Earlier this year I set myself the challenge of reading 30 books this year and I have read 24 books out of 30 so far. In the grand scheme of things reading challenges don’t mean more. They mean you managed to start or at least finish a certain number of books within a given period of time.
I like the reading challenge because it encourages me to read more than I might otherwise but I am slightly frustrated that it doesn’t show the number of pages we have read in total, across various media.
I used to really like YouTube. It was a place where normal people could share videos of their normal lives, for normal people to enjoy, and to discover organically. Today YouTube is a way of forcing people to watch adverts before watching content that has been seen half a million to a million times by people with a million subscribers who keep saying “i have a million subscribers” and showing off.
Leslie - Jan 3, 2022
These long walks.treks fascinate me as well. I’m not at all religious, but I think the experience of walking for days, stopping in small hotels/B&Bs along the way, connecting with other walkers, would be wonderful. Someday, someday!
The easiest walk to do is the Via Alpina route that starts in Liechtenstein and ends in Montreux. A train ride to the start, and then walk back towards “home”.
Over the last month or so I have been reading Le Camino Seule, ou enfin presque and it is one of my favourite hiking books. It might simply be because it was written in French, by a french woman rather than in English by Brits or Americans but it made me feel more than other books. She often references Sylvain Tesson’s book Forêt de Sibérie, a book I read a few years ago.
What do snails have to do with chairs, I wondered as I listened to a book speaking about our addiction to sitting and chairs. It turns out that snails and other animals are programmed to move, walk, slither or other in an individual way. He started, by discussing sleeping in class, and having chalk thrown at him. Movement is an integral part of our lives and apparently, and as we have seen, children move a lot more than adults.
I usually read several books at a time. This is because I start books but find that my interest is drawn to another topic. As these are usually factual books I can afford to take a break from one book and return to it later.
The Aeronaut: Travels in the Air I started reading this book last night. A meteorologist from, the mid 1850s wanted to study the weather more accurately and in order to do so he wanted to measure the weather from a variety of altitudes.
If you’re looking for a reason to walk from one village to another the practise of using old phone boxes as free libraries are common in Switzerland. This means that if you’re shopping around for books in Switzerland you can either go to the shops and buy them with the car or you can go for a walk and see if any of the nearby villages have the books you’re looking for.
This year I am replacing Social Media with Book Reading because social media is no longer a conversational place. It has become a place for sensationalism and the spreading of fake news and emotional news. As a result of these factors the potential gain of new friendships and interesting conversations has declined. For this reason you might as well find some interesting books and broaden your horizons. [caption id=“attachment_3412” align=“aligncenter” width=“300”] Replacing social media with book reading[/caption] I currently have hundreds of books on Kindle and Audible and my collection on the Kobo reader is bound to grow.
When I’m online I love reading. I read articles everyday. I see what people are doing. I see what’s happening in the world through text. When I see some information that may be of interest to me in video form I’m lazy. I hardly ever bother watching that video. I’d much prefer to have the text version. I’ve often watched mobuzztv and Iused to enjoy watching the videos but recently I find myself watching them less and less, probably in part due to bandwidth constraints.