Simply Sunday

| TravellinPenguin
author unknown

I’m not going to go into the events of the U.S. this week as we are all aware of them. But I admit it did take away from reading time as I was glued to the tv for a good couple of days and still checking. Not much is happening over the weekend but Monday over there may well pick up again. Will this presidency ever end??

I did manage to finish the book The Weekend by Charlotte Wood. I also listened to her on a podcast taped from last year’s Sydney Writer’s Festival on line where she talked about this book and a performance she saw at the Sydney Belvoir Theatre about Virginia Woolf. The Sydney Writer’s festival podcasts can be listened to on most podcast apps. I use Podbean.

I enjoyed The Weekend. A quick recap. The story is about three friends in their 70s who meet at the home of a friend, Sylvie who recently died, in order to clean out her house. Wendy who is one of the friends brings her 17 year old dog, Finn, with her which really gets up Jude’s nose. Adele is the third friend. She is mourning old age and her past life as a well known actress and her long term relationship with a married man that just doesn’t add up to what she would like.

The weekend shares the interactions between the women, their pasts, coping with aging, thinking about death all the while as they try and organise the emptying of this house. The dog, Finn, seems to be a metaphor for aging and impending death. The women’s relationship to the dog plays quite a large part of the story.

What I liked the most is the realness of the characters. They all have their strengths and their flaws. They get annoyed with each other yet they still retain their loyalty to each other when needed. At times I disliked all of them individually and other times I admired them. I liked the writing in the book most of the time. I’ve not read anything else by Charlotte Wood but I do have her previous book, The Natural Way of Things which won the 2016 Stella Prize and was long listed for the Miles Franklin award. It is on my shelf unread. I understand it is a much different book to the Weekend.

This week I will begin a library book I picked up on Friday. Ann Patchett’s The Dutch House. I listened to the podcast Divine in that featured Ann Patchett’s books. I enjoy the broadcasts about books by these two friends. They always make me laugh.

I have only ever read State of Wonder by this author and I thoroughly enjoyed it. I am looking forward to this book too.

Next, I will pull a book off my shelves in my TBR – Author Alphabet challenge. I was going to begin with the letter A and work my way to Z, one book at a time but I have decided to now randomly select an author’s initial and select my book that way.

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What else has been happening lately? As if an attempted American coup, a gutted kitchen, builders in the house, a radical surgery and recovery, Christmas and our lovely dog Molly dying wasn’t enough over the past two months…Ollie came down with a very inflamed bowel, some bleeding and a massive ear infection. He was full of beans jumping around one day and suddenly he was off his food and we couldn’t wake him up for much more than a few moments. Of course, like everything, it happened on a weekend but fortunately being Friday night, the vet did get him in Saturday morning, where he spent the day being x-rayed, poked and prodded. He had the first bad day of his lifetime.

Ollie at the dog beach awhile ago.

We were worried he had swallowed a foreign object and might need surgery. So far that doesn’t seem to be the case and he seems to be responding well to antibiotics and some prescription food he is not too thrilled about. We were worried about him though. His ear is also being treated. If we could only get him to stop eating potting soil, lizard tails, snails and possum poo I think he would be better off. If anyone knows how to do that please leave your message in the comments. below.

On a brighter note I am out of my six weeks of not being able to drive and I actually did a 5 km walk the other day and feel quite good.

I’ve decided the new year for us will begin on the 21 January when the world might change a bit for the better. Now if we could only understand why the Australian Prime Minister won’t condemn what has happened in America.

No, I’ll leave that alone for now.

I hope everyone has been safe and well and doing some things that cause happiness amongst the turmoil of the world. More later….

23 thoughts on “Simply Sunday”

  1. As each week comes along I think things in America can’t get any more absurd – but they do. I have a friend leaving UK tomorrow to go to Washington for two months and I’m thinking she is nuts. I wouldn’t want to be anywhere in the capitol right now.

    I finished The Dutch House last week – it was my second Patchett novel too though my first was Bel Canto which was fabulous. Dutch House was rather different.

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  2. I’m glad both you and Ollie are feeling better. It’s so true that animal emergencies happen most often on weekends. I’m fortunate in that my best friend and my cousin are both veterinarians. We also have amazing veterinary hospitals within two hours away, for the really serious stuff.

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  4. I wish I did know how to stop them eating things they shouldn’t.
    America is a train wreck it is hard to tear yourself away from. At least recent events might wake a few Republicans up to the danger they have been courting in enabling Trump. Loved the image and the caption, a much needed smile.

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  5. terribly sorry re Ollie… dogs are supposed to have a sense of smell about a thousand times better that humans so it’s confusing that they will eat such bad things… another eternal mystery i’ll never get the answer to, haha… glad you got a nice walk; i used to do that a lot before i discovered bicycles and in some ways it was better, because of the tempo, possibly – sort of mesmerizing… and safer, for sure…

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  7. Oh poor little Ollie, I hope he recovers well. And I’m pleased to hear that you are making the expected recover too.
    There is nothing like a good book to take your mind off things. I hope to hear good things about The Dutch House, I have that on my TBR.

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  9. The future looks bleak for America. As for The Weekend- I agree entirely with your view, but Mrs TD, who’s reading it now, is finding it a bit depressing. Dogs have very little sense of self preservation. Ours nearly died once after eating something disgusting- but she lived to a good age. My niece is currently stranded in Tasmania, where she was on holiday, then the virus struck and they have to stay 2 weeks. She’s enjoying a tour of the island!

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    1. I can think of worse places to be stranded than Tassie. It’s the cost of the strandings that can be a problem. I thought The Weekend was depressing at first but I thought it was much brighter as it went along. 🐧🍇

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  10. I don’t own dogs, but at the beginning of Such is Life Tom Collins’ dog is wearing a muzzle to stop it eating poison baits.
    Was glued to the computer minute by minute from the start of vote counting in Georgia – a strange few days. It is getting clearer and clearer the Capitol Police were complicit. I hope the US has the equivalent of a royal commission, they need about six – emoluments, conspiring with Putin, the recent violence (planned in plain sight according to today’s Age).
    I

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    1. I think the equivalent of Royal Commission there will be prison for Trump. I just can’t stop watching it. Like a moth to a flame. I think the security issue will be looked at. Too many cooks in the kitchen and no one knows what anyone else is cooking. It is bound to boil over. Hahah, I know, I know. 🐧🤪🤪

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