Five Photos Five Stories – Day one

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For the love of books

This week I was surprised to be nominated by, writer extraordinaire, Geoff Le Pard in a Five Photos Five Stories challenge. Geoff blogs at TanGental where he shares numerous and beautiful photos of his garden, family, travels and adventures. He writes an eclectic assortment of prose and poetry, memoir and fiction, with content both challenging and humorous. He also posts at the speed of light with at least one post each day. I can understand why the challenge would appeal to Geoff.

I’m not like that. I tend to stick to my routine of two posts each week and write mainly expository text about education with a response to a flash fiction prompt by Charli Mills thrown in. I rarely write explanations of or stories about photos and mostly use photos to support and add interest to the page. Why would Geoff nominate me?

Well it seems Geoff must have known something about me that I didn’t, as I have decided to throw caution to the wind and join in the challenge.

The rules of the Five Photos, Five Stories Challenge are:

1) Post a photo each day for five consecutive days.
2) Attach a story to the photo. It can be fiction, non-fiction, poetry, or a short paragraph. It’s entirely up to the individual.
3) Nominate another blogger to carry on the challenge. Your nominee is free to accept or decline the invitation. This is fun, not a command performance!

For my first photo I have chosen, and you won’t be surprised, books:

books

These are just a few of my favourites. As you can see I have chosen a range including picture books and chapter books for children and both fiction and non-fiction titles for adults. There are others that should have been there but I could not fit my entire collection into one photo!

Books have always been an important part of my life and I think a love of reading is one of life’s greatest pleasures. My love of books and reading is one of the reasons, if not THE reason I feel so passionately about education and the teaching of literacy. Sharing a learner’s excitement at becoming literate is both an honour and a joy. I have been privileged to share that excitement with many children during my teaching career, and of course with my own two children who both learned to read well before starting school.

I have written about the importance of reading many times before, including here, here, and here.

For this post, and for this photo, I will share ten totally random recollections of books and reading from my younger years.

I remember:

  • books as gifts for Christmas and birthdays
  • an expedition to the council library, a six-kilometre walk there and back, each Saturday afternoon for an armful of books to read during the week
  • being deaf to the world when totally absorbed in a book for hours on end (particularly so when there were jobs to be done)
  • the eagerness of wanting to get to the end of a book and the sadness and reaching the last page
  • the excitement of finding the next book in a series or by a favourite author
  • marvelling at words and phrases for the imagery or feelings they evoked
  • enjoying an author’s style and trying to emulate it by writing and writing and writing, and wishing to one day be an author too
  • the smell of new books
  • tracing the embossed lettering on the hardcover when the jacket was removed
  • being fiercely protective of my books and having a great dislike of seeing them torn or marked
  • the joy of ownership

And now I nominate the lovely Michelle James who blogs at Book Chat to take up this challenge if she so wishes. Her love of books is at least as great as my own!

Thank you

 

Thank you for reading. I appreciate your feedback. Please share your thoughts about any aspect of this post.

17 thoughts on “Five Photos Five Stories – Day one”

  2. Irene Waters 19 Writer Memoirist

    Books are important to lots of us although I have to admit that I am trying to limit myself to ebooks as I have run out of room. I find it very difficult to dispose of books which you too must find judging from the age of those pictured. I wish I was like Bec and could bring myself to write in the margins. It would add so much more meaning to the book but I just cannot bring myself to do it. Another reason why I like ebooks I can note away and highlight and not feel in the least guilty.

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    1. Norah Post author

      I had far too many books before there were ebooks and audiobooks. Now I’m fast collecting too many of those also! I haven’t tried highlighting with ebooks. Sacha mentioned the same thing. I’ll have to check it out. It could be a very useful tool. When reading a paper book I can often recall where the text I am looking for was placed on the page and at approximately which part of the book. This is not possible with ebooks (or audiobooks) due to the ability of changing font sizes etc. Being able to highlight when reading will be a great bonus. Thanks for letting me know about it. 🙂

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      1. Irene Waters 19 Writer Memoirist

        Happy highlighting. It doesn’t give me the feeling that I am defacing which it does when I do it in a paper book. I love the idea that Bec said however that it adds value to her because she can come back. I have appreciated that in the odd second hand book that I have come across with notations. The thing that I dislike most about ebooks is not being able to lend them to anyone which also adds a history to them that I find delightful.

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        1. Norah Post author

          I agree with you about the disadvantage of not being able to lend ebooks, or audiobooks. It makes them a more expensive purchase from that point of view. I also agree about buying notated second-hand books (not that I do it very often). The comments can be very interesting.

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  3. Bec

    What a lovely collection of thoughts about books. I can relate very much to the eagerness to finish reading a book, only to be sad it’s over. I am finding I am missing the world of Thomas Covenant, after finishing the series earlier this year. I suspect I’ll be re-reading the series in a few years’ time. Though unlike you (based on point 9), I’ve developed a habit of needing to annotate, highlight, and ‘flag’ books as I’m reading them, particularly non-fiction, or allegorical fictional. My most recently read books include words jotted in the margins, underlining, and little tabs sticking out at points which resonated with me as I was reading. I assume this is a habit coming from reading for research – not wanting to lose the best bits because I expect I’ll want to return to them later on. It makes me feel that the individual books are more valuable to me as they now contain not only the author’s thoughts and ideas, but my own interpretation too, and though this I’m more engaged with the content.

    I like the sound of Geoff’s challenge, and I look forward to the next 4 installments in the series!

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    1. Norah Post author

      Thanks for sharing your thoughts, Bec and especially of your reading habits, including annotations in the margins. I haven’t done this for a long time, except in non-fiction. I may mark passages I wish to remember or return to at some future point e.g. to quote or comment on. However at school when reading Shakespeare was a requirement, I’m not sure I could have managed without multiple annotations and scribblings of meanings and thoughts. Poetry was another that sometimes required clarification of interpretations to be noted in the margins.

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    1. Norah Post author

      I think I have read Sophie’s World three times, and would love to do so again! One of the times I read it to Bec when she was about twelve. It is such a clever book. I really enjoy Gaarder’s writing. I have read most, if not all, though I haven’t looked for a new one recently.
      Here is a link to Tony Ryan’s book “The Ripple Effect” http://www.tonyryan.com.au/home/powerful-futures/making-a-difference/the_ripple_effect/
      I can highly recommend it. Tony is an inspirational local (to me) educator. I have mentioned him in previous posts:
      http://wp.me/p3O5Jj-hn and http://wp.me/p3O5Jj-hF and http://wp.me/p3O5Jj-ps
      I attending many of his seminars back in the 1990s.
      In The Ripple Effect he shares many stories about, and suggestions for including, compassion in everyday actions. I’m sure you would love it. 🙂

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  7. Annecdotist

    Sharing your pleasure in books and the eclectic mix in the photograph. Funny how the tactile nature of books can also be so important to us – I’m with you on the feel of those embossed covers.

    Liked by 2 people

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