Wednesday
Apr062005
Books, books, books.....
Wednesday, April 6, 2005 at 7:41PM
Ok so I have had some of my tea, put a lasagne in the oven for dinner, petted one of the cats and have pondered my last posting. What I thought was that it seemed a shame to have the rambling post that did not really have a lot to say but it did get me thinking about books.
What - you may (or may not) say - is there to ponder about books. Well my answer would be that it depends on what role books play in your life and the life of your family. In my family books have always been an integral part of our lives. As children we always had access to books - we had books that were bought for us as gifts and every couple of weeks we would have a trip to the local library. For me the council Library was a magical place. It was the place where there were so many books it would take you years to read them all. It was an Aladdin’s cave where you could rummage about for what ever kinds of treasure you wanted. I think that my love of books is one of the most precious things that my parents have given to both me and my brothers.
As the years have gone on I have bought more and more books is a variety of forms from text books to Science Fantasy and Fiction to Autobiographies. Now this never seemed like too much of a problem to me - until I met Rob. Now luckily for me he understand my passion for the printed form - because he shares the same attitude. Now this may sound ideal however it does pose some problems - most notably that we own thousands of books between us. Recently we made a big decision - when we rearranged our book cases we would review each book and see if it was one that we had any interest in reading again. If the answer was no then they went in one pile - while the others went onto a book shelf. Locally we have found an Oxfam charity book shop and we have seen that there is a book recycling centre. We have decided that we will donate the majority of the books to the Charity shop and hospitals and those that we cannot do this for we will recycle. To give you an idea of the scope of the issue I have books that I got when I was born.
Anyway I was thinking about this and have realised that things have now changed a bit in my family. More and more I am saying to people here you should read this and giving them a copy of something to read. This is the case with my parents as I find things that I think they will be interested in. For me this means quite a lot as I am sharing something that reflects one of my strongest interests. For me there is nothing more magical than being able to loose yourself in another world and dream about things that may or may not be. On its most simple level - for me - books are escapism - they are your portal to another world. They also have the ability to elicit in people strong emotions that you may not expect from a page of words. Books can make you scare, happy, sad, angry and a myriad of other emotions - depending on the talent of the author. How can y0u not love that.
Of late I have been thinking about libraries again and wondering if in 10 years time - will we still have the village/town/city library where children and adults alike find a place to escape. It saddens me to say that I do not believe that there will be anywhere near as many about. This makes me sad as we will be loosing a valuable part of the ability to educate ourselves and out children. I guess that these days children do not have the urge to go to the library - I would think that they may not see it as being exciting enough - and that may br true - but for me it is sad.
Anyhow I have decided that I will take my own action and support the local libraries - so within the next couple of weeks I am going to find out about joining one of the local libraries. I would encourage you all to go out there and support all the local amenities that you have like this - why?? - well because - to quote Jonnie Mitchell - (dont it always seems to go) you dont know what you got till its gone.
Audio Books – A cool site
Anyhow on to some cool stuff. If you like the idea of books and the stories but not actually reading them then why not consider Audio Books. I have always really liked audio books – especially for when you are no up to reading for what ever the reason. Robert has only just gotten into audio plays and books since we started listening to the Hitchhikers Guide to the Galaxy. Anyhow we had a look about on the web and came across Audible.com
This is a really good site for buying downloads of audio books, plays and magazines – though I would recommend that you only go for the unabridged copies. Anyhow we picked George R R Martins A game of thrones (the first book). It comes in 4 parts but you get all the downloads when yo buy it. A cool thing about the site is that once you have bought a download – it remains in your account so that you can download it again if something happens to your PC. Pretty cool huh! Anyway why not go and have a look at it and see what you think
Anyway -some of those web sites for good Author Blogs
kelleyarmstrong.com/index.html
http://www.laurellkhamilton.org/MainPage.htm
What - you may (or may not) say - is there to ponder about books. Well my answer would be that it depends on what role books play in your life and the life of your family. In my family books have always been an integral part of our lives. As children we always had access to books - we had books that were bought for us as gifts and every couple of weeks we would have a trip to the local library. For me the council Library was a magical place. It was the place where there were so many books it would take you years to read them all. It was an Aladdin’s cave where you could rummage about for what ever kinds of treasure you wanted. I think that my love of books is one of the most precious things that my parents have given to both me and my brothers.
As the years have gone on I have bought more and more books is a variety of forms from text books to Science Fantasy and Fiction to Autobiographies. Now this never seemed like too much of a problem to me - until I met Rob. Now luckily for me he understand my passion for the printed form - because he shares the same attitude. Now this may sound ideal however it does pose some problems - most notably that we own thousands of books between us. Recently we made a big decision - when we rearranged our book cases we would review each book and see if it was one that we had any interest in reading again. If the answer was no then they went in one pile - while the others went onto a book shelf. Locally we have found an Oxfam charity book shop and we have seen that there is a book recycling centre. We have decided that we will donate the majority of the books to the Charity shop and hospitals and those that we cannot do this for we will recycle. To give you an idea of the scope of the issue I have books that I got when I was born.
Anyway I was thinking about this and have realised that things have now changed a bit in my family. More and more I am saying to people here you should read this and giving them a copy of something to read. This is the case with my parents as I find things that I think they will be interested in. For me this means quite a lot as I am sharing something that reflects one of my strongest interests. For me there is nothing more magical than being able to loose yourself in another world and dream about things that may or may not be. On its most simple level - for me - books are escapism - they are your portal to another world. They also have the ability to elicit in people strong emotions that you may not expect from a page of words. Books can make you scare, happy, sad, angry and a myriad of other emotions - depending on the talent of the author. How can y0u not love that.
Of late I have been thinking about libraries again and wondering if in 10 years time - will we still have the village/town/city library where children and adults alike find a place to escape. It saddens me to say that I do not believe that there will be anywhere near as many about. This makes me sad as we will be loosing a valuable part of the ability to educate ourselves and out children. I guess that these days children do not have the urge to go to the library - I would think that they may not see it as being exciting enough - and that may br true - but for me it is sad.
Anyhow I have decided that I will take my own action and support the local libraries - so within the next couple of weeks I am going to find out about joining one of the local libraries. I would encourage you all to go out there and support all the local amenities that you have like this - why?? - well because - to quote Jonnie Mitchell - (dont it always seems to go) you dont know what you got till its gone.
Audio Books – A cool site
Anyhow on to some cool stuff. If you like the idea of books and the stories but not actually reading them then why not consider Audio Books. I have always really liked audio books – especially for when you are no up to reading for what ever the reason. Robert has only just gotten into audio plays and books since we started listening to the Hitchhikers Guide to the Galaxy. Anyhow we had a look about on the web and came across Audible.com
This is a really good site for buying downloads of audio books, plays and magazines – though I would recommend that you only go for the unabridged copies. Anyhow we picked George R R Martins A game of thrones (the first book). It comes in 4 parts but you get all the downloads when yo buy it. A cool thing about the site is that once you have bought a download – it remains in your account so that you can download it again if something happens to your PC. Pretty cool huh! Anyway why not go and have a look at it and see what you think
Anyway -some of those web sites for good Author Blogs
kelleyarmstrong.com/index.html
http://www.laurellkhamilton.org/MainPage.htm
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