The power of imagined experiences

Having been a life-long reader (I'm 86 years old now), I was fascinated by a recent article from Reader's Digest entitled "Here's the Scientific Reason We're Drawn to Certain Books — And What Each Genre Does to Your Brain" (found HERE).  So what exactly does each genre do to your brain?  (I read all four of their categories.)  Here what the article claims:

Mystery and Thriller

• Stimulates regions involved in tracking clues and predicting outcomes.
• Forces the brain to build theories, test them, and impose order on uncertainty.

Fantasy and Sci-Fi

• Activates the sensory and motor cortices to simulate unreal worlds and actions.
• Provides heavy escapism, triggering dopamine and serotonin to soothe anxious thoughts.

Literary Fiction

• Exercises the brain's default mode network, boosting theory-of-mind and social cognition.
• Enhances your ability to understand complex human perspectives and internal reflections.

Nonfiction and History

• Strengthens analytical thinking, logical pattern recognition, and memory retention.
• Slows long-term cognitive decline by building rigid semantic and factual networks.

Musing about time and science fiction

Beyond Time ~ edited by Sandra Ley, 1976, science fiction, xv + 268 pages

The back cover of this book (that I bought in August of 1968) says that all twenty stories speculate on the fascinating question, "What if?"  They ponder how the world might be staggeringly different if only one event or person had been changed.  The stories include:

1. “The Cliometricon” by George Zebrowski
2. "The Rise of the Sun" by Gordon Eklund
3. "Jupiter Laughs" by Edmund Cooper
4. "Worlds Enough" by Don Thompson
5. "Assault on Fat Mountain" by R. A. Lafferty
6. “O Brave Old World!” by Avram Davidson
7. "Hail to the Chief" by Lucy Cores
8. "Soy la Libertad' by Robert Coulson
9. "The Devil and the Deep Blue Sky" by Robert Chilson
10. “A Class with Dr. Chang” by Ward Moore
11. "Unscheduled Flight" by Juanita Coulson
12. "Alternate Universe I, II, III by Tom Disch
13. “Polonaise” by Alan Dean Foster
14. "U-Genie SX-1--Human Entrepreneur: Naturally Rapacious Yankee" by Dimitri V. Gat
15. "Letter from America" by H. R. Percy
16. "The Napoleonic Wars" by Felix C. Gotschalk
17. "Checkmate in Six Moves" by Olga Lay
18. "Many Rubicons" by Michael Orgill
19. “The Fellini Beggar” by Chelsea Quinn Yarbro
20. "All Possible Worlds" by Laurence M. Janifer

(By the way, the original price on this book from 50 years ago was $1.95.)

A book for people who love words

Phraseology: Thousands of Bizarre Origins, Unexpected Connections, and Fascinating Facts about English's Best Expressions ~ by Barbara Ann Kipfer, 2008, etymology, 320 pages, 9/10

The front cover (above) has nine examples, which you may be able to read by clicking to enlarge the illustration.  Here are a few other examples from the book:

• alter ego is Latin for "other self" (p. 11)
• a captain's chair is one having a rounded back formed by a heavy rail resting upon (p. 30)
• the term flash flood only dates to 1940 (p. 109)
• flower children were hippies who typically wore flowers in their hair (p. 110)
• home page (1993) actually entered the language before website (1994) (p.139)
• kiss of life was a name used in the 1960s for mouth-to-mouth resuscitation (p. 158)
• living will, a written request that, if the signatory suffers severe disablement or terminal illness, he or she should not be kept alive by artificial means, dates to 1969 (p. 168)
• news flash (1904) originally applied to telegraphic news dispatches (p. 192)
• a red herring is something introduced to distract from a more important or controversial issue (p. 230)
• you're welcome did not exist as a polite formlaic response to a than you until 1960
  
  
  Week in Review

  • On TWOsday, I wrote about two books, HERE.
  • My book beginning on Friday, HERE, 
  • It's been a slow week for posting on my blog, it seems.

  

  Deb at Readerbuzz hosts Sunday Salon, a place for us to link up and share what we have been reading and doing during the week.

Science fiction ~ a book I bought decades ago

Beginning with the editor's introduction

Modern science fiction, among the insiders in the field, is a phrase that refers to a readily identifiable change in the format of the science fiction story, which was begun in 1938 and was readily apparent by the middle of 1939.  The revolutionary was John W. Campbell, who not ony forcibly moved this branch of fiction in the direction in which he wanted it to go but under the name of Don A. Stuart had previously written prototypes of the kind of stories he had in mind.

Doorway into Time and Other Stories from Modern Masterpieces of Science Fiction ~ edited by Sam Maskowitz, 1965, science fiction, 144 pages

Look into the future ... a wonderful, terrifying world in which all wishes are granted, all of man's (sic) work is done for him.  Machines can solve any problem, even the psychological ones of fear, ambition and frustrated love.  Look into the future ... and learn that one problem solved brings on a thousand new dilemmas man (sic) never faced before.  Look into the future ... if you dare.

(That's from the back cover, published when "men" were apparently the only humans around.  Okay, you know I'm being facetious, but I was around at that time and had three children.  Look closely at the top right of the cover photo, above, and see that this book is so old it cost only 50 cents!)

Gilion at Rose City Reader hosts

Book Beginnings on Fridays.

I heard about a couple of good books

Out of Africa ~ by Isak Dinesen, 1937, nonfiction, 416 pages

In this book, the author of Seven Gothic Tales gives a true account of her life on her plantation in Kenya.  She tells with classic sim-plicity of the ways of the country and the natives, of the beauty of the Ngong Hills and coffee trees in blossom, of her guests, from the Prince of Wales to Knudsen, the old charcoal burner, who visited her, of primitive festivals, of big game that were her near neighbors — lions, rhinos, elephants, zebras, buffaloes — and of Lulu, the little gazelle who came to live with her, unbelievably ladylike and beautiful.

A Gentleman in Moscow ~ by Amor Towles, 2019, political fiction, 496 pages

The #1 New York Times-bestselling author of The Lincoln Highway and Table for Two wrote this novel about a man who's ordered to spend the rest of his life inside a luxury hotel.

In 1922, Count Alexander Rostov is deemed an unrepentant aristocrat by a Bolshevik tribunal, and is sentenced to house arrest in the Metropol, a grand hotel across the street from the Kremlin.  Rostov, an indomitable man of erudition and wit, has never worked a day in his life, and must now live in an attic room while some of the most tumultuous decades in Russian history are unfolding outside the hotel’s doors.  Unexpectedly, his reduced circumstances provide him entry into a much larger world of emotional discovery, and the count endeavors to gain a deeper understanding of what it means to be a man of purpose.

Library Loot

Arrivals and Departures ~ by Amanda Eyre Ward, 2026, literary fiction, 288 pages

The Perkins family has problems.  They’re scattered across the globe.

• Lee, a glamorous reality-TV star, is struggling with her mental health in the spotlight.
• Reagan, her younger sister, has fallen for a romance scammer.
• Cord, their charming brother, is one drink away from losing it all.
• And their mother, Charlotte, still longs for the love she let slip away a decade ago, a lover who sailed off with her heart to a remote island in Greece.

When Reagan disappears, Lee flies first-class to Athens to save her family — again.  There, against the glittering Mediterranean and the shadow of the Acropolis, Lee contends with emotional nieces, relentless paparazzi, and her own fragile heart.  Lee is desperately searching — for her sister, and for the hope and joy she thought was gone forever.  Across continents and their crises, each member of the Perkins family must face the same question:  is it ever too late to choose love?  It’s the story of a family finding the courage to say the only words that can save us — I love you.

Week in Review

• On Monday, I wrote about two kinds of people, HERE.
• My subject on Wednesday was troublesome words, HERE.
• Friday's post, HERE, was about my new book about alien encounters.

Deb at Readerbuzz hosts Sunday Salon, a place for us to link up and share what we have been reading and doing during the week.

Two beginnings

Beginning of the Introduction

"Are we alone?"  This short but profound question has been repeatedly posed by us on Earth as we attempt to discover if there is life on other planets.

Beginning of Chapter One

Has human history been influenced by extraterrestrials for up to 12,000 years?  There are a group of authors and academics who say there is strong evidence this is the case, and aliens have walked the Earth, helping to build the iconic pyramids in Egypt, the holy site of Puma Punku in Bolivia, and even had a role with the Ark of the Covenant.

World of the Unexplained: Alien Encounters ~ by Sam Pilger and Leo Moynihan, 2024, unidentified flying objects, 176 pages

Take a journey into the world of the unexplained to discover the extraterrestrial mysteries of history:  tales of alien encounters across the centuries, from those who have witnessed mysterious lights in the sky to those with tales of time spent on alien spacecraft.  Whether you are a doubter, a believer, or simply curious, here you will find accounts that explore ancient tales of aliens before tracking the many UFO sightings that have been reported across the world.

The book is divided into four themed chapters:  (1) Ancient Aliens, (2)  UFO Conspiracies, (3)  UFO Sightings, and (4)  Alien Abductions.

Gilion at Rose City Reader hosts

Book Beginnings on Fridays.