I finally cleared myself some time in my schedule to read a book I’ve been dying to dive into. You know the one; that next in series, have to have it, bought it release day a year ago and somehow still haven’t dug into it yet. Yeah, that one. We’ve all got some of them and eventually we all make the time to read them (and if you’re like me, it’s because the book after it is about to be released, lol).

But back to my point, I finally found the time to read this book. I was so excited, but then my difficulties started. I couldn’t find it anywhere. It wasn’t on any of my book shelves. I had the rest of the series in paperback so I assumed that this novel would follow suit. I searched and searched. Checked under the bed, looked everywhere to no avail. I was starting to panic. I called my sister and my mom, the only 2 people allowed to borrow books from my sanctuary. Nope. I hadn’t loaned it to either. Where oh where could I have put it? Where to search next? My Kindle? After searching through my entire ereader and the Kindle Cloud just in case it didn’t download properly I determined that it wasn’t there. Searching my Kobo library had similar results. I even checked Google Play Books on the off chance that I decided to put it on my phone. Finally, after 3 hours of searching I found my purchase! It was on iBooks. Apparently the book was released the same week that I was all excited about my new iPad. Or maybe it was on sale on that platform. Who knows why I chose to buy one book there.

So, after hours of searching (when I could have read half the novel) I finally found it and had to take a break from my ‘non-reading’ to calm down enough to be able to read this novel (that was fantastic by the way). The moral of this story is that with all of these technological advances I need to find a better way of ‘shelving’ my books. So how do you sort your libraries? Do you have different lists? Minimize the formats in which you purchase books? A special shelving code? Are you simply one of those readers who doesn’t have a huge TBR pile? Let me know!

Recently, I received a letter in the mail from an old friend.  After I got over the shock of a real letter in my mail box, rather than simply the standard bills and flyers, I tore open the envelope to find out what the latest news was and the shock continued.

The letter was hand written on gorgeous stationary.  Unfortunately, I could only read about every other word.  After deciphering the bulk of the letter I found myself thinking about the state of my friend’s handwriting, and then my own.  What I discovered had me both laughing and cringing.

When you think about it, when was the last time you wrote something other than your grocery list? In my case, even that is digital now. I type everything, from letters to quick texts to shopping lists.  When I have a question for my sister, I don’t leave her a note, I send her a message.  It’s become so easy to do all of our writing and communication digitally that many of us have forgotten the art of penmanship.

Picture the calligraphy of the Middle Ages.  Everything was so beautifully put to paper.  Even 10 years ago we put effort into writing to each other, creating tangible records of our interactions and the events in our lives.  Personally, I love the look of a well written letter on parchment.

I tried to create one after reading my friend’s letter and discovered that my cursive was just as bad, if not worse than his.  And my printing, well, it wasn’t much better.  I cite lack of practice for the disastrous outcome of my attempt.  But it did remind me of how much I love the feel of pen sliding across high quality paper.  Legible cursive writing is a gorgeous thing that we should all remember to use before it goes out of style forever.