About 'A Book Unopened'

Who? What? Where? When? Why? How? Which?

Who and why
I've been a reader since I can remember. I love books. Well, most of them; nobody's perfect. Some time back, I started putting up status messages about the books I'd recently read. Someone asked about some of them. I wrote a line or two about my opinion. And that led, slowly but inexorably, like a pyroclastic flow, to this blog. I'd put up the name of the person who asked me, so you can practice target shooting, but fortunately, I'm really really bad at names.

Why and what
The name comes from a saying attributed to the Chinese: "A book unopened is just a block of wood." I have a few blocks lying around at any time. It's wonderful when they morph into ideas and stories, and take you to other worlds when they are opened. Most books I read are wooden, but I am agnostic to presentation, and read e-books on my mobile or PC as happily as a bendy book.

Which
My first preference is science fiction, followed in no particular order by its sibling, fantasy, and its distant cousins, thrillers and action stories. Non fiction is an excellent spice; more piquant for being restrained in the recipe. Funny books of any description are always welcome. Very occasionally I am startled to find myself halfway through a biography or history.

What, where and when
What can you expect here? A review, anything from a single line to a stream of consciousness piece about what I feel about the author. You can expect an update here about twice a month. Like lemmings hitting the sea all at once, followed by a die-back till the next round of lemminging. Like the paradigmatic lemmings, not the real mammals.

How now brown cow
OK, enough with bandying the long words about. Onward! Let the latest world intersect the sights of the spectrometer.

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