Jules Verne

From Journey to the center of the Earth:

page 33: "... foreigners have their own libraries, and our first consideration is, that our humbler classes should be highly educated. Fortunately, the love of study is innate in [certain] people."

I like this quote, because "the love of study" is an attribute I would love my posterity to have. It's much easier to play than it is to study, and it's much easier to love play than study. The love of learning and the love of books / reading are practically in my mind the same thing - provided that we learn from the books we read. There are other books from which we don't learn, but are merely entertained.

This leads to another thought that I often talk about with my parents. Being a producer vs. being a consumer. If you think about your day, how many times have you been a consumer of goods compared with the number of times you've been a producer? I think the answer to that question is a good reflection of whether we value production or consumption. Children often inadvertently learn these behaviors from their parents.

What I've read so far in 2010

Well, I've decided that I'm going to keep my book reviews here on Blogspot.
That way you can get an idea of what I think about certain books and you can also see what I'm reading / have read.

Here's a list of books read this year:

• The Arthurian Omen by G. G. Vandagriff - good mystery book. Kept me on the edge of my seat.
  
• The Secret - this is a self-help book with no plot. Hard to keep my attention. Like reading a text book.
• Irish Fairy Tales - Nice short stories often with a moral associated.
• True Names... And Other Dangers by Vernor Vinge - fun, short, science fiction stories.
• 100 Malicious Little Mysteries - A collection of mysteries written in 2000 words or less. I didn't finish this, I only got further along.

I'm hoping that by having a place to retain book reviews of what I have read that I will do a better job of reading more and thinking about the books I've read.

I couple of good questions I found myself thinking about after reading The Arthurian Omen were:

If I found out I had a serious mental illness that affected others, would I be able to live with myself?

How far does forgiveness go? I know it's supposed to be a virtue and it's better for us to forgive everything, but there is a point where it is better that one man suffer than that the entire nation / population continue to suffer the misdeeds of one. "The good of the many outweigh the good of the one."

I think I'll also post from my collection of quotes occasionally as well. Right now my collection of quotes is in a spiral bound notebook. It would be much more accessible if I would post it online, along with comments of why I like the quotes.