Worth the Time to Read

I'm a book person. There are currently over 2 dozen books (most non-fiction) stacked on, in and next to my nightstand - books I've been working through this past year or 2, but not done with enough to have made it to one of the bookshelves in another room - and another stack of a dozen new ones on the dresser waiting to move to the "reading" stack.

Perhaps on a more fundamental level, I'm a word person. Without limits, I would devour magazines and newspapers to the point of exclusion of other activities so I have to limit my contact with them. I can be greatly affected by movies and dramatic productions and I am thrilled that e-mail and blogging has brought written language back into a place of prominence and power in people's lives. I love it when bloggers - family, friends, and strangers - invite me into their lives with their digital words and pictures. But when it comes to sorting through history, knowledge, and experiences to choose blocks to use in building life perspective there is something about a book that has a greater weight in my reasoning mind.

I give minimal time to daily news broadcasts of any variety, but I regularly read a couple news magazines to keep me out of the Neanderthal box on world events. But I really appreciate the research, fact-checking, editing and deepening of perspective that should come with the time, people and money that has traditionally gone into producing a book for market.

All that said, I've decided that sharing books of my life should be a part of my digital journal. Sometimes they will be recent reads, at other times books I view as having major impact in my thinking and living. Sometimes just a quote and a link, other times more. That is, as soon as I can find an easy way to attach a picture of the book to the Amazon.com link for said book (thereby making it a "button")....