Welcome to my corner of the Earth... or maybe I should call it the center of everywhere & nowhere, depends on a person's directions I guess. Regardless of what terms a person uses or what GPS coordinates are typed in, I live in a rural area.
So what? What's the big deal about living in a rural area? Absolutely nothing really. Thanks to wonderful things such as the internet, DSL, and whatnot, I'm not at 'tech' handicapped as I used to be. However, a few years ago, it would have been an entirely different story!!
To give you an idea of how 'rural' I am, I live in a town with about 2200 population, most of that population is over the age of 50. We have one grocery store, the next closest is almost 20 miles away... (I almost wept with relief when they finally started price matching this year!) The nearest Wal-Mart is a 45 minute drive (one way), as is any 'decent' places to eat... we are lucky enough to have a McDonald's, which I have to say most of the kids in this town appreciate. And bookstores? Well, it's about 60-70 miles to the closest one and it's luck of the draw if they will have what you are looking for, so cross your fingers!! Perhaps the hardest concept for some of my more urbanized family to accepted was how far the closest hospital was... 45 miles (if you don't run into traffic in the city or farm traffic in the country -- pure looks of horror from my cousins, LOL!).
While those are the 'usual' drawbacks of living in a rural area, (and I'm sure I missed a few more & likely important ones too), there are some great things to be found here too... my favorite? This is a great place to raise a family. No question, it's quiet... And for the most part, living here is generally safe. I like that I know my neighbors and a good number of the people in town.
Like most towns, we have a public library. I'm not sure how others work, but ours is one of five branches in a library system... meaning that they can borrow any books from within the five branch system. The downfall? Well, selection choices are extremely limited (due to the area we live in being a wee bit conservative in choice) and any material that's been released in the last two years seems to have a wait list that at least a year long since it's being shared in a 5 branch system. I applaud the idea & the sharing... I just wish I had the patience to wait!! LOL!!
Hello Amazon Kindle!! My first piece of technology that I loved... outside my laptop and iPod. And I can now download my books and read them immediately!! I was in heaven!! And then I read a few bombs and realized I needed to start reading more reviews before I purchased them... I was amazed at how many great reviews & *cough* not so great reviews were available... until I came across a recently published author. The synopsis for her book looked fantastic! She had a few reviews up, but I wanted to read a few more... so this is where I am.... Rural Reviews.
I'm hoping to read & review a wide variety of genres... new authors and also well established ones too. (We'll see how that goes..) Anyhow, if you have questions/comments, etc. feel free to drop me a line!! I'm open to ideas or suggestions! And my format for this may change as time goes..again, we'll see! Until then, happy reading!!
Kym
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