Category Archives: Reading Snapshots

Photos of bookish sightings, including people “caught” reading in the wild. :)

Reading Snapshots: College Student Edition

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This reading snapshot of one of our beloved college students at Gracepoint Berkeley church evokes strong nostalgia for all of us erstwhile students. Whether your school was on a quarter or semester calendar, it seemed like there were always late nights studying for exams or writing papers. So you sleep when you can, and sometimes fall asleep when you don’t mean to! In her defense, she’s reading The Grand Inquisitor from The Brothers Karamazov, by my man Fyodor Dostoyevsky. And Russian literature is no joke; it requires some serious brain power. So she’s probably just *resting her eyes* and brain for a few minutes before diving back into contemplating human nature!

student reading sleeping

It happens to the best of us. However, The Brothers K is a marathon, not a sprint…so you go, girl!

(I posted this picture with her permission – I promise!)

Bilingual Family Literacy Practices

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Kids are super perceptive. My friend Cynthia, who leads the Gracepoint church in Hsinchu, Taiwan, along with her husband Eugene, told me about her family’s reading times. In their bilingual family, the kids have intuitively developed their literacy practices. She said that when the kiddos want a Chinese book, they go to dad, and when they want an English book, they go to her.

Warning: don’t continue this post if you’re in a place where a squee or an outburst of “awww” would be malapropos!

isaac cynthia reading

Look at that smile! Cynthia reading Why I Love My Mommy with Isaac. Wise book choice, my friend. 

eugene zoe reading

Eugene and Zoe reading a book in Chinese together. Vintage t-shirt!

 

And because the pictures aren’t delightful enough, here is a video!

Peng Family Reading from hemilykim on Vimeo.

Did you grow up in a bilingual (or more) family? What kind of literacy practices did you have? Thoughts on Zoe’s Chinese? Or Isaac’s singing-reading? 🙂

Bookish Treats!

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We’re in full-on Thanksgiving Retreat preparation mode over here at Gracepoint Berkeley church, so I’m going to be “taking it easy” and featuring photos and videos this week. As an evangelist of great stories, as well as THE Story, I’m very excited about this year’s retreat theme of God’s Story, but I’ll stop there, and leave the rest for this weekend!

It warmed my heart to receive this bookish treat from Emily, the 1st grader (not a present from myself), who went to Boston with her family. I was pleasantly surprised to find this waiting for me on my desk. Bookmarks are wonderful souvenirs because you can always use one (unless you don’t read!), and they don’t take up much space in your suitcase. So unlike some other souvenirs, they are definite win-wins for both the giver and the receiver! 🙂

I especially love the curly details in the fancy post-it note. They show a lot of care and effort!

Do you use bookmarks? Proper ones, or do you make them out of scraps or post-its? Or do you turn down (aka. “dog ear*”) your pages?

 

*Confession: I often dog-ear my pages. Gasp!