I did so enjoy all your thoughts on the Booker prize, both for and against. It does inspire very strong opinions to both sides, and so it’s nice to see some moderate ones expressed here.
This article has been doing the rounds of blogs – I saw it first on Kirsty’s Other Stories. Well, to be completely honest I saw it on her Facebook wall, but that sounds worse. This woman is my new heroine. (Though it doesn’t mention that she’s actually read any of ’em…)
In unrelated news, the most perspicacious amongst you will notice that I changed my world map provider last week. This one keeps the data for more than a few days – indefinitely, I think – and I can see that in the last week people visited Stuck-in-a-Book from 51 different countries. That’s quite humbling, since I’d probably be hard pushed to name 51 countries off the top of my head. I’m sure that quite a few came by accident, but nevertheless it’s quite a bizarre statistic to contemplate from my little room in Oxford. So, welcome denizens of Guam, Mauritius, Romania. Hello to Cyprus, Ukraine and Vietnam. And special greetings to those two readers who came all the way from that little known country ‘Europe’.
I love that story, and as someone who's been religiously borrowing between 6 and 8 books from the library each week since the year . I'm hoping that I'm on the way to achieving something similar – eventually. Mind you, I have switched library authorities, so my Devon stats are probably lost by now…
I have borrowed about 2500 books from public libraries in my life so far (excluding work-related books that is). A long way to go!
I was sent this by mail and thought it a lovely story. If she's borrowing books since 1946, then she's borrowed, on average, 415 books per year. That is an impressive statistic. I don't think I can match it even if I read constantly for the next 60 years.
Cornflower had the link to this story as well. It's nice to read a 'feel good' story in the news once in awhile. Also, how fantastic to know how far and wide your readers are!