Travellin' Penguin

Had coffee in town yesterday. I enjoy sitting with coffee and my journal at Fullers bookshop cafe.

Good afternoon friends,

Sorry I’ve not been around but I have had a couple of very sudden health issues that got me a big yellow ambulance ride to the hospital. I won’t go into details as it’s all rather boring but I am recovering. It is just taking a wee bit of time. 

I have been reading though. So this will be a bit bookish today.  Irish author Niall Williams is coming to Hobart and will be doing a talk in the auditorium of one of our private schools here. I had read This is Happiness a couple of years ago as one of our book club selections and really enjoyed it. I just finished Time of the Child which I also enjoyed. I would have liked to read another of his books or two but don’t have time before he arrives later in the month. 

Time of the Child takes places in the rural west of Ireland in a cold, dark winter in a small, very close knit village. There is a strong presence of church and tradition in the story.

The story is light on characters. The main ones are Doctor Jack Troy who is the central figure. He is a very thoughtful, observant, morally grounded man. The Child- is an infant, a mysteriously found baby outdoors one night. No one knows who it belonged to. Maybe left by a gypsy within a troupe that had passed through town. It was thought to be deceased by the doctor brought her back to life. 

The village community is a collective character in its own right. The other important character is Dorothy. She is the adult daughter of Doctor Troy. She works as his assistant and lives within the practice with her father. She takes in the baby and treats the infant as her own. She really bonds to this baby.

The problem is this is Ireland back in the 1950s and Dorothy is unmarried so Dorothy and her father keep the baby hidden as much as possible. The local priest would have the child taken from her and adopted out to a “proper’ family. She won’t allow this to happen. That conflict continues throughout the entire book until a resolution at the end.

The book is an observation of members from one household to another. Over the course of the story the reader learns of many characters within the town as the doctor does his work from family to family. By the story’s end we have a pretty solid picture of this village. There are many acts of kindness. There are economic struggles. There are moral struggles. 

I found it to be a gentle book. 

I’m going to wrap this post up here. I’ll write more when I’m back to my energy levels though that is happening day by day. 

I do have some good bookish news.  Fullers bookshop has been shortlisted for Bookshop of the Year in the Australian Book Industry Awards. They stated they don’t get into the business for awards because it’s all about the glamorous lifestyle. That made me chuckle. 

Next week is the Global Book Crawl Australia from April 20 to 26th.. Six bookstores in Hobart are participating. One picks up their passport from any one of the six shops and visits at least four of the stores to get their passport stamped.

There will be prizes and giveaways once you hand your stamped passport in to the shop you began at. Giveaways will be from Libra Audio, Penguin, The Australian Booksellers association and more. If we get the required stamps we’ll get a free audio book from Libro.fm. If a Penguin book is purchased the reader receives a free pack of the ultra collectible Penguin Persona cards. There are six of them. You know how much I love Penguin ephemera. 

I’m hoping for a sunny day to take my camera out and participate in an autumn crawl. Will get some photography hopefully as I walk to at least four of the shops. If the crawl is shared on Instagram one can win $200 Australian Bookseller Association Voucher. 

 Tasmania is also hosting the Island Readers and Writers festival in May. Amanda Lohrey, Hannah Kent and Shaun Tan are some of the guests who will be speaking. It is to be held at the historic Theatre Royal. I doubt I will go as I can’t tie myself into much at the moment. But I’m sure it will be well attended. Tasmania is such a literary state. It’s just wonderful to see how much is happening here. 

Well that’s me for today. I hope not to dawdle so much to the next post. Have a lovely weekend. 

Question: The great Book Crawl is a worldwide event. Have you heard anything about it?

Awhile back I went to a tip shop north of Hobart and took my camera. A tip shop for you non Australians is a thrift shop on the grounds of a dumping ground or landfill.

S one had an artist that made things from some of the junk dumped.

I thought I’d share some of the photos. You can let me know which piece you like the best. Think aesthetics and creativity- haha. Not sure I’d want any of the pieces in my living room but a fun thing to look at and photograph for the sake of posterity! Ha!

Tonight I’m going to a book launch so will be writing about that in my next post. In the meantime let me know which piece you like best IF you had to take one home. I;ll number them for easier reference. Just a bit of fun for the penguin and me.

Number One

Number two

Number three

Number four

Number five

Number six

Number seven

Number eight

Number nine

Penguin loves a bit of Op/thrift shopping.

By the way, we quite like number three. The swan could go into a garden with a very colourful plant.

🌻🌻🌻 Talk with you all soon. 🌻🌻🌻

Following on from my last post about the recipes on gravestones, I came up with a little project yesterday.

The book is To Die For:  A Cookbook of Gravestone Recipes by Rosie Grant. I’ve had a chance to look at it more. It is an American book. She travelled extensively across America and into Canada to find all of the gravestones that had recipes on them. It would have been quite an extensive trip. 

I can tell you, recipes on gravestones do not seem to be an Australian thing or more specifically a Tasmanian thing.

Yesterday was a lovely autumn day so I went over to the very large cemetery we have here in Hobart. It has approximately 100,000 people buried and 60,000 cremated remains according to CHAT GPT.

Being the day before Easter I had the place to myself. I parked the car at the river and walked up the hill to the cemetery that lies next to the river. The graves in it go back to the 1800s. 

With my phone camera, I walked around the cemetery for more than an hour. I read countless graves, admired the beautiful trees and views of the river and watched the cockatoos that seemed to follow me everywhere. I enjoyed the peace and quiet on a sunny autumn day. Did I find anything written on the gravestones of interest? Nope. Just names and dates. I didn’t see any poetry, recipes, comments outside of a few biblical phrases. Think how much lovelier it would be to read something about the people buried there.  There could be so many things to add. Anyway….

There is one area of the place that has only young children’s graves. I’d not ever visited that part of it before. So many children over the years. I couldn’t help but think back to all those years before penicillin and vaccinations for any number of illnesses as well as polio and I became angry again of what that Kennedy idiot in America who is in charge of health does. Decimating the disease data bases from illnesses added from around the world. Discouraging vaccinations, his ignorance is breath taking. Measles is now back in America regularly. I mean, really…..I will stop at those remarks as I don’t want my posts to get political but seeing the hundred or so graves of children who died before they had access to medicines that would have saved their lives is very sad. My own grandmother lost 3 of her 10 children before the age of 5 back in the early 1900s.

On a happier note I did make one of the recipes in the book. It was very easy and doesn’t involve turning an oven on. I’ll put that information here from the photos. 

The recipe is for No Bake Chocolate Oatmeal cookies. Easy to fix and tasted very good

Note: I’d take out a bit of the sugar next time. American baked goods are much sweeter than ours. Recipe makes 12 to 15 depending in how big you make each cluster. They harden quite quickly so not long to set.

The Penguin wants to know if you have a favourite biscuit/cookie, cake you love?