bibliophile

For the first time in my life I did some early xmas shopping this week and I’m here to tell you that now is absolutely the bestest time to stuff stockings.  All the xmas stock is out yet there’s little of the rabid gift grubbing that jingles your soul in the Last Week.

Put me in the proverbial sweet shop and I’d probably settle for a modest bag of fizzy cola bottles yet a decently stocked book shop has me bouncing around and stacking them high.  Much more dangerous than Amazon, pricier but so friendly for impulse purchases.

This is probably a good place to inject a meme I’ve just been exposed to (from Chris Unitt).  It’s the page 56 meme and it goes thus:

1. Grab the nearest book;
2. Open it to page 56;
3. Find the fifth sentence;
4. Post the text of the sentence along with these instructions; and
5. Don’t dig for your favourite book, the coolest book, or the most intellectual one: pick the CLOSEST

By my honest reckoning, that line is:

After birth and during infant growth, enormous selectional changes will occur in the synaptic population of the central nervous system.

It’s from Second Nature by Gerald M. Edelmann and those are the only words I’ve read from it so far though I’m now itching to read more.  This was one of the books that just seemed to stick to me as I went about stacking potential presents.  I’d slowly sipped (some books cannot be quaffed) Bright Air, Brilliant Fire by the same guy some years ago and his theory of ‘neuronal group selection’ made a long-lasting impression on my own young, fizzing synapses.

If I’m going to rediscover books then I should probably update my LibraryThing info too.  Somehow it feels like walking back into the old pub where I’ve had the most intense conversations and the threads are still hanging.

I love books.