of the same name. For this, she was nominated for the Academy Award for Best Adapted Screenplay.

«Forse non farò cose importanti, ma la storia è fatta di piccoli gesti anonimi, forse domani morirò, magari prima di quel tedesco, ma tutte le cose che farò prima di morire e la mia morte stessa saranno pezzetti di storia, e tutti i pensieri che sto facendo adesso influiscono sulla mia storia di domani, sulla storia di domani del genere umano.»

(Italo Calvino, Il sentiero dei nidi di ragno, 1947)

I read IL SENTIERO DEI NIDI DI RAGNO (THE PATH TO THE NEST OF SPIDERS) when I was 14 or 15 and I didn't like it. They had just opened the public library in the village where we lived (Almenno San Salvatore, in the province of Bergamo) and I started going there regularly. In fact, I don't even think I finished. I think it was because of the way s*x is described in the book which is seen from the child's perspective. It is something he sees as disgusting and reprehensible. Therefore, I bought hte book and deciede to give it a second try. I must say I didn't like it much now as a 68-year-old! However, I appreciated the book for its historical value, although it is fantasy, as the partisan war was for the liberation from the Nazifascists. Italo Calvino was a 'partigiano' in the Communist Garibaldi Brigade. I also like his neo-realist style.

Reading for pleasure in schools? Is it possible?

Interested in how to overcome barriers to reading for pleasure in school?

The complete webinar series with OU Reading for Pleasure is now available to watch on demand for free, including our final live discussion on the series as a whole. Watch here: https://www.worldbookday.com/about-us/our-approach/overcoming-barriers-to-reading-for-pleasure/

I wonder what it would be like to live in a world where it was always June.
L. M. Montogmery

Lucy Maud Montgomery OBE (November 30, 1874 – April 24, 1942), published as L. M. Montgomery, was a Canadian author best known for a collection of novels, essays, short stories, and poetry beginning in 1908 with Anne of Green Gables. She published 20 novels as well as 530 short stories, 500 poems, and 30 essays. Anne of Green Gables was an immediate success; the title character, orphan Anne Shirley, made Montgomery famous in her lifetime and gave her an international following.Most of the novels were set on Prince Edward Island, and those locations within Canada's smallest province became a literary landmark and popular tourist site – namely Green Gables farm, the genesis of Prince Edward Island National Park. She was made an officer of the Order of the British Empire in 1935.

Free audiobooks for all! YEAH!

Have you heard? 📢

Our World of Stories hub offers great FREE audiobooks for everyone to enjoy! 🎧Thanks to all the wonderful publishers we work with and to Yoto, our 2024 official audio partner, for providing them. Explore our World of Stories selection here: https://www.worldbookday.com/world-of-stories/

Anger's a potent spice. A pinch wakes you up. Too much dulls your senses.

Harry Beltik (Harry Melling) in THE QUEEN'S GAMBIT (2020) written by Scott Frank and Allan Scott

The Queen's Gambit (miniseries) - Wikipedia The Queen's Gambit is a 2020 American coming-of-age period drama television miniseries based on the 1983 novel of the same name by Walter Tevis. The title refers to the "Queen's Gambit", a chess opening. The series was written and directed by Scott Frank, who created it with Allan Scott, who owns th...

I am scared easily; here is a list of my adrenaline production:
1) small children;
2) policemen;
3) high places;
4) that my next movie will not be as good as the last one.

Alfred Hitchcock (1899-1980), British film director known as the ‘Master of Suspense’.

We live, make art, love, observe, suffer, laugh and are happy. We all exist in a million different ways.

Benedict Wells, German and Swiss writer

Why read? Choose your reason!

Why do I read?
I just can't help myself.
I read to learn and to grow, to laugh
and to be motivated.
I read to understand things I've never
been exposed to.
I read when I'm crabby, when I've just
said monumentally dumb things to the
people I love.
I read for strength to help me when I
feel broken, discouraged, and afraid.
I read when I'm angry at the whole
world.
I read when everything is going right.
I read to find hope.
I read because I'm made up not just of
skin and bones, of sights, feelings,
and a deep need for chocolate, but I'm
also made up of words.
Words describe my thoughts and what's
hidden in my heart.
Words are alive--when I've found a
story that I love, I read it again and
again, like playing a favorite song
over and over.
Reading isn't passive--I enter the
story with the characters, breathe
their air, feel their frustrations,
scream at them to stop when they're
about to do something stupid, cry with
them, laugh with them.
Reading for me, is spending time with a
friend.
A book is a friend.
You can never have too many. ~Gary Paulsen

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(Art: Photograph by Giuseppe Grimaldi)

The moment you doubt whether you can fly, you cease forever to be able to do it.

J. M. Barrie (1860-1937), Scottish Writer, from the children's book Peter Pan

'Conscience, nurtured by truth'
The Guardian began publishing in Manchester in 1821 first as a weekly, then biweekly newspaper; when stamp duty was abolished in 1855, it shifted to daily publication. In 1959 it dropped Manchester from its moniker (name) and five years later moved its offices to London.
Katharine Viner became the first female editor-in-chief at the paper in 2015. Its modern readership tends toward the mainstream left. The paper also shaped UK news by changing its format: it was the first British broadsheet (formato normale) to adopt a smaller, 'Berliner' page shifting to tabloid size in 2018.

I am a Guardian reader. The Guardian

There's a time for daring and there's a time for caution, and a wise man understands which is called for.

John Keating (ROBIN WILLIAMS) in THE DEAD POETS SOCIETY (1989); screenplay by Tom Schulman

We are launching our third summer camp for 3 weeks in June 2024 with English, golf, climbing and yoga for kids. We're going to use the Cambridge series STORYFUN and projects. Storyfun is a series of 20-hour course books with each unit based on a story. The grammar, vocabulary and skills are those of the Cambridge Young Learners' exams: Starters, Movers and Flyers. They promote values of well-being, social awareness and resilience, as well as management of emotions.

SUMMER CAMP a Bergamo – Anderson House Anderson House organizza il TERZO SUMMER CAMP DI INGLESE E SPORT in collaborazione con YOGA RI-CREATIVO, OROBIA CLIMBING e GOLF CLUB AI COLLI BERGAMO con yoga, golf e arrampicata.

Shakespeare quotes
Who is the speaker for each of these Shakespeare quotations: Hamlet, Henry IV, Juliet, Caesar, Orsino, Richard III, Romeo

1. 'A horse! A horse! My kingdom for a horse!'
2. 'Et tu, Brute?'
3. 'If music be the food of love, play on.'
4. 'Parting is such sweet sorrow.'
5. 'To be, or not to be: that is the question.'
6. 'Uneasy lies the head that wears the crown.'
7. 'What's in a name? A rose by any other name would smell as sweet.'

Three ELI books on gender equality, clean water, quality education.

UN Sustainable Development Goals

And inspire action - Jane Cadwallader ELI

Build knowledge …

Jane Cadwallader on creating interest before reading.

Donatella and Vanessa on extensive reading.

Italy will be the first country in Europe to establish an Extensive Reading Association: the ERA Italy.

Reading literacy by PISA.

Quotes by Letizia Cinganotto in her talk on Extensive Reading.