I love books. Love, love LOVE them and pretty much devour them at any given opportunity. I have, over the years, amassed and then either lost/sold or given away so many from my design library, fiction favourites or academic books that it’s a good job I don’t still lug them all around with me as moving house used to prove a right old pain in the arse as my Dad will attest.
I do enjoy ebooks and reading on a Kindle app, but nothing beats for me the feeling of pages, enjoying the artwork of a book cover, and the physical act of passing a book on is very special, in my opinion.
I started a Book Club locally, and where possible we meet once a month. We are mainly working mums so every month many of us have trouble getting together between either being too tired to get off the sofa, juggling poorly kids or general mishaps, but even if we can’t get together we discuss the book online via our Facebook group.
Reading as part of a group has widened my choices. We have read books recently that usually I wouldn’t pick up or think of, and they have ended up being the ones you can’t put down and go to bed even earlier to find out what happens.
I have started making my own little library cards of sorts; when I pass a book on I invite the person I lend it to to make their own comments, share freely and then the book makes it’s way back to me.
I love the idea of this sense of communal reading, of sparking a conversation through literature in another way.
The month the book club are meeting down the pub for mulled wine to discuss The Thirteenth Tale ( a BRILLIANT book) and I am insisting we at least make an effort to discuss the book before the mulled wine kicks in. What a taskmaster.
Do you read a lot? Would you share books in this way?
. With a storyline about a family of freaks whose various disabilities were engineered by as many drugs during pregnancy as their carnival king parents could muster, the “dreamlets’ challenge our conception of beauty. The book has an incredible set of characters – Siamese twins, a bald albino hunchback dwarf, a limbless man who inspires a cult following to dismember – and for me the genius of the book was in the subtext and meticulously crafted writing. Definitely one to read, and as my copy sat next to my regular glossies it proved a thought provoking read. ♥
