Hello again

 Hi. So, I nearly didn't come back here. I had other ideas. Ideas of using a blog for such gut-spilling, closet-opening reality that this one wouldn't do. Oh no, I wanted one where I could be completely anonymous. But do you know how hard it is to find a FREE blog like this, and not have it connected to your g account? Or make a NEW one? Er, nope. No way. Too much effort.

So I figured I'd come back here and babble away and just hopefully not say anything that would get Me ostracised from society or fired. Notice I say 'ostracised' and not 'cancelled'.  As much as this blog will be somewhere to exercise my freedom of speech, if anything I say comes across as homophobic, racist, transphobic, etc I FULLY expect to be called out on it. That's how we learn. I'm Bi and female but also cis and white and not exactly living in poverty, so I don't see from all those sides and would rather hear that something I'm saying is insensitive than continue saying it in ignorance.

Anyway, now that I've got the introduction out of the way, I'm talking about books today. More so the books I choose than the books I'm reading right now. 

I started to realise a couple of years ago that I was buying more books than I read. Way more in fact. And at least with novels, with a story, I'd read them all the way through. Non-fiction or 'coffee table' books I'd buy to look at interesting pictures and not much more. So I thought, 'no more!'.

I started doing LISTS. I made a note of every single book I owned and hadn't read properly. and started keeping track of which books I had read that year. I generally had one novel and one non-fiction on the go at the same time. It's been working pretty well.

But in rediscovering my love of reading, I also noticed how much there was out there that I hadn't read, and hadn't even thought of reading! Sure, I've read Les Miserables and Bronte, but I haven't read Dickens or Tolstoy or Melville! (Gilmore Girls fans, I am NOT choosing Moby Dick as my first Melville). My amazon wishlist grew amazingly. 

At the same time, I asked around in online book groups for suggestions to add to my ever expanding to-do list. I usually just pick up whatever takes my fancy from the selection at charity shops, but I was now making an effort to keep an eye out for non-fiction that appealed to me; ancient history, social subjects, natural history. But then I realised, as interesting as these were, if I was really going to expand my horizons I would need to ask around a bit more. Because when I was reading history, I really wanted to hear the things we DIDN'T get taught in school. And do you know what we did get taught in school? History as written by a load of old, white men. Sure it was interesting to read about ancient Egyptians and Greeks, but really what I was reading was the standard western take on such things. I wanted to hear from other perspectives. I've added a bunch of history books to my list, from not such a white/western perspective but I'm still on the look out for more (I've got about 3 years of books to be read, so if you suggest something and I buy it soon, I might even read it before the 20's are out).

On the other side of this huge idea of what I SHOULD read, all the sorts of perspectives and subjects I should let into my head, there is the fact that most of my book shopping happens spontaeneously in charity shops. Ok, recently more of my charity shop buys have been things on my list (wuthering heights, mill on the floss, far from the maddening crowd), but then that's mostly because my wish list has grown.

But what DO I end up buying and reading?

Well right now I'm reading my way through the fantastically packaged boxed set of Danielle Corsetto's comic 'Girls With Slingshots' (seriously, probably one of the fanciest hardbacks I own now).

The other book is 'The Final Confession of Mabel Stark' by Robert Hough,

This I believe I saw in a charity shop, looked at briefly and took home. I had never heard of it or her before, but she has now come into my life and I will talk about her next time.