Reading the First and Ultimate Pleasure

We persevere, because reading still brings information, stimulation, and solace. It is the first and the ultimate pleasure. Willard Spiegelman.

What can I say, but Yes.

I have spent close on 60 years as a reader and I will read until I die. Reading is truly the first and ultimate pleasure of my life.

Virginia Woolf on Fiction

“Fiction is like a spider's web, attached ever so lightly perhaps, but still attached to life at all four corners.”
― Virginia Woolf, A Room of One's Own

I love this quote by Virginia Woolf. Fiction is indeed like a spiders web and the anchoring to reality has degrees of attachment. Woolf has a range of attachment in her fictional works. The most loosely connected would have to be Orlando where the main character changes sex in the course of the story. It is in fact impossible to write fiction that is totally unattached to life, as we would have no way of appreciating it. The analogy to me is like a sail that has a great degree of movement but always has strong attachment points to stop it blowing away.

DK

Drive traffic to your Blog

Who Invented Reading?

“Whoever invented reading is a very cool person.”
― Contreras Robert L.

Hear, hear. However the inventor of writing is even more cool. Without writing there can be no reading. Great writers are always great readers and in this sense all writings are derivative of past writings. All writers and readers are extra cool people.
DK

Drive traffic to your Blog

Unschooling: Birds don’t go to flight school

“Birds don’t go to flight school.” ~ Linda Dobson

I love Linda's quote. Schooling is not necessary for learning about life and life activities. Children learn to speak before they go to school. Birds learn to fly by doing not by teaching.

Unfortunately we often limit our children from learning naturally by inclination by forcing them into schooling.

It is amazing how the negative effects of schooling stay with you for life. I can still remember vividly the dull, boring, meaningless days of my so called "education".

I should have been pushed out of the nest to fly!!

DK

Drive traffic to your Blog

An Authors View on eBooks

“I am completely unflustered by whichever medium people choose to read my words. I'm just delighted they're reading them at all!”
― Sara Sheridan

Basically books are written in words and whether we read them on paper or electronically doesn't change the meaning that the author is trying to convey.

Most reading activity happens betwixt the book and the brain and depends on how we filter the words.

I am agnostic as to the media as I am to how my food is dished up - I don't eat the plate but the food.

DK

Drive traffic to your Blog

Childhood Reading - a View

“The books of our childhood offer a vivid door to our own pasts, and not necessarily for the stories we read there, but for the memories of where we were and who we were when we were reading them; to remember a book is to remember the child who read that book.”

― Lewis Buzbee, The Yellow-Lighted Bookshop: A Memoir, a History

I can still remember the excitement of reading Coral Island when I was a young boy (48 years ago). The book, while having gory parts related to cannibalism, was a very gripping read. Thinking back I can remember the boy I was and my passion for reading. I always loved to go to bed early so that I could read. When I was a teenager, while my friends were out about town, I was in bed with a cake of chocolate, a bag of peppermints, my books and my imagination. I dropped the chocolate and peppermints decades ago but it is still a pleasure to read in bed, bliss!

Ciao

DK

Drive traffic to your Blog

Charlie Brooker on eBooks

“Until recently, I was an ebook sceptic, see; one of those people who harrumphs about the “physical pleasure of turning actual pages” and how ebook will “never replace the real thing”. Then I was given a Kindle as a present. That shut me up. Stock complaints about the inherent pleasure of ye olde format are bandied about whenever some new upstart invention comes along. Each moan is nothing more than a little foetus of nostalgia jerking in your gut. First they said CDs were no match for vinyl. Then they said MP3s were no match for CDs. Now they say streaming music services are no match for MP3s. They’re only happy looking in the rear-view mirror.”

― Charlie Brooker

What are the pleasures of the eBook that will replace the nostalgia for the written and printed book? Some of my eBook pleasures are as follows:

Longer Reading Times - I can read in bed when my wife has put the lights out.

Portability - my eBooks are with me all the time. I would need a 10 ton truck to carry my physical library around with me.

Quick delivery - eBooks ordered from Amazon arrive almost instantaneously.

You don't lose your bookmarks.

You can change the font size and style - very important as you approach your silver tsunami years.

Feel free to add more in the comments section.

Have a great day.

DK

Drive traffic to your Blog

Fuelling my eBook Obsession

I have finally turned the corner and have become an eBook fanatic. I only have one book that I am reading in paper form. This transition has taken many years but I have now stopped buying physical books. Sure I miss having additions for my physical library but I now have a portable library on my iPad that is where I am at anytime. The Kindle App on the iPad is excellent and I just love having instant delivery from Amazon though I do miss the Smiley boxes from Amazon.

I have just pre-purchased the first volume of Robert Frost's Letters as an eBook, delivery due tomorrow.

Long Live the eBook!

DK

Drive traffic to your Blog

Reading: the Joys of Familiarity and Surprise

There are two wonderful joys in reading. The first is the joy of familiarity and the second the joy of surprise.

The Joy of Familiarity

I love to reread certain books because they are like old friends. Pride and Prejudice is one such old friend. I have read this book a number of times but I still get a real buzz from reading the familiar. Elizabeth Bennett and Darcy are old friends.

The Joy of Surprise

Much as I like reading old favorites, I also like getting surprised in my reading. I was recently given a recommendation to read a book by Jasper Fforde called the Eyre Affair. This book really took me by surprise with its quirky approach and dystopian vision. The idea of entering into a book and interacting with the characters and its final form was not something that I had thought of before. There is a surprise at every turn. I am now onto my third Fforde book.

Drop me a comment on your familiar books or surprise reads.
DK

Drive traffic to your Blog

I am with Jane Austen on this one

“The person, be it gentleman or lady, who has not pleasure in a good novel, must be intolerably stupid.”

― Jane Austen

Being one of those trivial personages who enjoys novels, I have to agree with Janes sentiments. A good novel brings much pleasure to the reader who engages. Non fiction is informative, but the novel illuminates human nature.

DK

Drive traffic to your Blog

A Tribute to Andrew Carnegie - Libraries

Andrew Carnegie a well known American (born in Scotland) tycoon was also a philanthropist of note. While not many remember his role with relation to steel, many still treasure his contribution to the dissemination of knowledge through his funding of the establishment of hundreds of libraries worldwide.

I for one, applaud this generosity of spirit, from someone who had no need to do so.

A Carnegie library is a library built with money donated by Scottish-American businessman and philanthropist Andrew Carnegie.

2,509 Carnegie libraries were built between 1883 and 1929, including some belonging to public and university library systems. 1,689 were built in the United States, 660 in Britain and Ireland, 125 in Canada, and others in Australia, New Zealand, Serbia, the Caribbean, Mauritius and Fiji.

Few towns that requested a grant and agreed to his terms were refused. When the last grant was made in 1919, there were 3,500 libraries in the United States, nearly half of them built with construction grants paid by Carnegie.

This is a truly amazing educational legacy.

DK

Drive traffic to your Blog

A Fun Suggestion to use when Throwing books out

I hate discarding books, it is like breaking up with an old friend. Still the inevitable has to be done if you are space constrained, and all book lovers reach a constraint some time. To slave the help try this trick I found in one of my ambles through an online course. Make a poem consisting of the first or last sentences of the books you are throwing away. By doing this you retain some of their DNA and have a record of past friends. I know it sounds strange, but it is fun. Give it a try next time you have to downsize your book collection.

DK

Drive traffic to your Blog

Technology as an Aid to Literary Research

I have a keen interest in the works of Virginia Woolf. Woolf was a prolific writer. I have found that technology in the form of within text seraches and collation opens many veins of information and avenues for new research.

Whenever I add to my blog on Woolf, titled Virginia Woolf - Radical Writer, I am careful to use tags that I can later collate. The latest avenue I am exploring is looking at Woolf's mood in different months over her writing lifetime.

I have got the raw data for this from my reading over the years and the use of a month and year tag for relevant diary and letter entries. It is then just a matter of extracting the relevant entries and analysing the content.
DK

Drive traffic to your Blog

Taster - 18 Business Leaders who are or were Avid Readers

This is just a taster for a wonderful article that can be accessed here.

"Some of the world’s greatest leaders are also among the world’s most avid readers, and we’re certain that it’s no coincidence. Whether you’re reading business books or history novels, reading offers great opportunities for learning and perspective that can build a foundation for greatness. We’re inspired by these 18 business leaders who have a deep love of books, and we’re sure that their passion for literature and reading has a lot to do with their success in business."

In the article there is good information under every name.

1. Oprah

2. Steve Jobs

3. William Randolph Hearst

4. Phil Knight

5. Martin Scorsese

6. Sidney Harman

7. J.P. Morgan

8. Michael Moritz

9. David Leach

10. Michael Milken

11. Shelly Lazarus

12. Jay Walker

13. Dee Hock

14. David Rubenstein

15. Karl Lagerfeld

16. Bill Gates

17. George Lucas

18. George Peabody

DK

Drive traffic to your Blog