Brilliant bookshops worth visiting

TOPPING AND COMPANY

Topping and Company in Bath which opened in 2007 at a shop moved into a large Georgian building last year. This means it can house more than 75,000 books and host many author events. It fitted out with handcrafted (手工制作的) bookcases and rolling library ladders. It’s easy to spend hours here, settled on a comfortable seat and enjoying a pot of tea or coffee while looking through inspiring book titles.

BOOKSHOP BY THE BLACKDOWNS

Bookshop by the Blackdowns opened last December in Wellington and is a family-run affair. Very much a community bookshop and space for people to share a love of reading, they sell new publications, classics and old favorites. As well as pre-schoolers’ picture books and children’s books, the shop also has a good line in young adult fiction. Ever-changing Reading Lists highlight their hand-picked books. They also host author events, with visits by Emma Carroll and Hazel Prior in recent months.

BAILEY HILL BOOKSHOP

Located in Castle Cary, Bailey Hill Bookshop has been running for more than 50 years, with its current owners taking over in 2003, and its success lies in providing expert knowledge, selling books from national and international, but also independent publishers, and having an impressively fast delivery service for any books that need to be ordered. It has special events too, including a talk at the town’s Market House on October 21 by Rebecca Lowe.

ROTHWELL DUNWORTH

If you enjoy searching through old books and uncovering hard-to-get or long-forgotten treasures, then pay a visit to Rothwell Dunworth in Dulverton. Founded in 1975, it specializes in antiquarian (收集古物者) and second-hand books. It has sections covering all areas of interest including art, history, travel and literature. Regularly visiting all parts of the UK and searching overseas for books, it has some rare finds including first editions.

Struggling for breath, I felt another wave crash against my body. Desperately attempting to hold onto the sand for my life, at seven years old, I felt completely helpless. Waking up on the shore, I got up and began to clean the sand off me. My parents had been always drilling water safety into me and so I felt I should have known much better. But nearly drowning made me even more of a water baby.

Growing up in South Africa, I have many fond summer memories associated with the water. However, when I moved to the UK in 2013, I realized how much I missed it. As life went on, working full-time in media and advertising, I realized I wanted to do something else.

So much so, in 2016, I decided to train as a swimming teacher. I would work evenings and weekends, but eventually realized it was something I wanted to devote all my time to. I have been trained to teach a whole range of ages from three years old up to 77!

This desire to help others went even further when, in October last year, I decided to swim the English Channel with the charity Swim Tayka. I first knew about the charity back in 2019 after searching Google for volunteering projects, and I was really inspired by the work they did in providing disadvantaged children with swimming lessons and drowning prevention education.

“Why did you sign up for the challenge?” one of the charity workers asked me.

Sitting down one evening, I really thought about why I wanted to do this and I remembered the incident that happened when I was a child.

I just want to help people love and respect the water in the same way I do. Watching by the pool side as my students splash (溅) about care-free, I smile proudly. It really does make all the difference knowing you’re helping others and I encourage people to take up the challenge.

The pandemic has given a big push to all forms of digital communication. A workplace dominated by time on screens may seem bound to favor newer, faster and more visual ways of transmitting information. But an old form of communication — writing — is also flourishing (蓬勃).

The value of writing is highly valued in management thinking. “The discipline of writing something down is the first step towards making it happen, ” said Lee Iacocca, a giant of the American car industry. Jeff Bezos banned slides from meetings of senior Amazon executives (主管) back in 2004, in favor of well-structured memos (备忘录).

The move to remote working has strengthened the value of writing. When tasks are being handed off to colleagues in other locations, comprehensive documentation is crucial. When new employees start work on something, they want the back story. When old hands depart an organization, they should leave knowledge behind.

Software developers have already worked out the value of the written words. A research programme from Google into the ingredients of successful technology projects found that teams with high quality documentation deliver software faster and more reliably. Gitlab, a code hosting platform whose workforce is wholly remote, describes its secret of success as “textual communication”.

The deep thought and the discipline required by writing are helpful in other contexts, too. “Brain writing“ is a brain storming technique, used by Slack among others, in which participants are given time to put down their ideas before discussion begins.

Writing is not always the best way to communicate in the workplace. Video is more memorable; a phone call is quicker; even PowerPoint has its place. But for the structured thought it demands, and the ease with which it can be shared and edited, the written words are made for remote work and will flourish in the post-pandemic workplace.

According to a recent study, consuming three largely comparable meals each day to meet our energy demands may be the most effective method to prevent cognitive (认知的) deterioration. The study finds a link between skipping breakfast and a gradual failure in cognitive health. The study also reveals that eating more calories at one meal than another is not linked to a quick failure in cognitive function, but it does not improve cognition as much as eating balanced three meals daily.

With previous study focusing on how the quality of the food we consume can affect our health, there hasn’t been much research on how our daily energy intake is distributed and how it can affect our cognitive health over the long term, as well as if it might affect our risk of dementia (痴呆).

A recent study, in which the data from the 1997 — 2006 China Health and Nutrition Survey were analyzed, examines the possible impact of various meal schedules on cognitive decline in order to better understand this.

The poll (民意调查) collected submissions from 3,342 persons in China during a ten-year period, and their responses were included in the statistics. The average age was 62. 2, and people were at least 55 years old. The study did not include those who had severe cognitive deterioration.

Each participant underwent a dietary evaluation as well as a phone-based cognitive exam at the beginning of the study period. This test evaluated each person’s ability to recall words quickly and slowly, count backward, and subtract (减) quickly from given numbers.

The findings demonstrate that, in comparison to either less balanced ways of absorbing one’s total caloric intake or less equally distributed ways of ingesting one’s total energy intake, eating three balanced meals each day is related with superior cognitive function.