I am so excited!!!!!!!!!!
I am in a pretty bad state medically, and WAAAAY behind on my reading, which has lots of people who know me extremely concerned as they know what a big deal it is that I am not reading, because I am definitely a book addict. I had one family member recently tell me on the phone that he knew how badly sick I was and that I was downplaying my medical situation because he could not imagine anything making me so sick I wasn’t reading. But I have to admit I gave a fangirl scream when I found out Jacqueline Carey is going back into the world of Terre d’Ange…
The last time I gave that particular squeeling noise was when I found out that the Pini’s were writing The Final Quest which was as much a source of sorrow as celebration. But I have a feeling that once the Pini’s finish this particular run, there will still be irregular publications keeping the universe still relevant and giving us all the portal into the world of two moons…. Ayooooah
An interesting read that shows the power of words and regardless of where you are in life the transformation the right book can create
As I read this article I tried to figure out which of my books 📚 would get the golden ticket if o had to pick just one. I can’t do it. When I was little I had an early hard cover edition of Little Women which unfortunately got destroyed when I did something nice for someone and it came back to bite me on the ass. And there is Madeline L’engles A Wrinkle in Time, which was one of my husband’s favorites as well and which I read to my girls as I tried to process his death and somehow reading that book to our children helped me. I don’t know how much they remember of the story, but I know they remember the cuddles and the fact I was reading. Then there is the Great Alta trilogy by Jane Yolen, which inspired me so much, and introduced me to the power and joy that can only come from a trilogy.
I don’t know whether you will consider this necessarily a “book”, but the graphic novels of Elfquest–they had just been rereleased for their 20th anniversary and I was on a trip with my best friends family to Hilton Head, and after being so engrossed in Nora Roberts’ Public Secrets (which is another of my influences as life changing) that I spent the whole day at the beach on my stomach which led to a seriously bad burn which led to my father, who was not a fan of me going on the trip in the first place said that was it I was coming home and he sent me a plane ticket. The trip to the airport was a long one and my back was about 6 shades darker then a lobster(and I was in a lot of pain and the trip back home from the car ride to the airplane seat 💺 I was about ready to throw in the towel and was an exercise in mind over matter and how ( there is nothing to be done but let time pass and eventually you heal) and the only thing left in the car was my friend’s little brother’s graphic novel. They wouldn’t let me take it home (I was on page 87 and myom met me at the gate of the airport and she wasn’t able to find what I was talking about so I made her stop at the waldenbooks on the way home so I could read the end of story which of course, ironically, is finishing with the final quest this year and which I try to reread every 5 to 7 years.
And then I think of the eye opening Kushiel’s trilogy by Jacqueline Carey that opened a whole new world of series and books and a new world and genre of books and a great group of people…
[Top]A few thoughts
So, for the last few days, while the rain was falling I am a little ashamed to admit that rather than curling up with my favorite books and the new ones, too, I have been binge watching TV shows through Amazon Prime and Netflix.
And it started me thinking a little bit about how much things have changed even as they have stayed the same. We hardly ever think about the constant access we have to one another these days or how much information is shared constantly between us.
Another concept occurred to me as well. I have a little bit of an obsession that I’ve had since my early teens. That obsession is a comic book series called elfquest and the way that I got involved with that comic book series was kind of a fluke. I was on a road trip with my best friend’s family to Hilton Head and once we got there I took my book that I was reading in the car and had brought with me to read it the beach and read it at the beach while we were sunbathing. This had an unintended consequence, since I was reading I was laying on my stomach all day while we were at the beach and by the time that we left my back had passed the color red and it’s sunburn on the way to the color purple. I took an ice bath once we got back to where we were staying but that wasn’t enough for this particular burn and aloe and laying on my stomach was not cutting it either So eventually the decision was made that I was going to return home and so I had to ride from where we were staying to the airport I had finished my book that I had brought with me for the trip and it was a pretty long drive to the airport so I looked everywhere in the car and found the first graphic novel for elfquest that my best friend’s little brother had brought along to read on the trip. I didn’t really like comic books and I couldn’t imagine that anything could possibly dull the amount of pain that I was in but it was a long ride and I decided to give this graphic novel a chance. I got to page 87 in the book and as soon as my parents picked me up at the airport I demanded that we stopped at a bookstore and pick up the book so that I could finish it. As I convalesced from my own stupidity in getting burned so badly I entered the world of Two Moons and voraciously ate all eight of the graphic novels that has been released at that point. this started my love of elfQuest and through the years I’ve enjoyed every single comic book manga book poster figurine t-shirt and anything else that you can think of that is involved with elfquest. Were that trip to happen today I do not know that I would have ever discovered elfquest because I would have been able to download a different book to entertain me on that drive to the airport and I would have missed out on one of the few things that have been consistent in my life my love of Elf Quest
But I started thinking about TV shows. These days there are a few different ways we get our TV. There are the network (public, cable, and premium) shoes that we still watch as they are released weekly. There are the entertainment providers like Netflix, Amazon, and Hulu that release an entire season at once. Add in that the way we have watched TV has drastically changed and the younger me would have been shocked at all if it.
When I was a kid, we had family dinners that had to be over in time for my dad to watch a business show. And then depending on the night, we would either all go our seperately ways, sometimes watching TV sometimes not and then we would come together to watch certain shows as a family. Sometimes we watched Dallas although that was not one of my families staples. We watched Dynasty and LA Law religiously. It did not matter what else was happening in the world outside our living room. This was family time and we would discuss these shows in between episodes too. They were a part of our lives, one without a pause or rewind function and if you missed an episode you missed it.
Today you can watch any episodes of any show on any device. If there is a show we all watch, like Game of Thrones, we discuss it on social media almost immediately… Some of us talk during the episode.
Even if there is a show we all watch, the experience is of our choosing. We choose whether to watch it live on the tv or later on a dvr–we choose whether to binge watch over a weekend or closer to each series shows broadcast. We choose who to watch with or even how we will watch together.
I remember when the Disney Channel was first to be added into the world and Nickelodeon and HBO. I remember when it was questioned what these Channels could possibly offer that wasn’t already out there. Now the most basic of television packages comes with more channels than we know what to do with.
The question is are we better off? And my answers are as esoteric as they are necessary. I love being able to communicate with my family and friends 24/7 and yet we are far less connected to each other. We don’t have much anticipation or time for speculation these days until we get to the end of the season and our waits for answers are much longer.
As I watch my kids with their headphones and tablets. I think of how much things have changed and I wonder if our interconnectedness is a gift or a burden…
And then I turn on the read to me function in Google play books, put my headphones on and travel to whichever world I have chosen.
But in the back of my hand I wonder how many of those unexpected Treasures my children have missed simply because they have a hub of entertainment in their hands and thus no reason to read a friend’s little brothers comic book. And then I wonder how many I’ve missed in The Last 5 Years since I too carry my library of thousands of books around with me.
[Top]An Unwavering Recommendation…
Usually, I post about the books I read, the friends I find within each story and reconnecting with them. And right now I am reconnecting with Olivia and Gabriel–and all the mystery and magic of Cainsville. But I wanted to tell you about something seemingly unconnected and in the process I will explain the thought train that led to this post.
I love reading, as you know all to well. And I dislike audiobooks because depending on narrator, the book can be enriched through the process of creating an audiobook or it can be ruined by the slightest thing-a name pronounced differently, an accent that is different than what was expected or any other of a million reasons. When we read a book, we imagine the characters, their accents, and a million other things. An audiobook can ruin that because it makes the elements written in stone and each of these things can skew the enjoyment of the book.
I have been a long time fan of the Elfquest comic book series. When I first found them they had been reprinted as a graphic novel and were in color. When they later rereleased the comics in Black and White, they used a similar explanation–that the coloration of the comics limited the possibilities and locked the characters descriptions in stone. Printing the comics in black and white allowed for infinite possibilities and for the enjoyment of the stories in a whole new way.
For years I was a physical book reader, and my daughter still is. For her a book has to have a physical presence in order to be a book. Ebooks do not work for her-without the pages to flip and the smell of the paper and weight of the book in her hands, they do not seem real to her. Now, I fully enjoy all the facets of having ebooks- the ability to carry hundreds or thousands of books in the palm of my hand, rather than having to carry an extra suitcase on trips. I enjoy having multiple copies of the books in multiple places and the ability to transfer from device to device. I was and am a firm supporter of amazon kindles and have been for a long time.
Anyone who reads ebooks should look into the freeware program Calibre. It allows you to organize your library by author or series or even by publication date. It allows you to convert your books from one format to another and that allows you to use multiple devices. It can also manage your devices. You can merge files together (using plugins) and a million other things.
So now I have found the best program for my needs to be google play books. First off, google offers 24-7 tech support on using the play books app for free. In addition to allowing books to be read on multiple devices, with your progress in each book being communicated no matter which device you read the books upon. Google Play has a read aloud feature-it uses a computer voice of your choice. Much like the black and white comics, it still allows me to add the details to the story. It also allows me to speed up the reading so I can keep pace with where I would be approximately without using the read aloud feature.
So, whats the point of this long rambling post? It’s actually quite simple. My smartphone has become my reading device of choice. And protecting that smartphone has become VERY important. While there are a million choices in the market for cases, tempered glass protectors or plastic film protectors I want to speak with you about my experience with a company called Skinomi. They produce plastic film phone protectors. You can buy one just for the front screen, one for coverage of the entire device (front, back and sides), or one for just the front and back. he plastic film is self healing and the have a lifetime warranty on their products. They now have lines that can be used to change the look of your phone from wood to tempered steel or even cool black carbonite looking skin.
They are the best phone protectors out there. I have used a lot of different ones, but theirs have stood the test of time with each of my phones. In addition, they have exceptional customer service and replace your screen protector if there is an error in installation or for some other reason you need a new one. And it is a lifetime replacement on their products and there is a bubble free guarantee. So protect your phone-get a skinomi protector, they are the best on the market and worth the price!
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