Booking Through Thursday: Being A Reader

is  a weekly meme about books and reading, hosted by Deb. This week the prompt was longer than usual – please read it all at BTT. I quote only part of her post here, leading up to the questions at the end:

--- In my daily life, it seems like almost no-one reads anything more than a newspaper or a fashion magazine. I only have one person I can truly chat about books with --- I love following an intricately plotted story (the more layers the better). --- Can you imagine NOT being a Reader? How does it shape your life? Your perception of it? How does being a Reader affect your relationship with all those folks who are looking at it from the other side and simply can’t understand how you can sit and READ all the time? ---

I would indeed find life a lot poorer if I could not take part of “plotted stories” in between all the fragmented pieces of news and gossip that wash over us daily.

My social life is not what it was, as I neither work now nor “hang out” with as many people in other contexts either, as I used to… On the other hand, in recent years I’ve come to count certain internet friends as part of my daily life, and some of you do read a lot!

So, thinking about it, I come to the conclusion – somewhat surprising to myself – that I don’t really share Deb’s experience of being surrounded by non-readers.  I still often feel like there’s no one to discuss a recently read book with… But really, that’s often more about not being in sync than about the people in my life not being bookish at all.

Then I tried to think if I know someone who reads fashion magazines, and found I have no idea. If they do, they don’t talk about it with me!

I’ve always been a reader even if sometimes more and sometimes less. After I got problems with neckpain after an accident I had to change my reading habits physically but I still had a need of “stories”. So I listened more to audio books instead.

As for relating to “those folks who are looking at it from the other side”…  4½ years ago when I moved to where I now live, I hired help from a removal company, to both pack and carry. I packed some personal things like clothes etc myself, but left books and china to the removers. When they arrived, one of them went for a look around before they started. Then he came out to me in the kitchen, and said: “That’s a lot of books. Have you read all of them?” I said yes, most of them. The he said: “When you’ve read them, why don’t you throw them away?”

Now that’s a kind of question that leaves me lost for words… I do see the need of a clear-out now and then; but from there to treating books like newspapers … No. I really can’t imagine my home void of books!

Shortcuts make for long delays

We have an old proverb in Swedish: “Genvägar är senvägar” – meaning that trying to take a shortcut often makes you late instead of saving time. When I searched  for an equivalent in English, all I found was a quote “Shortcuts make for long delays”, accredited to J.R.R. Tolkien, from Lord of the Rings. I think he probably borrowed that from the Swedish saying…! But it’s the “point” I’m after here, not the origin.

Have you ever done anything that you thought was going to make things easier or save time, but that ended up the opposite? I did, this week. (And I’m not referring to the time spent in search of impossible translations.)

Next weekend is 1st Advent Sunday, which is the proper start of Christmas preparations and celebrations here. And of course that means we need a pre-Advent week (at least) to get ready for Advent… I do, anyway!

So I started this weekend by putting up my “Christmas” curtains in the kitchen. We do that in Sweden – change curtains for Christmas; especially in the kitchen. Mine are red-and-white checkered and as they have a neutral pattern like that I usually have them up from mid/late November until mid/late February. (In the other rooms I don’t change curtains. Not this year anyway.)

I also usually start early with my outdoors lights on the balcony, and that’s where I ran into trouble this year. I decided to “make things easier” for myself by buying a new set of lights enclosed in a plastic tube, like this (this is not the one I bought, but similar):

 

I bought it in good time, and this weekend I put it up. It was indeed easier to put up than my old kind of arrangement (which involved fake spruce garlands and a separate strand of little bulbs). I was also quite pleased with how it looked. I could have lived with it… If not for…

… the problem which arose after I’d had it on for about 30-60 minutes: Gradually, as I sat in the living room watching TV, I became aware of a very irritating humming, whirring, noise…

At first I thought the sound came from the timer I had connected the lights to – it was a rather old one. So I removed the timer. But soon the noise started again, and it turned out to come from the transformer…

No, no, no – not that kind…

(blame it on Google image search!)

That’s more like it.

So I tested the lights on and off for a while… It turned out that when the transformer had warmed up a bit, it started to purr. Put the lights out and let if cool off, and then it was quiet when I turned it on again… For half an hour or so. Then it started again.

The sound was much too loud for my “comfort” and I decided it would soon drive me mad. But this of course meant that I had to get out on the balcony again the next day and unwind and disassemble the whole thing, and leave the lightsnake to dry, and then make it go back into its little box (which at one point seemed impossible, but at last I succeeded).

Yesterday the weather was so miserable outside that I really did not want to set foot outdoors at all.

Today, however, I took the box back to the supermarket where I bought it, and said I wanted to make a complaint. Of course the first girl behind the counter could not handle something as complicated as that, so she had to call a supervisor; and then I had to wait while the supervisor “tested” the appliance – even though I explained carefully from the beginning that the noise does not appear until after half an hour or more. She tested it for half a minute and said she could not hear any noise… Duh! She then said that some of the various lights they had on display in the store also make a noise. (Duh! again… Very reassuring…) I said well, I have several other kinds of electric transformers in my home, and none of them makes a noise like this - I don’t consider it acceptable, and I want to return it! So eventually I got my money back.

Then I went into the store to buy another set of lights. As I did not trust the kind I had just returned, and that was the only “tube” lights that they had, I went for another type this time. I also took the trouble of checking those on display… following the cord to the transformer plug… and listening… (hoping no one to be watching!) Finally I found one that seemed to be able to shine silently, and, fingers crossed, bought one of those.

This time I first tested it indoors, spread out on the living room floor for about an hour, to make sure that this one would not get into humming mood too, as soon as it had made itself at home.

It remained quiet, however, so then I took it outside. Of course the trouble with this one was, instead, that it liked to tie itself into complicated knots while I twined it round and round and round four meters of balcony rail (with my fingers getting ice cold from the rain).

After finishing the job, and testing that it worked… I sighed. No, it was not humming… But it just did not look right. Even though it had LED-lights, and twice as many lights as my old strand of bulbs, this one too really seemed to cry out (silently) that it would be much happier in the company of some fake spruce twigs, and not just the bare metallic rail…

So I had to unwind the whole chain again… go down to the storage room and get out the spruce garlands… then prepare the rail as usual by winding plastic clingfilm around it (because the wires in the garlands tend to leave marks of rust if I don’t), then put up the garlands, and then do the whole round-and-round twirling of the long knotty strand of lights again…

But now it looks good! – and hopefully we’ll have a bright and quiet Advent and Christmas together…

Sepia Saturday – Greetings from the Past

May I draw your attention, please, to my blog

Greetings from the Past

where I just added a new post and also updated the introduction pages and the layout a bit.

As I mentioned a few weeks ago (here), I recently got an email out of the blue from a distant cousin, who had happened to find my blog and recognized our mutual relatives in it. He managed to fill in some blanks for me concerning my grandmother’s older sisters – the essence of it summarized in today’s post.

I also recently found the blog Sepia Saturday with a weekly meme based on old photos. I will try to join in there from time to time (from the Greetings blog), using their prompts as one tool among others to continue to explore the old family photos.

My grandmother’s half-sisters Ester and Gerda, probably around the time my grandma was born, which was 1900.

Last night I also scanned another dozen or so old postcards and I hope to be getting on with posting those soon. Posts for the Greetings blog tend to be rather time consuming though, partly because I’m keeping them bilingual (English and Swedish), and partly because I never know when I start out, where the research is going to take me! Hopefully, some of the new facts I learned will be of help as I continue to try to interpret the messages written on the postcards.

By the way, as I followed a few links from Sepia Saturday today, I learned a new word : deltiology.

Deltiology (from Greek δελτίον, deltion, diminutive of δέλτος, deltos, "writing tablet, letter"; and -λογία, -logia) is the study and collection of postcards. Professor Randall Rhoades of Ashland, Ohio, coined a word in 1945 that became the accepted description of the study of picture postcards. It took about 20 years for the name to appear in the dictionary the first time.

And if you devote yourself to deltiology, then you are a deltiologist.

Weekend Reflections: Buddy Bears

It seems Buddy Bears will be invading our town this December, replacing the usual Santaland in the town square. I found this preview of miniatures in a window belonging to the tourist office.

Linking to Weekend Reflections.

Thankful Booking Through Thursday

Booking Through Thursday is a weekly meme about books and reading, hosted by Deb:

“It’s Thanksgiving here in the U.S., so … what are you thankful for this year, reading-wise? New, favorite books? New gadget for reading? New comfy chair? Bonus time to read? Just the mere fact of BEING a reader? Having the internet to share ideas/recommendations/conversations about books?”

As I live in Sweden, I’m not celebrating Thanksgiving this weekend. (There is a Thanksgiving Sunday in our church calendar, but that was back in mid October, and it’s not a big one in our traditions.)

But of course there’s a lot to be thankful for whenever one takes the time to stop and think (as I know one or two of my blogging friends are actually in the habit of doing every Thursday). And with a theme like books and reading, and all those suggestions already given by Deb… it’s certainly not hard to join in. In fact I am very thankful for all of those things she mentions. (My chair is not new, but it’s still comfy!)

For a number of years I’ve had increasing difficulties reading printed books because of a combination of neck pain and eyesight problems.  As regular followers of this blog know by now, one solution for me has been audio books (which I still much appreciate).  But the Kindle Touch I bought a couple of months ago now also makes it easier for me to read a bit more “with the eyes” again – another reason to be thankful. On top of that, the Kindle also gives easy access to a lot of free classics; and as I do love English classics, that goes on the thankful list as well. As does being able to discuss and share books and reading experiences with others on the internet.

Now to some titles I’ve especially appreciated in 2012:

Kate Morton – The Forgotten Garden
Terry Pratchett – Snuff
Audrey Niffenegger – The Time Traveler’s Wife
Tea Obrecht – The Tiger’s Wife
J.K. Rowling – The Casual Vacancy
Hope Mirrlees – Lud-in-the-Mist
Mitch Albom – The Time Keeper
Mitch Albom – The Five People You Meet In Heaven

At the top of my blog is a tab My Book Reviews: there you will find links to some of my book reviews.

I don’t write a review of every book that I read. For example, I don’t usually see much point in mentioning Swedish books and authors here unless I know they’re also available in English translation. I also often find it difficult to summarize books I only listened to (one disadvantage of audio books is that it’s harder to go back and check details). So the ones I do end up writing reviews of are only a selection from my total read.