January movie + meeting details

The votes are out!

Thanks to everyone who voted. The rooms are all booked, so here are the details for our first meeting this semester:

Movie: Up

We're starting off the semester by screening Up, a heartwarming tale of 78-year-old Carl who ties thousands of balloons to his home, and sets out to fulfill his lifelong dream to see the wilds of South America. Russell, a wilderness explorer 70 years younger, inadvertently becomes a stowaway.

When: 4:00 PM on Friday, Jan 17
Where: Room 1, Media Commons at Robarts Library, 3rd floor

Meeting

When: 6:00 PM on Friday, Jan 17

Where: Sammy's Student Exchange, Hart House

We will hold our meeting after the movie screening, so if you can't make it to the movie, but would like to join us for the meeting, you're more than welcome! We will be walking over from Robarts to Sammy's around 5:45 so if you are around Robarts and would like to join us, meet us in Media Commons.

I look forward to seeing old and new members this Friday!

- Aditi

Welcome back! Book of January + meeting

Book of January

January is upon us , so that means time for a new book! For this month, we wanted to go with theme of "new years resolutions" or "to-do list". I know all of us have books that we have always wanted to read but never quite gotten to it, or have resolutions which can be helped by reading certain books. Anything you think will help you improve yourself, that's the book we want you to read for January. And since everyone is different, we've decided to let you guys choose your own book and read it this month.

Not sure where to start? Here are some suggestions (courtesy of Goodreads)!

• "The Tipping Point: How Little Things Can Make a Big Difference" by Malcolm Gladwell
• "The 7 Habits of Highly Effective People: Powerful Lessons in Personal Change" by Stephen R. Covey
• "How to Win Friends & Influence People" by Dale Carnegie
• "How to Find A Job: When There Are No Jobs" by Paul Rega (for those of us graduating! :P)
• "My Age of Anxiety: Fear, Hope, Dread, and the Search for Peace of Mind" by Scott Stossel
• "Brain on Fire: My Month of Madness" by Susannah Cahalan
• "A Gift of Fire: Social, Legal, and Ethical Issues for Computers and the Internet" by Sara Baase

These are just some suggestions. I know these are all non-fiction books, but you are free to read whatever you want (including fiction). If there's a book you think everyone should read at some point, email us and we'll pass it along!

This month's meeting

Our next meeting will be two-folded. At our actual meeting, we will be getting together to meet new members and discuss the books we read in January. Additionally, we will also be hosting a movie night this month!

Click here to vote for a day / time: http://www.doodle.com/4rch5u4s57bc7h94To suggest a movie, comment below or email us at bookendsuoft@yahoo.com

Happy reading!

- Aditi.

Book of January 2013!

I'd like to thank everyone for voting.

It was close, but the votes are in and the book of January is....

January Nominations + meeting!

Hi everyone, 

The January nominations are in! Here are the 3 books nominated for this month are: 

1) "A Whole New Mind" by Daniel H. Pink

The future belongs to a different kind of person with a different kind of mind: artists, inventors, storytellers-creative and holistic "right-brain" thinkers whose abilities mark the fault line between who gets ahead and who doesn't.

Drawing on research from around the world, Pink (author of To Sell Is Human: The Surprising Truth About Motivating Others) outlines the six fundamentally human abilities that are absolute essentials for professional success and personal fulfillment--and reveals how to master them. A Whole New Mind takes readers to a daring new place, and a provocative and necessary new way of thinking about a future that's already here.

2) "Imagine: how creativity works" by Jonah Lehrer

Did you know that the most creative companies have centralized bathrooms? That brainstorming meetings are a terrible idea? That the color blue can help you double your creative output?

From the New York Times best-selling author of How We Decide comes a sparkling and revelatory look at the new science of creativity. Shattering the myth of muses, higher powers, even creative “types,” Jonah Lehrer demonstrates that creativity is not a single gift possessed by the lucky few. It’s a variety of distinct thought processes that we can all learn to use more effectively.

Lehrer reveals the importance of embracing the rut, thinking like a child, daydreaming productively, and adopting an outsider’s perspective (travel helps). He unveils the optimal mix of old and new partners in any creative collaboration, and explains why criticism is essential to the process. Then he zooms out to show how we can make our neighborhoods more vibrant, our companies more productive, and our schools more effective.

3) "Sex at Dawn" by Christopher Ryan and Cacilda Jethá

Since Darwin's day, we've been told that sexual monogamy comes naturally to our species. Mainstream science--as well as religious and cultural institutions--has maintained that men and women evolved in families in which a man's possessions and protection were exchanged for a woman's fertility and fidelity. But this narrative is collapsing. Fewer and fewer couples are getting married, and divorce rates keep climbing as adultery and flagging libido drag down even seemingly solid marriages.

Ryan and Jethá's central contention is that human beings evolved in egalitarian groups that shared food, child care, and, often, sexual partners. Weaving together convergent, frequently overlooked evidence from anthropology, archaeology, primatology, anatomy, and psychosexuality, the authors show how far from human nature monogamy really is. Human beings everywhere and in every era have confronted the same familiar, intimate situations in surprisingly different ways. The authors expose the ancient roots of human sexuality while pointing toward a more optimistic future illuminated by our innate capacities for love, cooperation, and generosity.

Vote for the books here: