Travellin' Penguin

My gosh!! This weather. 27C/84F degrees today, hurricane strength winds and tomorrow snow is predicted in the highlands. Stop it already! 122kms per hour winds on Mt Wellington/Kunanyi.

It was nice having the windows open though. It is spring here now in all its glory.

This past week has been very book and dog oriented and forget about getting out for photography. Didn’t happen.

Our dog Ollie is getting ready for his big cruciate operation coming up this Thursday. At 8 am the orthopaedic vet will be rebuilding his back leg. Thank goodness for pet insurance.. Always makes me nervous when something like this happens. He goes in late Wednesday for a fentanyl patch. My sister wanted me to send the patch to her when Ollie is done with it. Made me laugh. No we don’t do drugs. 

Ollie’s home for the next 6 weeks though we take him out a lot.

What did I read this week? 

Well there have been a few things. Today I began our October reading group book by Australian writer Miranda Darling. It is called Thunderhead. It’s a short, darkly comic novel about a woman struggling to preserve her sense of self within marriage and motherhood. 

It unfolds over one day in the life of Winona Dalloway, a writer and mother living in an affluent suburb of Sydney. As she cares for her children and prepares for a dinner party, her thoughts reveal the distance between her comfortable looking life and her private unhappiness. Gradually her husband’s controlling behaviour makes ordinary domestic routines feel increasingly threatening. 

I read an hour or so of it today before I had to do something else and I’m enjoying it. The acerbic humour is hilarious in parts. I’ll write more on that once I finish the book. 

I finished The Red Notebook by Antoine Lauren and I loved this gentle book. A lovely woman is mugged, her purse stolen and she ends up in hospital in a coma. A man finds her purse and examines all within it and sees that there are items the woman would really want back. The book is the story of him trying to locate her and returning it to her. Did I mention it takes place in Paris and is very French?  It is a really delightful book and I could easily reread it. I look forward to diving into more of his books that sit on my shelf. 

The wheel also spun out an hour of The Diary of Young Naturalist. Not enjoying it quite as much as I thought but will keep with it as there are high points. The Naturalist is a 14 year old student who has autism and is obsessed with nature. His parents are also and indulge his many excursions to various British places to study it. There are lots of names of plants and birds and not being familiar with most of them as they are not Australian  or American, I do get bogged down at times. But I like him and his family and it is fun to look up on google where these nature reserves he mentions are. I also have three or four birds to look up.

Another book I’m reading an hour at at time is Walking the Gobi by Helen Thayer. It takes place in the early 2000 and she has just begun a walk across Mongolia and the Gobi Desert. I love stories that take place in Mongolia. It is a place I would have loved to visit but haven’t been there yet. I’d like to see the ponies, the inside of a yurt, the expansive landscape. The photography would be stunning and the people very photogenic. So far the book has had a good start. I take quite a few notes in my notebook of the various locations and the vocabulary words I need to look up. I’ll share some of those once the book is finished. 

My Random Day Out

As I mentioned last week I am trying to have one day out per week just to wander alone somewhere. I entered a list of many types of places I could go to walk, study or photograph into Chat GPT. Nature reserves, cafes, hiking trails, parks, etc and each Sunday morning it has a plan for me all written out with what type of excursion it is. Ideas for photography, map directions for google, etc. 

Last week it wanted to send me to a historical little town north of here but as I had vet appointments and was not able to get to this place after all the chores of the week I just had a day out at Fullers Book shop after the gym. My animals were my priority this week. But I did take my random Penguin black classic book of essays by Michel de Montaigne called How We Weep and Laugh at the Same Thing. I put my sound proof headphones on and sat for an hour with a lovely cappuccino and read. I had a pen to mark out things. The essay of the title name talks about how we have duality of emotions during many events or experiences. We can laugh and cry at the same thing. The example given was more serious though:

When they presented Caesar with the head of Pompey our histories say that he turned his gaze away as from a spectacle both ugly and displeasing. There had been such a long understanding  and fellowship between them in the management of affairs of State, they had shared the same fortunes and rendered each other so many mutual services as allies, that we should not believe that his behaviour was quite false and counterfeit…

We are often shaken by conflicting emotions in our own lives. 

Reading various books for an hour at a time has really focused my reading much more than I anticipated. Knowing I only have an hour, I find I have the energy to really pay attention, take notes and actually remember what I read. I also don’t get bored as I have different subject matters and locations to spend time in.

On top of all of this I am listening for 30 to 60 minutes every night before I go to bed of the Count of Monte Cristo. What a book!!!! Such an adventure. It will take me ages to get through it but hopefully I’ll be done by Christmas. It is a book I’ve always wanted to read so finally brought out the bullet and bit it. The narrator of the audible copy is very good with all the French accents. If I get bogged down on a chapter I ask Chat GPT to explain that particular chapter to me and it does a great job. Then I can move on without getting lost.

I’m not getting into all the conversations re the media about AI we’ve been listening to everywhere. That is outside of my life’s bubble. I just do my illustrations and have books explained to me and that is enough. No medical advice or anything else. It is also good for outlining historical perspectives of events I come across while reading. Just fun.

Have a good week everyone

What is your favourite book you read this week? Where did it take you?

AI gave me a random “My Day Out”.  I wrote about this in my previous post. It stated I should visit a book store. How appropriate is that?  So that’s what I did. 

I invited my 91 year old good friend to go with me and we drove north for 45 minutes to visit the small, but elegant, Black Swan book shop. It is owned by Alexander Okenyo and he and his staff are lovely and don’t even mind a quick chat even when extremely busy making many coffees. They have the most interesting shop, they are independent and their coffee is some of the best in the state. Cappuccinos are covered in chocolate and it is hot. Did I mention that my friend and I also shared a fudge brownie between us? 

I took the Penguin with me on this trip. I also took his American friend with him (who by the way is now an Australian citizen), Bald Eagle.  He left America too. Literally!  The two of them seemed to enjoy what was going on in the shop. We had a small photo shoot, after all Penguin really wants to be his own influencer. (Roll eyes…) I have decided that Penguin needs to get out of the house more often too and I don’t mind if he takes a friend as he has several. 

I bought a beautiful journal. I also bought a very interesting non- fiction book called How to Live an Artful Life by Katy Hessel. I haven’t come across this book before and I felt it pull me across the shop once I saw it. You know how that is.

It is a book about a collection of ideas and observations drawn from the lives and work of women artists through out history. Rather than being a conventional art-history book, it offers short reflections- one for each day of the year- about creativity, noticing the world around you, finding inspiration in daily life, and having the confidence to make or appreciate art. It’s designed to be dipped into daily, almost like a creative journal or companion, rather than read it straight through. 

I am looking forward to a big “peruse”. 

I also picked up this lovely little journal as I liked the cover so much. 

When we left the book shop we stopped and looked at all the plants. We are into spring now and there are plants everywhere. There is a market here every Saturday morning and my friend enjoyed looking at unusual things for sale as we strolled down the street. She is an Op (thrift) Shop queen. She loves a bargain.

I bought two ranunculus plants for my back patio area. The patio area is actually all enclosed as it doubles for a large cat enclosure. I need to be careful of what plants I put out there. Not that the two of them bother plants but you just never know. They are more interested in the spiders and lizards and other little bugs. 

The last shop we went into was FLYWHEEL. Flywheel is an absolutely beautiful stationery shop. I have to take tissues in there with me as I drool over the journals, the colourful inks and the fountain pens. Did I get another journal? Yes I did. These particular journals have paper that the fountain pen glides over and I really like them. I’ve never seen them in other places.  Penguin and Bald Eagle agreed they were gorgeous. 

The woman who runs the shop is lovely and she helped me pick out a beautiful forest green ink for my pen.  It is a little bottle of ink made in Japan but I also own a couple of small bottles of ink I bought there previously that are made in Tasmania. 

I must say the first random, Day Out day was a winner. I look forward to where Chat GPT sends me next week. I told it I am limited to anywhere in southern Tasmania. Anything to do with photography, books, art, touristy reserves, parks, etc. It sends me plan every Sunday morning.

Did any of you have a Day Out this past week? If so, tell me about it. I’ll put your adventures in my journal. I love little stories from friends. All the best for the next week.

By Tori Haschka.  Illustrator – Andrea Turvey; Photographer- Isabelle Wield

Published by Ryland Peters & Small London/New York

This book came up on the spinner and I pretty much got through it in the hour allocated to it. 

This book is a mixture of travel writing and cookbook inspired by her journeys around the world. The author shares personal stories alongside recipes that capture the flavours of places such as Venice, Paris, Morocco and Greece. 

The best part of this book, in my opinion, is the photography and the illustrations. I really enjoy looking at urban and travel sketches and the food photography is very good. I know how hard it is to photograph food in a lovely setting.

The recipes looked lovely but nothing I would ever make.  

The things I liked about the book:

• Sketches
• Photography
• Stories of the travels
• The hard cover and binding- very attractive
• What I didn’t like as much
• Too much meat. I need more balance in a cookbook and I don’t eat a lot of red meat. We also don’t eat lamb or pork. 
• Too much double cream, cream cheese. Desserts are too rich and complicated.
• Book published in 2013 but recipes felt like 1970s and 80s to me. Trying to be a bit trendy I think and would have liked more recipes that are common to the people in those countries instead of the 5 star restaurants.
• So with that – enjoy the scatter of photos throughout. Those are very good. 

I hope your week is going well.

Penguin really enjoys his time in France.