Library

Sometime during the summer I noticed that there was a small bookcase in the alleyway and it seemed you could take books from there and leave any you didn't want.  The bookcase became a book-shop and suddenly  Poros had a small lending library.  

The back alley way

Eventually I got around to visiting and left three books, two of them french, that a friend had given to me.  It's  a small room with children's books  and books in greek, english, french and half a dozen other languages.  What a terrific idea.  Bravo Poros Municipality.

Tourists, yachties, locals, anyone can step in and find something to read.

Books have always been hard to come by here. 

When one is left by visitors it goes from one foreigner to the other.

We used to have bazaars at Christmas and Easter,  run by the foreign residents and in aid of the stray animals on the island.   Books were a big part of the second hand items being sold. I always came away with an armful.  The stray animal society PAWS (Poros Animal Welfare) was taken over by local greeks and slowly the bazaars and book fairs came to a halt. A good english book became hard to find unless you wanted to pay 20 euros at the bookshop for a brand new book.  I started to buy secondhand books online, from Alibris.uk mainly.  Alibris was a revelation,   I could suddenly order books that I actually wanted to read instead of making do with whatever came my way.  I can buy a book (paperback) for 1 euro and with postage of 6 euros they are at a price well within my range.

Mustn't  forget kindle either.  I was introduced to this by my brother and neice who brought me one for my birthday. Another  revelation. More cheap books, as many as I wanted on one device the size of a novella.

I didn't think I would like reading from this cold electronic device. Amazing how quickly I got used to it. Now I have kindle on my phone. A book to read whatever my mood and as long as the 'machine' is charged. 

I went through the books in the Poros library  but only came away with one this time, a slim volume which will fit in any of my handbags so I will always have a back-up when coffee time at the cafeteria becomes a male political or football debate.  Looks interesting but I haven't started it yet.  

I am currently reading 'An Adventure' by Artemis Cooper.  

A biography of Patrick Leigh Fermor.

On my kindle I'm reading

100 Days of Solitude by

Daphne Kapsali

100 days on a small greek island in winter, time to write in solitude. She's part greek so it's not the usual 'i visited Greece for 3 months and wrote a book about it' nonsense.

I chose a slim volume which fits in my bag.  A bag without a book...........