Obsession, Enslavement, Fetish, Passion?

Now those are good memories Pyan. Was the same here too. The same half envelopes only they were a different colour every year at the British Council library. The number of books that could be borrowed was the same though. And you just felt you even had to walk quietly and try not to cough or sneeze. Was one of the highlights of the week, that trip to the library and walking out with those books with the crinkly platic covers.

JD ... A DESEASE??? Really?? Ummm okay.
 
Nesacat said:
JD ... A DESEASE??? Really?? Ummm okay.
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That's what she said, Cat.... The closest I can come to capturing the tone of voice she used... think if how someone would sound if they were from the upper crust and expected to walk through sewage to shake the hand of a leper....
 
Nikitta said:
I lost almost all of my books when we moved about one and a half year ago :mad: It also wasn't the only things we lost.

I'm only slowly rebuilding my book collection. We plan to move back to Scandinavia during this year and I'm not parting with any of the books I bought here and I know they're heavy for shipping, but I'm so not going through that feeling again. If it wasn't for that, I'd probably buy more books than I do.

This time, I'll send the books in advance, little by little, by post. Then I know that they're there when I arrive.

When I grew up, there was a limit to how many books you could loan at the library, pr user, so my mother made sure that I got a library card when I was 6 months old. Just thinking of the main library in the town I grew up makes me smile. There is something magic about libraries.
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I'm sorry about the loss of your books. Something like that would be unthinkable to me.

Ah, libraries! Some of the best times of my childhood were spent at my hometown library back in the Chicago suburbs! For such a relatively nondescript, lower middle class township we had a truly superb library. All the librarians at both my school and township library knew me on a first name basis (and many of them - some in their 90s - still remember me!)

Yes, we had limitations too - so many books were permitted and only the ones that came from the children's section . . . although I quickly charmed the librarians at my township library into breaking the rules for me!

However, at my grade school library one was NOT permitted to take out a book that was rated for older students. How idiotic! There was one book on monsters of myth and legend that I lusted after. It was three years above my reading grade level and the librarians would not let me check it out. It stayed in that glass display case for three whole years, untouched, unloved, unread and just collecting a patina of dust. I harped, pleaded and conjoled, but to no avail. What can I say, the lure of forbidden fruit held me in its thrall! It never fails!

Then, finally, the first day of my fourth grade year came. I marched in triumphantly - a man with a mission! -and got my grubby little mitts on the damned thing that had eluded my grasp for three frustrating years! Believe me, the wait was well worth it!
 
Curt Chiarelli said:
In a world that is increasingly and systematically dumbing and numbing itself down I find my need to keep my mind nourished that much more critical. Certainly the quality of conversation found in America isn't providing it.
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Absolutely, except 'the quality of conversation found in EVERYWHERE isn't providing it.' I always think we book lovers are very lucky and the unlucky ones don't know what they have missed and what their lives would have been.

One of my happiest childhood memory is going to children's bookshops on weekends with my dad - a bookworm himself. Everytime we get a dozen or so books - half chosen by myself and half by him. Then we'd go to a park to eat something and I'd spread the books on the grass happily going through each of them - never forget that mixed smell of new books and grass.....
 
pyanfaruk said:
It always makes me wonder, when I visit other peoples' houses, and they've a 54" tv, games consoles, etc, and on a corner shelf there's about four books, including one Readers Digest 3 in 1 condensed volume. I mean, have these people no imagination at all??:confused:
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Readers Digest isn't so bad, thinking about a couple of cookery books.:rolleyes: I have the habit of looking for books 1st thing when invited to others houses - bet you all do. It's a very strange feeling when not seeing one, it's totally absurd!
 
Sounds like quite a few of us have such memories Allegra .. mine is of sitting on the kitchen floor on a mat next to my mom with my younger brother on the other side. And she'd be reading to us. It was a dinner-time ritual. And the books were all based on Hindu mythology, sometimes Greek or Roman mythology as well. I still have a special fondness for kitchens. :)
 
Allegra said:
Readers Digest isn't so bad, thinking about a couple of cookery books.:rolleyes: I have the habit of looking for books 1st thing when invited to others houses - bet you all do. It's a very strange feeling when not seeing one, it's totally absurd!
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Oh, indeed... I tend to browse through the shelves in stores as well... that is, displays in furniture stores, where they've books on the shelves.... Always have a bit of a fit when I find some lovely old book that really should be in someone's library being read and cherished....
 
Nesacat: Now you've got me thinking back too. :rolleyes:

When we had long joyneys by train, my mother would sit and read to us to make the time seem less slow. I especially remebering her reading books from a series about 4 kids and a dog solving crimes. Sorry, but I don't know the English title. In one they had to find some jewels, which turned out to be hidden in a snowman.

She also read to us on other ocassions, but it's the reading on trains during long journeys that sticks out as a memory that I'm especially fond of.
 
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Enid Blytons Famous Five.

I don't the exact number, but she wrote a fair few of them.
 
According to Wiki's article on them:

Enid Blyton wrote 21 Famous Five books; in chronological order they are:
  1. Five on a Treasure Island (1942)
  2. Five Go Adventuring Again (1943)
  3. Five Run Away Together (1944)
  4. Five Go To Smuggler's Top (1945)
  5. Five Go Off In A Caravan (1946)
  6. Five on Kirrin Island Again (1947)
  7. Five Go off to Camp (1948)
  8. Five Get into Trouble (1949)
  9. Five Fall into Adventure (1950)
  10. Five on a Hike Together (1951)
  11. Five Have A Wonderful Time (1952)
  12. Five Go Down to the Sea (1953)
  13. Five Go to Mystery Moor (1954)
  14. Five Have Plenty of Fun (1955)
  15. Five on a Secret Trail (1956)
  16. Five Go to Billycock Hill (1957)
  17. Five Get into a Fix (1958)
  18. Five on Finniston Farm (1960)
  19. Five Go to Demon's Rocks (1961)
  20. Five Have a Mystery to Solve (1962)
  21. Five Are Together Again (1963)
Blyton also wrote a number of short stories featuring the characters. These were finally collected together in 1998 as 'Five have a Puzzling Time and other stories'.
There are also books written originally in French by Claude Voilier (the Five have long been extremely popular in translation in the French-speaking parts of Europe) and later translated into English. The French/English books (not written by Blyton, and for the most part contemporary to their era, i.e. the 1980s) are generally regarded as inferior by Blyton aficionados and at least in the English-speaking world, have never equalled the popularity of the original books. The title of one of these books—The Famous Five in Fancy Dress—has been a particular object of ridicule.
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There have also apparently been some books written recently in German, but they've not yet been translated.

The woman was terrifically prolifit:

Enid Blyton - Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia
 
I've read all of them still have about 15 of them in a box at my mums.Also remember reading her Secret Seven series.My first memory of reading was The Faraway tree.My first venture into mythology was her Pandora's box and other short stories. I have a lot to thank Ms Blyton for:)
 
The other day one of my flatmates expressed her shock at seeing I had a hundred (yes, just a hundred, at the most) or so books on the shelf in my room, asking "why on earth" I had so many. I can't help but feel a large percentage of the people I know would have a similar reaction.
 
Yeah, I know that one!:) That's why we have to give YA writers like J K Rowling - even the Potter hype is a bit out of proportion - much credit for getting children interested in reading.

Curt Chiarelli said:
A recent incident seems to confirm my worst fears: I went into a local restaurant and was greeted (if such sullen impertinence could pass as such) by a piggishly dressed girl in Sonoma State University sweats. The first thing out of her mouth - which had just curled with barely restrained disgust along with a beetled brow and narrowed eyes - was, "Dude, is that like, you know, a book or something?"

I just stared at her in complete disbelief: "Are you a student at Sonoma State?"

- "Yeah."

- "Okay, you're a student right, but you seemed shocked to see me with a book? Aren't you assigned reading for your classes? Don't you enjoy reading in your leisure time?"

- "F**k no! Dude, no one normal reads unless they gotta. What you're doing, that's just too f**king weird."
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LMAO:D! I almost missed this one! Sorry I know it's terribly sad and worrying but it's so much like a scene from a sitcom.
 
Karsa Orlong said:
The other day one of my flatmates expressed her shock at seeing I had a hundred (yes, just a hundred, at the most) or so books on the shelf in my room, asking "why on earth" I had so many. I can't help but feel a large percentage of the people I know would have a similar reaction.
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Same here, I don't have a terribly large collection but I decided to bring my whole book collection to uni (roughly 100 books) as I thought "You never know what you'll want to re-read". Now one of the girls in the hall is also a reader so that's not so bad, but I remember someone else asked me "Why do you have so many books?" to which I was a little confused by so I just answered "To read". The next line was "What, you actually read these?". I think at this point I just stared blank faced for a bit.
 
I think I've read more books than I own, simply because I go to the library a lot. Still, I haven't counted how many books I own recently, but it's still a fair amount. Mind you, like a lot of people on here, I think I'd be completely at home living in a library! Reading isn't an obsession. It broadens the mind at the same time as providing entertainment far more involving than a film. I can't imagine what I'd be like if I didn't have a book with me.
 
I envy those with so many books :D Only reason I dont have so many is funds, and space. I love books, they are a passion for me, and perhaps a little bit of an obsession.. But who cares :D
 
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