I'm awash in them.......
Finally, I'm starting to get to like books again. Ever since I worked in the library in high school and after at university my relation with books had changed. Whereas earlier I would see them as something to to satisfy curiosity, they became work. Whether it would be lending them out or browsing for information for the next paper to write, they became something to be avoided. Think about it, for my current thesis I expect to have well over 500 items in my bibliography. What room does this leave for reading for fun?
But I solved this now. First thing is that most of my professional reading stuff is now in PDFs. Either I get them that way or I scan them. Only occasionally when I have to read something very carefully I print it out. Reason is that I really got to dislike my stacks of paper, try finding something you urgently need out of maybe 1500 things for only a little bit of information. Today that only takes 10 seconds and the room is much nicer as well.
But the really good thing is that it has allowed for a renewed appreciation of normal books. It's so much better when, if tired of hours behind the computer, you can retire from the screen to someplace else and just relax and read a little.
Not that it's easy to get too bored with my present subject, though, today, among other things, I did some analysis of mainland Greece frescoes, one of them being the boar hunt fresco of Tiryns. It shows women in chariots leaving the palace, the men with dogs and spears in pursuit in the marsh, the boar running for its life but eventually captured in a net and a dagger put through her/his head. If this leads you to think these people where total arseholes for doing such a thing to a friendly boar, it might cheer you up to hear that the lot who burned down Tiryns just took it off and tossed it over the wall. Must have been those animal activists again.......No, this fresco stuff is not something you can easily get bored of studying!!
Oh, it's almost time for Sunday evening beers........best to all of ye reading this :)
