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.