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On a new look with a side of books

It was a morning in deepest British winter. I awoke with a start as if from a nightmare. My eyes tried to blink open but remained clouded in darkness. Was I blind? My heart raced as I sat up with a start and realised I still had my eye patches on. I removed them with a thankful sigh and squinted at the light bursting through my not-quite drawn curtains. As I attempted to steady my breath, my mind tried to recall what had gripped me with such fear as to rouse me so fully. 

It came to me all at once.

A world without book. That had been my dream. My nightmare. Even as I type this, shivers run up and down my body at the very thought. And it wasn’t the first time I had been gripped by such a terrible notion. Often, when my eyes have been deep within the pages of my latest read, I catch myself wondering just what I would be doing with my time, if that which I held in my hand ceased to exist. It doesn’t bear thinking about.
Oh how I do miss my lovely reading room...
Books have shaped so much of my world, my person and my life that I thought it was time to incorporate them into my blog. And so, I introduce to you my ‘currently reading’ page. Here, I’ll keep you updated on, well, what I’m currently reading (it’s in the title). If you feel particularly moved by whichever book I’m reading at any given time, please add a comment. If you’ve just read something amazing and need to share the experience with someone, please add a comment. If you have concerns about the reading path I’m going down, please add a comment. And if you’d like to recommend a book and see it featured on this page, please add.a.comment.

My new reading page is, of course, not the only change to my blog this week. I would love to say I also had a dream which gave me a vision of what my blog should look like, but alas, it was actually the fruits of a particularly distracted writing session I held over the weekend. With too much caffeine and sugar in my system, I clicked over to my website and decided it needed a refresh. Too many hours later, I had dismantled the blog I had set up in Melbourne all those months ago, and instead, had… a mess. With too many options for layouts and colours and fonts and graphics to choose from, I feared I would never complete the task I had set for myself. I needed another cookie to push through and eventually, I managed to create what you see now. It was then, while patting myself on the back for deciding to use a light pink and grey combination that I stopped to marvel at just how many blog posts were listed in my archive. A list that can only be matched by the number of books I’ve managed to read over the same timeframe.

Books and writing. Is anything more gratifying? More soul enhancing? More life affirming? When the world seems to be growing dark all around, opening the cover of a new book filled with promise, ideas, adventures and insight into the human condition, can help us understand who we are, how we got here and maybe, just maybe, how we can make it back to the light.



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