One thing leads to another. I look out for a good book to read. When I see one, I try to remember to check in our local libraries. If we have a copy, I try to remember to check it out. If we don’t, I buy it. Living in a small town in the north of the country is pretty nice with Amazon.com.
The trouble is that with borrowing and purchasing, the books pile up. They wouldn’t if I were a logical person, but I am piggy. I borrow and buy more than I can read, telling myself I will get to them later. I do read quite a few. The second trouble is that after reading, I may “need” the book later. You know, for reference, quoting or as a souvenir. So, the books pile up.
At one point in the summer of 2007, I was surrounded. Not just by crowded shelves but by stacks of books that wouldn’t fit on the shelves. I boiled over. When I expostulated (wow! Big word!) that we had to get rid of some of these durned books, Lynn, ex-librarian and ex-professor of library science, jumped in with two enthusiastic feet. Yes! Let’s clear things out. At the time, we had about 1000 books. After clearing, we had about 300. For us, it was a tremendous accomplishment, thanks to our persistent hardworking friend who carted the rejected ones away.
I tried, I really did. I tried to borrow less and buy still less than that. But, you guessed it. But April of Ought Eight, there was a book I justified buying. I needed it. It was valuable and would improve our lives. But I could not go through adding to our shelves, at least not just yet. Amazon had incessant ads about the Kindle. It held more than 1000 books in the space of one tradebook paperback. I bought one and liked it very much.
This spring, I looked around for possible topics that might be of interest to our local elder group of students and thinkers. The Kindle! But one doesn’t want to speak to that group without good preparation. I’m a book person but the Kindle also supports newspapers, magazines and blogs.
There are something like 70,000,000 blogs. That is quite a few. I wanted to prepare for my Kindle talk with some experience of receiving a blog daily. I realized that Amazon might use some judgment, some quality standard for which of the 70 million it would go to the trouble of sending to the Kindle.
I found that my own blog was a better place to keep track of the blogs I have found worth following. Google makes it easy to select some and keep a link and a snippet of the latest post right beside my own posts. Using Firefox for browsing the web, I have a bookmark toolbar that includes a link to my blog page. Lately, instead of looking at Google News, Wisconsin State Journal and Capital Times first thing each morning, I look at blogs of interest.
I am up to eight now. The best is Garrison Keillor’s The Writer’s Almanac. Best for what? For good ideas, for good language, for good links to other things. Just today, he and his staff turned me on to Scott Adams, cartoonist of Dilbert and author of several books you might not expect. Adams has a blog that I just added to those I list. I look at two from Amazon, one from Wired.com, one on children’s books and two on business. Take a look for yourself. Google has a blog searcher and there are other tools to find what you like.
