Words for Wednesday: book life

At the risk of sounding like a luddite, some thoughts about the differences between digital books on e-readers and a real, honest-to-goodness paperback or hardback book printed on paper pages have been rolling around in my mind lately.

Why? Because of the photo above. In a concerted and time-consuming effort, Mama has been clearing out this ol’ empty nest. We’ve lived in our country home for 21 years now and the accumulation of stuff tells me so.

So short of selling the house and moving (which always helped de-cluttering in the past but is precisely what Mama and Papa don’t want to do), I set my sights on eliminating the ever-growing assortment lurking in closets, drawers, and especially our very large unfinished basement.

What a job it was! Middle daughter contributed quite an assortment of no longer wanted items herself, so we decided to hold a garage sale or a tag sale as some folks call such an event. Sorting, marking items with prices, and setting up tables to display it all seemed like a herculean task, but I remained undaunted. We advertised our sale – where else but Facebook?

After two days of selling (and praying people would show up to peruse our stuff and take it home with them), we did manage to unload sell a good bit of our former belongings, including some bigger items. But WAY too much remained, and we hauled two very full SUV-loads to our nearest thrift shop to donate.

After all was said and done though, an observation I made saddened me. Papa and I are readers, and we own shelves and shelves of books. We decided it was time to reduce those collections, so many boxes filled with paperbacks, hardbacks, and even children’s chapter books all priced inexpensively and ready for new homes were added to the sale.

To my dismay, hardly anyone even looked at the books. Out of the scads of people who rummaged through our offerings, practically every one of them walked right by the books without a glance. I think we sold a grand total of two hardback books to an older woman and a handful of children’s paperbacks to one lady who mentioned she was trying to entice her son to read more.

What? No one wants “real” books anymore? I get it. You can download books digitally on your kindles or e-readers. But still….for me, reading  electronically isn’t as relaxing as cozying up on my couch with a nice cup of hot tea and a book in my hand. And finishing that book gives me a kind of satisfying fulfillment concluding a digital copy just doesn’t provide.

And I don’t know about you, but when I’m at the beach, I’d much rather read from a printed paperback then haul my kindle down onto the sand.

When I get distracted by the soothing sounds of ocean waves or that seagull who keeps trying to get close enough to see if I’ll throw it some crumbs or I simply get drowsy, I can put a physical bookmark in my book and set it aside.

I don’t have to readjust my focus on reading to realize my e-reader resorted to sleep mode while I was inactive, or squint in the bright sunlight to try to read it, or shut it down because it needs recharged, or locate a safe, non-sandy spot to store it.   

I assume I’m not the only person who prefers printed books to electronic ones, but I searched the all-knowing internet just to make sure I wasn’t the only off-the-wall hermit of a real book lover still in existence. (Don’t get your shorts in a knot, I know there are still some of you out there in cyber-land.)

And here’s one of the sites – 5o Reasons Real Books Are Vastly Superior to eBooks –  I found that caused me to nod my head often as I read it even though the guy who wrote the article called it satire.

I also found a non-satirical site comparing the two that spouted good common sense about why physical books are better than eBooks. It stated that reading on a screen is more tiring for your eyes than reading printed matter. And interestingly, studies have shown that students comprehend less when reading electronically than with traditional printed books.

You know what? I have found that to be true myself. I will buzz through an eBook quickly and then not even really remember much about the storyline but with a printed hard copy, I remember it well.

Sometimes I look at the library of eBooks I have and don’t even remember reading the ones that my kindle app marks as read. Plus, to be honest, some eBooks just really aren’t as well-written as traditionally published ones.

When it comes to books, I’d rather hold a printed one in my hands, go to the library to borrow as many as I want, and enjoy reading that way.

So what to do with all of the boxes of books still sitting in our garage? I could establish a free little lending library like one of my blogging friends has done. I love noticing those and have often photographed some on our excursions.

Somewhere on Cape Cod

At a children’s playground

“A library outranks any other one thing a community can do to benefit its people. It is a never-failing spring in the desert.” ~ Andrew Carnegie

But a few things might hamper that idea – we live in a very rural area and honestly, I sincerely doubt if anyone would even utilize one here. I’m not sure placing it in any nearby towns would work well either because lately I’ve noticed a lot of vandalism. Plus that wouldn’t be purging all of those boxes of many books at one time.

Thus, I may contact a used bookstore in the city and see if they would be willing to take some of them and, more than likely, I’ll donate the books to some community libraries in our area and thrift shops.

I just hope my assumption that folks don’t read printed books, or any kind of books for that matter, is wrong because I recall a quote once made by the writer, Ray Bradbury: “You don’t have to burn books to destroy a culture. Just get people to stop reading them.”

Anyone interested in a couple boxes of real books? Or do any of you readers out there have another suggestion for me? There’s still lots of good reading in those books.

“A reader lives a thousand lives before he dies . . . The man who never reads lives only one.” ~ George R.R. Martin

©mamasemptynest.wordpress.com 2021

Something good to read

When I want to relax, I cozy up in the overstuffed chair with a matching ottoman in our family room with a book in my hand. A real book.

Oh, sometimes I fire up my mini iPad instead and open the Kindle app to peruse an eBook, but I much prefer a printed and bound book that enables me to turn paper pages.

I’ve been a reader since….well…since I learned to read way back in first grade. Back then, it was “See Jane. See Jane run. Run, Jane, run!”

No matter how simple, those words on a book’s printed page fascinated me. And words still appeal to me which is why I keep a notebook of words (one full of quotations that inspire or encourage me).

Since I’ve been quite busy and distracted with tasks at home that need completed, I haven’t been engrossed in reading as much as I usually am.

A couple of weeks ago, Papa and I ventured to a local library and I came back with only two books instead of the usual six or eight. And those two books were already read and waiting to be returned when I finally sat down to relax one evening and felt like reading.

With no library book fodder to be found, I scrolled through the eBooks on my Kindle app finding none that enticed me into reading them.

I must admit that I’m very selective in what I do read. A lot of words are published in literal books and eBooks. And I find some of them not worth opening at all.  

To me, a good writer with an excellent command of vocabulary does not need to use foul language, explicit wordage to describe characters or scenes, and expletives in every other paragraph or even at all.

So I find myself closing a book written in such a way and either returning it to the library unread or banishing it from my Kindle collection.

I still adhere to the advice I used to give my children when they were teens – “If you put garbage in your mind, that’s what will come out.”

I don’t need garbage to clutter up my already full brain and frankly, reading that kind of “literature” doesn’t encourage, inspire, or make me feel positive.  The real world is ugly enough without reading about it in a fictional book.

So I sat in my comfy chair, propped my feet up, looked around my family room, and since I had an empty hand that was book less, I thought to myself, “I need something good to read!”

Immediately, I regretted my choice of words.

Because there is something good to read readily available in my house. Every single day. I don’t even have to search for it, scroll through hundreds of titles, or scan the library shelves for it.

Matter of fact, there are several versions of this good-to-read book on our own bookshelves. This book is one of the very few that I’ve read through more than once.

It’s a book full of a little bit of everything – mystery, intrigue, history, poetry, war battles, drama, supernatural events, advice and instructions for life, and even romance, including the greatest love story ever told. Pretty inclusive, wouldn’t you say?

I can easily turn to this book when I want to read something uplifting, something encouraging, and something inspiring.

This book proves to be true, noble, right, and pure. It is full of whatever is lovely, whatever is admirable. If I were tasked with giving a review of this book I’d categorize it as excellent and definitely praiseworthy.

That something-good-to-read book marks a permanent spot on my desk. It is there for the offering. All I have to do is pick it up and open the cover of this well-worn book. It has long been my favorite book of all.

And each time I read from it, I find something new to discover. Something new to contemplate. A new way of looking at the words written and printed on the thin pages, now lined and marked with special notations of my own.

The words in this good book never grow old, never prove dull, never bore me.

Instead, they sink into my mind, my heart, and my soul.

As they should.

“To what greater inspiration and counsel can we turn than to the imperishable truth to be found in this treasure house, the Bible?” ~ Queen Elizabeth II

©2019 mamasemptynest.wordpress.com

A book lover’s dream

I’m a reader. I’ve always loved immersing myself in a good book since the day I learned to read.

Occasionally that caused me a bit of a problem when my mother gave me chores to do and instead of obeying her, I would sneak off to my bedroom or outside under a tree and spend my time captivated by a story I was reading.

I can vividly recall my mom saying, “Get your nose out of that book and get busy. You can read after you’ve done your work.”

The love of reading and writing is what led me to become an English major in college, where I read more books than I can even remember.

Here I am many decades later and my nose is still stuck in a book. And often, I confess, I should be doing my chores around the house but you will find me reading instead.

I’ve read all of the books on the bookshelf in our living room and then some. I’ve read some of the offerings on Papa’s bookshelves in our home office but not all, mostly because his tastes in reading material and mine differ.

When our children took Advanced Placement English in high school, I eagerly scanned their summer reading lists and read the same books they did. I find myself burning through e-books in a jiffy because I am a fast reader and they are usually fairly short. 

Papa and I make regular trips to the library to borrow reading material. Usually, we come home with a tote bag full and most are the ones I’ve chosen to read. I’ve been known to check out six or seven books and have them all finished by their due date in two weeks.

All of that stacks up to a lot of books read. They range from modern fiction to biographies to non-fiction to classic literature.

At the start of this year, I decided to keep a running list of all of the books I read in 2018 for two reasons.

One was that I found myself either checking out the same book twice from the library or opening one on my e-reader and realizing I’d already read it.  I don’t prefer to re-read a literary work very often unless it’s one I absolutely love like my Bible, which I do read over and over again.

The second reason I began a “books read” list is because I actually wanted to keep track of how many I read in one year’s time. So far, my total is 105 with three more months in the year to go. I’m not sharing these facts to brag, I’m just attempting to reveal how much I enjoy reading.

This past week, Papa and I celebrated our wedding anniversary – 41 years of marriage to be exact. Since he had to attend an important meeting on the very day of our anniversary, we celebrated earlier. We didn’t go all out and indulge in anything extravagant but chose a simple celebration.

We opted for a lovely meal at a local restaurant, just the two of us. Then we set off on a leisurely drive off the beaten path and wound up in a nearby suburb of our nearest city. What did we do there? We spent quite a bit of time browsing in a store.

But not just any store. Our outing wouldn’t be considered very exciting to some folks but for us, it was perfect. We perused the many aisles of the Half-Price Book Store. 

Since Papa is an avid reader also, any book store is like a siren song to both of us – it just draws us into its folds. We even stopped at a used book sale at a library we noticed while driving through a quaint little Vermont town on vacation this past summer.

We didn’t buy any books at that library’s sale, but it was fun to browse. Actually, we seldom do purchase books any more, whether they be paperback or hardback versions, because honestly, our shelves are too full.  Boxes of unpacked books from our move into this home 18 years ago still sit in our basement. 

But at that half-price bookstore the other day, we did splurge a little and bought a few paperback bargains. For Papa and me, it topped off a nice day doing something we loved with the one we love.

A little bit like a book-lover’s dream.

“A book is a dream you hold in your hands.” ~ Neil Gaiman

©2018 mamasemptynest.wordpress.com

 

 

 

 

 

Expressing myself…again

My usual library choices

Express yourself.  Just the phrase conjures up freedom, doesn’t it?  Let the real you show.  Use whatever means that works best for you to convey your thoughts, emotions, beliefs, what have you.

Just like plunking in a couple of quarters in a jukebox, flipping through the song options, and pressing a corresponding number on the buttons, an instant tune from the past comes to my mind when I read that phrase.  A song entitled “Express Yourself” from 1970 by Charles Wright & the Watts 103rd Street Rhythm Band sounds from the jukebox speakers in my mind.

“Express yourself! Express yourself!  You don’t never need help from nobody else.
All you got to do now; Express yourself! Whatever you do, uh, do it good…”

That photo challenge theme this week – express yourself – is still running through my mind.  Even though it’s a challenge to showcase a photograph, I always seem to find something to say in written form as well.  I guess I just always have the need to express myself verbally even in photo challenges.

When I view the world around me, there is a whole lot of expressing going on with a lot of freedom but not much of it is done well.  Or done for good purposes.  Or done to uplift and encourage our fellow travelers here on earth.

Folks express themselves in tirades on Facebook.  In online news and off, magazines, and on television. In denigrating comments on the internet.  And there’s a lot of verbal garbage being thrown around everywhere you look. 

And while we do have the right to free speech, when did that speech become so inundated with words from the gutter?  When did filth, demeaning and disgusting descriptions become socially acceptable? My ears are assaulted with foul language just walking down the street and frankly, I’m getting tired of those expressing themselves without any boundaries.

I just checked out a number of books from the public library and in doing so, I decided to take a little detour away from my usual fiction.  Instead of searching out some of my favorite authors, I decided to wander up and down the library aisles, books to the right of me, books to the left, perusing titles on the spines of so many editions lined up like soldiers in formation as I meandered.  If a title grabbed my attention, I slipped the book off the shelf, opened it, and read the quick synopsis on the inside dust jacket.

Some of them disturbed me immediately and they were promptly returned to the library shelf.  But at last, I found one that sounded like an interesting story, one of transformation and redemption if I could believe the reviews and the short description of the novel.

That book came home with me along with my usual novelists and some non-fiction as well.  But as I settled down to read this variation from the norm, I was assaulted by the very first paragraph dropping the f-bomb right in my lap. 

When did ‘good writing’ resort to the use of this word on practically every page of a book?  When did a work by “one of our most important and original writers,” according to one reviewer, become littered by graphic descriptions of sexual acts? And this was certainly not one of those torrid romance novels by any stretch of the imagination, nor was it that shades of a certain color novel.  Let’s call it what it is.  Pornography.

I closed the book, disgusted not just in the words printed on the pages but in myself for choosing such a disappointing read.  I reopened the book to the last page of the dust jacket to check out the author.  A woman.  An award-winning novelist with books that have been translated into several languages.  A writer that one reviewer gloated about wanting to travel with on ‘the journey called life.’

Okay, I’m not Pollyanna but I, for one, do not want to travel on a journey of life like the one described in this book.  I know the world is full of disgusting, filthy, vile people and things. I witness enough of that in front of my very eyes and every time I turn on the TV, read an article online or in print.  I get that.  But I do not agree that slime should be touted as award-winning and I certainly am not willing to make such degrading ‘literature’ my journey of life.

Isn’t it enough that the real world is so ugly?  Why does the make-believe world of fiction have to be the same?

If this is the kind of garbage that makes you a writer winning fame, accolades, and publishing contracts, then I want no part of it.  I’ve read a lot of classical literature both during my college days as an English major and in adulthood and can’t recall one time that any of those eloquent and articulate masters of the written word dived into the depths of cesspools that writers do today. 

I do not want to fill my mind with garbage by taking it in through my eyes or any other of my senses.  And I firmly believe that when garbage goes in, it comes back out, something I used to remind my children as they were growing up to caution them about what they watched, read, and listened to. 

I relegated that book back to my library bag for an immediate return and opened another volume of what I usually read – while not always written by Christian authors, it is what I call ‘clean lit.’ Ironically, when I finished reading that book, I noticed something sticking between the plastic sheet covering the book and the dust jacket.  Someone had left a bookmark there.  Accidentally or intentionally, I do not know.

Bookmark in the book where I found it

But I know this.  It was encouraging to see.  The front was a well-known scripture, which you can see in this photo, and on the back were these words, “The Lord bless thee.”

Maybe, I thought, I should stick that bookmark in that other vile book.  Maybe someone reading that garbage would need reminding that God loves her or him very much.  Maybe it would show what real love is, not the immoral lust that book contained. 

I know one thing.  At no point do I want to find myself in a putrid, stinking pit again either in my own very real life, in reading, or in the one I express through my writing.  Because I do express myself.  I express myself in words that spring from my mouth and those words emerge from my heart.  Words that take form in the recesses of my mind.  Words that often easily surge from my inner self to my fingers as I type onto the computer screen before me.

And I want those words to be uplifting, not debasing.  To be encouraging, not degrading.  To be enlightening, not corrupting.  Just as that left behind bookmark encouraged me.

There is enough ugliness in this world, but my hope is fixed on something much nobler.  So I will continue to express myself using the following scripture as my guideline.

“And now, dear brothers and sisters, one final thing. Fix your thoughts on what is true, and honorable, and right, and pure, and lovely, and admirable. Think about things that are excellent and worthy of praise.”  ~ Philippians 4:8

And I’ll be more discerning over my choice of ‘literature.’

“All that a man is outwardly is but the expression and completion of his inward thought. To work effectively he must think clearly. To act nobly he must think nobly.”  ~ William Ellery Channing

©2015 mamasemptynest.wordpress.com

 

Readin’ and ‘Ritin’ but no ‘Rithmetic

Friday, 19 August 2005

Life is so strange and amazing sometimes.  So as you know, I’ve    been recuperating from cancer surgery this summer.  Lots of time on my hands.

There are a bazillion items I wanted to cross off my to-do list this summer…just stuff around the house, cleaning, organizing, going through major junk-a-rama in the basement and maybe making it into some kind of a cool hang-out spot for the kiddos.

So my to-do list still has too many to-do’s on it and summer is basically shot. Just took middle daughter back to college yesterday and Bud is already in the throes of two-a-day soccer practices.  That officially means summer is over!

Anyway, since I was not physically capable of accomplishing my summer tasks – although we did manage to get two bedrooms painted and rearranged – I have been spending a lot of time with my “nose stuck in a book,” as my mom used to say.

And it’s been quite the assortment of reading material – my Bible, some fiction, some non-fiction, some mysteries, and some classics.   I usually read Bud’s summer reading list for AP English.  Bah!  I don’t like this year’s choices!  Last summer, I read everything on the list.  This year, I managed to trudge through one, Anna Karenina, so far.  Oh mercy, it was agony.

And now I’m attempting Crime and Punishment and not enjoying it either.  Now before you think, “Ah well, she’s just a mom, she’s used to reading Women’s Day magazines,” please keep in mind I happen to be the proud owner of a bachelor’s degree in English.  But I am painfully reminded that Russian literature was never my forte!

So in between the “hard stuff” I read some lighter fare to give my brain a rest.  Well, one day I was at a local discount store and happened to see some paperbacks for a buck each.  I just can’t pass up a bargain and the girls in my family needed some quick and easy reads for the beach trip (more on that later), so I picked up a couple paperbacks entitled Malice Domestic #1 and #5.  They are collections of mystery short stories and I figured since we girls like to read mysteries, we might enjoy these.

I’m buzzing along reading and enjoying the short stories and I come across one written by EKS.  So I shout,  “Whaaaat?” to myself and think, “Whoa, I KNOW a lady named EKS.”    I turn to the end of the story to read the short biographical paragraph about the author and discover EKS is a native southwesterner and former journalist.

Major whoa!  Definitely sounds like the lady I know and used to work with at a newspaper in, you guessed it, this native state of hers.   So I did a little surfing the net, discovered her website and there it was – a picture of the EKS I know.

I’m so impressed, someone I personally know has actually published not just a short story but several mystery novels as well.  I think I’m a little jealous.

You see, back in the day when I was young and had no sense  (yes, I’m admitting it!) and wasn’t the proud mama of three amazing kids, I was a reporter/assistant editor at a daily newspaper.  Bet you didn’t know that!

I wrote stories every single day and was surrounded by people who also wrote every single day, one of them being EKS.  We used to converse at lunch or break and I distinctly remember her saying she wanted to write novels and I thought, yeah, me too…someday.

Well, for her the someday came.  For me, I write, a little and not very well, on a blog.  Hmmmmm.

©2005 mamasemptynest.wordpress.com

Comments (1)

You should write a book! We could write one together!

8.22.2005 — sunflower

Thinking About Thankfulness

Friday, 15 July 2005

I think every morning when I wake up this is what I will tell myself:  “This is the day that the Lord has made, we shall rejoice and be glad in it.”

Being told by a doctor that you have cancer (even the treatable, curable kind) does that to you…makes you realize how precious each day is and that you need to find joy in every little thing like…ice cubes.

I love ice cubes and I am thankful for ice cubes.  Without ice cubes, my water and iced tea would not be freezing cold the way I like. I wouldn’t want to live in Europe where people do not use ice cubes.  I do not like luke warm drinks;  I like freezy, frosty, colder than cold drinks.  So yay, thank you God for ice cubes!!!

Of course we also need to find joy in all the really big things too like our families – don’t get me started on how much I love and like and enjoy my three wonderful, talented. articulate, delightful children (I mean that!), my husband, my dear daddy and my sisters – and my friends.  Wow, God has blessed me with so much.  I think I’ll go cry now. 🙂

Ok, enough of that.  So since I have been recovering from my surgery (4 weeks yesterday!), I can’t exactly run around and do all the normal things I usually do.  To keep from going stir crazy and stop myself from watching really stupid TV, which is another whole subject I could write about,  I’ve been reading a lot – something I don’t always take time to do.

I’ve been much more faithful reading my Bible, but I’ve read other stuff too.  I’ve just been jumping around from one thing to another.  I’ve read some devotionals, then read a murder mystery, then a book written by a Christian author (Blue something or other, can’t think of the title for the life of me, probably because I really didn’t care for the book!).  Then I read one of my daughter’s books, then the old classic Robinson Crusoe, which I loved.  Then I read a fiction book by a Christian author and now I am reading Charles Colson’s Lies That Go Unchallenged.

I just started it but I’m pretty sure I am going to not only like it but agree with it 100%.  Charles Colson can be pretty deep.  I read his book How Now Shall We Live? and it took a lot of concentration but it was definitely worth reading.

Well, on to the rest of my day. The key word for today, dear readers, is:  THANKFULNESS!

©2005 mamasemptynest.wordpress.com

Comments (6)

Your journal entry made me think of a quote I saw while on vacation in Wisconsin.  I’m not sure to whom it is attributed, but I really enjoyed it.  Here goes:

“What a life we’d have if we were able to forget our troubles as easily as we forget our blessings!”

P.S.  I like ice too! — HockeyStickBoy

Hey HockeyStickBoy – how did punky give you that name?  Anyway, I love that quote – it’s definitely worth a space on the ol’ refrigerator door so you can see it every morning when you get the milk.

P.S.  Where would we be without ice???? — Mama

I love and like and enjoy you, too! And I can’t drink anything without ice. I must get it from you. —sunflower

Is the book you’re thinking of named Blue Like Jazz by Donald Miller?  —Dorkwad

Yep, that’s it!  — Mama