Playingjane - Playing Jane

The dilemma - my goal is to read all the books on my bookshelf that I haven’t read - approximately 27 and I'm 6 books in. I've been really good about not adding to that but couldn't help myself and adopted these two today at work. Approx 29 for the year...

SeriousPensPublishing Draws Higher Literacy Levels Worldwide - New York Wire

Education and literacy are known priorities in established systems worldwide. Yet, despite the attention given to these areas, downward spikes are recorded now and then – appearing more often under…

Someone I know is making moves. 

One of twelve volvelles in Trithemius, Polygraphie, 1561. The title written on the fore-edge of this book suggests that it belonged to John Dee. It’s a book about cryptography, and the volvelles are cipher discs used to encoding or decoding text.

The RCP library has the largest known collection of books from John Dee’s library, going on display from January 2016.

My mom’s friend got me this beautiful bookmark from Mexico

Look at all these penguins I don’t own. 

Outlander, Game of Thrones, Penny Dreadful

Feeling vulnerable for sharing my vice-watching but can’t wait to see the outpouring of responses, photos, and gifs for these shows in the coming months. On the edge of my seat.

Review | Packing for Mars by Mary Roach

Genre: nonfiction, science writing Setting: the US, Russia, space, etc. # of Pages: 334 Rating: 5/5

The skinny: An exploration of the science of human life in space.

The fat: This is a great read regardless of how much you care about space. Roach’s exacting research, efficient prose, and effortless sense of humor make Packing for Mars a surprisingly easy read. The wealth of scientific detail is communicated in such a way that you don’t need a degree in astrobiology to understand it, but the real selling point of this book is how it humanizes the tremendous task of manned spaceflight. While there’s plenty here to impress, there are also entire chapters devoted to the intimate–and often embarrassing–challenges of life outside Earth’s atmosphere, including sex, shit, and body odor. Gross as that sounds, Roach’s unflappable sense of humor makes even the most disgusting details delightful. At the same time, she doesn’t shy away from the big questions, like why we should spend billions of dollars sending men to Mars when so much economic inequality already exists on Earth. A thoroughly fun and thought-provoking book. 

Found this in an article from Brain Pickings and now I'm in love. 

The Book of Miracles: Rare Medieval Illustrations of Magical Thinking