Hello I said! Halfway through January and I'm still trying to internalise that 2017 actually happened. I'm beginning to acknowledge that things as they currently are are a bit ridiculous. Last year it was my intention to stay at home and use the tremendous amounts of downtime at my disposal for two particular things - learning to drive, and writing the book about my walk. An entire year has gone by without measurable progress on either of these things. I'm not here to be a downer, though - a bunch of good things happened and some productive things too. But in general, when they write my biographies, 2017 will be a short chapter. So we look with renewed determination at 2018! One thing is certain: I gotta leave home. There are a lot of attractive things about my town - easy accommodation, familiarity, a sense of being part of the community. But I need to at least get some proper full time work and to be somewhere where things are happening and where there are people my own age. I'm terribly conscious of the fact that I'm getting older. But before I leave home, I want those two tasks accomplished or mostly so - the driving, and the book. It's getting increasingly sillier not being able to drive (when I have to tell people, they look at me as if I never learned to read or how to count), and as for the book, no-one wants to read about something like that if it happened fifteen years ago. Shit or get off the pot time, boys! I do have a wee project for the summer, too - time to get those bare feet back out - but I'll leave mentioning it here till Pubski next. I went up to Dublin this weekend to a going-away party - a couple of friends are moving to Canada this week, and they'll probably be gone for the next couple of years. A little sad, but it was good fun. I accidentally ended up drinking the night before with a bunch of other Dublin friends, though, and between the two I was feeling rightly used up when I landed home. Which is a good sign, even if my memory is a tad hazy. So my sister got me a Kobo ereader for Christmas as I mentioned somewhere else around here, and it's fantastic - you can store a needlessly large amount of books in the space of less than a single volume. I've already been reading a bit more - just finished blasting through The Princess Bride today and I have to say I love it as much as I do the movie. Gravity's Rainbow, in paperback form, is sitting on the bedside table and being much more slowly chewed through. But it has changed how I buy books. Now, I would almost never buy new books anyway, unless I really wanted something and it was impossible to find secondhand. But most of the books I read come off of a large and vague mental list of titles and authors that I've heard of or had recommended, and I would mainly browse through second-hand bookstores and pick up cheap copies of one of these. (As an aside, I've been thinking lately of the dangers of forming a sort of "reading bubble" around oneself. Food for thought.) Well, I was in Dublin visiting Chapters, with its labyrinthine used book section upstairs, and doing exactly that. With one difference - I kept Library Genesis open on my phone. If there's an epub available, I ain't buyin'. I'd feel less guilty if I was in the 'new' section. A quick check tells me that in the last years I've spent less than €80 per annum on books, which is a pittance considering that my to-read pile, though by no means massive, has never actually decreased in size. I'm beginning to think I will start spending even less. What are people's feelings regarding piracy of books? In other ereader related news - I will start a newsletter to keep ye up to date - my sister also ordered a case for it, which failed to arrive after several weeks. She discovered that the listing had disappeared and contacted the seller, who failed to respond, and decided to just get the money back through PayPal. This was rather a stroke of luck, because I discovered she'd bought one for the wrong version, and ordered another of the correct size. Days later the first one arrives. Oops. But it doesn't fit, because it's for the Aura Edition 2 model, which is very slightly different in shape. I'm not surprised she made this mistake; after looking it up, I can now present to you in chronological order the release schedule of the Kobo Aura line of ereaders over the last four years: Kobo Aura Kobo Aura H2O Kobo Aura Edition 2 Kobo Aura One Kobo Aura H2O Edition 2 Confusing. This is almost as bad as Nintendo with the DS family. And with that I must leave you, my comrades, and go for a cigarette, because obviously I haven't actually quit smoking. Kobo Aura HD