Happy New Year - Welcome 2013

Quote from To Kill a Mockingbird from Banned Books Week poster

What a lovely way to start the new year by reading a cracking book.  I have just finished Jasper Jones by Craig Silvey.  With references to To Kill a Mockingbird I thought that the image  and quote to the left was appropriate.
At times, I might take my ability to read (and read whatever I like) for granted, but if I couldn't read ever again my world would be so much more the drabber and duller.  To enter worlds and concepts with ease and to be transported to another time and place is something I cherish, yet I don't contemplate it as a privilege that some may not have.
I give thanks for living in a country which does not dictate to me what I can and can't read.  I give thanks for my free public education which engendered in me a love of reading.  I give thanks for great teacher librarians (which I can only hope to emulate) who fostered my love of learning and reading and encouraged me in all my weired and wonderful endeavours.  I remember be obsessed as a primary school student on stories of shipwrecks - despite living nearly 400 kilometres inland.  And in high school being hungry for biographies and autobiographies of every type - Nikki Lauder being a memorable read - which certainly nurtured my inner rev-head.
2012 my have been the National Year of Reading but it seems like every year needs to be the year of reading.  I hope to devote much of my free time to reading and rereading my lovely friends.  To discover and to revisit familiar and disparate worlds.
Let the reading begin.
Or as Max would have - Let the wild rumpus start!