Books in my life will never be replaced by an electronic alternative. There is something about having a good book on a shelf, being able to open it and taking it with you. The text books I now have, apart from theology, are nearly all travel books. These books open up the world to me, whether places I have been or places I dream to go, they are my reminder of memories and containers of vision.
While I was at school the text book changed from being full of text, to containing diagrams and pictures. These brought the subject alive, and now I realise that my intuition and imagination responds much better to images, and short blocks of text than pages full of words. £2.50 will pay for a text book for two students in Southern Sudan. The importance of that should not only be to enable children to learn, but to open their horizons to new things.
My latest purchase is '1000 Sacred Places' bringing together my two loves - travel and God. I haven't read many books this year (probably 3 at the most and all on holiday in January) but I will gladly give 10p today for every book I have read and purchased so far in 2011, because life without books is something I could never imagine.
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