OPEN A BOOK – it’s an Antarctic vortex …

There’s so much about winter I love. But today I’m saying this a little nervously. Why you ask? Because I’ve just been told by the usual sensationalist reporting on TV that we are experiencing winds gusting in from an Antarctic vortex !
I guess these winds are no longer allowed to be called our usual VERY COLD westerly’s!
At least with this Antarctic vortex I get to wear my beloved selection of overcoats if I venture out. But to be honest I’d rather sit by the open fire and edit ‘Consequences’ and read books—

Reading books would have to be one of the BEST things about cold weather. Other than writing them. Is there anything more fun than to begin a book you’ve been longing to start curled up in a favourite chair maybe in front of an open fire? Big sigh!

For the past several months I’ve working every day on ‘Consequences’, my next novel. Recently, my blogging schedule has gone a bit quiet. When I say a bit quiet, I mean at times deathly silent. The reason for this is basically if I spend approx. 4 hours creating a blog post, I end up exhausting my writing for the day.

So you can imagine I just can’t ignore the last years effort in writing this next book to focus solely on a blog.

But my plan is to share some paragraphs of the new book with you and add some regular blogs over the next months. Regardless of my bemoaning not enough time, there’s no way I’m going to abandon my blog. I’ve come to love sharing things with readers but I do need to keep a balance otherwise the next book won’t happen.

When I think about it I can’t imagine anything better than turning to the first chapter of an anticipated story and straight away stumbling into a mystery. But there’s more, did you know that reading a novel can improve the brain. I read about this some time ago in a column by Lee Dye.

How nice to think that something you LOVE is actually good for you. I guess when you think about it, we’re told by those who allegedly know that dark chocolate is good for us and also a glass of red wine. Both mesh quite nicely with reading and add the fact that our brains can improve with reading turns the whole exercise into something of a celebration.

Here’s a slightly abridged version about how reading a novel can improve the brain. Now it’s back to editing, talk soon.

PS You can follow the link if you wish to read more.

How Reading a Novel Can Improve the Brain
Column by LEE DYE – http://abcnews.go.com/Technology/reading-improve-brain/story?id=21501657

Lee Dye wrote: Scientists are using some of their most sophisticated tools to peer inside the human brain to see what happens when we engage in the process of reading, and they are finding a number of surprises:
— Reading is a very complex task that requires several different regions of the brain to work together.
— But surprisingly, we don’t use the same neural circuits to read as we grow from infants to adults. So our brains are constantly changing throughout our lives.
— It appears possible that reading can improve the “connectivity” between the various brain circuits that are essential to understanding the written word.
— And there is recent evidence that simply reading a good novel can keep that enhanced “connectivity” working for days, and possibly longer, after we have finished the book.
One of the main tools used to test this is functional magnetic resonance imaging (FMRI,) a scanner that allows them to see what is going on in the brains of human subjects without having to cut their skulls open. Blood rushes to the parts of the brain that are active, thus telling researchers which areas are responsible for different functions, like dreaming, and reading.
When Charles W. Eliot said: “Books are the quietest and most constant of friends; they are the most accessible and wisest of counsellors, and the most patient of teachers.” Maybe he knew that in the future we would be informed that it’s not only exciting to write books but it seems writers are doing their readers and themselves an enormous favour.