BOOK BAGGERS

As we are now in a new year it is time to take stock, i.e. what are some trends I have noticed on this blog?  One is that while I get a relatively small number of hits each day - family and friends, I assume - occasionally there is a massive surge!

One example of this is a book review I did of The Pillow Book by Sei Shōnagon here.   It received a 100 times more hits than any other post!  Why is that?  Dunno... except that probably people thought is was something related to Playboy magazine.  (It's not.)

What I notice today is that some book bloggers are talking about their New Year's Resolution to read a book for every year from 1900 to 1999.  See the blog references at the end.

I live with people who like to climb all the mountains in Scotland over 3000 feet (as listed originally by Sir Hugh Munro (1856–1919) and thus labelled "Munros").  These folk, of whom Iain is one, are called "Munro Baggers".   It's a great idea and folk have many happy years getting to know the country and the mountains as they tick them off the list.

Therefore I propose that the folk who wish to set themselves a challenge to, say, read x number of books (not necessarily in a given length of time) as above, be called "Book Baggers".

Before I leave this subject, that is our book "The Munros" (above) by our good friend Donald Bennet (died one year ago) on our book shelf. 

I am not a Munro Bagger; therefore to be a Book Bagger is just not my thing. However, here are some glimpses of what's on our shelves at the moment.

Given that we downsized 4 years ago we have somehow gathered an accumulation of books over the intervening period of time.  

I note that the book bloggers talk about sources for their books, e.g. e-books and something called p-books.  (I had to look that up; it means printed books.)

Anyhow, as Miss Jean Brodie said, "If you like that sort of thing, that is the sort of thing you like."  In order to have a source of the places to get ideas for books, say, in the example above for each year 1900 - 1999,  I have made a list below.  

The blog person who came up with the idea is:
[1] http://www.stuck-in-a-book.blogspot.co.uk/2014/01/it-all-starts-again.html

and is taken up by:
[2] http://booklad.blogspot.co.uk/2014/01/a-century-of-books-challenge.html

Sources for e-books:
[1]  http://www.gutenberg.org/wiki/Main_Page
[2] https://openlibrary.org