Some books, once read, stick with you for the rest of your life whether you like it or not. I can think of a few which won't leave my mind alone. 'The Most Dangerous Game' (written by Richard Connell) is one of them.

Others include 'We Have Always Lived in the Castle' and 'The Lottery', both by Shirley Jackson and 'The Monkey's Paw' (written by W. W. Jacobs) which was a short story I read from a book I found at my Grandparent's house a very long time ago. I still remember the sick feeling of wondering what was at the door. If you have never read it and want a good short story, give it a try.

Did you Read "The Most Dangerous Game"?

'The Most Dangerous Game' is about hunters and being hunted. Which do you think is the most dangerous animal to hunt? Lions, tigers and bears... oh my! Not any of those, according to the book. I don't want to give away the story for anyone who doesn't already know it. But, I can say there has never been an adventure quite like the chase which goes on in this book. The ending leaves you guessing, unless you choose to assume things ended in a better way and leave it at that.

You don't need to be into hunting to enjoy this book. If enjoy is quite the right word. It is not a story for children, though it was a story we were required to read when I was a school kid. The story impacted me - I didn't stay up late to sneak downstairs and watch horror on TV as my brother and one of my sisters did. I liked to avoid the gruesome stuff. I still do. But, there are some stories you need to read, some ideas which should be explored, or at least tempted a little. Not that I'm taking up hunting, not as a sport, not after having read 'The Most Dangerous Game' at least once in my life.

I miss webrings. They were a great way to find new links, interesting ideas and people. Social media is an offshoot of webrings. Most of the webring software I used to know is gone. Swallowed up by marketing. The new webrings are different, lighter, and they tend to be personal.

Sadgrl Webring Listings

"The Silent Book Club is a global community of readers and introverts, with more than 800 chapters led by local volunteers around the world. SBC members gather in person and online to read together in quiet camaraderie. Find a chapter near you or a virtual meetup at http://silentbook.club."

My local chapter has gone dark. I think it happens a lot to groups like this. Someone gets inspired to start, works at making it go, then gets discouraged when it doesn't work as well or as fast as they would like. Some hang in there, a lot don't and move on to the next fresh inspiration. People don't understand, or don't want to know that nothing starts out big. The groups that hang in and trudge along are the ones with a chance to grow and become popular, or at least get a regular attendance.

I thought about offering to take up the local group myself, to re-start it. But, I pulled myself back and waited. Its so easy to take on a new challenge when its fresh and you feel enthusiastic. For me, I'm better to wait and see if I still feel that way a week from now. I'd rather wait now than have another project started and left unfinished/ unsatisfied.

There are times you make a go of something and then something else comes along to muck it up. Its not always in your control. But, some of it is. Know yourself and don't jump in with both feet right away. Make sure its really what you want before you commit to it.

I have written in a book. A book I owned not one borrowed from someone else or a library. Also, not a book I was going to trade in at my local secondhand bookstore for more secondhand books. So, I didn't feel it was defacing the book, but it still felt as if I were breaking some kind of cultural barrier.

Quoted from the Amazon book description of "The Reader in the Book: A Study of Spaces and Traces" by Stephen Orgel.

"One of the most commonplace aspects of old books is the fact that people wrote in them, something that, until very recently, has infuriated modern collectors and librarians. ... The underlying question is at what point marginalia, the legible incorporation of the work of reading into the text of the book, became a way of defacing it rather than of increasing its value-why did we want books to lose their history?"

I made notes about what I was thinking as I read the book. I made wonderful notes I wish I could read again now and be inspired by what I thought years ago when I first read the book. But, I gave the book to someone else to read and they didn't value it the way I did. It's gone. I don't even know if they read it cover to cover as I did, or just humoured me when I said how wonderful I thought it was.

Beyond that sad little story, I think people who write in a book are those who did find more inspiration, more to explore, in the book than the people who read it (maybe even loved it too) but did not leave any notes. Leaving a note, making that decision and acting upon it to crack into the pristine pages of a book... it takes guts, for lack of a better word. Writing in a book, leaving a mark is one thing, quite a thing for some. But, that's just the start. Your personal thoughts are there, exposed, for as long as that book is still around.

A book has to be burned to be destroyed. Throwing it into the garbage is not a final end. Someone could still pick it out, clean it up a bit and read it. Composting, is closer to an end, but that takes time. Quite a lot of time and you're not going to be there to guard the spot where its composting for as long as it would take for that book to break down. So, your thoughts will be there beyond the time it takes to jot them down.

Knowing and thinking about all of this, would you write in a book? I still do.

I've been having a lot of trouble seeing clearly when trying to read websites. The style seems to be small, pale grey fonts which are very hard to read. No problem for a computer, or other machines. I wonder if these sites which are hard to read just expect machines and not human being to read the information? Are they just looking for web traffic for marketing. Content doesn't seem to be very kingly when you can't read it. Anyway, that's a bit off topic but the issue really frustrates me, personally.

I found a way to change settings in Firefox to make websites easier to read. It seems to be working, so far.

Go into your settings, click those three stacked lines in the right top bar of the web browser. Then Settings. From there you should be able to find the Languages section. See images below. Just click the "zoom text only" to turn that feature on. Then go into Advanced and set a minimum font size which your web browser should stick to when it opens web pages. The minimum font size may not work 100%. Some web developers choose to force font settings rather than letting readers choose what works for them. Again, likely valuing cosmetic looks instead of a readable site.

The zoom text only is great and has worked every time for me. Instead of enlarging the entire site, images and all, only the text is made bigger. So sites are not warping as much when I want to read them. Of course, this means zoom will not work for images now if you have been using it that way. But, I find it works well to open images in a new tab. Most of the time the image file is actually larger than the one used on the web page.

Zoom is a feature which allows you to increase or decrease either the size of a web page or the size of the text. This article explains how it works.

Source: Font size and zoom - increase the size of web pages | Firefox Help