Thursday Thirteen #11

Thirteen Things I can do to compensate if Jackson County Library Services shuts its doors: Read the books I own, neglected in favor of library book due dates:. 1. Of the backpack full of books that I managed to bring with me when we fled the Silicon Valley streets in August 2001, I have yet to finish at least 50% of those which are not primarily reference books. 2. There are a couple dozen books that I picked up cheap over the last six years or were given to me by those who took pity.. A few of them are even novels. 3. There is the 1999 World Book Encyclopedia set which I bought from the library at $1 per volume. Sure some info would be dated but not a very high percentage. I used to love to read encyclopedias and the World Book was my favorite from an early age. Which is why I bought this set in 2005 by dipping into the funds I was saving for my laptop. The drawback is that I always ever used encyclopedias as curiosity wetters, a jumping off place--anything that grabbed more than momentary attention sent me running to the library card catalog. 4. The creme de la creme is the Britannica Great Books set, also bought at $1 per volume from a library book sale. In this case it wasn't pre-owned by the library but donated by a patron who had never taken the shrink-wrap off more than ten of the volumes. We used to own the set and I got hooked on the Syntopicon which indexes the Great Ideas of several millennia of literature and allows you to follow the centuries-long dialog/debate on a great many topics. I bought this a week or two after the World Book set out of the same funds. The major justification was the use I had been making of them since 86 to inform a major fiction project (multi-volume) whose theme is the fruits of the Spirit. Read the books loaned to me: 5. I borrowed a couple dozen books from my Dad's library after his passing last year. They are mostly from the fundamentalist/dispensational viewpoint. I wanted them for reference for the same Fruits of the Spirit fiction project which is concerned with contrasting dogma and piety with the actual behaviors of individuals rooted firmly in the fruits of the Spirit. I haven't looked at these books much since I brought them home. It has been too painful on too many levels. I'm still not sure I'm ready. 6. My niece loaned me the first 12 volumes of Lemony Snicket's A Series of Unfortunate Events and Harry Potter and The Half-blood Prince last July and I've only read the first three Lemony Snicket's. Make better use of the Internet: 7. Read the free e-books I have downloaded and go after more. A lot of classical fiction is available this way. 8. Explore the web for more free resources. College and University sites are one good jumping-off point. I've been collecting them in my favs for years but not making much use of them. It is the personal pages of professors that are often a goldmine. 9. Use the free resources I've found online to study HTML and Webmistressing--design, managing and promotion--and turn Joystory, Joywrite and Joyread into the awesome sites they were in my first dreaming of them. All three currently fall seriously short of my aspirations. Write more: 10. Write more stories. (the fiction in my collection--not counting that in the Great Books set--won't last more than three months so I would have to write my own stories to get my fiction fixes) 11. Post more regularly to Joystory, Joywrite and Joyread. 12. Return to the serious journaling and writing exercises that were often the source of insight and fodder for my more formal writing--fiction, personal essays and poetry. Misc.: 13. Get more balance by increasing activities unrelated to reading and writing: fine needlework; meditation--a creativity stimulant among other things; daydreaming--the wellspring of my stories which must be primed months if not years before a word is committed to paper or screen; mentally stimulating games; listening to music--another creativity stimulant; walking--something will have to replace my weekly trek to the library if I'm not to become bed-bug fodder! Links to other Thursday Thirteens! 1. Tink 2. Rashenbo 3. JohnH985 4. Gattina 5. dawn 6. Jamie 7. amy (leave your link in comments, I'll add you here!)

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