Compassion Summer 2021

Summer 2021 - Compassion | www.tcf.org.uk 8 As I’m writing this things seem to be going back to normal as far as the library is concerned. I’ve been able to use the train and underground again to get to Kilburn and have completely cleared the, quite considerable, backlog now. If you’re reading this and thinking you should have heard from me but haven’t would you please get in touch. I would like to thank all my readers for your patience and, if you’re thinking you might like to borrow some books, I would love to hear from you. The library email address and my phone number are on the back of this magazine. One of the jobs that keeps going to the bottom of my to-do list is up-dating the suggested reading list, which is on the TCF website, and it occurred to me that quite a few of our books will be available to download to kindles or as audio books, from sites like Amazon, for those of you who would rather access reading material in those ways. When the library first came into existence, back in the 1970s, there was no such thing as Amazon but there’s no escaping it now and we might as well make use of it. Personally I’ve always been adamant that I’d never give a kindle houseroom and I’d only ever read ‘REAL’ books. Then I was given a kindle for Christmas and have been converted. I still do read proper books but I also use the kindle a lot and I do like it now especially on that lengthy journey to and from the library. Looking at just the first dozen books on the suggested reading list I can see that quite a few of them are available for kindles but only two are available as audio books. Some of our most popular books are only available in print form and many of them have been published privately or many years ago. Some are out of print now and we have some of the, very precious, few copies that still exist of those so the library is likely to remain a very important and valuable resource for us into the future. However there are some very useful books which can be downloaded at a click, usually for quite a small charge, and I thought I’d mention a few of them. One book which I really like is Gloria Hunniford’s “Always With You” which is the second book she wrote after her daughter Caron died and it was a response to all the letters of support she received after her first book, about Caron’s life and her illness, was published. Another is Megan Divine’s “It’s ok that you’re not ok” which challenges the prevailing view of grief and loss in the Western world. This author argues that grief is often supposed to be hidden away and we should all be back to normal in a few months and this leaves many grieving people isolated and even feeling guilty because, as we all know, the reality is nothing like that. This is one of the books also available in an audio version. Two books which I was very surprised to find on kindle, because they were both published News from the Catharine Pointer Memorial Library