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Christmas Book Flood | Recommending reading

29 January

Book of the day

agenumberAge is Just a Number: What a 97 year old record breaker can teach us about growing older
Charles Eugster
(UK: Sphere, 2017; USA: Sphere [Kindle], 2017)

Retired dental surgeon Charles Eugster rekindled a love of competitive rowing he’d neglected for most of his adult life at the age of 63. He took up bodybuilding at the age of 87. And at the age of 95 he started sprinting for the first time in his life, becoming World Champion at 200m indoor and 400m outdoor. He is a world record holder for his age group in a number of sports, and has 40 Gold Medals for World Masters Rowing.

In this book, Charles shares his journey and his passionate belief that growing older needn’t slow you down. And he shows his readers how taking on new challenges, learning new things, and improving your body as it ages is not only fun, but rewarding for the individual, and beneficial to society.

Available in the UK via ‘My Local Bookshop‘ search engine, or via Amazon (Age is Just a Number)
Available in the USA via Amazon Kindle (Age is Just a Number)

boy-reading-2Facts of the day

29 January

1856 In the UK and Commonwealth, the Victoria Cross was established to acknowledge valour in the face of the enemy.

New Year

According to Twitter, based on user tweets, here are the top New Year’s resolutions for 2017:

  • Diet, exercise and weight loss
  • Read more
  • Learn something new (e.g. a language)
  • Save money
  • Be a nicer human being
  • Get a new job
  • Give more time and money to charity
  • Drink less
  • Sleep more.
  • Make new friends
Book

Alexandre Dumas fought his first duel at age 23. During the course of the duel, his trousers fell down.

Writers birthdays

1632 Johann Georg Graevius (Germany)
1689 Hubert Korneliszoon Poot (The Netherlands)
1763 Johann Gottfried Seume (Germany)
1783 Vasily Zhukovsky (Russia)
1798 Henry Neele (UK)
1860 Anton Chekhov (Russia)
1866 Romain Rolland (France)
1867 Vicente Blasco Ibáñez (Spain)
1895 Muna Lee (USA)
1898 Karl Bjarnhof (Denmark)
1900 Willem Hussem (The Netherlands)
1913 Peter von Zahn (Germany)
1915 Fred Ramsey (USA)
1915 Halfdan Rasmussen (Denmark)
1919 N F Simpson (UK)
1923 Paddy Chayefsky (USA)
1927 Edward Abbey (USA)
1939 Germaine Greer (Australia)
1944 Hans Plomp (The Netherlands)
1957 Grażyna Miller (Poland)

Jokes of the day

Bifocals are God’s way of saying, ‘Keep your chin up.’

Cartoon: Victoria Roberts, The subconscious, New Yorker

Quote of the day

E B White, One Man’s Meat: ‘There is nothing harder to estimate than a writer’s time, nothing harder to keep track of. There are moments – moments of sustained creation – when his time is fairly valuable; and there are hours and hours when a writer’s time isn’t worth the paper he is not writing anything on.’