The Blog Continues...

Hi, I've been away from this for a while, but now I'm back, adding thoughts and opinions to my blog. First of all, I'm going to try for now to relate this to my work, thus justifying my typing on the job, so here goes...

I spent the weekend in Paradise...well, really, Batesville, Virginia, at my friend's house, but it may as well be Paradise. Lisa lives on top of a mountain, with lots of trees, wildlife, and fresh air. We talked a lot about technology, because I had just finished my 23 Things, and she is the technology resource person in her elementary school where she teaches. I did show her my blog, and we talked about Del.icio.us and Rollyo, Technorati, YouTube, and so much more. She knew of many of those, but some were new to her. I wish I had recalled ZohoWriter and GoogleDocs, because she really could have used them in her fifth grade class. Another time...
She was particularly intrigued with RSS feeds, again, a useful resource for a teacher.

I hope to have some images on my Flickr account so that I can share them with you, so that you also can see what I mean about how lovely it is there. I have to get my images uploaded first. Then I'll share.

Then, last night, my sister stopped by for a visit. We sat on the deck, sipping tea in the cool evening air, discussing - what else? - books. She likes Miss Read and Dorothy Simpson, neither of which I have read, but HCPL has many Simpson mysteries. Maybe I will add them to my Library Thing account (www.librarything.com) . I recommended Alexander McCall Smith's books to her, because she does seem to go for the gentle reads - well, her mystery writers may have corpses in them, but like me, I think she'd prefer not to have the graphic descriptions of blood and guts.

That's sort of an issue with my book club (book discussion group). Not all of us share the same tastes, which makes the group interesting, although I must admit we do end up with similar likes and dislikes. Anyway, some books may be offensive to some readers, with language and descriptions or characters that offend one's sensibilities. It's hard to know what lies on that next page. I don't think I've ever stopped reading a book because of language or whatever, but a few I've wished I hadn't read, especially if the descriptions are gross. Is that really necessary? I don't know.

So the book group is now reading Shadow of the Wind by Carlos Ruiz Zafon. I thought the language was really interesting, kind of Old World, and since it takes place in another era, mid-Twentieth Century, I remarked to a group member that I thought it was really skillful how the author made the book sound like a translation - kind of formal, with those flourishes of language that translations sometimes have. She looked at me oddly and pointed out that it was, in fact, a translation. Duh...well, the author lives in Los Angeles. How would I know? (I could have looked more closely at the title page!) Anyway, I had to return the book unfinished because I'm off to the U.K next week, and the book was due and I was only half way through. So another book not finished. No matter, this group won't throw me out if I don't finish a book for discussion. It's more about friendship anyway, just getting together. Books do that for people, whether it's two sisters on a back porch discussing mysteries or a group of pals sitting around, eating snacks, and sharing thoughts on a common book read.