Blame it on kindle

Image via Wikipedia

My sister has just reminded me that I haven’t posted anything on the blog for a while.

It’s not because I haven’t got anything to write about; it’s just that I’ve been doing a lot of reading recently on my new chic toy – the kindle…

Well, that’s not entirely the whole truth – Facebook and Season’s One and Two of True Blood have also been the main culprits keeping me away from blogging. Oh yes, nearly forgot about the new Photoshop software that I’ve been trying to feel my way around. But it’s mainly the reading.

With absorbing titles like those below, can you blame me?

• Kitchen Confidential by Anthony Bourdain
• The Hitchhiker’s Guide to the Galaxy by Douglas Adams [I’ll start reading The Restaurant at the End of the Universe as soon as I’m done with H2G2]
• The Choice of Hercules by A C Grayling

I hope to be back soon sustained by and armed with some awesome new knowledge.

Reading is about to become a lot more pleasurable

Cover via Amazon

I finally joined the world of the chic and got the Amazon Kindle earlier this week.

And yes, it’s a little beauty. I’ve already spurned the paper versions of three books that I’m currently reading, by purchasing the e-Book versions for my new Kindle. They’re lying on the table right beside me as I write [type] this, looking rather rejected with their paper bookmarks sticking out like drooling cardboard tongues.

And naturally I got a little carried-away and bought a stack [can I still call it that?] of books – The Hitchhiker’s Guide to the Galaxy by Douglas Adams, The Choice of Hercules by A C Grayling, Midnight’s Children by Salman Rushdie and the Believing Brain by Michael Shermer (Audiobook version), among the one’s I haven’t read yet.

But one of the books I bought among that lot mentioned above, that’s intriguing me the most at the moment is The Good Book: A Secular Bible by A C Grayling. It’s styled along the lines of the  King James version of the Bible, but presents meanings, morals and values from a secular or non-religious viewpoint.

…All who read this book, therefore, if they read with care, may come to be more than they were before. This is not praise of the work itself, but of its attentive readers, for the worth to be found in it will come from their minds. If there is anyone who learns nothing from this book, that will not be attributable to faults in it, but to that reader’s excellence. If readers judge candidly, none among them can be harmed or offended by what it asks them to consider. Yet all who come hungry to these granaries of the harvest made by their fellows and forebears, will find nourishment here…

If that excerpt from the introduction is anything to go by, I think I’m going to be wrapped up in this book for a little while…

Drop Everything and Read…DEAR

Today, April 12 is Drop Everything and Read Day, or D.E.A.R Day.

I heard about it on local radio this morning, but it doesn’t seem to be an international event. It appears National D.E.A.R Day is commemorated annually in the USA to remind and encourage families to make reading together on a daily basis, a family priority. It’s celebrated on 12 April each year to honour American author Beverly Cleary who wrote many books for children and young adults.

Setting aside a day for encouragement of reading is a marvelous idea, and should be celebrated internationally. The statistics for literacy in South Africa is appalling and I’d venture to assert that the figures for the rest of Africa is not much better, probably worse. So any initiative to improve these statistics should be seized upon and disseminated widely. Sadly the government in South Africa seem set on a path to diminish the standards of education further and further each year and need constant reminding about their inanity.

However, the rest of the world should consider themselves lucky to not be governed by dodgy miscreants; so grab yourselves a book and get stuck into a few chapters. But for the love of literacy, please let it not be the Bible or the Koran or the Bagavad Gita or any other religious text. Please read something that imparts at least some intellectual enlightenment, not useless dogma.

Now that I’ve done my bit for R.E.A.D Day, I’m off to complete the last few chapters of The Form of Things by A.C Grayling…