Crazy Days of Autumn

| TravellinPenguin
Our kitchen is confusing our cats.

Reading this past week or so has been a mish mash.  We have builders, an electrician and plumbers tearing the kitchen apart. We have confused pets checking everything out constantly wondering where their food dishes are and Ollie spends days in the backyard looking through his crack in the fence for the neighbour’s cat, Stanley;  playing with his toys and standing, staring at rocks for the local lizards to emerge. I am trying to keep him from killing them. So far the score is Ollie 1 the Lizard 0.

I’ve also been informed in this past week of a health problem I have and it will require surgery within a very short period of time. I’ll have more on that front on Friday. Needless to say it is a hard time to concentrate.

I’ve been enjoying further essays in the book I wrote about in the last post, The Gift of Reading. I find them quite uplifting.  I’ve also pulled a beautiful copy I have of Andersen’s Fairy Tales off the shelf. It is illustrated with lovely black and white as well as colour plates and there are 100 stories within it’s beautiful covers.  I go to random.org each day and choose the number of the tale I will read that day.  It is a total comfort read.

I was given several book vouchers for my birthday which I will probably save until after Christmas when new books stock Fullers Book shop after the Christmas rush or older shelved books will be on the large sale table. 

Last night had two of my wonderful friends and I at our popular local Italian restaurant, DaAngelo’s for our annual birthday, girl’s night out. The next one will be in March when they celebrate their birthdays. I received a book from each of them, plus a beautiful little note pad and a box of Ferrero Rocher chocolate. My dessert was a delicious crème brulee. Birthdays can be so much fun even as I progress into my 70th decade. I cannot believe I am so old.

Love Clancy is a book of letters from Clancy to his parents in the bush. It is a tale of a young dog’s musings about the oddities of human behaviour, life in the big city and his own attempts to fit in. An interesting perspective I think by a well known author.

The second book I received is both a title and author I am not familiar with. The Phone Box at the Edge of the World by Laura Imai Messini. The author has been living in Japan and works between Tokyo and Kamakura where she lives. It has been translated from the Italian by Lucy Rand, from the U.K. She has also been living in Japan for the past three years. No idea where the Italian link comes from.

It is a story of Yuri who loses her mother and daughter in the tsunami and wonders how she will carry on. She hears of a disused telephone box in an old man’s garden where those who have lost loved ones find the strength to speak to them and begin to come to terms with their grief. As news of this phone box spreads people travel to it from miles around. Interesting? Certainly different. Should be fun.

I received the latest copy of Womankind magazine and this month it features the women of South America. Some interesting articles and brightly coloured photography.

I am also working my way through my copy of October’s Australian Book Review with several interesting articles of books I’ve read or own on the TBR shelf.

As you can see November is a big month of chaotic mish mash and my reading,Mr. Penguin and our affectionate animals are keeping us sane in the run up to Christmas.

I’m not certain what December is going to bring except to say I will have no problem farewelling the year that has been 2020 and I do wish/hope/pray for better times worldwide in 2021. To think one year ago we had no idea what this year would turn into. Wow!

Until next time…

21 thoughts on “Crazy Days of Autumn”

  2. Good luck with your surgery and wishing you a rapid recovery. I haven’t been feeling well for quite a while and can’t decide how much is ‘real’ and how much is covid stress and anxiety. I have an appointment with a new doctor and am hoping she can help sort things out.
    The phone
    booth book sounds interesting. My mother’s been dead for over 20 years, but I still reach for the phone to call her to tell her about things in my life.

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    1. Thank you Joan. My mother is also gone and it would be nice to talk to her now and then. I hope the USA supituatiin improves in 2021. It’s been a difficult time there. 🤠🐧

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  4. Wonderful reading your blog for this month Pam! The telephone book sounds so interesting. I will look into that one. Love the colors in the Womankind magazine also. Hope your kitchen turns out to be as nice or even nicer than you imagined. I hope the health problem isn’t serious Pam. Wishing you well with the your surgery, etc. Let those of us who love you know more when you choose to. I totally agree with you comments about the year 2020. So suddenly totally crazy and unexpected. Guess we should have listened more to all those books and predictions regarding killer quickly spreading viruses. (Although who would want to or think it would come so soon in our time?) Your blog is always so interesting and visually so eye-catching. Thank you so much for providing such stimulation when we need it the most. Best wishes Pam.

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  8. On abebooks.com it says this author, Laura Imai Messina, also wrote The Beekeeper of Aleppo. Our OverDrive library app says, Expected pre-release, March 2021. Maybe that means in our libraries?.

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  9. i hope it’s not too serious… trite expression, but heart-felt. i too will be very glad to see an end to this mixmaster year; hopefully when whatsisname gets thrown in jail things will improve, haha…

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