More book clearing

[vivdunstan]

Finding another stash of books that can mostly be donated to Oxfam's. Including several Egaeus Press weird short story collections, gorgeous hardback books, but I no longer need, and am happy passing on. As well as a Little Endless "Delirium's Party" hardback. Keeping some of the other books though.

Time and distance is making it easier to pass on some of these books. And we still have way too many books in house, especially a huge number I can no longer read with my progressive neurological illness. It's very freeing passing them on. Even if book lover me naturally rails against the concept!

P.S. I reread the Little Endless book quickly tonight before passing it on. Quite charming, and written and drawn by someone other than Neil Gaiman. Gorgeous mini Endless comic book art too.

P.P.S. Martin is now going to have an incredible number of books to take to Oxfam later this week!

Comments

[watervole]

I find ebooks so much easier to read in bed - and also to take on holiday!

I've cleared a lot of physical books as a result. Donated those in good condition, binned the old, yellowed paperbacks.

[vivdunstan]

I've been reading ebooks since the early 2000s, years before the Kindle came out. I started reading them on my iPod touch, finding somewhere I could buy them from to read in an adjustable flowing text format. Though the small (iPhone sized) screen was not ideal. Then when the Kindle came out I used that eagerly, and have had several models over the years. It works better for me size wise than my tablet. Or a large print book. And I find it very restful to read in bed. I read almost everything on my Kindle now. Unfortunately the academic books I need to at least look at some of are not in ebook form generally. Which was a problem when I was a postgraduate taught MPhil student 2001-3 and history PhD student 2003-10. But somehow I bodged through ;)

I'm an academic book historian among other things, and there's still a frustrating snobbery among book historians about ebooks.And also audiobooks. The physical print book, preferably several hundred years old and stuck in a library, is viewed as sacrosanct. And many of the academics are still very snooty about anything else thinking it's "reading". This annoys me intensely.

[watervole]

For the last few days, I've been down with a horrid, 'exhaustion/swollen through/dizziness/Hausa' bug.

Audio books are my lifeline this week!

I still prefer paper for some types of academic book. A book on historic costume making with loads of photos, patterns and diagrams, will not work in ebook format, and is also easier for me to scribble notes on.

But would be impossible to read lying down!

[vivdunstan]

I'm so sleepy that audiobooks are no longer a good option. I also need to reread often because I tone out, which is a hassle in audio. I was a very early audiobook user back in the late 1990s, getting a gigantic tape machine on loan from a charity (Listening Books/Library or so, though not sure if it's the same as the modern charity of that name), and then chunky tapes (not cassettes!) of audiobooks posted to me and back from me. Even then I was struggling with audiobooks, as my hearing was already quite badly affected early on in my neurological disease, and I kept needing to replay. Luckily ebooks came along later and work well for me.

[watervole]

I sometimes fall asleep listening to audiobooks. If it's at night, I stick to books I know well, like 'The Martian', so it won't matter if I miss a chunk.

How badly do the hearing problems affect your music playing?

[vivdunstan]

The hearing problems from the neurological illness are more cognitive than ear specifically, and mean I can often have to concentrate more to listen to something and not tune out. Especially in eg a crowded room. To be fair this was also a lot worse early on in my disease, in the mid/late 1990s, before I was properly diagnosed in 1997 and long-term treatment started, which helped my hearing and vision recover quite a lot. As for music, well I'm just playing for me, and my main instrument is a really loud one ;) No problems hearing that. More of a problem is when I'm just too brain tired to manage to play any music, or my hand control has deteriorated too much for a while (I'm weaker down my right side too, since my huge relapse - basically a stroke - in 2004). It's why it can be months between practices.

The loud instrument comment reminds me of primary school, when we had an inter-house competition (each pupil was in an assigned "house" - this was not a boarding school), and for the music part of the competition I turned up with my accordion and a fellow pupil appeared with his bagpipes. Very loud afternoon in the school that day!