Monday, January 31, 2011
Finding Orphaned Books
Starting today I will let readers know when and where some of the books will be left to be found. A book by Laura Penny, Your Call is Important to Us will be dropped off today or tomorrow at the Purple Perk cafe on 4th. street sw in Calgary. Look for it among the stack of books at the north wall above the newspapers located on the shelf between the benches. Another book, How To Live, by Henry Alford will be dropped off at the Bullet Cappuccino Bar, also in Calgary on Northmount Drive and 10th street nw. Look just to the right of the front door as you enter. Check to make sure there is a sticker with the owl reading a book. Some books will have the sticker inside the cover. So before adopting our wayward publication check for the sticker.
Tuesday, January 18, 2011
New Features to the blog
You will notice that I have added two new features to the blog. The first is Hobo Tomes Resources which is a number of links you can go to for information about various topics followed and discussed in this blog. If you have any links you would like put into the resource centre please e-mail them to me at HoboTomes@shaw.ca. For that matter if you have comments, questions or ideas you can e-mail them to me at the same address or use the comment box by clicking the bar underneath the blog and adding your ideas. Secondly, I have begun to list the books that are out there travelling the world. I hope to get some stories and information soon about some of my vagabond books.
Recently I was on a two and a half hour flight to warm weather and golf when I noticed a fair number of my fellow travellers were using e-readers, Kindles, I-Pads etc.. I was given an I-Pad for christmas but I have yet to use it for reading a book. I still prefer the old school method of actually holding the book in my hands and turning the pages rather than moving my finger across the screen to turn the page. Two things stood out for me. First was the number of what I would call older people or people of age who were using these electronic devices. People of say approximately 50 plus in years were engaged with these things. I counted 10 grey haired individuals in my general vicinity who were busily running their fingers over the screen, tapping buttons, generally keeping the pain of arthritis away by moving their fingers about every few seconds. As I watched my fellow passengers enrapt with their 6 to 9 inch screens it unnerved me to see how fleeting are relationships with books was becoming. We simply download read and delete. No bookshelf to store the bulky reminders of stories once read. Nothing to jog our fading memories of events that occurred while spending a holiday abroad. Every time I run across one of my tattered copies of the three Lord of the Rings books I'm reminded of a trip I took to New Zealand during 1975-76. Frodo Baggins and his friends accompanied me all over the north and south islands of New Zealand providing comfort and solace as I sat by the side of the road waiting for my next ride to somewhere. Again this morning I was reminded of this tenuous relationship that is emerging with books when I came upon a quote that really has no relevance to this but I changed by deleting a couple of words and adding others to give some meaning to this topic. So with apologies to Washington Irving and all his descendants here it is :
"How idle a boast,after all, is the immortality of a book! Time is ever silently turning over his pages; we are too much engrossed by the story of the present to think of the character and anecdotes that gave interest to the past, and each book is a volume thrown aside to be speedily forgotten."
The year was 1825. If you have any thoughts on this please e-mail or comment.
Recently I was on a two and a half hour flight to warm weather and golf when I noticed a fair number of my fellow travellers were using e-readers, Kindles, I-Pads etc.. I was given an I-Pad for christmas but I have yet to use it for reading a book. I still prefer the old school method of actually holding the book in my hands and turning the pages rather than moving my finger across the screen to turn the page. Two things stood out for me. First was the number of what I would call older people or people of age who were using these electronic devices. People of say approximately 50 plus in years were engaged with these things. I counted 10 grey haired individuals in my general vicinity who were busily running their fingers over the screen, tapping buttons, generally keeping the pain of arthritis away by moving their fingers about every few seconds. As I watched my fellow passengers enrapt with their 6 to 9 inch screens it unnerved me to see how fleeting are relationships with books was becoming. We simply download read and delete. No bookshelf to store the bulky reminders of stories once read. Nothing to jog our fading memories of events that occurred while spending a holiday abroad. Every time I run across one of my tattered copies of the three Lord of the Rings books I'm reminded of a trip I took to New Zealand during 1975-76. Frodo Baggins and his friends accompanied me all over the north and south islands of New Zealand providing comfort and solace as I sat by the side of the road waiting for my next ride to somewhere. Again this morning I was reminded of this tenuous relationship that is emerging with books when I came upon a quote that really has no relevance to this but I changed by deleting a couple of words and adding others to give some meaning to this topic. So with apologies to Washington Irving and all his descendants here it is :
"How idle a boast,after all, is the immortality of a book! Time is ever silently turning over his pages; we are too much engrossed by the story of the present to think of the character and anecdotes that gave interest to the past, and each book is a volume thrown aside to be speedily forgotten."
The year was 1825. If you have any thoughts on this please e-mail or comment.
Friday, January 14, 2011
The Second Edition of Hobo Tomes Jan. 12, 2011
After a brief holiday and some research into providing more info for the reader I'm happy to report that there are now 10 books out there in the world at large fending for themselves. A small contribution compared to a web site I was told about today. It's called bookcrossing.com. Check it out if your interested. They claim to have over 850,000 people registered for the web site world wide. To be honest it's everything I don't want this blog to become. A commercial enterprise to be sure but let's not forget the goal of these sites is to encourage people to read so if it meets that goal then so be it. But that's not the way this blog is going to go if I can help it.
As I mentioned there are now 10 books out floating around various places in the US and Canada. I will reveal the names of the books and where they are located once the specific information becomes available to me. For now I can say that 4 books are in the Palm Springs area of California. I hope who ever finds these will follow the instructions on the sticker.
I will be completing my profile within the next couple of days. I also have started a spreadsheet to keep track of the books out there.
I ran across an interesting article today in the Globe and Mail which I would like to share with you. It led me to a web site dedicated to the National Reading Campaign. Here are the sites: http://www.theglobeandmail.com/news/arts/books/national-book-count-aims-to-show-that-books-count/article1866480/,http://nationalreadingcampaign.ca/ ,http://nationalreadingcampaign.ca/web-resources/
Some great information and provocative ideas from these articles and resources. Have a look and when I get the discussion section of the blog up and running we can then generate some dialogue on the issues. I hope this is a good start to building a community of concerned people who want to be engaged in preserving the art of reading.
As I mentioned there are now 10 books out floating around various places in the US and Canada. I will reveal the names of the books and where they are located once the specific information becomes available to me. For now I can say that 4 books are in the Palm Springs area of California. I hope who ever finds these will follow the instructions on the sticker.
I will be completing my profile within the next couple of days. I also have started a spreadsheet to keep track of the books out there.
I ran across an interesting article today in the Globe and Mail which I would like to share with you. It led me to a web site dedicated to the National Reading Campaign. Here are the sites: http://www.theglobeandmail.com/news/arts/books/national-book-count-aims-to-show-that-books-count/article1866480/,http://nationalreadingcampaign.ca/ ,http://nationalreadingcampaign.ca/web-resources/
Some great information and provocative ideas from these articles and resources. Have a look and when I get the discussion section of the blog up and running we can then generate some dialogue on the issues. I hope this is a good start to building a community of concerned people who want to be engaged in preserving the art of reading.
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