My family lived with my
grandfather in a middle-aged, Cape Cod house filled with books. Every Christmas mother and Gunny would give
me a good book. Every Christmas my Aunt
Margurite and uncle Charlie would give Gimpa a good book too. Perhaps I grew up believing books meant love.
Captain Poolie commented, “I love
that you know so much about authors and books. I am a Luddite.” I don’t think she is increasingly against
books, but I do believe that she doesn’t have any time to read any more. Many people don’t. Nook’s and increasingly, Kindles, fill the
space that printed books once held.
Everyone is increasingly busy in today’s society…including me. My reading time isn’t spent on my Nook but
with a real book in my hand.
I read any printed thing.
When I was a kid, I read the cereal boxes before school. Today’s reading menu moves between a
seventeenth century history to a modern ghost catcher paperback. If I didn’t do volunteer work with books, I’d
go to my job wondering what was happening next in the book I left behind. My wonderful husband puts up with my masses
of old paper…and reads one of them on occasion.
How do you all feel about books? Are they still a part of your lives? I’d like to know.
I think you have books covered.
ReplyDeleteBooks are very much part of my life. Give them as gifts to pretty much the whole family. I buy myself fewer now, less space. I get them out of the library these days and then buy the ones I know I'll reread for certain. Unless of course I find .a good book sale. I love the paper, like holding them too.
ReplyDeleteMy office is lined with books and I'm what is known as a 'serial reader'. :)
ReplyDeleteI've given hundreds away, but keep books by my favorite authors. Additionally, I have many books stored electronically.
For really good books...and that's all I read, I buy hardcover, Kindle and Audible versions. I move from one venue to another through the day. For example, John Darwins 'Unfinished Empire,' a very big book, I have all three venues, and can read on my iPad, either Kindle ( I have the small Kindle for my purse) or laptop, or listen. All are synchronized. I like the print book because I read much history and that means maps. You can't see maps on a Kindle. I have the audio version because my eyes get tired.
ReplyDeleteYou reminded me of the hunger I had - as a child - for the printed word; avidly reading the H.P. sauce bottle at breakfast time. I have books I have hung onto from every decade of my life.
ReplyDeleteI have to admit to using a kindle when travelling where I can have the equivalent of four books weighing practically nothing and much kinder to my healing arthritic wrist when reading flat in bed - arm aloft. Maddening though when you want to find a passage already read.
Oh yes! There were not many books in my home, but some from my mother's library and I read them all including the one on human sexuality. I read the encyclopedia when I was done with those. I also read the cereal box addictively each morning. I do find that the print is getting too small and tend to enjoy my e-reader since I can enlarge the font...sad but true.
ReplyDeleteI read all the time, but it's pretty much my Kindle these days. My bookshelf is slowly being diminished of actual hard copy books which are slowly being donated or given away.
ReplyDeleteWhen we were headed to SF to live in a 500 sq ft studio, I gave away about 500 books. I really had planned to not pile up books all over the house again, but it is happening. I buy about 20 books a year, and that's not counting what I buy for the kids.
ReplyDeleteI'm a Kindle fan. Books don't do well in the tropics. I have most of them packed away in plastic boxes to protect them from humidity and insects. I am a constant reader too.
ReplyDelete