The Bookshelf

I have always loved to read. Not in school, obviously. Back then I treated books like vegetables, something adults forced on me while I was busy trying to figure out how to make a paper aeroplane fly further than the teacher's patience. But once nobody was making me do it anymore, I actually started to enjoy it.

The past few years I simply did not make the time. The last few months I picked it up again, and it has given me something I had forgotten I needed: a quiet place to think, a slower pace to process, and the kind of focus that only comes from turning real pages.

My shelf holds many more books than what you will find here. Some were given to me. Some I bought. Some were donated. There are old university textbooks still stacked somewhere, a few titles on the Kindle and Books app, and the occasional audiobook on Audible (which, by the way, I hate, because I get too easily distracted. I need the book or the device in my hand. I need to read, not listen).

These are the ones on my new shelf. I will add to it as the blog progresses, and hopefully my love for reading and the old muscle memory will keep me turning pages.

I should also say that I do not really enjoy non-fiction. There were a few exceptions, but the ones that stuck with me were the ones that felt like lived experience rather than instruction. The Spud series by John van de Ruit, for example. I enjoyed it so much because it reminded me of my own boarding school days. That kind of recognition, the feeling that someone else was there too, is what makes a book worth keeping.