… the online home of a librarian in Perth, Western Australia
A new word, courtesy of Sharon Bakar:
Bibliophibians (n.pl) - those who are drowning in books to the extent they develop special gills.
Cartoon is from David Malki. (Thanks Sharon, I like the word, too!)
Sharon also asks: what are you reading now?
Me, I’m reading A fine balance by Rohinton Mistry and Slowly down the Ganges by Eric Newby, and enjoying both immensely. Not sure how I ended up reading two books with Indian themes at the same time - an accident.
What about you, what are you reading?
Any of you Google Reader users use the share feature a lot? What sorts of things do you share?
Do you follow other people’s shared items? The only person I know of who actively looks at my shared items and comments on them (verbally) is M.
Just looking at my shared items and wondering why I usually don’t bother to blog them. Actually, I think I know why I don’t blog them - it’s the time factor again. I follow so much stuff in Reader that I’d have to give up my day job to blog everything that was interesting.
Spotted this some time ago on John Dupuis’s blog - an interesting post about reading material categorised by when and where it’s read. (John’s inspiration came from this blog.)
It got me thinking about my own reading…
The breakfast table read: I used to read blogs (via RSS) and the news (online of course!) while having breakfast. Lately however I haven’t been doing this much, as my morning time has lessened significantly. I have pondered getting up earlier in order to increase my reading time, but for some reason I seem to baulk at the idea of getting up at 4am every morning. 5am is early enough, I think.
The to-go read: The original poster defines this as reading material when you’re in a waiting room. If I know I’m going to have a long wait I usually bring my own - and that tends to be my current main read. Otherwise I’ll flick through the stuff in the waiting room.
The bathroom read: I’m not squeamish about germs at all. I wash my hands frequently, after all. At home we have a stock of magazines for this purpose. New Scientist, National Geographic, The Monthly, InCite, a range of Chinese mags…
The read-aloud: I don’t read aloud much. If I do it’s usually just whatever I happen to be reading. I might read passages aloud when they look really good on paper, and I want to see if they sound as good. I usually stop when Paco starts looking alarmed.
The main read: This tends to be fiction. I do think I ought to be reading more non-fiction, but I mainly read for the sheer enjoyment of it, and for me that enjoyment is most often found in works of fiction. I enjoy crime novels (Peter Temple, Henning Mankell, Ruth Rendell, etc), science fiction (space opera, anything set in complicated future political, cultural, and social environments and anything about aliens), and a wide range of other novels. When I do read non-fiction at the moment I seem to find stuff to do with the environment, sustainability generally, and sustainable eating most interesting. Oh, and anything about languages can always grab my attention. Currently reading The Dreaming Void by Peter Hamilton but I think I am about to give up on it for the time being because I have just realised it is Book One of a trilogy, with Book Three only out in 2010 and that wait would be torture.
The work read: Contrary to popular belief, librarians do not get to read much while at work. (Email doesn’t count.) Any reading I do for professional purposes tends to be in my own time, and at the moment I am not managing to read much of the professional literature at all. On the way to work I usually read my main read.
The travel read: I LOVE it when I am travelling overseas and in a country where I can read and understand the language. I then spend most of my time reading signs and menus (seriously) and local publications in the other language - newspapers, magazines and any other publications I can get my hands on. When I am in Malaysia I love immersing myself in the local media, listening to the radio, watching tv, and spending hours and hours in bookshops (and then having to buy another suitcase for all the Malay and Chinese language books I end up buying). Going to France will be interesting (and scary) because I don’t speak any French at all - I will feel blind and ignorant. The Netherlands and Germany will be interesting - an opportunity to see how much Dutch I can squeeze out, and I do have rudimentary German… I do of course bring English reading material - usually a short story collection I can dip into when I feel the need.
The comfort read (my own category): When I am sick in bed I find that I like re-reading old favourites, like To Kill a Mockingbird, The Growing Summer (by Noel Streatfeild), The Wolves of Willoughby Chase by Joan Aiken, or Tales from the End Cottage by Eileen Bell…
What do you read, and when?
