@Lash,
It's been awhile. I'm not certain, but I think that exchange goes back to a time before Bob and I met.
I do not khow how many books I have read. Lately less,but at least one a month, not long ago one a week or even two. Add it up with my age it gets to be a lot.
Have many books, like the library and have started to reread my books.
@roger,
I just did a search hoping to find it. Unearthed commentary, but it wasn't the conversation I think I remember. A Moby Dick thread I bounced up from yore.
@Lash,
Actually, I vaguely recall it occurred in the chat room, so it may have even dated back to ravensrealm. I'm pretty sure Craven and Dlowan were there. Maybe you and someone else. Or, it may have been on forum.
chai, I'm convinced that reading kept me from going completely nuts when I was a child. I'd sit on the sofa with my feet sticking out (too little to reach the floor) and the monstrosity (our name for a lamp) lighting the pages for me. I could block out anything and everything when I was reading. It provided a kind of peace.
BTW (here comes a bit of bragging), I was the youngest person to have her own library card at my local branch. I still remember standing in front of the huge desk higher than the top of my head, struggling to read what I had to read to get my card. My goal was to read every book in the library. I started with books about horses and dinosaurs. I read all the books by Albert Payson Terhune. Lad a Dog. I wanted him.
Lash, Yes, a lot in common. I was contemplating including Sons and Lovers on my list. I was not a fan of Moby Dick. Maybe I should give it another try. It was required reading in one of my classes. I had less than a week to get through it.
I don't think I have a specific guilty pleasure. I read many mysteries. Not much guilt involved but definitely a pleasure.
chai, I'm convinced that reading kept me from going completely nuts when I was a child. I'd sit on the sofa with my feet sticking out (too little to reach the floor) and the monstrosity (our name for a lamp) lighting the pages for me. I could block out anything and everything when I was reading. It provided a kind of peace.
BTW (here comes a bit of bragging), I was the youngest person to have her own library card at my local branch. I still remember standing in front of the huge desk higher than the top of my head, struggling to read what I had to read to get my card. My goal was to read every book in the library. I started with books about horses and dinosaurs. I read all the books by Albert Payson Terhune. Lad a Dog. I wanted that collie.
Lash, Yes, a lot in common. I was contemplating including Sons and Lovers on my list. I was not a fan of Moby Dick. Maybe I should give it another try. It was required reading in one of my classes. I had less than a week to get through it.
I don't think I have a specific guilty pleasure. I read many mysteries. Not much guilt involved but definitely a pleasure.
So many books, so little time.
Though my parents got me books once in a while when I was younger than nine, books multiplied once we moved to Evanston, Illinois, a small city with an excellent old fashioned library. Plus, there was a small elementary school library at St. Nick's. Early memories - Black Beauty, the Nancy Drew series, the Black Stallion series. I did read Terhune, but maybe only one of them. I read some of those history books for children in that school library. I pawed over my parents' magazines, which is another whole story for another thread. Basically I read for pleasure, and still do. Up until age twelve, we were a small middle of the middle class family, and then the bottom fell out, fiscal difficulties off and on through my life for many reasons, some of them my own fault re choices about what I cared about. I'd still make most of those same choices. At any rate, I still had libraries for a long time, and now have the Good Will store.
We moved to California and lived for some years with my aunt. I read almost all of my late uncle's books, many of them westerns, many of them by Dickens, and a little history. My mother and aunt took me often to the Santa Monica library - where, once I was allowed out of the children's section when I turned fourteen, I scoured the bookshelves over and over, taking out what I remember as four or five books at a time. That was around when I got interested in the history of medicine.. but still interested in fiction. I worked after school from when I turned sixteen until I left university, usually over 30 hrs a week, and full time in summer, so reading other than school books could flag, but not entirely. As I aged and also read newspapers and magazines I got fascinated by more subjects. No money to buy books until I got out of school and had a salary. But that is also when I got all hooked on art, so I took many studio art classes at night, again taking some book time, but I still tended to read at least one a week. Oh, and buy art books, which I still have most of, except for the ones about Mexico, which I later gave to Venice High School library.
I got into english murder mysteries, read all of many authors, and then gradually got more interested in police procedurals from around the world, a kind of reading travel. Also, travel diaries by many authors, another way to travel by book.
Then I went to school for four more years and studied landscape architecture and got licensed in it (boards and all that). Read a great many books on land arch & planning, and bought a vast lot re architecture in general. Also, photography books, which I still have a lot of; I'm a photography nut.
Then, in the late eighties, we went to Italy, a place I close to never shut up about. It widened my real world in many ways - whatever its many faults, I love it. I've read close to all of the four or five hundred books I've kept re Italy.
Machiavelli is still waiting.
That's enough for now. Diane is picking me up and we are going to our now favorite italian place for lunch, Bravo Cucina over in Uptown Albuquerque.
Re favorite books, I'll try and make a list later on. They vary in types.
Re numbers, I've no idea. Somewhere approaching the range of books ehBeth and Roberta have read.
@ossobuco,
I remember a paperback book ran around 35 to 45 cents in price and the book Seven Days in May was price at 75 cents and I was very annoy at this price inflation.
@cicerone imposter,
I have considered and done a list of books I've read since last year. I just read 89 books in 2015 and too many magazines and children'sbooks. )))
I can recommend Lev Tolstoy «Kreutzer Sonata». And I like to read «Bhagavad Gita» and the Bible over and over again.
Just hear that BN is no longer selling ebooks or supporting it nooks readers in the UK.
BN is claiming that a third firm will allow access to the nooks UK custumers libraries by way of their smart phones.
As I am in the US and I will not buy any books or software that have DRM protections that I can not removed if need be I should be safe even it BN stop selling and supporting their Ereaders in the US.
The UK government however should demand that either BN buy back the books and readers at their full cost or keep supporting the nooks they sold in the UK or at least removed the DRM protections from the books so they can read their books independent of anyone one software reader program/hardware.
I used to try and track just the science fiction I'd read but I lost that list when I left home (it was just a scrappy notebook) at age 20.
I assume it's in the thousands but how would you tell? I do know I don't read as much as I used to - just not enough time AND so much of my professional life involves reading (but on a computer) that I find reading for recreation isn't always appealing.
I read a survey done somewhere recentishly that suggested we do actually read more than we used to - but we read less books than we used to. Facebook, twitter, online news etc take up the bulk these days.
@hingehead,
I like to read books when I'm transitting. I tend to leave them behind (or put them in community little free library ) when I'm finished reading. Can't do that with my kindle (or at least I shouldn't).
the little free library has a lot of turnover. it's where I nabbed the collection of Raymond Chandler short stories
@hingehead,
I kind of miss reading a local newspaper every morning while drinking coffee and instead checking google news but all the local newspapers in the areas I had live in over the last few years had become almost worthless.
@ehBeth,
We do swapsies when travelling (or sometimes just donate - no point bringing finished books home when you're pushing your luggage limit).
Sometimes we get caught reading the same book at the same time - I remember playing racing bookmarks with Mrs Hinge in Rome in 2008 inside the Time Traveller's Wife.
@cicerone imposter,
Actually, it's not possible to say the exact number of books I have read. But there are so many books which I have read till now.
Hell, i've read hundreds, maybe even dozens of books.
@Setanta,
Quote:Hell, i've read hundreds, maybe even dozens of books.
There is one book I am sure you had never read How to Win Friends & Influence People by D Carnegie.
@Setanta,
I read about two dozen - probably more - outside of school.