On reading and books

June 20

Heresy was spoken in Jaronland last night, the horror of it shook me to the core. You see, we were talking about rearranging the living room and how hard it was simply because we so much stuff squash in here. Then came the heresy … Jan uttered the words books, too many and charity shop in just one sentence. Oh the horror of it, the shock that I’m still feeling here this morning. And yet …

In the past we have done just that; when space became tight we passed a load of books on. When I think about it, if we still had all the books we have had all the books I’ve collected over the last 36 years, we wouldn’t be able to move for them getting in the way. So what will we do this time? We have a walk-in cupboard off the hall and there is a set of six shelves in there. Right now they are filled with all sorts of stuff that won’t get used again, so later today I will be in there sorting it out. Then there will be room for a lot of my books in there.

Meanwhile, Jan is sitting with a smug smile on her face knowing that several thousands of books are safe on her kindle. I too have a quite a few on my kindle as well. Is that even more heresy I wonder? There are some who will say it is. There’s a skit song about this one doing the rounds on Facebook now. It features a group of librarians poncing about throwing books about and singing about how much better real books are compared with a kindle. Oh yes? Then why are they throwing the books around like that?

You see, there is use and a market for both types books. Like us here, I read both, Jan uses only her kindle. When we go out anywhere we always take our kindles with us, just in case we decide to go for a drink, which is pretty much every time we go out. So now Jan sets up the kindles while I’m at the bar getting our diet cokes, or J2O for me these days, cokes make me too gassy. Then we can sit and read for a time, and chat as and when we feel like it, which quite often really seeing as we are both chatter boxes. Indeed, the only time we sit in silence is when I’m sat writing.       

Reading is perhaps something we all need to do at some point on our lives. A student has to do a lot more reading than most other people. During my OU days I have no idea how many books I read on top of the course materials, which added up to huge amount anyway. At one point I began getting concerned my memory. You see, all that reading and yet how much was actually sticking in my memory. At the sane tine a retired teacher was asking how I was getting on with it. So I told her what I was feeling and she said something along the lines of, that I wouldn’t remember all of it, no matter what I do. The trick is to just remember the main points of what I was reading. To help with that, is efficient note taking. This was invaluable advice for me at that time.

These days I read very little non-fiction, and when I do it’s related to diabetes and healthy living/food. So in most cases it’s not so important to remember story plots and so on. That’s why I’ve read Michael Connelly’s The Poet twice. Other books I have read a number of times intentionally, Asimov’s Foundation series for example, The Ryanville books from Tom Clancy, and of course, the Parry Hotter series are now into their third reading. The best book I have read more than once, is an easy choice, The Bible, although I haven’t read it for some time now.

Add in all the papers and the mags I read, then reading is important to me. And it’s great for passing time when waiting for someone, like the guy in today’s photo …

Today’s funny …

Son: My teacher must be really old.
Father: Why is that son?
Son: Well, today in class, he told us that he used to teach Shakespeare.