Reading is Funtastic

I don't know what it is, but going to new places always puts me in a reading mood. I feel especially adventurous when I am not only on a train to someplace cool, but I am reading a good book along the way. It just has a classic gentlemanly feel to it that I like, and its a much better use of time than yapping to someone else about nothing or staring out the window. When I first got to Ashikaga, I hit the books left by my predecessors with a voracity. Its was just a jumble of different stuff, but I read it so fast that I soon ran out of things to read.

Larger books stores, in the Tokyo area especially, usually have English sections. The stores stock about half classic titles and half contemporary. Unfortunately they come with a "we know there's nowhere else in town you can find English" price tag.

Recently I have been playing around with Google Book Search. They won't let you just sit and read whole books that are still under copyright, but there's plenty of good stuff that's free. It might be a good way to spend half an hour if you just sit in front of a computer during your lunch break anyway, as I sometimes do. One issue I'm having is that I can't figure out how to place a bookmark or save my place somehow. It looks like I have to scroll around to find where I stopped every time I start reading. Maybe someone can figure that out for me.

As for the train rides, I think a visit to the Ashikaga public library is in my future.