Category Archives: Books

April 2, 2026 · 5:46 pm

Encyclopedia Sue grows up

The first book I remember receiving, taped back together:

The date written inside the cover:

In the past few years, alarming reports about how excessive screen time is destroying our attention spans, especially impacting children’s learning, appear regularly in the media. There have been professors reporting a growing problem of incoming college freshmen, who can’t manage to read through whole books and never did that in high school. Brain experts can explain all the changes taking place inside our brains with excessive screen time, but if you spend a good bit of time online, I don’t think you need a PhD to recognize this attention span problem. I’ve been working on improving my attention span by reverting to many of my life-before-the-internet habits.

A couple weeks ago, I thought about writing this blog post, for which I even had a title, Encyclopedia Sue Grows Up which is my own learning program that I began as a young child, who stuttered, but dreamed of being able to speak clearly like other kids. If I could do this on my own as a child, surely most people, young and old alike can manage this.

The first thing I learned about learning anything is, just like in every other human activity – attitude largely determines outcomes. The most important thing I learned about seeking information, gathering information, analyzing information, organizing information and actually using information is you should focus on building up your PATIENCE, not on your reading skills. I set up my own daily reading and speech lesson practice when I was in first grade. I had to attend speech class and that speech teacher told us to practice every day – and I did. Patience is developed through our habits – yes, it’s that simple.

Electronic devices, while offering us the entire world of information at our fingertips, work counter to helping most people learn good habits that develop patience. We click and scroll, expecting quick search results or instant answers from Alexa. We don’t have to put any real effort into this and while the term “user-friendly” sounds helpful and benign, many things in life require a lot of time, a lot of hard work, and developing patience to persevere when faced with obstacles, set-backs and, yes, failures. Many things also require more than one go-to source for everything and it’s very easy to become dependent on Google or Alexa, rather than thinking about alternative sources of information.

When I started school, we went right to first grade, because our school district didn’t have kindergarten back then. I was extremely shy, scared of strangers, and stuttered, but I wanted to learn to talk to other kids and I wanted to learn, just like other kids.

Virtue is a word seldom used in the secular world now, but practicing virtuous behavior will help any person develop a better character and a more positive mindset when facing obstacles. Just like with most things in life, learning skills to become a better reader and better at learning takes a lot of time and practice. There aren’t any short-cuts, so developing consistent study habits and reading practice will take time and that means you need to work on developing patience.

I set up my own home studying habits – daily practice reading. My mother gave me a paperback dictionary in elementary school, so I began daily practice reading that dictionary. Yes, I read the dictionary every day and I still look up many words regularly. It’s become a lifelong habit. One thing I particularly love about online dictionaries is there are some that have clips to play, so you can listen to how a word is pronounced. This is very helpful to me.

My mother also gave me an embroidery stitch guide when I wanted to learn embroidery. Having some actual reference books on hand is still worthwhile, because learning to handle physical books is as important as learning how to access information online. Media and social media thrive on creating drama and controversy, so naturally there’s been a lot of talk about giving up devices and this new lifestyle hype about “analog doomscrolling, replacing your online scrolling habit, but thinking you need to choose online information or physical books is a false choice. The logical option is to learn how to use both and find ways to utilize them in ways that help you more easily find and use information, to improve your life and potentially save you some time.

My home learning took a gigantic step forward when I was around 12 yrs old (early 1970s), when my parents bought a set of World Book Encyclopedias, replete with a large dictionary. This literally opened a new world to me. It was a world filled with new learning adventures on every page and a large dictionary, which I studied every day to learn new words and practice how to pronounce words. Along with the stuttering problem, I also couldn’t pronounce some letter sounds. Having that encyclopedia set in our living room dramatically changed how I searched for information. I now have that set of World Book Encyclopedias and the large dictionary, which needs to be repaired.

Naturally, my encyclopedia and dictionary reading habit led my siblings to nickname me… Encyclopedia Sue. Admittedly, I’m a bit obsessive about searching for information when something piques my curiosity and I’m still always reading information about information – asking all the usual who, what, when, where, why and how questions.

Life before the internet lent itself toward learning patience, because we often had to wait longer for most things (especially items that had to be shipped to us). Without 24/7 access to the internet, we had to rely on people around us or on written sources we could access. In my rural PA area we didn’t have a nearby public library, we had a very limited school library, our retired pastor’s home library and whatever books we had. We had to think about school reports and plan ahead.

In my teens I became interested in my family history while looking at old photos my great-grandmother had. I sat with her and as she remembered names, I wrote them on the back of the photos and I wrote notes. There was no ancestry.com or online genealogy information. I don’t remember where I found the address to write to the US government for information on birth and death records, marriage records and divorce records, but I mailed in a request and they sent me these booklets:

Even in everyday life, sometimes, while a Google search can instantaneously cough up more search results than you have time to scroll through, it can’t teach you how to think critically. Often, I consider a variety of information sources, not only Google searches (I don’t have Alexa). Recently, I was trying to remember the name of a wife I knew during Desert Storm in Germany, as I was writing in my Penzu journal. I quickly considered searching Desert Storm sites for unit rosters, but then I remembered I had looked at some of those sites years before and the unit rosters had lots of gaps. So, I thought about what else I remembered about this wife and I remembered she had submitted a recipe for Sweet Potato Soufflé to an Army wives cookbook some officers’ wives put together. I made this recipe once and liked it, but my husband and kids said it was too sweet. The internet makes so many aspects of searching for information much easier, but it took only a couple minutes to pull out that cookbook and find the recipe… and her last name. Don’t get stuck in only one path when searching for information. Start thinking beyond Google or asking Alexa.

I started comparing information from different sources and taking information apart in my early teens. Without even knowing it, the term for this type of reading is syntopical reading. You don’t need to know this term – just start being a critical consumer of information, instead of being someone who repeats what “smart people” or “experts say. Read opposing views, read challenging information that you know nothing about, and learn to pull information apart and/or compare it to other information. Most of all learn to explain what you think you understand in your own words – this is an unforgiving mirror for you to test yourself. This is very different than reading to memorize. It’s reading to ask questions and understand and the exact opposite of trying to become a walking “encyclopedia” of useless trivia.

When Encyclopedia Sue grew up, well, I realized an encyclopedia is a collection of reference material, on many subjects, written by many experts and editors. It’s an effort by many of the smartest minds, not a one-person show. Learning isn’t about memorizing and repeating information, it’s about understanding information and concepts. Encyclopedia Sue, was a star-student in high school, but once I got into the real world, I realized how little I really knew about most things, especially life and this set me on a totally different road – trying to focus more on helping other people.

Along with learning patience, one of the hardest things to learn is how to pick yourself up when you fail. For those lessons, I credit my short time in the Army and my late husband for teaching me how to focus on the team and not my pampered feelings. I learned to pick myself up and drive on. The truth was that because I stuttered a lot and was so shy, my parents babied me a bit too much. I learned there are many things more important than how I feel and I didn’t find those lessons in the set of World Book Encyclopedias. Learning comes in many forms, not only from books.

I’ll delve into some experts’ advice on learning and reading in another blog post, but again the important thing is to learn patience and developing a consistent study habit will help you learn do that. Olympic athletes don’t wake up one day and say, they’re ready for the Olympics. They practice hard daily, for many years. The same is true with reading and learning how to find and use information. It’s going to take a lot of consistent practice and a lot of failures, but once you get in the habit of going back and trying again to learn something hard, well, it starts to become part of your character.

You learn not to quit.

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Filed under Books, Education, General Interest

March 16, 2026 · 11:27 pm

My own word quest

GIVE ME LIBERTY, OR GIVE ME DEATH!

–Patrick Henry

I first read this Patrick Henry quote in one of my oldest sister’s Scholastic Book Club hand-me-down books. My oldest sister is eight years older than I am, so I was the lucky recipient of, not only her hand-me down books, but also the cast-off books of some of her friends. Her name is written in this book, that’s how I know this one was hers. In my last blog post I mentioned listening to podcasts on American history, a topic which has been a passion of mine since around 7th grade, when my US History teacher inspired in me a lifelong love of American history and a Girl Scout trip to Williamsburg, VA, which I mentioned in a long ago 2018 blog post, Falling in love… with America. I vividly recall the tour guide telling us about Patrick Henry and this quote. The acquisition of this book, via my oldest sister’s cast-offs, became part of my overall lifelong habit of not wanting to throw away things that are still useful (especially books), but also a larger curiosity about information, in general, and that’s going to be the road I wander down in this blog post.

Around the time I was 12 yrs. old, my parents, like many parents in America, bought a World Book Encyclopedia set, which came with a large dictionary. With 24/7 access to so much information at my fingertips, my world literally grew by leaps and bounds. When I wrote my last blog post, I already had the outline of another blog post in my head, for which I’ve even written a general outline with ideas and have a title, Encyclopedia Sue Grows Up, but before fleshing out that post, I’ve been thinking about writing a blog post about my how I became interested in words, writing, reading and how information is shared and spread.

Watching the dramatic changes in news media largely becoming part of partisan messaging operations, in the 1990s, led to my conviction that America has a serious national security threat right here at home with the Democrat spin information war, which has now been borrowed and modified into Trump’s hybrid spin war. Trump’s hybrid spin war has expanded on the Dem. spin corruption of using government intel and other assets for partisan political purposes and also abusing many other executive powers. Trump has turned the entire executive branch into a potent partisan spin operation, replete with “Rapid Response” partisan spin efforts, while casting it as “fighting against the Dem spin & Woke liberal media. Since, so much of my blog has been about this domestic spin information war and my entire Twitter posting effort has been, deliberately, geared to verbally trying to defeat partisan spin attacks, this post is going back to my childhood and revisiting my fascination with information.

So, now back to the beginning, not just with my fascination with information, but with the evolution of humanity’s information pursuits. In my early teens, I became curious about the history of the written word, reading and the sharing of information, especially via the written word. I like learning about how ancient peoples communicated. However, I’ve also been interested in information warfare since 1980, when I was stationed in Germany in a Pershing missile battalion, as a 19 year-old young soldier, trying to understand the Cold War.

I was the kid who drove my mother crazy questioning, Why?” and I was the young soldier, who found an antiwar post card in a German store and taped it inside the door of my wall locker, to prod myself, not to be antiwar, but to try to understand more about my mission defending America. I wanted to understand the ” Why war?” issue and became fascinated with reading about military history, especially the Cold War, which I was living in. I tried to explain this to my first sergeant during a room inspection one morning, when he spotted my “Why?” post card. He didn’t understand, but he didn’t make me remove my post card:

My interest in the Dem spin information war, which is what big Clinton political operatives called it (their “spin war”) probably caught my attention so much, because in 1992 we returned to the States after living in Germany for 5 years, without American TV in our leased military quarters. I reacted the same way when I returned to the States after living in Germany in 1981 and my husband told me we were getting cable TV. I binge watched 24-hour news. on cable TV in 1981, because when I had left for Germany, I was still in the CBS, ABC, NBC childhood TV choices world. Returning to the States in 1992, well, the political media landscape looked very different again.

Perhaps, if we had had AFN TV in Germany during those five years the change wouldn’t have been so jarring to me. The Clinton political operatives bragging constantly about their ingenious “spin war” caught my attention. This wasn’t just the usual political messaging, this was an all-out effort to control all political media messaging in America and work to spin right-wing media into a looming threat to America, that needed to be silenced. I started trying to understand how the Dem spin information worked and I’ve written many blog posts about this, like this one: The Pieces of the Media Messaging Puzzle in 2016.

The Dem spin information war has always been a sophisticated, actual information war, more akin to what you see in totalitarian regimes and it is antithetical to American free speech principles. Trump has now borrowed that and turned it into his hybrid spin info war. In 1992, on the right, the only place the right was dominating was on talk-radio and in 1992, Roger Ailes came up with a late-night show starring radio star, Rush Limbaugh, to counter the left’s total control over TV news/commentary in America.

I am always a “try to start at the beginning person” and that’s why I keep going down rabbits holes on the “history of” topics, as in my fascinations with the “history of words and reading,” then information warfare, recently led me to purchase two books on communications systems, even though I am severely technology-challenged (a total dunce). I often take detours down rabbit holes, as you can see, below, by a few of my books I pulled out (there are plenty more):

Since the advent of the internet age, it’s become a trend to try to “profile” people by what words they enter in search engines and what books they read, to draw sweeping conclusions about people, especially when profiling people deemed “national security threats” and I believe that’s a pretty lazy way to do a threat assessment. If you use the formula: Threat = capability X intention, which I think is a good one, if you rely on all second-hand information and/or draw sweeping conclusions from Google searches, your assessment is based on very little information about that person’s actual life and beliefs. Where the Dem spin operatives, with their abuse of US intel, have melded over and over again is they seek out only sources that bolster their desired spin narrative, while waging ruthless media character assassination attacks on Republicans (see Bret Kavanaugh & endless scorched earth attacks on Trump). The Dem spin info war operatives only seek out negative information on their targets to exploit and ruthlessly smear them.

My reading list and Google searches could easily be spun into a “dangerous, domestic terrorist,” by lazy spin clowns, however I have always been a loyal American citizen, believe in working hard to be a good citizen and good neighbor, try to be kind to everyone, love needlework and growing flowers and have always been afraid of guns, despite having to learn to handle firearms in the Army and my interest in military strategy and military history. I have never wished harm on anyone. And above all that, I love America and believe in protecting and respecting the rights (especially the liberties) of all Americans.

What got me thinking about this pigeonholing people was something that happened to me last year, which I won’t get into in this post, but it made me really think about what does freedom in America really mean and this You Tube video I shared recently hits on the key question – When would you speak up against injustice and for how long would you speak up against epic abuse of government power?

Since I am proud America has made it to its 250th anniversary, well, I’ve read a good bit about the Revolutionary War and Washington commanding the Continental Army, so this year, I want to dig into a two-volume set about The Pamphlet Wars and Thomas Paine. I have a book on Paine I want to read thoroughly because I only skimmed it when I first got it:

With spending so many years trying to dissect and understand the Dem spin information war and now Trump’s hybrid spin information war, this year I want to read more of this Library of America 2-volume set on the Pamphlet Wars, I bought in 2015 and have only read bits and pieces.:

I keep two books on the little table next to my recliner, and no, neither is the Bible, of which I have several, but I keep the Bible I use regularly on a little book cart I bought recently with this new “analog doom scrolling” effort, that I’ve been trying after seeing young people on social media talking about how they’re working on spending more time reading, to break their online doom scrolling habit. I was doing “analog doom scrolling” since I first learned to read, LOL. This little book cart is handy and I have my Bible and an assortment of books on it, everything from adult coloring books, daily devotional books to I started on the Forrest C. Pogue biography series of George C. Marshall to Atomic Habits, and crafting books. Here’s the book cart I purchased on Amazon. I already let myself get carried away on purchasing a 3-tiered craft cart, after watching a lot of crafting videos on YouTube, early last year, so it wasn’t really surprising I talked myself into buying this book cart too. I love having both of them, honestly. Sorry for rambling a bit there, but here are the two books I keep next to my recliner:

Truly, if I had a message that speaks to my heart, it’s the little wooden plaque I have hanging here on the hutch of my computer desk:

My poor, long-suffering, late husband lived with my love of cute and pretty things. I immediately decided our foyer was going to be the “I love America room,” when we bought our house in 1994, but then for a couple years we went back and forth over the dining room, which I wanted to use as a home library and then later it became our computer room. We both agreed we liked eating at the table in our large country kitchen and didn’t want or need a dining room. Speaking of going down rabbit holes, once this room turned into a sort of home library I told him with decorating, I was going to make it my Bunny Room and luckily for him I didn’t go overboard on the “bunny theme,” but there are some bunny figurines and a few bunny pictures still on the walls.

I resurrected this bunny, which had been in my Bunny Room, from the garage last year while decluttering and have it on the chest of drawers in my bedroom now. It’s a greeting card I bought at Walmart in the early 2000s and framed – it still gives me hope:

Have a nice day!

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Filed under Politics, American History, General Interest, Public Corruption, Information War, Books

March 7, 2026 · 11:40 pm

Gearing up to celebrate America’s 250th Anniversary

Back in November I negatively critiqued Ken Burns’ much-ballyhooed 6-part documentary, The American Revolution, which was produced as part of our celebration of America’s 250th anniversary. Well, more honestly I gave up on this 6-part documentary, after falling asleep during the first two episodes. In that November blog post, I Slept Through The American Revolution, I mentioned that I thought Burns’ documentary would have worked better as a podcast and I recommended two very good history podcasts by Wondery, American History Tellers and Tides of History. So, with that in mind this is going to be a freewheeling blog post about a book shopping haul update, jigsaw puzzling progress report and perhaps even some meandering down memory lane. Don’t expect a central theme, but you’ll probably gather there are too many ideas floating around in my head and, oh my goodness, too many book purchases and hobbies in progress. I’ll even toss in some truly mediocre photos for visual interest, LOL.

I started down the listening to podcasts road a few years ago and, just like with audiobooks, it took some getting used to and I finally settled on open-ear earbuds and have found listening to history podcasts, while working on jigsaw puzzles goes together as perfectly as Hershey’s chocolate syrup on vanilla ice cream (I’m a PA girl).

Recently, I listened to several American History Teller series while working on jigsaw puzzles: The Cold War (7 episodes), Prohibition (7 episodes), The Age of Jackson (7 episodes), Revolution (7 episodes), and National Parks (7 episodes). The jigsaw puzzle progress is moving along too. Here are the puzzles I’ve completed.

The jigsaw puzzle new purchases well, 3 from Ollie’s, for $4.99 each, which is quite a deal, 6 puzzles from Amazon, and one Charles Wysocki puzzle from ebay with a backstory.

With book purchases, these were inspired by history podcasts. I am proud to say, I mustered some self-discipline and only purchased two books discussed at the end of a The Cold War series podcast. The last episode of that series was an interview with the historian, Audra Wolfe, a Cold War expert. She recommended a short list of interesting Cold War books, so I purchased these two.

I have started reading, Raven Rock: The Story Of The U.S. Government’s Secret Plan To Save Itself, While The Rest Of Us Die, which is a wild ride through the history of Continuity of Government planning in the Nuclear Age.

Now, the backstory of the ebay purchase- a discontinued Charles Wysocki jigsaw puzzle, called Peach Of A Day. I put this puzzle together when we lived at Fort Leonard Wood in the early 1990s. We had returned to the States, after five years in Germany (1992), and I was loving going to the little Walmart store off-post and buying fabric to keep feeding my dream of becoming a good quilter, but then I found Charles Wysocki jigsaw puzzles in the toy section and an old hobby passion was rekindled.

My husband was used to how I am a 100% commitment kind of person. It doesn’t matter if its’ taking care of my family, volunteering, or any of my always-growing hobbies and interests. My fabric obsession and desire to recreate my great-grandmother’s closet of fabric scraps has been going strong since I first married in 1980. My great-grandmother crocheted and did embroidery, but her true passion was quilting – and she was good at it.

I gravitated towards embroidery, counted cross-stitch and needlepoint and love working on those. I also enjoyed latch-hook. When I got out of the Army in 1981, I had been used to getting up in the morning and getting busy. Now, it was only my husband putting on combat boots in the morning, while I was now pregnant and in an apartment in Germany. I needed projects and since I love reading, decorating, cooking, baking and needlework, I threw myself into those. I found a large latch hook rug kit at the PX and got busy. I still have that rug.

When I first started this rug, I don’t think my husband thought I would finish it, because he watched me attach each short strand of yarn to the canvas and work my way across each row. With that first needlecraft project as a wife, I don’t think my husband knew how I am, but he quickly learned – I like to finish needlework projects and I like to have several more lined up, but I also am always working on several other hobbies, for when I need a break from sewing. I’ve met many women, who are into needlework and crafts, who are just like me.

At Fort Leonard Wood, my husband encouraged me to take some quilting classes that were on-post, because I had started buying a lot of fabric at Walmart and I did that. However, I’m not very good at quilting and I don’t really enjoy it that much, but these quilting dreams from my childhood have been slow to die. I grew up with my great-grandmother living on one side of the house and our family on the other side and my earliest memories of my great-grandmother are sitting at her round table in the corner of her kitchen, while she sat in her rocking chair and stitched quilt pieces together.

I became my great-grandmother’s helper bee from the time I was very young. She made several quilts that were a pattern called Grandmother’s Flower Garden, which was popular during the Great Depression. This quilt is pieced together using a technique called English Paper Piecing and here’s a You-Tube channel that offers all sorts of tutorials, tips and inspiration: Emma Jones Vintage Sewing Box. I spent many hours carefully tracing hexagon shapes on the back of fabric and cutting out my great-grandmother’s pieces for these quilts.

My true, absolute joy in being my great-grandmother’s helper bee, though, was spending endless hours sitting in her fabric closet, filled with cardboard boxes of fabric scraps and picking out fabric for her quilt blocks. She would tell me she wanted some pretty pink floral patterned fabric, or she wanted solid blues, or perhaps she wanted yellows. I could stay in that closet for hours pulling out fabric scraps and trying to find the colors and patterns she wanted. She showed me how to lay fabric pieces together and think about how they look together and then try some other combinations, in order to find color combinations you like. I have never made a Grandmother’s Flower Garden quilt, but I’ve made some blocks and years ago I made some throw pillows appliqueing Grandmother’s Flower Garden blocks onto the pillow tops. I have a few blocks sitting here… someday maybe.

Since 1980, I’ve been recreating my great-grandmother’s fabric scrap closet and have at least a dozen large plastic totes of fabric in my garage.

But at the Walmart in Waynesville, MO in 1992, I became obsessed with Charles Wysocki jigsaw puzzles and I put one after another together and decided I was going to glue all of them together and hang them on the walls on our stairs. My husband hung them, but he kept urging me to go buy some nice things for the walls and not some cardboard puzzles. I even had him hang some on our hallway upstairs.

In 1994 we moved to Hinesville, GA and bought a brand new house here. I had already started making decorating choices for decorating our new house, when one morning, sitting at the kitchen table, I was chattering on about this Charles Wysocki puzzle I had hung underneath the middle window in our kitchen. It’s my absolute favorite one, called Peach of A Day.

My husband had this alarmed look on his face, as I happily told him I had put the box with all my other Charles Wysocki puzzles in the garage until I decided where to hang them. Mysteriously, when I later was looking for my box of puzzles in the garage it was nowhere to be found. He never fessed up to throwing them out, but would always urge me to go buy nicer things to hang on the walls.

My favorite puzzle is now pretty dinged up, so I searched online and found it on ebay and the vendor says all the pieces are in the box, so we shall see. If they are, I’m going to glue it together and replace the old one.

I have been in jigsaw puzzle phase for years now and I recently put together this Charles Wysocki puzzle and glued it together. I am thinking of hanging it in the guest bedroom. The walls in my house are pretty full of other stuff, but I have space in the guest room. I’ve certainly gotten over that idea, to hang Charles Wysocki jigsaw puzzle everywhere, but this one just feels like it needs to go in a frame and be hung up this year.

If I get around to getting carpal tunnel surgery on my wrists, I might even celebrate America’s 250th anniversary by completing this latch hook rug kit, I found in my garage, early last year, while I was decluttering.

I guess, you’re catching a theme here, LOL. This one has been a phase my entire life. Here’s my 2016 blog post, My I love America room.

My “I love America!” room

Have a nice day!

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Filed under American History, Books, General Interest, Jigsaw Puzzles

December 14, 2025 · 11:26 pm

Everything old is new again

Often I come across new terms used online that baffle me. Recently, I came across the term “analog doomscrolling” and while listening to a nice young man on YouTube explain it and talk about the benefits, I felt a strong wave of nostalgia. I also chuckled a little bit, because I used to be a master of “analog doomscrolling.”

“Analog doomscrolling,” is replacing time spent doomscrolling online with reading books, working on puzzles, and doing crafts to replace time spent online doomscrolling. This You Tuber demonstrated browsing through various books and reading small bits and he recommended having an assortment of books nearby, including reference books, like dictionaries & encyclopedias, where he can pull out a book and read a few minutes at a time.

My childhood was filled with many hours spent reading our World Book Encyclopedia set and the large dictionary that came with that set. I added many other books to my “analog doomscrolling” habit, like books of quotes, books on poetry, magazines, browsing through cookbooks and hours paging through my oldest sister’s set of interior decorating books. I also borrowed my great-grandmother’s old Workbasket magazines, and loved finding new needlework and craft ideas. At the kitchen table, I read every side of cereal boxes, all the print on any food container, from the pancake syrup bottle to the strawberry jam, and if my father finished reading the newspaper, I was quick to grab that too and start reading. Words have always fascinated me.

The negatives about digital use caught most of us by surprise, but I’m hopeful we’ll learn to find ways to navigate through this. Articles about research into how screen time can wreck our attention span and negatively impact our lives abound, but rather than throw the baby out with the bath water, I think we should find ways to mitigate the negatives, while embracing the positives. Fast and easy access to information offers many benefits. I find it very helpful to look at how-to videos for many household repair tasks, find new recipes, pay bills and handle banking, and of course, shop. I even found the internet very useful for finding information about the negatives of internet use.

I have been working on my bad habit of wasting time doomscrolling with limited success, because another bad habit – online shopping – rears it’s head, whenever, I embark on new hobbies. Many people, myself included, waste money shopping online for things we probably never would have considered purchasing shopping in physical stores and it’s easy to convince yourself that you “need” a lot of extra things to start new hobbies, try new recipes, or just about anything else we do, because we see so many new options online, especially on social media.

In the digital age, almost every new interest comes with a few online purchases. because as soon as I watch a few YouTube videos on a new craft or needlework project, the next thing I know is I am purchasing some new “must have” tools and/or supplies. Before the internet, I would have just used what I had and jumped in. And once I make that first purchase, well, often I end up buying more accessories. Then once I’ve got all this new stuff piled up, of course, I absolutely need some new storage containers to organize it all.

When I started working on adult coloring early this year, I promised myself that this time I wasn’t going to overdo the buying too much crap, but I failed and have 18 adult coloring books (more than I will likely ever use), several sets of colored pencils, markers and assorted supplies. Overall, luckily I live pretty simply and am working to impose more discipline on my online shopping, like trying to stick to a 24-hour rule, where if I see something I want to buy, I wait 24 hours before purchasing. Often that bit of time leads to me deciding not to buy the item.

There’s actually a term for this consumption behavior called the Diderot effect. The term describes a pattern of behavior where one new purchase can lead to dissatisfaction with other possessions and lead to a spiral of new purchases. Diderot, a French philosopher, received a gift of a beautiful scarlet robe, which led to him buying many new purchases to be good enough to go with that fancy robe. From Wikipedia:

“I was absolute master of my old dressing gown”, Diderot writes, “but I have become a slave to my new one … Beware of the contamination of sudden wealth. The poor man may take his ease without thinking of appearances, but the rich man is always under a strain”

Poor Diderot, ended up in serious debt and I don’t want to end up like him. The interesting thing about watching this nice young man on YouTube, was Diderot’s effect kicked in. He had a book shelf next to him where he had placed some books specifically for “analog doomscrolling,” but I started thinking that what I need (want) is a book cart on wheels. I thought a book cart with wheels would be so handy to stack books on and roll around the house to wherever I choose to spend time “analog doomscrolling.” I already have a small, three-tiered metal cart on wheels that is very useful for my crafting supplies, so now I will likely purchase a book cart in the near future too.

Yes, I know this book cart idea is totally ridiculous and frivolous, so I am expanding my 24-hour online shopping rule to thinking about a book cart purchase until, at least, next month.

Small steps…

1/30/2026 Update: I didn’t even make to January. I purchased a book cart on Amazon on December 27th, LOL. And I am using it for my “analog doomscrolling.” Yes, I know it’s totally ridiculous.

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Filed under Books, General Interest

September 24, 2023 · 1:08 pm

Dystopian fiction can spark reality checks

In the above YouTube video, Prepper Potpourri, a very practical-minded prepper, put together a list of apocalyptic fiction to consider. In her video she collaborated with some other preppers in the YouTube prepper community about their favorites in the dystopian genre.

One of the other YouTube preppers in her video, Cold War Prepper, offered a great tip for reading dystopian novels and it’s actually the way I read non-fiction books too. He suggested having large index cards, post-it flags and a pen handy, to mark pages and jot down notes. This is how I’ve been reading for decades.

This year has turned into a departure from my usual type fiction reading choices, as I’ve wandered into some dystopian fiction this year, which I’ve generally skipped. I’ve also been reading a lot of non-fiction on totalitarianism, Mao and Soviet communism and other serious topics, trying to make sense out of our rapidly changing world. I even watched the first season of The Last of Us, an apocalyptic series about most of the world being wiped out by a rapidly spreading fungal infection, that attacks the brain and leads to, well, a zombie apocalypse.

I prefer happy endings and historical romances have always been my top fiction choice, but I’ve taken this reading detour lately, as I realized how many things I don’t know about preparedness and other very serious topics. I vaguely knew what an EMP event was, but once I learned more, well, that led to the William R. Forstchen novels and more reading on that topic.

Back in March I wrote a blog post about reading William R. Forstchen’s 2009 novel, One Second After (the John Masterson series). I then read his follow-on novels, One Year After and The Final Day. I also read his novel, 48 Hours. I recommend all of these, because even though a few things in the plots seemed unrealistic and a lot of Masterson and the town doctor dialogues often sounded more like they were regurgitating some “worst case scenario” information from some government report, overall I learned a great deal. The 4th book in Forstchen’s John Masterson series, Five Years After, was released in hardcover a couple days ago. The paperback will be released in May of next year and on Amazon, there is a Kindle version available.

Last year, I reread, George Orwell’s 1984 and a lesser known 1960s dystopian novel, A World Without Men, by Charles Eric Mann, which I saw mentioned at some conservative site several years ago, so I had ordered it and read it. Orwell’s masterpiece continues to be the easy go-to comparison for every extremist thing happening in the world.

The Mann novel delves into some of the extreme societal shifts within a world that, over time, through man-made reproduction problems, becomes literally without men. It’s a world maintained via artificial insemination using harvested sperm from males, as male babies were dramatically decreasing. Then male babies stopped being born and the last male on earth died off, leading to a secret global race for scientists to get male fetuses to survive. The story begins far in the future, then jumps back in history to set the stage of global events that explains how this all-female world came about. All of the characters felt hollow and forgettable to me. As the story returns to that future world, the protagonist figures out some important truths and she starts making waves.

The Mann novel would be totally forgettable, except some of the criticisms of early modern feminism the author touched on are worth considering, especially since modern feminism has moved into some very extreme mutations (they refer to them was “waves) with #MeToo and the ever-expanding gender movement. Seriously, LGBT is now 2SLGBTQI+ in Canada. The Canadian government explains: “2SLGBTQI+ terminology is continuously evolving. As a result, it is important to note that this list is not exhaustive and these definitions are a starting point to understanding 2SLGBTQI+ identities and issues.”

I developed an interest in all the Cold War era stuff back in the 1980s. Then the Soviet Union collapsed in 1989 and most people brushed aside all the things we had learned. Back then I had developed an interest in learning about propaganda and as we moved from one Army post to another, one of the many blessings of life around the Army was Army post libraries. Those libraries catered to military-themed topics and I found piles of interesting books to read. Perhaps, that earlier interest in propaganda is what sparked my interest in the American spin information war developing in the 1990s.

Recently, I read Reagan’s favorite dystopian novel, The Journal of David Q. Little, about the US falling under the control of an international organization controlled by the Soviet Union. Although the Soviet Union is long gone, many of the themes of Marxist ideology and Soviet operational methods described in this old 1960s novel, didn’t feel so antiquated when thinking about all the Marxist-tinged ideology that’s taken hold in America in recent years, especially among the far-left and in academia.

Now, we keep hearing about Russian and Chinese disinformation, AI generated information, fake news, digitally-altered images, bot attacks, algorithms used to distort perceptions, etc. and I’ve realized that I need to, not only try to understand the new things, but go back and brush up on older history. Influence operations went from being a thing government intelligence agencies or big corporations masterminded to now being a social media influencer” is a coveted career path and anyone with an internet connection can become an “influencer.”

Many people don’t enjoy reading non-fiction books, that’s why a dystopian fiction list like Prepper Potpourri put together can come in handy. While some of the plot twists and events may be unrealistic, the authors generally put a lot of effort into research and present scenarios, you might never have considered.

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Filed under Books, Emergency Preparedness, General Interest

January 1, 2020 · 12:50 am

New horizons for 2020… reading more books

Well, it’s after 11 pm on New Year’s Eve and here I am writing, because I don’t want to end 2019 without getting a blog post finished.

After writing so much about politics, this blog post will be about books and reading, plus whatever else flits into mind that’s generally related to books and reading.  On various sites, including Twitter, there seem to be a lot of year’s end type stories about “best books of 2019” or “I read 127 books this year.”

While I peruse other people’s book lists and jot down books from their lists that interest me, my own reading tastes veer from historical romance novels to serious books on foreign policy, military affairs, U.S. history, spy novels, general fiction, and even the classics, so it’s doubtful anyone would find my reading list very useful.

Numerous articles have been written about General James Mattis’ voracious reading habit and I always find it interesting what books generals recommend, although most of them stick to military-themed novels, which is what makes Mattis so interesting to me.  He has mentioned The Far Pavilions by M.M. Kaye.  I knew I had that novel somewhere and I finally located it among some of my old historical romance paperback novels.  I bought this somewhere around 1979/1980, I think.  The copyright of this paperback is 1979 and hard to believe it cost only $2.95.  I read some of it, but never finished (it’s 1189 pages), so perhaps in 2020, I’ll give it another go.   Mattis also recommended Scipio Africanus: Greater Than Napoleon by B.H. Liddell Hart and I actually have that book too… along with Marcus Aurelius, another of Mattis’ faves.

The one stand out novel I read this year was the Pulitzer Prize winning novel, All the Light We Cannot See, by Anthony Doerr, a WWII story with characters who stay with you long after you’ve finished reading.  The writing alone soars, but then there’s the captivating cast of characters, and a plot that was way larger than “just another WWII novel.”  It’s the type of story that can touch just about every human heart, even those who have no interest in WWII, I think.

Reading matters a great deal and while harping on reading sounds like a tired old public service message, being able to read truly does open doors of opportunity.  More importantly, it allows even the poorest people the chance to explore and learn about the world.  With books anyone can travel to new and fascinating places, travel through time, and even travel to imaginary worlds.  The ability to read is one of the great equalizers around the world, but especially in a republic like the United States of America.

Frederick Douglass was born a slave in 1818, but he died a world-renowned abolitionist, orator, writer and most of all a free man in 1895.  Teaching slaves to read was against the law, but after his mistress began teaching him to read, the fire was lit in Douglass to acquire an education despite the risks.  His master caught his wife teaching Douglass and forbade her to continue the lessons, propelling Douglass on a lifelong journey to acquire an education:

“Seized with a determination to learn to read, at any cost, I hit upon many expedients to accomplish the desired end. The plea which I mainly adopted, and the one by which I was most successful, was that of using my young white playmates, with whom I met in the streets as teachers. I used to carry, almost constantly, a copy of Webster’s spelling book in my pocket; and, when sent of errands, or when play time was allowed me, I would step, with my young friends, aside, and take a lesson in spelling. I generally paid my tuition fee to the boys, with bread, which I also carried in my pocket. For a single biscuit, any of my hungry little comrades would give me a lesson more valuable to me than bread. Not every one, however, demanded this consideration, for there were those who took pleasure in teaching me, whenever I had a chance to be taught by them.”

Douglass, Frederick (2009-10-04). My Bondage and My Freedom (p. 85). Public Domain Books Kindle Edition.

My Bondage and My Freedom is in the public domain and available free online at gutenberg.org and in kindle format at amazon.com.

The love of books and reading is one of the best gifts you can pass on to your children and grandchildren. My four granddaughters are all teenagers now and all of them love to read.  My daughter made going to the library a part of their ordinary routine, which is what my husband and I did with her and her siblings.  When my granddaughters were younger, I bought them kindle fires, so imagine my surprise a few years ago when they told me they prefer reading actual books, because it’s more enjoyable holding an actual book.  My kids bought me a kindle many years ago, in hopes that I would buy fewer actual books, since my bookshelves are crammed full.  I still read kindle books, but I also still buy some actual books (some habits never die).

While it’s easy to get caught up in the constant doom and gloom prognostications about how everything in America is going to hell in a hand basket… because of evil Trump or the evil Dems, perhaps the truth is there’s still plenty for us to remain hopeful about.

Despite concerns about the demise of reading in America, Pew Research Center found that roughly 72% of Americans said they had read a book in the past year, across several formats and that statistic has remained unchanged since 2012.  Audiobook usage is up, but print books still remain the most popular book format.

In April 2019, I moseyed to my local public library and got a new library card, since I hadn’t been to the public library in several years.  My public library resides in a lovely, brand new building and a lot had changed besides the building.  I learned about free digital services, Hoopla and RB Digital, that I can access from my phone, tablet or desktop PC and sign out audiobooks and ebooks,  all with just my library card number.  I can renew library books and pay fines just by signing into my library account online.  Using Hoopla and RB Digital, I joined the audiobook listener ranks in 2019 and while I still prefer reading an actual book best, the production quality of some of these audiobooks completely exceeded my expectations and kept me captivated from beginning to end.  Of course, there were a couple audiobooks where the performer’s voice grated on my nerves and I just couldn’t finish the book.

We’re now into 2020, so let me wish everyone a very Happy New Year and if our crazy political sideshows get too tiring, just pick up a book, find an ebook or listen to an audiobook to escape the politics and media madness.

Goodnight.

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Filed under Books, General Interest

September 3, 2019 · 11:20 pm

Hurricane grumbles and book chat…

While sitting here in southeast GA waiting for Hurricane Dorian to hopefully make a turn northeast, here goes with a blog post attempt about some scattershot ponderings of mine.

First pondering –  The  modern media, modern weather reporting and modern politicizing everything,  leaves a worrier like me totally exhausted  trying  to make it through day-after-day of  evacuation notices and constant updates with Hurricane Dorian.  The media escalation started before the end of last week and now it  seems likely to dog the US until the end of this week.  The warning overload has me to the point of yearning for this stupid storm to hit, so we can just get it over with.

Second pondering deals with reading and my self-education efforts, which brought to mind a comment by former Secretary of Defence, James Mattis, while discussing his new book in an interview.  Mattis said:

The Strategy Bridge
@Strategy_Bridge
“If you haven’t read hundreds of books, you are functionally illiterate, and you will be incompetent, because your personal experiences alone aren’t broad enough to sustain you.” – James Mattis What are you reading this weekend? #TheBridgeReads #WeekendBridge

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6:15 AM · Aug 31, 2019

As with just about everything in our culture today, this statement by Mattis evoked attacks against Mattis on Twitter, from partisans on both sides.  It seems like the extreme partisan voices want to tear down people more than they want to pause and look for some common ground.   

One of my favorite things to do when I visit the home of someone new for the first time is look around for reading material, to try figure out the people who live there. When I first learned of Mattis’ large book collection, the thought popped into my head that it would be very interesting to snoop around his book shelves. Even more interesting would be to have casual chats with him about books, especially find out what sparked his interest in reading.

I’ve read a lot of books over the years, but assuredly nowhere near as many as James Mattis has read. Even more than the sheer number of books though, Mattis is getting at something vastly more important than just reading.  He’s talking about reading leading to the development of critical thinking skills, which forms the core we need in principled leadership.

Several years ago, JK, a long-time commenter on my blog, recommended a helpful book, Cultural Literacy: What Every American Needs To Know, written by E.D. Hirsh. which can set anyone  on the path toward becoming  a well-read person.  Recently I was reading this book again and decided to work through another book, purchased many years ago, except I couldn’t find it… after searching through my books in the living room, computer room, bedrooms and in my sewing and craft room.   It will show up again, because, trust me, books rarely leave my house.

Anyway, I find a lot of older books at Thriftbooks.com and with a $10 order, shipping is free there.  I found that book there  for $4.79, so I bought it, along with two other books.  Here’s the list:

The Intellectual Devotional: Revive Your Mind,  Complete Your Education, and Roam Confidently with the Cultured Class by David S. Kidder & Noah D. Oppenheimer

The Intellectual Devotional, American History, Revive Your Mind, Complete Your Education, and Roam Confidently with the Cultured Class by David S. Kidder & Noah D. Oppenheimer

West With The Night by Beryl Markham

These intellectual devotional books are intended to be quick daily readings (a page or so) covering a broad range of topics and often there are additional facts at the end of each entry, which can point you toward other reading on the topic you might want to explore.  Despite all my good intentions to work my way through the classics and hoping to get through the entire “five foot shelf” of books, an early 20th century Harvard president, Dr. Charles W. Eliot, compiled in 1910, as a roadmap to acquiring a liberal education, often my reading veers toward popular fiction and even, way too many historical romance novels. Eliot believed that the average reader could acquire a sound liberal education by devoting just 15 minutes a day to reading through his list of classics.

Of course, that 15 minutes a day sounds easy, but just reading classics for a certain amount of time daily doesn’t work for me, especially when it comes to trying to absorb more complicated ideas and concepts.  Last week, when ordering another JK book recommendation, Between Two Worlds: How the English Became Americans, by Malcolm Gaskill, I ordered, The Well-Educated Mind: A Guide to the Classical Education You Never Had, by Susan Wise Bauer. 

If you love older books Thriftbooks works great.  I found the Bauer book in hardcover, like new condition for $6.39.  Wise offers an organized way to approach reading the classics and she has this book divided into chronologically-based lists, to help you build a base of knowledge to give you the tools to digest the other books, as you work through the lists.

In a few months, I’ll let you know how this approach works out… if I can only devote more time to studying the classics than to reading romance novels and popular fiction, lol.

My last pondering is whenever you think you’ve seen it all, something will come up on the internet, that leaves you wondering, “what the hell is she thinking?”  So, here goes with just such a Hurricane Dorian story: Florida woman wrapping home in plastic ahead of Hurricane Dorian.  I sent this news link to my daughter in TX and told her that I think the wind will likely rip that duct taped plastic off her house in minutes.  My daughter responded, “Yeah… you can’t fix stupid.”

Tomorrow is supposed to be our hurricane encounter, so the power will likely be out and I have a stack of books ready to read

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Filed under Books, Education, General Interest

July 2, 2019 · 1:19 pm

Odds and Ends

“This is not who we are!”

My intention is to get more blog posts written soon, so we’ll see if my intentions turn into actual writing, lol.  For a long time I’ve been pondering how the internet and especially social media usage has changed my life.  One of the things I noticed over the years is a decrease in my attention span when reading in general, but particularly staying focused on reading books.  The constant click, click, click mentality of modern internet usage made me realize that I wasn’t spending enough time, sitting back, unplugged from the internet, and enjoying hours of reading.  So, once again, I’m recommitting myself to spending more time reading actual books, but also filling in the wasted online time listening to audiobooks.

For June, I finished 4 actual books and 3 audiobooks.  I’m working my way through two audiobooks and two actual books presently, hoping to stay focused on reading more books and spending less time online.  One of the books I’m reading is Ben Sasse’s, Them: Why We Hate Each Other And How To Heal,  which I bought a while ago, read a few pages, then sat it aside.  I’m halfway through it now and intend to write more about it after I finish the book and do some more research.

Sasse offers important information on the news media evolving into a massive infotainment business.  Trump’s reality TV show presidency seems like a natural evolution in this news as entertainment environment, but the real problem isn’t only “Trump is evil” and it’s not only this polarizing news media environment.  The main problem really is we, the American people.  Without a huge market for this combative news as infotainment and the American embrace of trashy reality TV, this media environment would not thrive and assuredly, Trump’s brand of petty name-calling and juvenile insults would never have acquired a large cheering section, that still fills up large stadiums with flag-waving Americans, who show up to see these Trump Rally Shows.

The corrupt way in which the media gave Trump billions of dollars in free media during the 2016 GOP primary to hype his “GOP Insurgency” still serves as the most glaring example of this toxic media environment, but there are plenty of other examples.  Trump’s opponent in 2016.  Hillary Rodham Clinton received liberal media deification in the early 90s, with the media overhyping her as the “smartest woman in the world”, America was “getting two presidents for the price of one” and on it went with the liberal media slobbering all over her, crowning her America’s #1 feminist icon.

Conservative media has done the same thing, like turning Sarah Palin into a conservative icon, but the liberal media due to its dominance seems to churn out more media-manufactured political sensations.  We now are regaled with the “rock star” Beto O’Rourke, America’s small town mayor, Pete Buttegieg, the always in our faces, Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez  and last week’s Democrat debates, crowned Kamala Harris as the latest media darling for her championing school busing… of all topics to grasp to try and galvanize Americans to vote for her in 2020…

Probably the most realistic liberal take on Harris came from, of all people, liberal icon, Willie Brown:

“The first Democratic debates proved one thing: We still don’t have a candidate who can beat Donald Trump.

California Sen. Kamala Harris got all the attention for playing prosecutor in chief, but her case against former Vice President Joe Biden boiled down in some ways to a ringing call for forced school busing. It won’t be too hard for Trump to knock that one out of the park in 2020.”

https://www.sfchronicle.com/bayarea/williesworld/article/Bad-news-for-Democrats-none-of-these-14059874.php?utm_campaign=CMS%20Sharing%20Tools%20(Premium)&utm_source=t.co&utm_medium=referral

As the 2020 Democrats veer left, President Trump, is veering back to his 2016 fear mongering about America being a victim of “unfairness” at every turn, even claiming most of our closest allies are taking advantage of us.  He’s ranting about illegal immigrants.  Mostly, though he’s wrapping himself in the American flag at every turn, playing to his blue collar white audience, proclaiming that only he is there to save them from the crazy Left.

The 2020 Democrats running to unseat him, are trying to find “issues” to run on, doubling down on the most far-left ones out there.  Most of all, what they lack remains a stage presence that can push Trump from owning this reality TV show media environment.  Americans, especially those who follow the infotainment regularly and are more galvanized to vote, really want the drama and constant controversy that Trump generates.   Even while many of Trump’s harshest critics claim to despise Trump’s reality TV show presidency and constant antics, they still tune in to watch and they spend hours upon hours tweeting and railing about Trump’s latest outrage.  He still owns the American political stage and I agree with Willie Brown’s assessment.

That’s it for today.  Have a nice day everyone.  As for me, I’ll be sitting here sipping iced tea … inside this afternoon.  It’s 97 degrees, but feels like 105.   Even my dogs don’t want to step outside this afternoon.

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Filed under Books, General Interest, Politics

June 22, 2019 · 6:29 pm

Inspiration can come from afar

First a short blog note before moving onto a new blog post.  On Thursday, I think my blog was hacked.  Don’t want to go into details, but a photo was posted on my blog and I didn’t post it.

Now onto the blog post, which is going to be about books and writing… sort of.  The technology revolution in the past few decades often leaves me a bit bewildered and unsure of how to navigate using new devices, new software programs, and new digital ways of communicating.  The technology revolution happened without me ever wanting to jump onboard.  In retrospect, it’s easy to admit to my insular attitude to new technology, but at the same time many of the my concerns about the disturbing aspects to digital technology  in our daily lives turned out to be well-founded.

We had two sons, who were constantly wanting new computer gaming systems in the 90s.  I didn’t understand why every time a new gaming system came out, their perfectly good gaming system was treated like old junk.  Coming from a generation where we went outside to play, not glued to computer games, I neither understood nor liked how much time they spent playing computer games,

We didn’t buy our first PC until 1997, strictly because I was adamantly against it.  My husband kept telling me how great a PC would be for the kids, but in my mind a PC sounded like  just another expensive toy.  I had this same resistance to getting cell phones too, but my husband went and bought cell phones and cell phone service, then handed me my cell phone.

Part of my resistance to this wave of technology stemmed from my being totally technology-challenged, which created a fear of high-tech gadgets and part of it was my natural reticence about spending a lot of money on “shiny new objects”, which we did not need and were in no way necessary.  In 1990. while we were living in Germany, my husband had gone to the PX and bought a home word processor, which used floppy disks to store information on.  Although, he bought it wanting to store information related to his work and he thought it would be great for the kids to use with their schoolwork,  I quickly became the main user of  that word processor, despite being the one who lectured him about wasting money on a gadget we didn’t need.

The PC purchase went the same way.  I quickly became hooked on using the internet, while my husband never did become much of an internet user.   With cell phones, neither my husband nor I ever became glued to our cell phones and both of us have always preferred our traditional landline phones.  Seriously, once landline phones moved to having cordless handsets, that was about as perfect a phone as we ever needed.

I use my PC for everything from paying bills to learning new craft and needlework by watching YouTube tutorials.  I have dozens of books in my kindle library, but I’ve also found plenty of free classics at other online sites too.  Somehow though, I never bought audiobooks, mainly because they’re pricey and I wasn’t sure I would like listening to them.  Our oldest daughter loved listening to books on cassette tape, that she could read along with the book, as a preschooler in the early 1980s.  We would go to the public library and she would select the books with tapes and then she would sit for hours playing the tapes on her own radio/cassette player.  It amazed me how many new words she learned quickly, reading along.

In May, I wrote a blog post about trying audiobooks for the first time and somehow that brings me to the topic of a recent Matt Lewis interview of George Will in a 38:10 minute podcast interview.  This interview covers a wide range of topics, one of them being George Will talking about his love of writing and his enjoyment of fiction, not just the lofty ideological, political, cultural topics I assumed occupied his thoughts.  Of course, Will is also an avid baseball fan, which he has talked and written about many times, but I had no idea that he loves fiction (at 2:32 in this podcast).  Will said he has about 40 Audible books on his phone at any given time.  Will also said  that after a day of being immersed in facts and politics , it’s really refreshing to the soul to have stories told to him.

George Will became an inspiration to me in my early teens… back in the early 1970s.

My rural school district in NE PA had a Jr.-Sr. high school for grades 7-12.  As long as I can remember libraries have been magical places to me.  I remember starting school, 1st grade, because it wasn’t until several years later that our school district added kindergarten, and that small school library became my favorite place in the entire school.

Trying to decide which books to sign out seemed like a  monumental problem and I recall the school librarian kindly explaining to me that books with the big Newberry Medal Winner emblem on them were always good choices.  That helped me a bit in selecting books, but for me the best help has  always been word-of-mouth recommendations from friends, who have similar taste in books as mine.  Here again, the internet expanded on that “word-of-mouth” aspect to selecting books with customer reviews, blogs and websites galore with genre specific book reviews.  These days, I even add books to my book list, that I come across on cross-stitch blogs, because many cross-stitch bloggers also seem to be avid readers.

When we were learning about American government(7th grade, I think), my history teacher told us to try to read national newspapers and news magazines in our school library, as often as possible.  My father was a devoted reader of our local newspaper, The Pocono Record, so I had already adopted my father’s newspaper reading habit.  My high school library is where I first came across George Will’s columns and his columns inspired me to explore, not only new ideas, but to learn new words.  Whenever I read his columns, it became a habit of mine to jot down ideas or words I was unfamiliar with or wasn’t sure of their meaning.  Later, I would look up the words in the dictionary and try to remember them or I’d check the encyclopedia for explanations of ideas Will had written about. Sometimes, I even had to use the card catalog to find books with more information about something Will had written about.

George Will has been not only an inspiration to me; he’s been a valued teacher.

As I got older and developed my own political views, there have been times when I disagreed with George Will’s take on an issue, but I have never doubted his integrity, his honesty in putting forth his heartfelt convictions, but most of all his dedication to striving for excellence in his writing and analyzing politics.

George Will’s latest book is titled, The Conservative Sensibility, and yes, it’s on my reading list.

 

 

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Filed under Books, General Interest, Inspirations

May 20, 2019 · 8:50 am

Trying audiobooks for the first time

Finished the In-the-Pink Zinnias tissue box cover

When our kids were growing up we spent a lot of time utilizing the Army post library wherever we lived.  When we lived stateside, we often frequented the local public library too.

After the kids left home and I was busy with a full-time job, I drifted away from going to the library.  Of course I still bought books and I have hundreds of books on my kindle, many of them free e-books, that I haven’t read yet.   I have piles of books, paperbacks and hardcovers, many that I haven’t read too.  For quite a while making time to read more has been another one of my goals, so I had been thinking about trying audiobooks, as a way to get through more books.

I suppose like many people, I have become wary of devices and subscribing to digital services, that I doubt I’ll use enough to warrant the cost.  I have an Amazon Prime membership that I truly don’t utilize nearly as much as I could, but I’ve looked at Audible many times… and hesitated.  

Somehow, my sister, telling my son about an app called Hoopla, that offers free e-books and audiobooks, available through many public libraries, motivated me to go to my public library recently.

I can’t remember the last time I had been to my local library. So, I got a new library card, since my old library card has been replaced with a newer card system.  My local library has a nice selection of audiobooks, so I signed out my first audiobook.  In a comment, I mentioned my first audiobook to try was a Brad Thor novel, Code of Conduct.  I enjoy thriller/spy novels (along with many other genres… not just historical romance novels).

 

Finished this Christmas Santa for another ornament

As I was stitching away and listening to this Thor novel, very quickly the dead bodies were piling up, as the main character, Scot Harvath, dealt with some unfriendly rebels in the Congo.  When I mentioned the dead bodies and vivid descriptions of  “head shots” and weaponry mumbo-jumbo to one of my sons (the one who is a gun-enthusiast), he asked me, “Did they deserve killing?”  And I said, “Well they were violent rebels trying to kill him.”  My son smiled and said, “Then it’s all good.”  Men are weird.

By the second CD of this Thor novel, I decided to check out the Hoopla thing, I signed up on my home PC, but there’s a Hoopla app for other devices too.  All I needed to sign up was my library card.  It was very simple to sign up and use. 

I quickly found a story more suited to working on needlework, A Fall of Marigolds, by Susan Meissner.  I also downloaded the Hoopla app to my tablet, so I can read e-books or listen to audiobooks on that too.

My library also offers RB digital, another free digital service of e-books and audiobooks . If technologically-challenged me could manage the sign-up, downloading the app and using these free digital media services, anyone can.

I’m on the 4th CD (out of 10 CDs total) in the Thor audiobook, which I’ve relegated to listening to as I scroll through Twitter and somehow the blood and guts action in this story goes much better with reading Twitter politics than it does with needlework, lol.

I’ve also started a second audiobook on Hoopla, Becoming Mrs. Lewis: The Improbable Love Story of Joy Davidman and C.S. Lewis, a novel by Patti Callahan and the title adequately describes the plot.

The world of books has certainly changed dramatically from my childhood of being thrilled with hand-me-down books to present day life awash in so many options to access books through my public library and that’s not even touching the many free e-books available online via just a bit of online searching. The ease of using these free digital services at home with my library card amazed me.  By all means, check out your local public library and you might be amazed too.

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