Did you know Arsenic used to be used as a green pigment back in the day? This is an interesting read by the guys at Hackaday. Thousands of books have been quarantined over concerns of the amount of poison in the pigment, this post covers what they are doing to separate the good books from the bad. Do you have any of these green stained books on your shelves? Don’t worry if you do, just refrain from licking them for too long…
You probably do not need us to tell you that Arsenic is not healthy stuff. This wasn’t always such common knowledge, as for a time in the 19th …
Do you remember your favorite book from childhood?
See this is what I’m getting at, the prompt from yesterday was not much different from this one for today. The guy that does the prompts at WordPress must be getting right bored.
Cockleshell heroes
Anyway, just as well I read a lot as a youngster. One of my favourite books I read as a youngster was the Cockleshell Heroes by C.E Lucas Philips. This book was published in 1956 about 9 years before I arrived on the scene.
I was a bi product of that period post wartime when the big rebuild of the country and the economy was starting to kick start. As a kid it was all war films and war comics so it was only natural to read war book’s wasn’t it?
It’s another book that I’ve read more than once and as a youngster it’s sheer excitement and intrigue kept me engrossed from cover to cover.
I hope tomorrow’s prompt is another subject, I quite fancy “What did you eat yesterday?”, for a change. (Only joking 🙃)
Anyway have a darned nice day and enjoy the sun if you are fortunate enough to see it.
List three books that have had an impact on you. Why?
Cosmos – Carl Sagan
Cider with Rosie – Laurie Lee
The bitter lemons of Cyprus – Lawrence Durrell
I was a kid of the sixties, one of Apollos children as I lived through those heady days of the space race. Carl Sagan was one of those superb teachers that could bring a highly complex scientific process down to a level every one could understand and there haven’t been that many people who have followed him who can do the same. I have read the book and watched the series many times, I’m sure I will do the same soon.
I love Laurie Lees ability to be able to teleport you into his life as a child growing up in the country. I first read this book at school and then read it again about 30 years later. The things you notice in this book as an adult against what you read as a child shows how much our knowledge and attention grows as you mature. It’s a go to holiday read for me as it’s one of those comfortable books. His other books about the Spanish civil war are also very well written and insightful.
I love Cyprus and everything about it. This book by Lawrence Durrell gives a fascinating insight into the old ways of the island pre-invasion, as he travels around documenting the many people and ways of the island. I must have read this book a good six times now and I never tire of it. I suspect number seven will be coming up very soon.
If you could be a character from a book or film, who would you be? Why?
This is quite a tough one and I’ll have to think about that. I rarely read fiction so any choice I make will probably hark back to my school years.
I’ve got it. Cider with Rosie by Laurie Lee. I’d have loved the life he had as he was a bit of an adventurer and an independent soul.
I know the area where he spent his childhood fairly well so could relate to some of the places he wrote of. The period of time was a much more innocent era and the characters are so well described, what they did and what he thought, all of this pulled you into the story. I read this at school and again only a year or so ago, but it meant more to me as an adult than it did as a child. I would have loved his life purely for the innocence and lack of responsibility in those hazy days of summers long past.
His follow up books of when he pretty much hiked all around Spain at the time of the civil war and then when he returned at the height of the civil war gave a fascinating insight to those particular times.
It’s amazing the feelings a well written book can stir inside you.
I live with my wife and dog. I do not wish to objectify or itemise them as they do not deserve that, they deserve an immense amount of love and respect, I’m just putting it out there that they are all I need in my life and have been for many years.
However as I dutifully have to make a choice or three here we go.
Medication 💊 without the two that I currently take (I won’t go in to detail) I guess it would be game over so to be honest this is probably the most relevant
Books 📕 my constant thirst for knowledge and learning means that this object slots comfortably into second place. As I’m a child of the sixties it’s books over Internet all day long, as the internet didn’t exist then, fast forward 3 decades and my choice if I’d been born in a different era might be slightly different.
Camera 📷 what better way to remember all those wonderful places, people and memories you have created along the way. Whether using the old film cameras of my generation or the new fandango units and phones of today, how else are you going to peek into time gone by and put a smile back on your face.
Yep, I’m happy with that, had to think a bit but these are the three items I could not live without.
Foxes Den 
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