For the love of books

I've always loved reading and had a love of books.  Right from when I was very little, and my Mum read stories to me before bed, I've just loved to loose myself in a good book.  It's something I've also really enjoyed sharing with my children, and while they do all love stories, my oldest and youngest are both already proper book worms too.

Back in the days that I used to keep a diary every day, which I did from around 14 to my early 20's when I just reached the point where I was only making an entry every few days or so, I used to also record the books that I'd read in the back.  I didn't count books that I read for school, for my A levels or University course, but even so, back then I was reading more than a book a week. Of course these days, I don't have chance to read that much, with small children, I just don't get as much time to read.  But I do still read as often as I can; when I'm feeding Anja, just before I go to sleep, whenever I've got five minutes..... (like I say, not very often any more).

A couple of years ago at Christmas, I got one of the best Christmas presents ever from Mum and Dad, a kindle.  I have to admit, when I first heard about these 'ebook reader things' I didn't really think that I would ever want or have one.  Then I heard how good they were, and wanted to give one a go.  When I got it, I quickly got into it, the great thing about it is that it's lightweight and yet it can hold heaps of books on there.  The slightly less good side of it, is that I've been caught out a few times when the battery's run out midway though me reading something really good.  Of course you can't read in the bath either, but I never get chance for that these days anyway.

My kindle is linked straight to my amazon account, which is great because I can just down load a book the second I want to read it.  The bad side is that I can down load a book the second I want to read it, which isn't always great for my bank balance.  It's also meant that for the last two and a bit years, I've had far too many books queued on there, ready to read.  I've finally got it down to three, but I'm not sure that I can get to the end of those before I download more.....  You do get some great books free for it, classics are all pretty much free, and there are others that are the start of a series, or by a new author that are free or really reasonable.  I've found some really good authors, that I doubt I'd ever have found if it weren't for having the kindle.  I thought that I might share some reviews of great books and authors I've found recently in future blogs......