Ye old family reunion

I'm going to a family reunion this weekend. In anticipation, mum has had me scan some (many, many, many)old letters that she's had in storage (handed down from her mother and her grandmother). Its been an interesting experience putting them in order and getting some of the back story on bits of them. They were prolific letter writers.

It was an eye opener seeing how poor one side of my family was. I had been told, but seeing the letters saying that James was off looking for work or one of the children who are off working is sending money orders home, really emphasizes things.

Theres also a series of letters from an uncle who went off to Canada and then signed up for WW1 - he died in France. I was able to read about his life from 1906 to 1916 when he died & the letters afterwards from the military, informing his family of his death.

There are also a bunch of WW2 letters from several brothers. Wow, they are interesting (and some have bits cut out)Lots of "somewhere in France" addresses, or desert areas. There's also telegrams from the military with messages monitored from Japanese propaganda radio, purporting to be from them saying they were alive and well in POW camps, and similar from private individuals monitoring radio after the camps were liberated (they listed names and who to get the message to).

What I should do - if I could find some time - is collate them properly and find out some of the surrounding information & then epublish them. I could call it "The Chalmers Letters - snapshots of 3 generations of Australians"

Minor Plug

I just remembered to add Autumn Write to my places to go,people to see list. One day I might update it to separate comics from other interesting and useful sites....but not today.

Shameless plug for putting links on your blog - when I lost my bookmarks on my computer, at least I had my favourite comics linked and didn't have to go searching.

Maybe I should spend the time and put a whole list of lists on here :)

The downside to owning a Kindle

When you've found a CD full of books and decide to read the series on them, its very easy to keep reading. My vain "I might go swimming this afternoon" thoughts were abandoned and my "I might have an early night" was thwarted. Must...develop...more...discipline. I feel tired and un-exercised. And I over-ate on the weekend. Bleh.

On the upside, I'm getting to read all the Honor Harrington books in order one after the other.

reading glut

I just remembered I had a cd of BAEN books that I got as a freebie at world con last year. I hadn't read them as I didn't have an ereader and I just don't like reading on computer screens. I just downloaded them to my Kindle Or at least all the Honor Harrington ones - the rest can wait till I'm through these. I put them all in a file (in the right format) on my computer, so its easier to transfer them. I've also gotten online at Baen and found a couple of other books that I'd like to get. Maybe next weekend. My reading has gone up a lot with the ereader. I'd slowed down because of
1. Lack of space to put new books (and I don't like to assume I'll read once and give away)
2. Price of books - if I'm not sure whether I'm likely to want to reread, I'd rather not pay $100 for only 4 books.