Day 209: The Perfect Bookstore

If you had to get locked in some place (book store, amusement park, etc) overnight alone, where would you choose to be locked in?

Novels in a Polish bookstore (Photo credit: Wikipedia)

If I could pick a place to be locked into overnight it would probably be a bookstore.This bookstore would be special. It would always have at least one copy left of any book I wanted to read, even the out of print titles. The shelves would low enough so that I could reach all the books easily from my chair, even the top shelves.

The bookstore would have an entire floor devoted to each genre and an elevator instead of stairs to go between them. There would be an endless supply of hot chocolate or warm tea to drink. While browsing the bookstore I would constantly find coupons which be discovered in the morning to add up to the exact amount needed to pay for all the books I would want to take home. Once the books would never get lost, I would never lose my place, and the pages would refuse to dog ear no matter how many tines I read them.

I know books and bookstores like that don’t exist but I can continue to dream. As a friend of mine says,”I reject your reality and substitute my own.” Who knows, maybe someday someone will design a store like that. Hopefully it is not as crooked as the picture in my which sort of resembles the description of Ron’s house from the second Harry Potter book.

Day 128: The Kindle Question

Cover via Amazon

I have a Kindle. I have actually had this nifty little device for over a year and I’m just now getting around to saying something about it on this blog. If you for some reason feel out of the loop, you are not the only one. I had it for several months before my sister knew. I have a 3^rd generation Kindle,what Amazon is now calling a Kindle Keyboard. I have not gotten to “play with” either a Kindle Touch or Fire. Both look awesome at a glance but I would have to spend a little time with either if I were considering upgrading to see if the touchscreen technology was “cerebral palsy user friendly.” I can manage an Ipad easily enough but I’ve come to the conclusion that those things are best evaluated on a case by case basis.

Someone suggested that owning a Kindle (or any other e-reader for that matter) can contribute to laziness. Say for example you decide you want to read Mary Stewart‘s Merlin Trilogy. You then go hunting through the Kindle bookstore only to discover it doesn’t exist there. So rather than go to the local library or brick and mortar bookstore you don’t read it. In case anybody’s interested the Kindle bookstore doesn’t have the Merlin Trilogy or National Velvet yet, I have looked for both to no avail. I would like to be able to refute the charge of laziness but that is easier said than done. I have discovered that many times, unless the book already has a special place in my heart (like Merlin, National Velvet, and Harry Potter do) I won’t go looking for the paper and glue versions. Does that make me a snob? I can’t get to a “proper” bookstore as easily as others can so I prefer to think of the Kindle as a way to prioritize my reading  list. In other words I have to really like the book before I go hunting for the paper version if there isn’t a digital one.

Day 90: Story… Who are we to judge?

Image by Sidereal via Flickr

I will be the first to admit that Stephen King is a talented writer even though I do not care for several things that he’s done, mostly because I’m a chicken and they scare me. I do like The Green Mile very much though I actually wrote a post should you care to read it.That being said I lost a little bit of respect for Mr. King when I read a comment that he made about the Twilight series in which he basically espoused the opinion that Stephanie Meyer, the author, wrote fluff. I like the Twilight books, it was possibly the first series my sister and I agreed on and was also probably one of the few she finished before me, a fact which she is proud of as seen by the epitaph written on the gift tag of my copies of the second and third book which I received a few Christmases ago, “finally a series I finished before you.”

 

It greatly disturbs me that one writer can so callously dismiss the work of another. Mr. King’s comment (which can be found in its entirety over at my friend’s blog Maggie Madly Writing in her Defense of Twilight post) compared the Twilight series to Harry Potter and cast Twilight in a distinctly unfavorable light.  I believe that was unfair, the stories the respective authors tell in both book series are completely different, comparing the two is comparing apples to oranges. I don’t know what kind of problem Stephen King has with Stephanie Meyer but I think you should just get over Stephen. I am sure she put as much effort into getting those books published as you have any of yours, if you can’t respect the writing respect the elbow grease.

Day 72: there may be no place like home but I’d sure like to visit…

If you could be part of any fictional universe, what would it be? And why? (For example Star Wars, Mad Men, Hamlet, etc.)

Prompt taken from The Daily Post here at Word press.

I’m pretty sure even someone who knows me only as a casual acquaintance will think they know the answer to the above question, Harry Potter of course. Those people will probably be at least a little surprised to discover that it isn’t the answer at all.  I love J.K Rowling‘s world a lot,  so much so that my sister and I are planning to go to the Harry Potter theme park next year . However the fictional place I’d like to visit most is the small New England town of Haven. By the standards of that town I’m normal in spite of the wheelchair and accompanying canine. The only “troubles” I’ve ever had are those caused by run of the mill brain damage. It would be nice to be normal somewhere.

Day 60:wading through typos….an apology

I  feel the need to apologize for the plethora of typos which sporadically litter this blog.   I have had many college English classes…..enough that  I should proofread better than I have been lately. My only excuse  is that my speech recognition software sometimes appears to have a mind of its own and I suppose I rely too much on it to get it right the first time.  Sometimes I wish for the days of typewriters and correctional fluid… and then I realize that correctional fluid would actually be harder for me to use.  Operator error would definitely abound.  I really appreciate the fact that some people are willing to slog through and interpret all my typographical babble into sentences that more or less makes sense.  I’ve resolved to be more on top of my proofreading, but if a little typo gnome (think the garden gnomes out of Harry Potter… with their potato like heads) slips past my vigilance I will remove the offending typo as soon as I find it.  Thank you for your continuing patience, this public service announcement has been brought to you via the lovely people at WordPress. We now return you to your regularly scheduled Internet browsing.