Managed to sort through my books and put them away. The following pictures show my idea of ‘tidy’! There are hundreds more books in other bookcases and rooms.
The third photo (just above) is the reject pile… am ‘signing them off’ from my book database (when not feeling too tired and unmotivated). In the picture you can just about see a few Dean Koontz novels, including The Taking (large white hardback), Demon Seed (red) and Velocity.
Decided to see which books I’ve read in the past month (information taken from my journal):
The Taking (Dean Koontz) I already referred to it here.
Mr Murder (Dean Koontz) DK raised a sub-theme in this book of the importance of stories and novels.
Icebound (Dean Koontz) Very good. An Alistair Maclean type thriller. It’s the only one of DK’s novels I passed to Mum to read, as I didn’t think she would like the gory or supernatural occurences in the others!
Reader’s Digest Good Health Fact Book Mum brought it home and I read some of the sections and pondered! So it counts a little bit.
The Good Guy (Dean Koontz) Pretty good. You wondered who ‘Doorman’ was.
Demon Seed (Dean Koontz) Scary. Finished it in three hours.
Lightning (Dean Koontz) Better than I hoped. Quite science-fictional.
The Darkest Evening of the Year (Dean Koontz) Comment from my journal: “…too much about dogs and arsonists, but struggling on with it.” One of the villains had a perspective on women who write diaries! He believed there was no meaning in life, and it was dangerous to imagine there was. I had the thought that if you’re a prawn, you might end up in a dish of Stir-Fried Prawns with Pak Choi. I don’t know what that means.
Panicology (Simon Briscoe and Hugh Aldersey-Williams) About fears whipped up by the media. Less lightweight than I expected. Some of it was of interest, but in other places I felt it was as much opinion as anything. People’s priorities differ, and nobody has a crystal ball.
Outsider (John Francome) – my current reading. Interesting, but running some risks where I’m concerned. Will see…
In my journal, shortly after my comment on whether there’s meaning in life for prawns, I mentioned reading an article, by Louis Menand in The New Yorker, on why people read diaries. It said we get a better idea of what people are ‘like’ from seeing them through the eyes of others — so diaries mentioning others are more interesting (and illuminating) than those focused on self.
Again, it depends on priorities! Imagine if something happened and people had to live underground. It might be all you knew, if you were born there… but there could be an archive of books and diaries about living on the surface. In those circumstances, you would absorb all the bits about the warmth of the sun on your skin, and birds warbling away to themselves.
Just a thought…
PS: Checked the difference between diaries and journals — I definitely write the latter, though not as creative as I would like! Sometimes wish I could write less, so that ‘taking your diary with you’ would mean a couple of moleskin pocket books for the whole of your life. That’s because I worry about space, storage, flood and fire. (What would you save in a fire? I expect a multi-volume journal would be left behind). But this post is quite inspiring. Happy journalling! 
