Same-day delivery is such a recent expectation. To call it a “thing of the past” may be accurate as in “no longer available” but it’s also misleading with its unintentional implication of a longer history. If it was just a brief blip, we’ll manage just fine. Livable cities and a livable planet have to be our priority.

Another rec for libraries - brilliant places for exploring. And also one for LIBRARIANS. When you go in to sign up for a library card, ask the librarians for suggestions. You will probably make someone’s day to let them help you get into reading. Librarians are really cool like that :)

Also look around for a wee display of curated selections. Those will change every month or so and feature recommended books.

E-books are another possibility and there are many sources of free ones - another low cost way of exploring and experimenting. I read free fluff from the book store app built into my tablet when I’m not up to anything serious, go to Project Gutenberg and Standard E-books for out-of-copyright classics when I am, and sometimes find something on the e-book system I have access to with my library card sign-in. (I rarely buy e-books as I prefer to put my book budget to subscriptions from small presses because they need our support and an unexpected book arriving in the post is a delight.)

Some of the high school curriculum will always be dry, but some of it is just forced on us when we’re still too young to really understand what’s going on and it’s much more interesting when we have enough experience and maturity to get it. So if you come across something you have bad memories of but it sounds interesting, try it again.

For a specific rec, I’m going to suggest Death and the Penguin by Ukrainian writer Andrey Kurkov. 1996, but shouldn’t be hard to find in translation given the recent western interest in Ukraine. This was my review: “Quietly absurdist, yet feels well grounded in the realities of time and place. Pacing, flow and details are excellent; exceptionally well written and translated. Don’t find out more about it, wondering what is going on is part of its appeal, just read it :)”

I like the idea of this very much and I hope someone has made/does make it.

What’s the book? Who knows, you might find the core of your group just by sparking interest in the book. Good luck :)

“propitiatory indexing” is a delightful autocorrect :)

I tend to set things down if it’s not working for me at the moment, because sometimes later I’ll come back to it and it will. But in this case, where it’s part not the whole you’re struggling with, maybe you just need to know what the point of the bits you find uninteresting is? The writer will have included all of it for a reason.

this is their website: https://bluemoosebooks.com/books

My central and autonomic nervous systems. Mine are shite and have been since I was wee. Even a clean reinstall of the original operating system would likely help a ton, but if the open source community could go through the files and find the all the bugs, who knows what I could make of my life. At the very least I’d be able to work again.

My tablet, in part because I didn’t expect to take to ebooks so well (yay dark mode!) and because I don’t want more devices (cost to the environment + need to keep charged etc). An e-ink I can also listen to podcasts on might be my ideal. I use a laptop for social media and general internetting, which means minimal distraction problem on the tablet.

I would really love to get one or two small press subscriptions again. I had one from Fitzcarraldo for a bit and it was such a delight when a new one, completely unknown to me, arrived in the post.

But I had to be rehoused into pensioner housing last year and it’s a tiny cottage. For every thing which comes in, something has to go.

Books are hope. And we all need more of that.

Bifocals that I don’t get on with. Then a downturn in my health which affected my concentration. Only upside to middle age is that my eyes have changed such that I can read without glasses now so that’s what I do.