The Bazaar of Bad Dreams

    Author: Stephen King

    US author Stephen King is well-known for creating contemporary horror, supernatural fiction and science fiction stories. His latest book delivers a generous collection of stories with hidden connections. The master storyteller also includes insight into why and how he came to write them.

    Magnus Chase and the Gods of Asgard

    Author: Rick Riordan

    A troubled kid named Magnus Chase has lived alone on the streets of Boston since his mother's mysterious death. His life changes when he meets Uncle Randolph, a man his mother warned him about. Randolph reveals that Chase is the son of a Norse god. Chase is then tasked with searching for a lost weapon to save the world from monsters.

    Little Victories: Perfect Rules for Imperfect Living

    Author: Jason Gay

    There are always moments in our lives when we feel doomed（注定） to be imperfect. In this collection of humorous essays，Wall Street Journal columnist Jason Gay tells us that, when we mess things up，we should just give ourselves a break and celebrate the things we did right.

    Thing Explainer: Complicated Stuff in Simple Words

    Author: Randall Munroe

    Have you ever been puzzled by complex terminology (术语）？ Has it prevented you from learning about science? This fascinating book provides simple explanations and line drawings to explain essential science concepts. The book's author is the man behind the popular science blog -- What If.

    Today Dante had a small skating competition in his class. Before we went to the competition, I asked him if he wanted to wear something nice for the competition and he said, “Who cares? It's not important.” When we showed up at the rink(溜冰场), we found that most of the kids were dressed up. One boy who was around nine years old was my son's friend, wearing a dress shirt and a pink vest. I walked over to his mother saying how beautifully dressed he was. But his mother said, “He didn't want to dress up. He said that this competition was not important for him to dress up.”

    I thought it was interesting that neither Dante nor his friend viewed the competition as important and neither wanted to dress up. I started to wonder if this was how a child learned what was “important” and what wasn't.

Interestingly, this boy won two medals and Dante won none.

    Parents and teachers often instill (灌输) what they think is important: then children will accept the opinions of the adults. Gradually, they grow up stressing about how they look, how many medals they get, what color the medals are, how good their grades are, what a great “job” they can get in life, what a big house they can live in... etc.

    Dante taught me an important lesson today. He taught me what was unimportant. Life goes on long after the medal ceremony whether you win a medal or not.

    Norman Garmezy, a development psychologist at the University of Minnesota, met thousands of children in his four decades of research. A nine-year-old boy in particular stuck with him. He has an alcoholic mother and an absent father. But each day he would walk in to school with a smile on his face. He wanted to make sure that "no one would feel pity for him and no one would know his mother's incompetence.” The boy exhibited a quality Garmezy identified as “resilience”.

    Resilience presents a challenge for psychologists. People who are lucky enough to never experience any sort of adversity (逆境) won't know how resilient they are. It's only when they're faced with obstacles, stress, and other environmental threats that resilience, or the lack of it, comes out. Some give in and some conquer.

    Garmezy's work opened the door to the study of the elements that could enable an individual's success despite the challenges they faced. His research indicated that some elements had to do with luck, but quite large set of elements was psychological, and had to do with how the children responded to the environment. The resilient children had what psychologists call an “internal lens of control(内控点)”. They believed that they, and not their circumstances, affected their achievements. The resilient children saw themselves as the arrangers of their own fates.

    Ceorge Bonanno has been studying resilience for years at Columbia University's Teachers College. He found that some people are far better than others at dealing with adversity. This difference might come from perception(认知) whether they think of an event as traumatic(创伤), or as an opportunity to learn and grow. “Stressful” or “traumatic” events themselves don't have much predictive power when it comes to life outcomes. "Exposure to potentially traumatic events does not predict later functioning,” Bonanno said. "It's only predictive if there's a negative response.” In other words, living through adversity doesn't guarantee that you'll suffer going forward.

The good news is that positive perception can be taught. "We can make ourselves more or less easily hurt by how we think about things," Bonanno said. In research at Columbia, the neuroscientist Kevin Ochsner has shown that teaching people to think of adversity in different ways--to reframe it in positive terms when the initial response is negative, or in a less emotional way when the initial response is emotionally “hot”—changes how they experience and react to the adversity.

                                                                                              America's top comic book stores

    New York City, NY － JHU Comic Books

    NYC has a number of impressive comic book stores. While other comic book stores in the city fill their shelves with other products like cards and board games, JHU focuses only on the comics themselves, with shelves filled with great selections of the latest releases and back issues from wall to wall. (32 East 32nd St, 212 — 268 — 7088)

    Austin, TX－Austin Books & Comics

    Opened in 1977, Austin Books &. Comics is one of Texas' biggest and longest running comic book stores. Not only do they sell the latest issues, they also carry many first editions and back issues. Good news is that they often hold regular book purchase discount activities, which means that you'd better consult them before your visit. (5002 N Lamar Blvd, 512－454－4197)

    Washington D. C. － Big Planet Comics

    This store, originally from Georgetown, prefers the more independent, small-press titles as well as stuff from Europe and Japan that your kids probably haven't even heard of, but they also carry the more popular ones. True to its name, BPC has established its own comic book world, with book signing and meet-and-greet events, and their very own, though tiny, comic book publishing house. (1520 U St NW, 202 —342 —1961)

    Portland 9 OR － Floating World Comics

    Floating World Comics is not only a comic book store but a community hosting art shows. Priding itself on cool style, this is an ideal place for comic books, where art books fill shelves just as much as the more mainstream comics. Both the future artists and the comic book lovers in your family will more than appreciate a stopover during your Portland vacation. (400 NW Couch St, 503－241－0227)

    Are you looking for some great beach movies? If you are, here are some beach movies that you are advised to watch.

    Blue Hawaii (1961)

    The first of Elvis Presley's Hawaiian three beach movies puts him into a setting(背景) as an army man who returns home for some surfing. Mom Angela Land sbury wants Presley to get a real job, but he's all about touring the island. Relax, Mom. Time for some wonderful parties!

    Beach Blanket Bingo (1965)

    The most famous of the “beach party” film of the 1960s stars Frankie Avalon and Annette Funicello. This movie is all about how fun it is to be a teenager, especially if you're at a party on the beach. Sunny, silly and energetic! You might find yourself laughing at the story and being happy after watching it.

    Six Days Seven Nights (1998)

    Anne Heche stars a woman unhappily engaged (订婚) to Frank Martin. On a vacation, she finds herself on a plane piloted by a sad man called Quinn Harris. They hate each other, which gets even more annoying once they two find themselves being alone on an island with no people. What better setting to fall in love?

Teen Beach Movie (2013)

    The Disney Channel remade the beach party movie in 2013 and brought us a new series of teens-dancing-on-the-beach movies. Ross Lynch is a kid suddenly thrown into a actual teen beach movie by a magic wave! Time to dress up fifties-style and sing tunes (曲调) like Surf Crazy and Cruisin for a Bruisin. In the end, the kids return to the real world. These are the movies to watch if you love happy endings.

    Joey was born in 1990 in Connecticut and now lives in North Carolina in the United States. When Joey was six, he started racing small cars in competitions. He began to win many races, but they weren't big races. His parents decided to move to Atlanta, Georgia, so Joey could compete in bigger and better competitions. When he was 12, he set a record by winning 14 races in a row at the Atlanta Motor Speedway. He continued to win many races, and finally began racing with regular-sized (正常大小的) race cars.

    When Joey was 15 years old, he met the race car driver Mark Martin. Martin is a famous NASCAR driver. NASCAR is the National Association for Stock Car Auto Racing, and it is the biggest and most popular car-racing organization in the United States. Martin was interested in Joey and thought he was “the real deal.” He said, “I am sure that he can be one of the greatest that ever raced in NASCAR. There's no doubt in my mind.”

    Martin was right. Joey started as a NASCAR driver in 2007. NASCAR has many races, and at first, Joey was only able to compete in smaller races because of his age. In his first NASCAR season, he won a championship (冠军). In 2008, he was able to compete in bigger NASCAR competitions. He competed in one of the top NASCAR racing series called the Nationwide Series, and at 18, he became the youngest winner in Nationwide Series history.

    In 2009, he became the youngest winner in another top NASCAR racing series called the Sprint Cup Series, and he also won the Nationwide Series for the fifth time. To be one of the best drivers in the history of racing, Joey has to win many more races. But at 19, he's off to a good start.