Top Ten Tuesday is a weekly meme where every Tuesday we look at a particular topic for discussion and use various (or more to the point ten) bookish examples to demonstrate that particular topic.  Top Ten Tuesday (created and hosted by  The Broke and Bookish) is now being hosted by That Artsy Reader Girl and future week’s topics can be found here.   This week’s topic:

Reasons Why I’m Thankful for Books (In honor of Thanksgiving in the USA.)

1. A fantastic hobby – let’s be honest right now, people have been storytelling since I don’t know when. Maybe not in a written form but stories have been passed from generation to generation and told around campfires for eons.  There’s a lot of imagination out there and some fantastic tales to read.
2. A great community of bookish people.  I read, I blog, I am.  One of the things I love most about blogging is the people I talk to as a result.  I love chatting with people who love books and it also frankly saves me from boring to death other non-bookish friends and relatives.  Thank you bookish community – I applaud you.
3. Travel.  Of course I’ve done a bit of real hopping around, plus city breaks and holidays but reading – well.  I’ve travelled to the Moon and across the universe, I’ve travelled through time, down a rabbit hole, to Ancient Greece, onto a bloody battlefield or the back of a dragon, across Middle Earth to the doors of Mordor not to mention the land of the Gods.  Just try getting a return ticket to any of those – just try – the only way is through a good book – and no need to pack, win/win.
4. Escapism – (apart from all the travel above of course) books are such a perfect form of escape from the everyday norm, the humdrum.  You pick up a book and hope to be plunged into whatever it is that has particularly taken your fancy, be it horror, mystery, fantasy or a cosy romance.  So much choice.  So little time.
5. Way of avoiding eye contact.  Okay, hands up those readers out there who haven’t used a book, on the odd occasion to avoid making eye contact, either with someone they know or not.  It doesn’t always work – and I know it sounds kind of mean to do this – but sometimes you’re near the end of the book and you have to press on – it’s a real thing, a condition if you will.  When I’m at the end of the book, I feel cranky if I can’t pick it up.  Also, lets just be honest, I’m a grumpy curmudgeon and sometimes making polite conversation makes me want to run away – fast.
6. Teaches you about real things and also the strangest things.  I’ve picked up the strangest facts over the years – don’t ask me to quote any here.  I’m grumpy and anti-social (as I believe I said above).
7. Great artwork – some of these covers!  Wow, just wow.  Get into a frame on my wall right now.  You people with all your talent – it makes me sick with envy.
8. Such a lot of choice and diversity.  No need for explanation.
9. Not forgetting all the great non fiction books – I don’t read these as much as I used, or would like, to – even down to cookery books which I used to love to delve into for ideas – the internet has become a one stop shop for this sort of thing, but I did like to read a good history book and would probably still enjoy those now if I could bare to tear myself away from all the great fiction.
10. Great shelf fillers – plus I love to look and see what books other people have on their shelves – what? doesn’t everyone else do this?  Or am I just indecently nosey?

Just look at this post – so plain without a good sprinkling of covers so I’ve decided to choose some randoms to cheer the place up, in no particular order here is a random sprinkling of colour (not to mention some goods books – maybe one will catch your eye: