Books, books, books

We have just returned from a rather whirlwind trip to the library. For December, I return all of our library books so as to make room for all of our Christmas books which come out for the month. Well, those all went away last week when I put Christmas away and our kitchen bookshelf was looking rather bereft. The children were also feeling the need for new reading material and were resorting to bringing me books that I wasn't terribly excited to read. As we were getting in the car at the stable after riding lessons, I realized that I had them strapped in, there was nothing on the calendar for the rest of the afternoon, and it would be the perfect time for a swing by the library. We managed to do it in about 40 minutes, which for us is pretty darn speedy. Right now I have many children sitting in piles of books as they look at them. It always takes a while for the books to make it onto the shelves. (TM and P. have taken themselves and their books upstairs to their rooms.)

See the piles? 



I've also been meaning to write for a while about how my love for my Kindle sort of faded away over the past few years. I loved it at first. I loved being able to carry so many books with me all the time. (You all know I have a fear of running out of things to read.) Yet, I was finding that I had no memory of what I had read. I couldn't tell you the name of the book or the author and even plots are now hopelessly confused into one giant mess of everything I've read on it. I couldn't account for it, but decided it had something to do with never seeing the covers when I was reading on the Kindle. It felt a little disorienting and sort of without even being aware of it, I moved back to reading actual books. I didn't even miss it. (I still think it is absolutely brilliant for plane travel when you can't lug dozens of books along with you.)

Well, it turns out that it wasn't entirely my imagination that I was having trouble remembering what I read. An article came across my facebook news feed this morning that I found interesting. In Science Has Great New for People Who Read Actual Books, I had confirmed what I had intuitively felt all along. I needed the actual pages to help me remember. There were also some other things I learned, but on some level already knew. Reading for 30 to 45 minutes a day is calming and helps your stress levels. It also helps you sleep well. Before Christmas, I usually read for a couple of hours. Then Christmas hit and everything combined made my brain completely unable to concentrate on anything. My stress has been higher than normal and I haven't been sleeping well. Who knew that going back to my little compulsive reading habit would help both those things? Now you understand why we HAD to go to the library this afternoon. I was out of books. I now have a good supply laid in and it's all I can do to finish this post before I get my cup of tea and look at all of them. (I suppose I should add 'fix dinner' into that list; it would make my family happy.)

I'm already feeling more relaxed just knowing I have books to look at and read.
___________
I may not have been writing much here, but the writing continues. I've had several articles published recently. Feel free to click and share them... a lot. It helps my little, teeny, tiny paycheck.

A Winter's Worth of Books

Dear Struggling Mother, Part 2 of 2

Adopting and 11th Child

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