I am a keen reader – and I loved that Facebook poll\u00a0that asks\u00a0which books you have read from the 100 listed- I don’t remember the exact tally but it was\u00a0pretty good, perhaps 70%, over a spread of authors from different nations and eras.\u00a0\u00a0 It contained a lot on\u00a0my ‘I must read, sometime’ list, including classics like ‘War and Peace’ by Tolstoy, but also on that list is\u00a0to finish the rest of ‘Uttermost\u00a0Part of the Earth’\u00a0by E.Lucas\u00a0Bridges,\u00a0and E.L James’ other two volumes following\u00a0“50 Shades of Grey”.\u00a0 although everyone’s talking about them, and one of my friends is circulating her copies,\u00a0I just\u00a0don’t have time just now for ”\u00a050 Shades Darker” and whatever #3 is, being as I am\u00a0in the midst of a piecing and quilting storm.<\/p>\n
One of my favourite authors\u00a0is the\u00a0American, Pat Conroy (“Prince of Tides”,\u00a0 “South of Broad” “Lords of Discipline” and others including one I must read but haven’t yet read, “The Great Santini”)\u00a0\u00a0A\u00a0book of his I\u00a0listened <\/em>to recently – “My Reading Life” read by himself and so\u00a0itself a real treat – outlined the incredible depth and breadth of his lifetime of voracious\u00a0reading which was started on a firm footing principally by the influence of his mother.\u00a0 Reading aloud, bringing home books from the library, talking about them with her kids….\u00a0 (I wonder whether I got a pass or fail on that one)\u00a0 He reads at least 200 pages every day, and before commencing his day’s writing he reads a little poetry, (keeps a volume or two on his desk) – and his library totals many 1000’s books… no doubt he lives in an old large Charleston house to accomodate all of it.\u00a0 Today’s e-readers, such as my\u00a0kindle, accomodate several thousand books, so, that’s OK, I can read 200 pages each day if I put my mind to it, without necessarily needing space for shelving\u00a0massive quantities of books.\u00a0 The\u00a0trouble is, I am sucked in so often by (a) the fabric and thread world (b) the digital world.\u00a0\u00a0Does it count to your daily tally if you listen<\/em> to about\u00a0200 pages a day?\u00a0 which I am doing at the moment, with my iPod touch nestled in a pocket and playing as I sew, sew, sew…\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0 The fascinating book to which I’m currently\u00a0listening is “Postwar: A History of Europe Since 1945” by\u00a0 Tony Judt.\u00a0 Being an early Baby Boomer, it’s\u00a0actually covers my entire lifetime, really, and explains a lot about things in my earlier life, which being a young Australian, was then very, very, Eurocentric compared to the more multidirectional outlook Australians have today.\u00a0<\/em> Although I didn’t then understand why really, being very young,\u00a0I do remember the\u00a0 frontpage newspaper pictures,\u00a0 (b\/w of course)\u00a0harrowing escape stories\u00a0and divided family\u00a0accounts following the sudden erection of the Berlin Wall – and now understand more of why my parents seemed so shocked.\u00a0 And so much more.\u00a0 I had opted out of history at the earliest chance, because the teacher, our principal, Miss Rooney,\u00a0was so very boring in her presentation of what should have been such an exciting subject.\u00a0 I had no idea what I was missing until well into my university degree.\u00a0 Not saying that I would have wished to study history as a major, but as an adult I’ve become progressively more interested in history.\u00a0 Reading the occasional history-based, fiction or non fiction, is helping fill some of the yawning gaps in my education and understanding.<\/p>\n On my bedside table at the moment is “Explorers Of The Nile” by Tim Jeal – its going to have to pick up a bit if I’m to finish it by wednesday ‘s book club meeting – I think it is very\u00a0interesting, but I need to find the Dr. Livingstone- Menry Morton Stanley part of the book, read that and then let the rest go- have to hand the book in that day and someone is waiting for it.\u00a0 “Call the Midwife” by Jennifer Worth is apparently the first in a\u00a0series about a London\u00a0 midwife in the immediate postwar years and ’50’s – I’ll try to get the book club to order the others, it was great – but why oh why are so many authors now putting out series and trilogies\u00a0 (normally I seem to tune in at #2 or #3)\u00a0 What’s wrong with a large engrossing single volume story, like\u00a0Ken Follett’s books, and James\u00a0Michener’s….. can’t modern authors handle the one large epic story \u00a0in one go?\u00a0 Or is it the point that modern readers can’t handle the large story?\u00a0 Is it a brilliant thing from\u00a0 the marketers and actually\u00a0all about money?<\/p>\n And this just occurred to me –\u00a0\u00a0is this the same phenomenon as people making small\u00a0 1m x 0.75m quilts and referring to these as ‘large’?<\/em><\/span><\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":" I am a keen reader – and I loved that Facebook poll\u00a0that asks\u00a0which books you have read from the 100 listed- I don’t remember the exact tally but it was\u00a0pretty good, perhaps 70%, over a spread of authors from different nations and eras.\u00a0\u00a0 It contained a lot on\u00a0my ‘I must read, sometime’ list, including classics […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"advanced_seo_description":"","jetpack_seo_html_title":"","jetpack_seo_noindex":false,"jetpack_post_was_ever_published":false,"_jetpack_newsletter_access":"","_jetpack_dont_email_post_to_subs":false,"_jetpack_newsletter_tier_id":0,"_jetpack_memberships_contains_paywalled_content":false,"_jetpack_memberships_contains_paid_content":false,"footnotes":"","jetpack_publicize_message":"","jetpack_publicize_feature_enabled":true,"jetpack_social_post_already_shared":false,"jetpack_social_options":{"image_generator_settings":{"template":"highway","default_image_id":0,"font":"","enabled":false},"version":2}},"categories":[1],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-1675","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-general"],"jetpack_publicize_connections":[],"jetpack_featured_media_url":"","jetpack_sharing_enabled":true,"jetpack_shortlink":"https:\/\/wp.me\/p6uxpF-r1","jetpack-related-posts":[],"jetpack_likes_enabled":true,"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.alisonschwabe.com\/weblog\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/1675","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.alisonschwabe.com\/weblog\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.alisonschwabe.com\/weblog\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.alisonschwabe.com\/weblog\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.alisonschwabe.com\/weblog\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcomments&post=1675"}],"version-history":[{"count":6,"href":"https:\/\/www.alisonschwabe.com\/weblog\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/1675\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":1683,"href":"https:\/\/www.alisonschwabe.com\/weblog\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/1675\/revisions\/1683"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.alisonschwabe.com\/weblog\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fmedia&parent=1675"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.alisonschwabe.com\/weblog\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcategories&post=1675"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.alisonschwabe.com\/weblog\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Ftags&post=1675"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}