BOOKS:
I have always been a reader of books. I remember reading the Dick and Jane books in first grade as well as The Weekly Reader and reading an article about President Eisenhower.
My first set of books that I received for a Christmas gift was a Bobbsey Twins, Bert, Nan, Freddy and Sally. The one most memorable of the many books was the trip to Mexico. Bert got to learn some Spanish, Quidado, Danger and tasted mole and tasted chocolate in the mole.
I discovered a stash of books at Grandma Horns house. One was all about Barnacle Bill the Sailor. He had many adventures and even ate a mud pie. Another set of books were some Ruth Fielding books. This was the 30's version of Nancy Drew only she went to college and ranches and things of that. I reread one of those books years later and was a bit horrified to read a sort of joke about Mexicans on a jury and even the sheep ran away. Yeah.
We always had books at home. Mom had a subscription to Reader's Digest and we read those books for years. And we kept them and kept them and kept them.
I read The Five Little Peppers and How They Grew. Along the same lines I read Little Women, Little Men, Eight Cousins etc. We had a set of encyclopedia's when I was a kid it was published in 1947. One of the volumes deals with children's stories and I always loved and read them. That set of books went the way of all outgrown things. Years later, Carla found a set of them and she said there was another set and I asked her to get them for me. I have them in my library at home.
We were also enrolled in some sort of Children's Literature book of the month and I remember reading Black Beauty and Huckleberry Finn and Tom Sawyer.
During Mom's brief suburban wife phase, we had a subscription to a children's magazine. These were precious. We were not allowed to color in them, not to cut out the craft things. It was my first exposure to Science Fiction. There was a story about a family who lived on Mars. I was fascinated that the girl got to celebrate her birthday twice a Martian year.
I talked in another blog about going to visit people. I always looked around for books, it was always disheartening to find no books in peoples homes. I wondered about the lack of books. It wasn't a snobbish thing, it was a sad thing.
Dad loved all the classic Westerns. In later years every time Louise Lamour published another book I would scurry out to buy it for Dad's birthday. I wish I had known about Tony Hillerman much sooner I would have purchased those books for him as well. I was always astonished at the wonderful cultural things I learned from those books. For instance there was mention of the Lincoln Canes. Apparently Abraham Lincoln sent canes as a diplomatic gesture to countries and kings. He also sent one to the Hopi Nation and the cane came up missing in one of the books. I was very sad when he died.
Then just recently I discovered that his daughter, Ann, has been writing about the same characters on the Rez. Hot Damn! I learned a couple of cultural things about Navaho people. They do not eat fish, it is an insult to offer fish to a Navaho. They believe that fish are messengers between the gods. Also, a dead persons name is never mentioned out loud. They are always referred to as "The one who died" and this is to ward off the Chindi (spirits) of the dead. No one wants them hanging around. Also the Navaho way is known as The Beauty Way. I really like that.
I fell in love with science fiction as a teenager. I read Robert Heinlein's "Stranger In A Strange Land" I had to have a note from an adult to check it out of the library and I was afraid to ask Mom, so I asked an older cousin to write me a note. I have since read the book several times and gained a new perspective each time. The basic plot is how a person raised in one very strange culture adapts to a new culture. It has held up well over the years. When I moved to Alaska I had a huge yard sale and I had about ten cardboard boxes of sci-fi books that went pretty quickly. I took a few favorites with me.
During this extended period I discovered PERN, Anna McCaffrey's Dragon rider series and I kept those. I would dearly love to see Netflix produce that entire series.
When I moved to Coquille, I discovered that the Auxiliary had a book cart and I browsed there and found a romance title I read. It was a Johanna Lindsay book, "Defy Not The Heart". And I was hooked. I haunted the local used book store and purchased all the Johanna Lindsay books, all the Jude Devereaux and all of the classics romance writers.
As the years passed I day dreamed about having a book store, but I have balanced on the cusp of selling or keeping. Can't turn loose of them quite yet. And the sad thing is that I have approached the time in life where I actually need the large print books. Fortunately I have Kindle with scalable font. Yay!
I discovered the author S.M.Stirling. He has written a post apocalyptic series that begins after an EMP like event happened. It rendered the third law of physics useless. Bullets no longer fired, steam only worked a about a tenth of its former power and so on. Electricity does not work. Planes fell out of the sky. Go read "Dies The Fire", The Protectors War" and "A Meeting In Corvallis". Fabulous stuff.
Years ago when I lived on Margaret LaVann's ranch for a few months, I would occasionally get invited by her brother Tony and his wife, Letha, to go for a ride. One day I and Charlie went with them. They were going to visit a retired teacher and we were invited to feed the racoons. She had a lovely little house on a spit of land that hung nearly over the Pacific. She put some dog food into a pan and several racoons climbed onto the porch and tidily ate the dog food. As I have collected almost 3000 books of my own over the yeas, I realized that I now have my own much loved library. It is very eclectic and I have far outstripped the retired teacher. Granted my tomes are largely fiction and if a dedicated archeologist dug this up in several thousands yeas, I am not quite sure what would be made of the find. I should leave a book with the periodic table in it, any alien culture could decipher that and read the books. Still they would get a fairly narrow version.
I have always been a reader of books. I remember reading the Dick and Jane books in first grade as well as The Weekly Reader and reading an article about President Eisenhower.
My first set of books that I received for a Christmas gift was a Bobbsey Twins, Bert, Nan, Freddy and Sally. The one most memorable of the many books was the trip to Mexico. Bert got to learn some Spanish, Quidado, Danger and tasted mole and tasted chocolate in the mole.
I discovered a stash of books at Grandma Horns house. One was all about Barnacle Bill the Sailor. He had many adventures and even ate a mud pie. Another set of books were some Ruth Fielding books. This was the 30's version of Nancy Drew only she went to college and ranches and things of that. I reread one of those books years later and was a bit horrified to read a sort of joke about Mexicans on a jury and even the sheep ran away. Yeah.
We always had books at home. Mom had a subscription to Reader's Digest and we read those books for years. And we kept them and kept them and kept them.
I read The Five Little Peppers and How They Grew. Along the same lines I read Little Women, Little Men, Eight Cousins etc. We had a set of encyclopedia's when I was a kid it was published in 1947. One of the volumes deals with children's stories and I always loved and read them. That set of books went the way of all outgrown things. Years later, Carla found a set of them and she said there was another set and I asked her to get them for me. I have them in my library at home.
We were also enrolled in some sort of Children's Literature book of the month and I remember reading Black Beauty and Huckleberry Finn and Tom Sawyer.
During Mom's brief suburban wife phase, we had a subscription to a children's magazine. These were precious. We were not allowed to color in them, not to cut out the craft things. It was my first exposure to Science Fiction. There was a story about a family who lived on Mars. I was fascinated that the girl got to celebrate her birthday twice a Martian year.
I talked in another blog about going to visit people. I always looked around for books, it was always disheartening to find no books in peoples homes. I wondered about the lack of books. It wasn't a snobbish thing, it was a sad thing.
Dad loved all the classic Westerns. In later years every time Louise Lamour published another book I would scurry out to buy it for Dad's birthday. I wish I had known about Tony Hillerman much sooner I would have purchased those books for him as well. I was always astonished at the wonderful cultural things I learned from those books. For instance there was mention of the Lincoln Canes. Apparently Abraham Lincoln sent canes as a diplomatic gesture to countries and kings. He also sent one to the Hopi Nation and the cane came up missing in one of the books. I was very sad when he died.
Then just recently I discovered that his daughter, Ann, has been writing about the same characters on the Rez. Hot Damn! I learned a couple of cultural things about Navaho people. They do not eat fish, it is an insult to offer fish to a Navaho. They believe that fish are messengers between the gods. Also, a dead persons name is never mentioned out loud. They are always referred to as "The one who died" and this is to ward off the Chindi (spirits) of the dead. No one wants them hanging around. Also the Navaho way is known as The Beauty Way. I really like that.
I fell in love with science fiction as a teenager. I read Robert Heinlein's "Stranger In A Strange Land" I had to have a note from an adult to check it out of the library and I was afraid to ask Mom, so I asked an older cousin to write me a note. I have since read the book several times and gained a new perspective each time. The basic plot is how a person raised in one very strange culture adapts to a new culture. It has held up well over the years. When I moved to Alaska I had a huge yard sale and I had about ten cardboard boxes of sci-fi books that went pretty quickly. I took a few favorites with me.
During this extended period I discovered PERN, Anna McCaffrey's Dragon rider series and I kept those. I would dearly love to see Netflix produce that entire series.
When I moved to Coquille, I discovered that the Auxiliary had a book cart and I browsed there and found a romance title I read. It was a Johanna Lindsay book, "Defy Not The Heart". And I was hooked. I haunted the local used book store and purchased all the Johanna Lindsay books, all the Jude Devereaux and all of the classics romance writers.
As the years passed I day dreamed about having a book store, but I have balanced on the cusp of selling or keeping. Can't turn loose of them quite yet. And the sad thing is that I have approached the time in life where I actually need the large print books. Fortunately I have Kindle with scalable font. Yay!
I discovered the author S.M.Stirling. He has written a post apocalyptic series that begins after an EMP like event happened. It rendered the third law of physics useless. Bullets no longer fired, steam only worked a about a tenth of its former power and so on. Electricity does not work. Planes fell out of the sky. Go read "Dies The Fire", The Protectors War" and "A Meeting In Corvallis". Fabulous stuff.
Years ago when I lived on Margaret LaVann's ranch for a few months, I would occasionally get invited by her brother Tony and his wife, Letha, to go for a ride. One day I and Charlie went with them. They were going to visit a retired teacher and we were invited to feed the racoons. She had a lovely little house on a spit of land that hung nearly over the Pacific. She put some dog food into a pan and several racoons climbed onto the porch and tidily ate the dog food. As I have collected almost 3000 books of my own over the yeas, I realized that I now have my own much loved library. It is very eclectic and I have far outstripped the retired teacher. Granted my tomes are largely fiction and if a dedicated archeologist dug this up in several thousands yeas, I am not quite sure what would be made of the find. I should leave a book with the periodic table in it, any alien culture could decipher that and read the books. Still they would get a fairly narrow version.
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