Bookshops, Books, and their Awesomeness

Today apparently it's Bookshop Day (so Twitter tells me, anyway), which gives me a perfect opportunity to blog about one of my favourite things - books!

I've always loved reading. Being a geek, as a kid I would not only read the huge pile of Peanuts cartoon books my parents had in the house, but then went on to count how many times various characters appeared in the books and then create graphs based on the data (spoiler - Snoopy wins. By far.)

Robin Hood's Bay, which is one of my families' favourite places to visit (do check out the video from the holiday I and my dad had there), used to have a brilliant bookshop called the Chapel bookshop - large, with various rooms, nooks and crannies, you could easily spend hours there hunting through dusty piles of books that quite possibly hadn't been read by anyone for years. The downside of Amazon (and I am a big user of Amazon, it is great for getting stuff you need) is that it tells you what is most popular, the bestsellers, and the things that you typically like, but doesn't necessarily show you things that you wouldn't normally consider.

Several times I've seriously considered buying a Kindle, because logically it makes perfect sense. Rather than having, as we do currently, a couple of walls in the house full of books, I can store them all on one easy to carry e-reader that I can take and use anywhere. But there's just something about the physical presence of a book, the weight of it in your hand, flipping pages, sticking a bookmark (or in my case a scrap of paper) in to track your position. Plus the cost difference between an e-book and a paper book isn't big enough for me to justify buying a Kindle.

And, of course, there's so many books that you can't get on a Kindle. For example, I happen to own a hardback copy of "Hello Sailor" by former Python Eric Idle, a quite rude and slightly bizarre story which doesn't make a great deal of sense but is funny nevertheless. From the 1970s, there's almost no chance of that appearing as an e-book any time soon.

Take a look at a sample of my books:

Hello Sailor is at the end on the right. Told you I had it.

There's a lot of science fiction and what you might consider to be typically geeky books there, but I've found, particularly as I work on writing my own books, the value and enjoyment of reading different genres. A good example of this is Adele Archer's International Relations trilogy, the first of which to be quite honest I only bought because I'm a big fan of Adele's blog.  I found myself engrossed in the story, and was surprised at how my emotions were affected by the story - getting angry at one of the lead characters part way through at their actions!

Right now I'm reading "Laura's Handmade Life", a novel which I probably wouldn't have ever considered reading before experiencing Adele's work, and all I can say is, to me, it makes sense to try new things, whether it be some crazy and exciting new hobby, or simply reading a book that you wouldn't normally try.

So, it's Bookshop Day. This seems like a good reason for you to pop out and support your local book store.  Off you go then :)

What Shall I Write About (Bill Bryson apparently)

I'm sat at my computer.

This isn't an unusual event for a geek like myself.  Off the top of my head I'd guess that I spend something like 19 hours a week on my computer, playing games, checking emails, watching YouTube videos, all that sort of thing.  Indeed, we have the attic designated as a "computer room", with desks, computers, husks of old PCs and stacks of components that would probably be of use to people if only the component managed to make its way from Location A to Location B, be fitted into another PC, drivers installed, system configuration tweaked, component removed again because it wasn't working, component blown on (because nothing makes a piece of computer hardware work like a momentary breeze of lung-processed air and sputum), replaced, new drivers installed, various forums searched via Google, even resorting to trying the Microsoft Windows Diagnostic software (which as far as I can tell does nothing except display various windows on your computer and taking up sufficient time for you to make a cup of tea) until you discover that the component in question is only compatible with Windows 7 service pack 9 (with hotfix KB18947391734810), and not Windows 7 service pack 10 (with hotfix KB18947391734811) and you end up eBaying the thing, selling it for seven quid and spending nine pounds mailing it to the lucky buyer.

I've recently discovered the works of Bill Bryson, a writer and author.  Many people will be well aware of Bill's work, but I hadn't read any of his material until this week.  I was vaguely aware of Bill as a "travel writer", which I must admit had made me exclude him for consideration when purchasing books - travel writing makes me think of something writing about the delights of some sort of Caribbean or South American resort, the sort of place that I am unlikely to ever visit and therefore have little interest in carrying out homework upon.  I live in northern England, where the weather is variable and the language clear and often heated - my desire to experience a place in which these two characteristics are swapped is limited.

However, I do sustain thoughts of visiting North America, and while those thoughts have not as yet formulated themselves into firm plans of any sort, I do enjoy reading about the USA and Canada.  And so, when in Oxfam Books the other day (a brilliant invention where a charity shop gets rid of all of those clothes that generally take up place, and replaces them with shelf after shelf of literature) I looked at the travel books, I decided to pick up "Notes From A Big Country" by Bill Bryson, using the following complex rules of logic:

1 - I had heard of him.

There were several of his books on the shelves, meaning that either he was quite popular and therefore a good writer, or he had a very good PR machine that meant that people bought his books, then realised that they had made a terrible mistake and gave them to Oxfam.  I'm pleased to report that the former reason seems to be the case.

In this book Bill talks about life in America having newly returned to America after many years living in the UK.  I'm not going to talk about the content of the book in detail (I'll let the pleasure of the content stay hidden until you read it) but suffice to say that Bill is very funny, intelligent, and erudite in his writings.

I shall be returning to Oxfam to see which other pieces of his I can pick up.

I tried to defect!

I've had enough.

I've tried for so long to work with Google Chrome.  But I can't put up with it any more.

I love Google Chrome.  I find it more responsive than Internet Explorer, I prefer the user interface, it's by far my preferred browser.  But it has a bug in it.

You see, Chrome comes with a copy of Adobe Flash Player built into it.  If you don't know what Flash is, basically it's a type of code used all over the Internet, best known in the area of animations, sounds and videos, but has spread to do other stuff too.  If you don't have a Flash Player in your internet browser, you'll have problems.

But the problem with Chrome is that it, as well as having a copy of Flash built in, it installs another copy, and the two conflict.

A lot.

As a result, generally what happens is Chrome freezes, and then goes on to freeze my PC, requiring a reboot.  And I've just had enough of it.

And yes, I know the "fix" is to go into chrome://plugins and disable one of the Flash plugins.  I can't get it to work, regardless of whichever one I disable.

So I went to good old Internet Explorer, and put the thoughts of Chrome behind me.

For about two days.

Back on Chrome.

In other less geeky news, my son hasn't been too well this week - he's had a bad cold so we've been dosing him up with a variety of medicines, from an inhaler to antibiotics to ibuprofen and paracetamol.  But of course when he's feeling really sick the last thing he wants is to take medicines.  On Monday we tried to bribe him with chocolate so he would have his ibuprofen.  He actually gave the chocolate back, and I'm sure if he'd had the vocabulary he would have accompanied it with "I might like chocolate, but I'm not going to pay that price!"

What else? Well, I have an insane amount of books to sell, so if anyone wants a huge pile of books, mainly in fairly decent condition, let me know.  Lots of sci-fi, warhammer 40k, quite a few vampiry ones (those are my other halfs let me assure you), some funny books... I've made the decision to sell off my books and make the move to e-books.  There isn't a logical reason to keep the books when I can get the ones I'm actually going to read online, and then access it from whatever phone or tablet I have with me.  I've tried using a variety of online book selling systems, but they all seem to give me rubbish prices for them - I realise that I'm not going to get full price for second hand books, but 50p for a virtually new book (eg read once) that sells for £10 seems too low.  If it was a £1 I'd go for it, but 50p is just too slow.

And keeping on the topic of books, my mum has just written a new one all about Halloween - it's got Halloween games in it, stories, all kinds of stuff about the Samhain festival.  If you want to find out more head over to their Facebook page (https://www.facebook.com/RavenMagical) - if you send them a message on Facebook with your postal address they'll send you a catalogue (they operate in a mail order format) and you even get a free gift with your first order!

Birthday wishes...

I've been writing my birthday list!

For my birthday and for Christmas, I produce a birthday list for my other half to use and share with friends and family - I'd never done this before we got together, but she had difficulty finding things for me as presents, so what I do is search the internet for stuff that I'd like, give her a list, and she can pick from the things, safe in the knowledge that I'll like them.

But it's really hard to do, because the thing is, there isn't really that much I desperately need or want.

Sure, I'd love a new car/house/phone/computer/tablet/jacket/desk mug, but the issue I have is that I have all of these things, and they all work.

Yes, the car is an aging a red Vauxhall Agila aka Postman Pat van, yes I can complain about the various other things, but I have a problem with getting things when I still have something serviceable.

Take a mug, for example.  We have a cupboard full of mugs, most fairly plain, one beloved Foamy the Squirrel mug (if you must, go check out http://www.illwillpress.com/ but don't say I didn't warn you), and at work I have a "I love my daddy" mug allegedly from my son, although his lack of employment (being 3) indicates that his mother was probably involved in financing the purchase.  Nevertheless, I don't feel able to replace it with a geekier mug (Cup of R2D2 anyone?).

And the vast majority of the blokey stuff you can buy just seems overpriced.  Would I like a sweater that looks like a galaxy? (as in lots of stars, not a chocolate bar) Yes, of course I would, but I wouldn't want to pay over £40 for it, and neither would I want people I know to pay that much for a present for me anyway.  Besides unless it was in a larger size it wouldn't fit... (sob)

So, I basically have a list with a load of books on it, a lot of Warhammer 40K and a load of other ones.  I'm looking to move more into getting electronic books rather than real books, to save on house space.  I've just read my first e-book, one of Jeffrey Archer's prison diaries, and although it's slightly annoying when the book reader app freezes up for a few seconds while it loads the page for you to read, overall it performs very well and I'm certainly up for reading more in this format.

Oh, before I forget - go to Google, search 241543903, and look at the images. Bizarre? Yes. Internet? Of course!