World Book Day 2021

It’s the second World Book Day during my (not) Walking Commentary daily journaling and last year I got it wrong. I wrongly encouraged readers to celebrate an unofficial celebration. Today is the official World Book Day for 2021.

So here’s a link to lead to other links in celebration of World Book Day 2021. [I plan to build this post by updating this page several times during the day.]

Breakfast thoughts:

These are books that I had reason to open this morning. I’ll let you imagine why.

• Enough is Enough by Fintan O’Toole (2010)
• The Lives of a Cell by Lewis Thomas (1974)
• The Lost Letters of Flann O’Brien (2021)
• Invisible Women by Caroline Criado Perez (2019)
• Magnum Magnum ed. Brigitte Lardinois (2009)
• The Company of Trees by Thomas Pakenham (2015)
• The Secret Lives of Trees by Colin Tudge (2006)
• The Hidden Life of Trees by Peter Wohlleben (2015)

Noon update:

I’ve also been reading the Encyclopaedia Britannica this morning. We bought the whole thing for our kids in the 1990s. It wasn’t used as much as we’d hoped yet it was used enough to justify the investment. It turned out that the volumes also press flowers quite nicely.

Over twenty years later, I’ve come to appreciate the many volumes that line our kitchen shelves. Today, two are open on the kitchen table.

I was among the angiosperms, then magnolias, leading to the mysterious magnon and then learning that Norwegian King Magnus III, Magnus Barefoot, died in Ireland in August 1103 while foraging for food. I found myself turning pages in wonder rather than scrolling with a narrow online focus. Both mechanisms of reading and researching are complementary, if not mandatory. But the EB has an edge since every article is peer reviewed. The information may have aged but it was correct at the time of printing. And it’s just that; information. The web lures the seeker towards entertainment because that’s what sells products. At the end of World Book Day, I hope to have become wiser by informed opinion rather than poorer by temptation.

Evening update:

There are more magnolia trees in our local area than I’d expected. So I’m using Perfect Plants by Roger Phillips and Martyn Rix to help identify the species. Now I know the names of my photographic prey. Elizabeth. Bull Bay. Nigra. Ricki. Star. Rustica Rubra. Merrill. Leonard Messel. Denudata. Wilsonii. Soulangeana. I’m glad we bought the book in 1997 because it holds secrets and details from our garden as plans, sketches, labels and receipts, slipped among the pages long ago for safe keeping.

Enjoy World Book Day.