This hasn't got much to do with Learning 2.0 but...

...I'm getting into this whole blogging thing.
I went with my mother to see Miriam Margoyles "Dickens' Women" at the weekend. There seemed to be quite a few other mother-daughter combinations in the audience but very few people under 40. Is that because it was a matinee or are younger people not interested in shelling out for Dickens these days?
Anyway it was great: Margoyles brought the characters to life in a way that Dickens himself would have approved. (He may not have been so pleased with her warts'n'all portrayal of his domestic life). Hearing some familiar and some not-so-familiar passages from his books read with such feeling and delight was a real treat.
I'm reading Daniel Pennac's "The Rights of the Reader" at the moment (the edition with the wonderful Quentin Blake illustrations). It's a funny, thoughtful, radical, inspiring kind of book: the ten "rights" should be posted in libraries and schools and homes across the country.
I am convinced that our public libraries can and should not only be places where books are borrowed and returned but places where books are read (out loud and in quiet), debated and extolled. Thanks to Dickens (via Margoyles), Pennac and Blake I feel re-energised to make this happen.
Phew, that's getting a bit passionate and idealistic isn't it? (One thing I'm just getting used to with a blog is the fact that although it is like a personal diary it is nothing like a personal diary in the sense that I would never ever willingly let anyone read my private ramblings and musings).