I’m no literary Luddite (反对新技术的人). I bought an iPad with my first paycheck from my first full-time job after graduating from college. But after two years of reading occasionally on the device, I gave it away to my brother. It just wasn’t the right reading experience for me.

Technology lovers choose e-readers over books because e-readers are more convenient. They’re right. It is objectively easier to carry a 7oz (盎司) tablet with thousands and thousands of books at your fingertips than it is to carry five books in your bag, which is exactly what I did on vacation.

But I don’t read for convenience. I read to learn more about the world and myself. I have made friends by seeing a book cover in a cafe and noticing that it was the same title that I was reading. I can trace my life by the books that have been my companions. When I open an old book and come across my previously scribbled notes — shaky ones when I’ve been reading on the subway, covered in sand if I read it at the beach, next to a train ticket if I was traveling — I am able to add an extra level of personal depth and experience to the story I am about to reread. It’s just not enough to simply consuming the story, which is what e-readers are great for.

When I read paper books, I hold onto them for long periods of time. I just purchased a new bookshelf specially for my “to be read” pile. Once in a while, I go through the process of deciding which books to donate, but usually the idea of parting with a book feels like giving away a part of my soul.

Physical books may not be the most efficient medium, but they are the most meaningful. So keep your Kindle, by all means. But I’ll be happy hoarding with my library.

【推荐2】Franz Kafka wrote that “a book must be the ax for the frozen sea inside us.” I once shared this sentence with a class of seventh graders, and it didn’t seem to require any explanation.

We’d just finished John Steinbeck’s novel Of Mice and Men. When we read the end together out loud in class, my toughest boy, a star basketball player, wept a little, and so did I. “Are you crying?” one girl asked, as she got out of her chair to take a closer look. “I am,” I told her, “and the funny thing is I’ve read it many times.”

But they understood. When George shoots Lennie, the tragedy is that we realize it was always going to happen. In my 14 years of teaching in a New York City public middle school, I’ve taught kids with imprisoned parents, abusive parents, irresponsible parents; kids who are parents themselves; kids who are homeless; kids who grew up in violent neighborhoods. They understand, more than I ever will, the novel’s terrible logic—the giving way of dreams to fate.

For the last seven years, I have worked as a reading enrichment teacher, reading classic works of literature with small groups of students from grades six to eight. I originally proposed this idea to my headmaster after learning that a former excellent student of mine had transferred out of a selective high school—one that often attracts the literary-minded children of Manhattan’s upper classes—into a less competitive setting. The daughter of immigrants, with a father in prison, she perhaps felt uncomfortable with her new classmates. I thought additional “cultural capital” could help students like her develop better in high school, where they would unavoidably meet, perhaps for the first time, students who came from homes lined with bookshelves, whose parents had earned Ph. D.’s.

Along with Of Mice and Men, my groups read: Sounder, The Red Pony, Lord of the Flies, Romeo and Juliet and Macbeth. The students didn’t always read from the expected point of view. About The Red Pony, one student said, “it’s about being a man, it’s about manliness.” I had never before seen the parallels between Scarface and Macbeth, nor had I heard Lady Macbeth’s soliloquies (独白) read as raps, but both made sense; the interpretations were playful, but serious. Once introduced to Steinbeck’s writing, one boy went on to read The Grapes of Wrath and told me repeatedly how amazing it was that “all these people hate each other, and they’re all white.” His historical view was broadening, his sense of his own country deepening. Year after year, former students visited and told me how prepared they had felt in their first year in college as a result of the classes.

Year after year, however, we are increasing the number of practice tests. We are trying to teach students to read increasingly complex texts, not for emotional punch (碰撞) but for text complexity. Yet, we cannot enrich the minds of our students by testing them on texts that ignore their hearts. We are teaching them that words do not amaze but confuse. We may succeed in raising test scores, but we will fail to teach them that reading can be transformative and that it belongs to them.

If you're looking for a moving story that explores themes of mental illness, grief (悲痛), and love, pick up a copy of How It Feels to Float and follow Biz as she comes of age. This moving novel will stay with you long     after you finish reading it.

Put on your crime-solving cap and get swept away in this thriller about a girl, a boy, and a string of unsolved murders. As threats and clues pile up, you’ll be burning the midnight oil trying to finish the book before dawn.

The first book in the Rise of the Empress series takes the bones of a traditional fairy tale — a poor girl fated for power, an evil queen determined to stop her, love for someone who doesn't love back and magic — and gives them a richly imagined East Asian setting.

If the Star Wars movies have made you fall in love with the space opera, eventually you're going to read Frank Herbert's most famous creation. The story of centuries-old political plotting — about warring factions (派系) battling over control of the extremely valuable planet Arrakis — is a classic and remains a wonderful introduction to the larger, more complex world of science fiction just beyond the Star Wars trilogies.

【推荐1】Business meetings are, arguably, a necessary part of any organization where people work collectively to accomplish a goal. But badly managed, meetings can be unproductive, boring and feel like a complete waste of time. In a recent survey conducted by technology firm eShare, it was found that the average UK employee spends over 10 hours weekly preparing for and attending meetings—approximately 50% of which they consider unnecessary. However, there are theories that technology could improve things.

It’s very workable for an AI to be able to recognise when one person is controlling a meeting, or if a circular discussion keeps returning to a single issue. “If no new points are made after a while, the AI could suggest wrapping up a meeting,” says Cynthia Rudin, a computer science professor at the Massachusetts Institute of Technology. But AI isn’t quite there yet.

“If AI can do most of the dull work during meetings, that leaves more space for humans to think about strategy and vision,” believes Niki Iliadis at the Big Innovation centre. This seems to be true. Osaka in Japan started using an AI as a minute taker (会议记录员) to record and summarise the 450 annual meetings. It has halved the time needed to produce summaries and cut staff overtime. AI can also help with the matter of attendance. If a meeting with irrelevant subject matter is called, or if it’s an inconvenient time, an AI could be used to decide who should attend the meeting and when it should be. Finally participants can make open-ended responses, exchange comments or vote in multiple-choice quizzes. This has fundamentally changed the atmosphere of a presentation.

While tools that can create agendas, send meeting invitations and keep track of action items should improve effectiveness, they are still in development. Let’s hope that if or when they do arrive, they will meet our expectations.

【推荐3】Throughout history, music spread among people of different cultures.In today’s technological advanced society, however, people spread music online, sometimes without an artist’s permission.This can lead to many problems, and music companies are now cracking down on this practice.Sharing music online without permission is theft (盗窃).

Sharing music online prevents recording companies from making money from their efforts.They say that sharing music online has resulted in a huge drop in profits and sales over the past 10 years.People who find music for free online are not paying for CDs or every MP3 downloaded.To truly understand the influence of music piracy (盗版) on creators, one must understand how many people are involved in the recording process.For the sale of each album, profits must be shared between musicians, sound engineers, music producers, managers, advertisers, and the company selling the product.Many people believe sharing music only affects the recording artist, but the reality is that sharing hurts business for all companies involved.

There are many people who don’t see the harm in sharing music online and even think they have the right to do it.One online blogger states that he originally paid for an entire CD and that he should be able to do with the material whatever he wants.While he may have legally paid for the music, he does not have the right to provide permission, which means people like the blogger are thieves.

Although we don’t spread today’s music the same way we did before, there’s no doubt that people around the world love to share music.However, internet piracy would prevent musicians from continuing producing albums for fear of theft.Therefore, if people want to continue listening to their favorite artists, they need to buy their music so that artists will make enough profit to continue their music careers.