New Beginning

I originally created this blog for an online course I was doing, but life got busy, other stuff got in the way and I lapsed in both the course and keeping up with the blog. Recently I've thought a lot about restarting a blog. I still like the name so I've deleted all the previous posts and am starting fresh. 

The name Random Acquisitions of a Curious Mind comes from Alan Powers gorgeous Living with Books.

"Libraries in houses today are comfortable, welcoming rooms, sometimes more like the cabinets and studies of the Renaissance. They represent the extension of a personal world, whether their purpose is the active research of the scholar, the pride of possession of the collector or the random acquisitiveness of the curious mind."

My personal library and borrowings from the library are very much the Random Acquisitions of a Curious Mind

I became a librarian because I am a bookworm. I love books, I love researching.... the thrill of the chase, trying to track down the book, articles or other information that will connect customers what they need. I was the kid who loved research projects at school. Would spend many, many hours tracking down as much information as possible, reading it and often getting side-tracked by fascinating but off topic facts. Then throw together the actual written report at the last minute when I sudden realised my deadline was looming and I couldn't go on reading about my topic forever.

I love collecting quotes on any and every topic from things I read, sometimes because I agree with them, others because I strong disagree, sometimes just because I think the phrase or paragraph is beautifully and poetically written. I have many notebooks full of them. I was quite disappointed when I learned the phrase for these type of notebooks was a "commonplace book" as it seems a rather boring, even ugly phrase for my beloved notebooks. Reading back through them I can trace different stages of my life, different preoccupations. Somethings I've written in them in the past I wouldn't record now. Others still move me and sometimes inspire me to re-read the original source. Frustratingly I sometimes haven't recorded what that source was (before I was library trained of course). 

This blog is intended to be part book review, part notebook of quotes, a reflection of my current reading and obsessions, Internet finds and I'm not sure what else.