hello

I'm a bit obsessed with the word 'hello'. It's such a simple word- only two syllables- but it can mean so much. In English alone it can be spelt three different ways; the normal 'hello' along with 'hallo' or 'hullo'. I first discovered this while reading Enid Blyton's 'The Naughtiest Girl in School' as a child and confronted my mother, who explained that the 'e' can be substituted for any vowel besides 'i' or 'o'. I find this so fascinating- why did we adopt the spelling with an 'e'? Either way, I'm thankful 'hollo' is not an option.

http://ia600800.us.archive.org/zipview.php?zip=/6/items/olcovers20/olcovers20-L.zip&file=203189-L.jpg

A massive, I repeat MASSIVE part of my childhood. Expect a detailed post about this at a later date. 

Moving on-


Hello! Welcome to my blog. I have been searching for a creative outlet to all of the ranting and reading that goes on in my life, and this seems like the perfect centre for all of that. I plan to feature my opinion on new books, old books I enjoy, books-turned-failed-movie rants, and a whole lot more on this blog.

Summer reading- Over Summer 2011 I spent a week in Australia. This photo was taken while I was packing- and I wasn't exactly packing clothes. That's right, I brought with me a record 11 books (all paperback except for one, thank goodness!) and I read 9 of them. I'm not even kidding. Keep in mind I was only there for 8 days.

So if you haven't gathered that I'm a book lover already, well, I am. I love books, but I'm very opinionated and picky about my books. I'm a proud member of the public library system which is easy to get too. I spend hours wandering around aimlessly inside the endless buildings of local libraries, pestering the customer service clerks and amusing myself with the electronic borrowing system. Oh, books give so much meaning to my life.

Honestly, as much as I love technology (I couldn't be writing this without my computer!) I must say that I cannot STAND the Kindle (or any alternative, such as an iBook/eBook or whatever the iPad app is called.) I believe reading a book itself is about the experience you get from it- feeling the texture of it's page as you turn it, the musty smell, that ragged piece of paper or old plane ticket you use as a substitution for a bookmark, just the weight of the book in one's hand. You can't get all that on a Kindle, can you? Sure it's convenient, but couldn't you compromise convenience for the overall experience? Besides, on the iPad, there's a blinding light emitted so you can't even read your book without seeing little black smudges everywhere. What do you think?

Another important piece of information- I use British English, not American English. Despite setting my computer to use 'English (UK)' it still seems to not believe me, or something, because I still get that annoying, red swiggly line underneath words like 'favourite' or 'centre'. (Oh, and swiggly. Pretty sure that's not a real word though.) So if you read something and think 'hey, that's spelt wrong!' I'm probably just using British English. (Let me know if I've ACTUALLY spelt something wrong though, please.) Also, I spell 'maths' like that, with an 's'. Just in case I do a post about maths...which I don't think will happen.

Well, thanks for reading! I hope I gave you a good taste of what could be coming up (and that you'll want to stay tuned for it!) Feel free to leave comments and thoughts below on anything.

Until next time!
-L xxx