Imagination is the part of my life that I need, that keeps me going. I need an escape from real life. I want to forget the news about wars and destruction. I like to lose myself in another world now and again, and so I read. I do not read books with paper and hard covers, they are too heavy for my hands. I do not want to smell them or feel them. I have a cellar with six bookcases of real books as well as a living room with king sized full book shelves and believe me they do not smell good after so many years. I have a bilingual household in German and english, Mr. Swiss being german speaking. When we got together we caught up on the books we read. German literature also has its own world as well as english, and after 51 years of life in Switzerland, my german (actually Swiss German) is good enough to read the german books in the original language.
So I have a bilingual world of books at my Kindle hands. On the photo you only see the last five books I have read from a total of over 300 books on the Kindle. I can upload a new book in a few seconds and begin reading, no matter what the language. My taste is often a little strange, often a little supernatural fantasy, even some steam punk now and again and of course detective novels mainly based in England.
I like to keep up with new publications. I love reading books from London, especially if they deal with areas I know. The county of Essex plays quite a large part with its strange witchy stories. Essex borders on the eastern part of London where I grew up. The imagination plays a large part of my book life, imagining how the people look, their daily life and adventures and – wouldn’t it be interesting to partake in the story. Knowing the places where it happens is also a big plus. I can really get carried away.
But I also have a realistic side of life, although I need my imagination as encouragement. When we bought our ground floor apartment, with adjoining gardens back and front, I began to plant things. One of these things was a small apple tree, imagining free apples for life. Although they did not happen to that extent, we do have quite an amount of free apples during Autumn according to the harvest conditions: usually about 2-300 apples. This year looks like a record year. Warm weather and sun and enough rain seem to have given the tree a boost. Last year was a poor harvest, but we had an army of builders renovating our block trampling around in their heavy boots.
They have now gone to annoy someone else and the tree has awoken to new life. Mr. Swiss said it looks like a record harvest and on one branch alone I counted 28 baby apples. My imagination is now working overtime. Will I be supplying the village with apples this year and will our cellar have enough room to house them all? Visions of apple pies, tarts and crumbles are arriving. Perhaps we might even began to brew calvados, who knows. Mr. Swiss says we would have to get permission for that because of the alcohol content, then I will be satisfied with a few bottles of cyder.
You see, my imagination is already working overtime.
Chronicles of an Anglo Swiss 
I must be doing something wrong. I cannot get my post to link to their website. I do love your imagination!
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Your post is now there, just an administrative quirk. Tabby’s post is also now there, we are back in operation.
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I wish I had an apple tree but there’s no where for me to plant one in my yard – fortunately, there are hundreds of stray and random apple trees around empty houses and some of the public buildings. We go pick them or gather the windfalls. 🙂
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I have a second apple tree that implanted from a pip.that is also full of Gala apples. Can’t wait to try them: my first big harvest
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Yay!!!
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I had a pear tree that produced bushels of pears. I used to eventually invite everyone nearby to come with a basket and take pears. I tried to make pear jam, pear pie, everything I could think of including just eating a lot of pears and they are still among my favorite fruits, but this tress was insane — and huge. We were so young then. My friend Mark used to climb to the top of the tree and toss down the pears. I’ve never had that type of pear since. It was a hybrid between Bosc and Bartlett.
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i am nor such a pear fan. Here they usually grow on walls attached to some sort of trellis. They are also quite popular in Switzerland
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I appreciate your diverse and bilingual reading. I’m just starting to get the hang of reading on a kindle.
It looks like its going to be a good apple year here, too–I’m excited, as we had very few two years ago and none last year–fickle weather.
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I love my kindle, very handy.
This year looks like a great year for apples. Hope the slugs stay away
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I wonder how I missed this post earlier…
So glad to see your Kindle collection. I personally prefer paperbacks, but there are always space constraints. Like yourself, my collection is divided between the bookshelves and Kindle.
It’s wonderful to belong to a multilingual household. More books to read! We usually speak in English at home, but I read in Hindi, Marathi, French and Italian.
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Not only reading in other languages, but you learn about their writers history. My collection is today almost pure Kindle unless it is a book that particularly takes my interest because I know the author.
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That’s so true. I was reading ‘The Tin Drum’ some time ago, and came across an article of how Gunter Grass was not very satisfied with the quality of translations and had them redone. It’s such a delight to be able to read works from the original authors – you never know what you might miss in a translated version. Just yesterday, I read up on Italo Calvino and how he passed away before completing ‘Under The Jaguar Sun’. I like reading about writers, in addition to their books.
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