Published on 12, July, 2020
Looking at other people's bookshelves is fascinating!
Do share a favourite book, or a book you would like to read one day.
I'm probably breaking the site rules on Anonymity. But Czeslaw is actually my real middle name!
One of my favourites of his - about books...
AND YET THE BOOKS
And yet the books will be there on the shelves, separate beings, That appeared once, still wet As shining chestnuts under a tree in autumn, And, touched, coddled, began to live In spite of fires on the horizon, castles blown up, Tribes on the march, planets in motion. “We are, ” they said, even as their pages Were being torn out, or a buzzing flame Licked away their letters. So much more durableThan we are, whose frail warmth Cools down with memory, disperses, perishes.I imagine the earth when I am no more: Nothing happens, no loss, it’s still a strange pageant, Women’s dresses, dewy lilacs, a song in the valley. Yet the books will be there on the shelves, well born, Derived from people, but also from radiance, heights.
Czeslaw Milosz was a very fine poet. I have a collection of his works. Well worth reading.
I just came across this list of 78 feel good books - is there anything here that appeals to you? ideas.ted.com/.../
I'm living vicariously at the moment - due to always moving around, I don't have many books of my own (the boxes with books in are always the ones that are hardest to move!) However, I've been sharing a house for a year or so now with a landlady who is a total bibliophile. There are several entire walls of books from floor to ceiling here, and everything from classic fiction through to deeply technical books about psychology and sociology (the fact that I seem to have cracked the spines of many of them does rather make me wonder how many my landlady has actually got around to reading herself!)
My own bookshelf is almost completely reference books; aside from a couple of favourites that I like to re-read, I generally don't hang onto fiction, and mostly borrow it rather than buy my own. My reading has always been dominated by factual books rather than fiction; as a kid, I'd often read an encyclopedia from cover to cover as if it were a novel. Fiction only really works for me when the characterisation is fairly simple; if there are too many characters, or too much story is based on their relationships, I get just as confused about the social goings-on as I do in real life! I have a definite preference for short-stories rather than novel-length fiction. I can happily read for hours and hours at a time, but novels seem to need too much storage in my brain for character biographies and sequences of events, so I "lose the plot" very easily.
The reference books show my special interests quite accurately. There's a lot of art and art history, natural history and biology, history and archaeology, programming language guides, geology (especially relating to caving), and books about language. Having said that, I rely on those less and less as I get more adept at finding what I want online - if Wikipedia were a book, it would be very dog-eared and have pages falling out by now!
Reading is a must, though. I was hyperlexic as a child, and my brain has a very strong compulsion to read any and every word that I see - including terms and conditions on bus tickets, the ingredients of my shampoo when sitting on the loo, the beer mats on the wall of pub behind the person I'm trying to listen to, etc. It barely matter what the words are, or whether I already know them by heart; my brain just likes to play with words as if they are toys.
As for a favourite; if I had to pick only one (OK; some), I would choose The Hitch-Hikers Guide to the Galaxy trilogy (of five books!) I still read it again every other year or so, and have never got the slightest bit bored with it.
Thanx for the info caretwo. Yeah I thought Noddy's was disappointing, I thought he came across as quite cocky and blowing his trumpet a lot, it didn't make me warm to him. I'll check out Don's and Dave's then.
Anyone else do this?
Cartoon by @HannahHillam on Twitter
the reason so many kings books have been made into films is because he sells the rights for a dollar but they must stick to the premise of the story no cuts or embellishments have you seen the new "IT" starring Bill Skarrsgard its awesome and they're currently re making pet semetary which looks good too i have several leather bound signed limited editions of stephen king worth a few thousand by all acounts
I'm with you on Chekhov Tom. Until relatively recently I had a few years of being really into autobiography - Pepys, 32 years worth of Boswell's diaries and other writings, Lady Mary Wortley Montagu, etc . I spent many happy hours boring the a**e off family members recounting events in the C17 and C18 (I'm sure I was the only happy one...). I found it impossible to go back to reading fiction of any length, which was very odd indeed as I've ploughed through an awful lot of fiction since an early age. But I do re-read Chekhov's stories now and again, also Barbara Pym and Anita Brookner.
Me too! It is amazing how many Kings have been made into films. I enjoy Koontz but while he is hot on suspense and creating mystery, his plots can be easy to forget.
just treated myself to 3 new stephen king books has to be hardbacks for me i love the feel and smell of a new book im also a fan of Dean Koontz Jeffery Deaver and james Herbert i love horror and sci fi
Yes, I do know what you mean - I just had a quick look on Project Gutenberg - there are only two version of Black Beauty listed there: https://www.gutenberg.org/ebooks/search/?query=Black+Beauty Abe Books has several: https://www.abebooks.co.uk/servlet/SearchResults?sts=t&cm_sp=SearchF-_-home-_-Results&an=Anna+Sewell&tn=Black+Beauty&kn=&isbn=
..."Deduct TAXES."
Wise man
Twitter is a fantastic thing - thought it would be full of superficial, pointless stuff, but it's not if you follow the right people. I really like @AutisticAdvocate and other #ActuallyAutistic Twitterers - only problem is I spend too much time on there!
One of my favourite Twitterers too.
Matt Haig is great!
I don't really have favourites but I like a bit of science fiction. Philip K *** in particular. Never read a book of his I didn't like.
I've also recently read two really good Matt Haig books (Reasons to Stay Alive and Notes on a Nervous Planet). Both have helped me with some mental health issues I've been dealing with.