Well I have always followed Margaret Atwood's life with great respect and enjoyment.

You definitely don't need to worry about Ursula! How I miss her....

https://www.neh.gov/article/ursula-k-le-guin-was-creator-worlds

Fun fact about her -- she never drove. She got a drivers' license in 1947 "but I just never drove, and people who know me are thankful for that".

People always read aloud until medieval (in Europe) times.... even worse, there often wasn't even punctuation or even spaces between words!

Tons of info about that all over the internet, but if you are especially interested in the history of original aural communication by poets such as Homer and his Asian equivalents shifting gradually into writing, then eventually into books, then even later into printing presses etc.....I recommend Papyrus: The Invention of Books in the Ancient World by Irene Vallejo.

One of my favorite books everywhere -- AND you can get an audio version!

The body keeps the score.

There are worse habits!

But I second the suggestion to get a library card --- you can enjoy browsing there just as much.

My book group has been going since about 1994 (that was when I joined and it was not new then).

Our protocol is: we each nominate 3 books about every 7-8 months, everyone votes and we choose one book from each person. Then, 2 months before we run out of books, we choose again for about 3-4 more books. This covers the year and allows us to choose books later in the year based on new interests or new book releases.

The person who nominated the book runs that month's book group meeting and we all make sure that everyone gets to speak and we try to minimize interrupting each other. Since Covid started, we have been meeting on Zoom. It is actually easier to minimize interrupting that way.

We do our fun chatting at the beginning or end of our meeting. Before Covid, we used to do a December potluck. Since Covid, we just take December off. Several of us are very high risk, and one person moved out of state, so we are continuing with Zoom so that everyone can participate.

I LOOOOOOOOOOOOOVE my book group!!! And we all know/like each other pretty darn well by now (not all of us have been in the group 29 years, but several of us have....)

One of the best things is that I read books which I would never have read on my own, and even if I don't always like them, it is still interesting to have a big variety. And we all agree that if you really dislike a book, you don't need to read it.

One thing that helps us with a variety of books/topics is that our book group includes both men and women.

Beautiful comment.

I've read all of those except the last one. Good choices. My very favorite is Flow.

GREAT goal! For most people. The problem for me is ... I love reading so much that I don't get sleepy and then stay up way, way, way too late...

Here is my book group's NF choice for Jan 2023 -- I have already read it and enjoyed it a lot. All that you didn't know you wanted to know about fungi -- from the first life on earth through today and tomorrow (someone else suggested it, so I don't know where she copied this "blurb" from...)

​

Entangled Life: How Fungi Make Our Worlds, Change Our Minds & Shape Our Futures by Merlin Sheldrake
In Entangled Life, the brilliant young biologist Merlin Sheldrake shows us the world from a fungal point of view, providing an exhilarating change of perspective. Sheldrake’s vivid exploration takes us from yeast to psychedelics, to the fungi that range for miles underground and are the largest organisms on the planet, to those that link plants together in complex networks known as the
“Wood Wide Web,” to those that infiltrate and manipulate insect bodies with devastating precision.
Fungi throw our concepts of individuality and even intelligence into question. They are metabolic masters, earth makers, and key players in most of life’s processes. They can change our minds, heal our bodies, and even help us remediate environmental disaster. By examining fungi on their own terms, Sheldrake reveals how these extraordinary organisms—and our relationships with
them—are changing our understanding of how life works. 

THIS is a GREAT idea -- I am going to try it too. I have allowed myself to buy way, way too many books and I need to read many more of the ones I already have. THANKS for the idea.

Nice variety. Some of those are really good too. I like the idea of a certain number of pages per day vs. a certain number of books. But if you miss a day, then will you read 54 pages the next day?

Maybe I'll start a new on with the new year...

I used to keep one just like this.....then got behind and I never went back to it...wish I had!

Well, some of us, despite symptoms, get told to wait until it is very painful and then get a total hip replacement.

Bitters are good for digestion according to centuries of traditional herbal medicine --- now we can just update that knowledge to "since paleolithic times".

How do we know it was for seasoning? Couldn't the plants/herbs/minerals etc. have been used for medicinal purposes such as preventing/lessening food poisoning or indigestion? Bitter herbs are especially useful for this according to old herbalist handbooks.