Oh, my!!! More and more people in their 40′s, 50′s and 60′s are getting their first tattoos.  It is a growing trend.  Much to some husbands and fathers dismay!! 

PLEASE CLICK ABOVE BOOK or HERE FOR VIDEO!!!

So what do you have to say about you, your parents or grandparents getting tattoos?

I’m reading a most excellent one at the moment actually, Shantaram, written by Gregory David Roberts.

Its the kind of book that completely engages your imagination and almost invites you in to witness the story unfold before you. I shan’t harp on about it but suffice to say that I do like a good story.

So have you heard/read/written any good stories recently?

Short or long, true or embellished, funny or sad, deposit your stories here please and sssshhh!! be quiet as people are trying to read…..

This is the book I just finished here  in Canada, called Twilight by Stephenie Meyer. It’s about a girl who moves in with her dad and soon falls for a vampire. The book explores how these two love each other so much but they just can’t be together because she is human and he is a vampire. The movie, Twilight, comes out November 21st. Yes, I jumped on the bandwagon of Twilight lovers. It all happened because the movie company sent me the trailer for the movie and as soon as I saw it I was hooked.

I have never been into the science fiction/ vampire thing, but, I did read almost all of the Harry Potter books when they became popular, so I knew I would love these too. The Harry Potter books gave me nightmares at night when not one Stephen King book ever had.

There’s something to be said when it comes to a cult following. You can always find someone to talk to about it. (I mostly use Twitter for that!) I mentioned at the bus stop the other day that I was reading the Twilight series and all the moms went, “Ahhhh…” each of them had been bitten by the same bug I had.

Some people say the book is hard to read. I find it the opposite. I haven’t been able to read a book for over a year and this one held my attention.

Which book do you wish they could turn into a movie? Do tell!

Hi from the U.S of A flower people. I’ve just started reading a little murder mystery based on that oh so popular television series from the 80s, Murder She Wrote.

For those of you who aren’t familiar with it, the series follows the mishaps and adventures of an older woman from Cabot Cove, Maine as she writes books and solves murders. I’m a big fan of Jessica Fletcher and Murder She Wrote, but this book is not picking up my interest.

It seems that there are a lot of books out there, entire collections of them that are based on television series’, like Buffy the Vampire Slayer or Star Trek. Some are pretty good and some not so good. Even movies that have been scripted in Hollywood and turned out to be a success are later turned into books for reading, which is a little weird to me.

I can see how Hollywood can take a book and turn it into a movie, but to take a movie and turn it into a book? Like we couldn’t just go see the movie? I don’t suppose you’ve read a tale or two that’s been taken from television and spinned into a book?

Perhaps some television series’ are versitile enough that they can be easily transformed into different mediums like books and even song apparently. Whaddaya say?

Hi from the U.S.A flower people. We’ve recently opened up a booth at the local fleamarket. While we haven’t had much call to sell anything yet, we’ve sure been doing a lot of shopping in the market. I’d say we’ve gone overboard in buying previously read books.

It’s kind of ironic that we set up a booth to help clear out extra stuff in our home, but it’s only helping us to bring home more stuff!

Our fleamarket features both indoors and outdoor booths. While every other vendor probably has a few old books to sell off. I’ve found some good ones, especially by Stephen King and Dean Koontz. I’ll read them and probably sell them off to other people. Nothing like the endless cycle of reading.

There must be some interesting markets out there in your part of the world and every one has something in particular that’s commonly sold. What kinds of stuff do you find at your local fleamarkets most often? Do let me know….

by Mike,

My friend, Paul Burman, is now out and sitting in the shops.

Well his book, The Snowing & Greening of Thomas Passmore, is and on Wednesday at 11.00 PM BST Paul and I are interviewed about my magazine, the View From Here, and his debut book on Blogtalkradio.

So if you could get something of yours into the shops and chat about it on the radio, what would it be?

Do tell!

I love to shop! It’s nothing get to do very often if at all. I don’t have friends that come over to go shopping with, and most of all the money to go shopping with. So now I have found a new addiction…shopping online. It’s kind of amazing what you can buy online if you really look.

So now in the last three days I bought a book on Afganistan, a kids movie, and the first two seasons of Supernatural. This is so much fun!! Who needs a babysitter to actually go out shopping, I don’t!

What is your favorite thing to shop for?

I am really into analyzing my dreams. At one point I used to write my dreams in the morning in a diary so I could see if there was any patterns. And as a writer it can be fun to use your dreams as the basis for a short story. I have stopped writing them down because I put way too much pressure on myself to remember every little detail. But I have noticed a recurring theme…

I am away at someone’s house and I have to pack to go home…or I am moving from my house and I have to pack…it’s always about packing. But the part that always happens everytime I have packing dreams is that I can never find a way to bring all my books with me. It happens with other things I want to pack, but I notice it the most with books.

I love my books, I have about 400 books scattered around my house waiting to be read. But I don’t have time to read them lately. I work seven days a week, fourteen hours a day and do an average of 15 posts a day. I don’t have time to sit and actually pay attention to what a book has to say.

I bet my dream has to do with me taking the time to read. Back before I started working online I would read a novel a day, yes, I read that much! In the end I guess I’m afraid that something will happen to me and I won’t get a chance to read them. I guess it sounds stupid doesn’t it…

What is something that you should make time for but don’t?

Google has a knack of being ahead of the times – take their logo today, celebrating the birthday of Helen Beatrix Potter (28 July 1866 – 22 December 1943) the English author who was best known for her children’s books, which featured animal characters such as Peter Rabbit.

Rupert Murdoch, one of the world’s most powerful media moguls, has compared the advent of the internet with the invention of the printing press. Although they occurred half a millennia apart, both gave ordinary people the power to access information that was previously available to a few.

As more publishers choose to digitise their content google is working with some of the world’s biggest libraries to creat a huge online resource. It’s partners include Oxford University, Standford University, the New York Public Library and Princeton University. Whatever would Beatrix say?

The initiative is contorversial. As well as teaming up with libraries, google has stuck deals with publishers, some of which are allowing the search engine to put their back-catalogues on the site, despite the obvious commercial drawbacks of allowing readers to access books free of charge.

What is your take on this? Printed versus online – smelling the pages rather than scrolling down them and enjoying a room FULL of books. We’d love to know your thoughts on this and feel free to complete the poll in the right hand column!

What does the future hold and is this the final chapter for printed books? Do tell!

Mike here,

When not making films for GO! Smell the Flowers, BLAM Productions also makes films like these:

The following is actual footage filmed under cover by The Lone Ranger as part of  Hi Ho Books Away at my magazine, The View From Here. The idea is to leave ten hardback literary books in a public space and see how long it is before someone picks each one up.

So when is the last time you picked up a book and what was it?