– Tom

we don’t have an e-reader and aren’t likely to get one for quite a while. through my job at the well-respected university publisher i took an early kindle home for a weekend. it held more novelty than anything else. i wasn’t impressed with the screen resolution, the crispness of the fonts nor the way amazon wanted me to pay for access to blogs i could find online for free.

bonn, my wife, stopped by the nook stand at B&N last weekend. she commented on how heavy it was (surprisingly so) and decided she wasn’t a fan after playing with it for a few minutes.

at this point, if i was to invest the money into an e-reader i’d go with the next generation of iPad. it has color, it is not an uni-tasker, the screen is great and it can handle all sorts of e-book formats. (and there are many)

– Tom

i was a writer. a writer of letters, but a writer nonetheless.

when i kept a daily journal i was writer. a journal writer.

now that i’m writing stories, hoping for publication, i’m a fiction writer.

each type of writing involved different structures and carried with them different expectations. the constants were: putting words down on paper/computer screen; writing honestly; entertaining the reader (even if that reader was only me while i was writing).

– Tom

One of our local libraries had a kids book discussion group where I cemented several life-long friendships.

When we moved to Raleighwood and I became an Instant Father, we had no money whatsoever beyond the bare-bones basics. Our weekly trips to the local library gave us a family outing, a place where our son could claim a new stack of picture books (of his own choosing!) every week.

Those stacks of picture books and my time spent in the children’s section of that Raleighwood library gave me an invaluable education into picture books. Less than a year later, when I was offered a position as an elementary school librarian (based on my BA in “Children and Television” and my history of growing up in libraries and NOT on anything close to an MLS) I had enough of a recent background in children’s books to kid myself that I could say “yes” to the job with confidence.

Libraries are Free.

Libraries offer access to information to the public–all types of information to all segments of the public. In this way, Libraries represent the best of a community, of a society.

– Tom

I love that they are FREE, though admittedly I do support them, or try to, with book donations or other donations when asked.

I love being able to rent audiobooks. My husband has trouble reading the traditional way and audiobooks are expensive. That libraries rent audiobooks (and CDs and DVDs!) is amazing.

But I also worked at a library in high school, many years ago. Back then, when Harry Potter was juuuust becoming a phenomenon, a lot of parents came to the children’s librarians, asking for “similar” book recommendations. Many of the librarians were fantastic, pointing out classics (Susan Cooper, Ursula K. LeGuin, Tolkien, etc.) but one librarian HATED fantasy. HATED. So she turned all of the parents away from any similar fantasy book, insisting it was “better” for their 12-year-old. That… that made me SO MAD. But I was a powerless teenager who was obsessed with and loved fantasy. So if there’s something I dislike about libraries, it’s that sometimes you can get a librarian who is more interested in pushing books they like than listening to the wants/desires of the patrons they are helping. Sigh.

Like a dear friend of ours whose marriage is in trouble: she’ll drop all thoughts about her situation and jump to encourage anyone to stick with it and not give up.

Like my brother who nearly died in an accident this last Easter Sunday. The young man who caused it called us every day after M came home from the hospital. When M finally was able to talk to the kid, the kid thought he was going to get an “I’ll hate you forever!” thing. But my brother just started talking about God’s grace, how he fully forgives the kid, and that the Lord doesn’t give us trials we can’t overcome. M still can’t taste or smell because of the head trauma, and he had to find a new job because of it.

You know, even if I never get published, I’ve learned things from writing. It’s opened many doors for me. Heh, I know YOU because I started writing.

One last quick(ish) note: I remember once when a few success stories were invaluable to me. When Mom was diagnosed with cancer, the only people I’d ever known with cancer were horrifically ill for years, and then they died. I thought that would happen to Mom. I had no idea people could survive it. But then some BtNers wrote me about their moms/aunts/sisters/etc. who had been diagnosed with cancer and were totally fine a year later. Which Mom was! Maybe that gave me false hope at the time, but it stopped me from believing that Mom was about to die.

Okay, that’s all for now.

The Hobbit, however, rules. When I was about 13, I had it almost memorized from cover to cover.

Which story are you writing on? The same one that you wrote me over IM that one night? I s’pose I’d better read some recent posts, because no doubt you’ve written about it.

Air conditioning? *shivers* It’s definitely not warm enough here to take off the ol’ sweater…

That says a lot given our car is stick-shift and while I am technically able to drive it, I hate doing so and am not comfortable doing it at ALL.

I’m that desperate for the air conditioning. I mean, the writing.