Aug 10, 2016
Reading is such a pleasure but did you know that it can also prolong your life?
Apparently it can. A new study by Social Science & Medicine found that if you read 3.5 hours a week (easily done when one book can take a couple of hours to finish) they are 17% less likely to die in the 12 year follow up period. It also found a similar association for those that read newspapers and periodicals (although it wasn’t as strong for them as it was for the book readers)
What else did the study find?
- Book readers tend to be female
- College educated
- Higher income groups
Reading a book is usually done sitting down and that leads to another problem – it doesn’t make you exercise more (which is important to all round health and wellbeing)…maybe reading a book while cycling (exercise bike) is the answer. That way you exercise the brain and the body.
What are you reading?
Jul 5, 2016
Hitler’s Last Secretary
In 1942 Germany, Traudl Junge was a young woman with dreams of becoming a ballerina when she was offered the chance of a lifetime. At the age of twenty-two she became private secretary to Adolf Hitler and served him for two and a half years, right up to the bitter end. Junge observed the intimate workings of Hitler’s administration, she typed correspondence and speeches, including Hitler’s public and private last will and testament; she ate her meals and spent evenings with him; and she was close enough to hear the bomb that was intended to assassinate Hitler in the Wolf’s Lair, close enough to smell the bitter almond odor of Eva Braun’s cyanide pill.
In her intimate, detailed memoir, Junge invites readers to experience day-to-day life with the most horrible dictator of the twentieth century.
Buy ebook from Amazon
Jan 28, 2016
The Last Jews in Berlin by Leonard Gross
Buy from Amazon ($1.99 -special price)
The incredible but little-known true story of the Jews who went underground in Nazi Berlin at the height of World War II—and lived to tell the tale
When Adolf Hitler came to power in 1933, approximately one hundred sixty thousand Jews called Berlin home. By 1943 less than five thousand remained in the nation’s capital, the epicenter of Nazism, and by the end of the war, that number had dwindled to one thousand. All the others had died in air raids, starved to death, committed suicide, or been shipped off to the death camps.
In this captivating and harrowing book, Leonard Gross details the real-life stories of a dozen Jewish men and women who spent the final twenty-seven months of World War II underground, hiding in plain sight, defying both the Gestapo and, even worse, Jewish “catchers” ready to report them to the Nazis in order to avoid the gas chambers themselves. A teenage orphan, a black-market jewel trader, a stylish young designer, and a progressive intellectual were among the few who managed to survive. Through their own resourcefulness, bravery, and at times, sheer luck, these Jews managed to evade the tragic fates of so many others.
Gross has woven these true stories of perseverance into a heartbreaking, suspenseful, and moving account with the narrative force of a thriller. Compiled from extensive interviews, The Last Jews in Berlin reveals these individuals’ astounding determination, against all odds, to live each day knowing it could be their last.
Reading is such a pleasure but did you know that it can also prolong your life?
