Hello and welcome to our blog. I intend for this to be a communication hotspot for all of us and the Great Books. Please feel free to post along with me, telling us your reactions to what you are reading, or just post a quotation that provokes or excites you. 

Here are a few of my favorites about books:

A book is the only place in which you can examine a fragile thought without breaking it, or explore an explosive idea without fear it will go off in your face.  It is one of the few havens remaining where a man's mind can get both provocation and privacy.  ~Edward P. Morgan

To sit alone in the lamplight with a book spread out before you, and hold intimate converse with men of unseen generations - such is a pleasure beyond compare.  ~Kenko Yoshida

A house without books is like a room without windows.  ~Heinrich Mann

I often derive a peculiar satisfaction in conversing with the ancient and modern dead, - who yet live and speak excellently in their works.  My neighbors think me often alone, - and yet at such times I am in company with more than five hundred mutes - each of whom, at my pleasure, communicates his ideas to me by dumb signs - quite as intelligently as any person living can do by uttering of words.  ~Laurence Sterne

This one below truly sums up my youth: I read everywhere, all the time, and before there were portable e-readers. My father was gone for large chunks of my childhood, as a pilot in the Air Force during the height of the Vietnam War, and life was, needless to say, stressful, so I hid in books as much as possible. 

If you have never said "Excuse me" to a parking meter or bashed your shins on a fireplug, you are probably wasting too much valuable reading time.  ~Sherri Chasin Calvo


Tomorrow, I'll talk more about my goals for this blog, and how they tie into HUM111.