Author: TravellinPenguin

The past couple of weeks have been zooming by. Book launches, photography club, friends, reading group. Exercising. All of it enjoyable.

Control your moods-

This week had a few walks in between 5 and 8 kms each. Had a pedicure as it is probably the most relaxing task. Love the massage of legs and feet after soaking feet in very warm water, only to have them swabbed with lotion. Hair appt too is always good for the mood. Coming out of winter an appointment or two with a psychologist also change a mindset and can be rewarding.

Book Launches

The raptor refuge in Tasmania has launched a book about Tasmanian raptors (Birds of prey) Wonderfully photographed with relevant information about the birds. It was well attended and appreciated.

Jenny Hocking came to Tasmania to launch her Australian history book, The Palace Letters.

Jenny Hocking is an award-winning biographer, Emeritus Professor and political commentator. She is the author of the acclaimed two-volume biography of Gough Whitlam, Gough Whitlam: A Moment in History (Melbourne Universiry Publishing 2008) and Gough Whitlam: His Time (Melbourne Universiry Publishing 2012), winner of the Fellowship of Australian Writers’ Barbara Ramsden Award and shortlisted for several awards including the Prime Minister’s Literary Awards and the National Biography Award.

It was a riveting discussion as it related to Australia’s governor general and his covert links with Prince Charles in the sacking of Prime Minister Gough Whitlam in the 1970s. The corruption, the lack of any transparency, the secret letters that have only recently been discovered and released from the national archives after winning a high court battle. The conspiracy between the royal family especially a younger Prince Charles and John Kerr, the governor general at the time.

I know a lot of Australian history of colonial times. I also am familiar with political history from the time of our arrival in Australia in 1988 to the current day. However I am quite weak with historical knowledge from the time of federation in 1901 through the 1970s.

I also attended a book launch of Profiles in Hope by John Brogden. John Brogden was a former liberal politician from New South Wales. The two other speakers were Jacqui Lambie who is a current Tasmanian Senator and Nick Sherry is a former Tasmanian Senator. What do they have in common? They all made serious attempts to end their lives. It was a very interesting discussion about events that led to their attempts and how they recovered. Older men make up the majority of people who kill themselves at this time. All very sad. But help is available and this evening we heard about these three success stories.

Reading Group

There were 8 of us who had a really fun discussion of Paul Auster’s book New York Trilogy. Several of us want to read more of him. One man said he’d had enough. Lots of laughs.

We are now on summer break until February next year. Time to dive into that large TBR pile.

Looking forward to this new book.

I recently acquired this beautiful travel book called Border Crossings: a Journey on the Trans-Siberian Railway by Emma Fick. It is a beautiful format of her travels with coloured illustrations throughout. Emma Fick is an artist and illustrator. After completing her degrees in English Lit and Art History in 2013, she obtained a Fulbright scholarship to teach English in Serbia. I’ve included a few

photos.

Social life

The highlight was when a dear friend of mine from New South wales was in town this past week and we spent a couple of days together. We went to the southwest of the state to Mt Field National Park, having stopped in a favourite cafe for lunch on the way there. So good to catch up. We had beautiful weather.

Looking forward to …..

Spending a week in Sydney in December to see two wonderful friends. I really love Sydney and will meet a family member of one who is helping me with transport to spend time with one friend. The other is our 15th year of a girl’s week out. Shopping, a play at the Opera house and a cocktail each night. Did I mention visiting a favourite stationery shop and a couple of book stores.

Planning

Looking forward to refreshing my blog posts in the next year. Looking at content and/or format. Reading more Australian writers in 2025 and books from writers of other countries. I will not be interacting with any political news from America. When someone asks me if I’m American, as they often do because of my accent, I am going to tell them I used to be. Fully embracing my Australian citizenship from now on. 🇦🇺

There is some exciting news to look forward to in 2025 but I will talk about that more once it is confirmed.

30 Minute Friends (a random person one chats with for a short period of time in a shop, bus stop, restaurant, etc. A pleasant chat before moving on with your day)

Renay is a lovely woman who runs a cafe in a country town in Tasmania. I have chatted to her when my sister was here and we visited her cafe. We were sitting outside by the river, trying to spot a platypus (wrong time of day) .Our photo workshop had us going there for lunch one day and Renay chatted to us. This last week I took my friend and the three of us had a few laughs.

Question to ponder

Did any of you have a 30 min friend this week? Or

What was your favourite reading/bookish moment of the week ?

Have a good week. Do something fun.

Yes, I have lived in Australia for 36 years and am Australian but I am also an American citizen with some vested interest there, so I am quite concerned about this election. I fear watching you tube so much about the candidates keeps me from reading a lot, or taking photographs or stabilising my mental health at times. Like much of the world, we are hoping Kamala Harris wins and 2025 will see D Trump paying for his crimes, then disappearing, maybe into prison.

I have been reading though. I will mention a couple of books and stories of the week. I reading the second story in New York Trilogy by Paul Auster. It is entitled Ghosts. A very unusual tale as all the character names are colours. Mr Brown owns the detective agency but is old. His son, Mr Blue takes a job for Mr White who wants Mr Black observed at all times. He even rents an apartment across the street from Mr Black’s apartment and Mr Blue moves in. The story begins. The introduction states the story goes on for years. I’m not there yet so looking forward to how this all plays out.

I am listening to The Sweet Life in Paris written and narrated by David Lebovitz. I enjoyed the last book I read of his, L’Appart so much I thought I’d listen to more of his adventures. I learn so much about daily life from this book. Nothing major happens but I feel as though I am with him as he goes about his daily business.

I haven’t been to any book launches at Fullers during the past week but a couple are coming up. They are doing another program at the store which I think is lovely. Gorgeous behaving dogs come in and young children sit with them and read to them. A small group of children to one dog at a time. I hope to pop in sometime when this is happening.

I had a funny experience when visiting 10 Lives Cat Centre’s newest thrift shop. I was out on a long walk when I came across it. Inside I met and made one of my 30 minute friends. An 80 year old woman who was searching for a yellow toy for her budgie as he likes yellow evidently. Having owned budgies years ago and really liking them I asked her about hers. Blue with white wings. Nine yrs old.

He has the run of the house but he is on a schedule for going to bed at night. After he plays with his ‘tree’ with all his toys hanging from it, he is then told he has to go to bed where he is settled down for sleep. No idea how she does this.

But.. thebudgie often looks at her after hearing he must go to bed and says to the woman, “Getyourassouttahere!!” I wasn’t expecting her to say that and I cracked up. So funny. He then gets on her shoulder and puts his face against her neck and says “I love you.” His name is Harold. Evidently Harold was her father’s name who she only recently learned of through DNA. He went to Papua New Guinea in WWII and never returned. She never met him and he never knew of her. She named the budgie Harold as she thinks it is a way of sharing love with him through the budgie.

Just goes to show everyone has a story and I look forward to hearing more in the future through my 30 minute friends.

To finish up I will share a photo a friend did of our cat Cousin Eddie for Halloween. I really like it.

Meet Cousin Eddie.

All the best to everyone for the coming week. ❤️

It was another fairly busy week but I did have a few bookish things going on.

 One book launch, one library book, one audible book in progress and one kindle book for book club in progress.

 In life I had three gym sessions which were quite hard going after being away from the gym for almost six weeks. Monday Pilates, Wednesday training and Saturday 50 minutes of a slow jog on a treadmill at the gym. It felt good and I need to lose the couple of kgs I gained by travelling and then getting sick. Tomorrow will have me back there. It is also such a social place so I do enjoy going there.

 The book launch was in the café at Fullers Book shop and we had Danielle Wood interviewing Markus Zusak about his book Three Wild Dogs and the Truth.

 It was lots of fun as Markus has the best sense of humour and he had everyone laughing quite a bit at these crazy, big dogs he adopted from the pound. He doesn’t believe in the term “rescue”. They are simply pound dogs.

They are also awful dogs. Naughty dogs. They killed a possum, attacked his plumber, bit the piano teacher. I think there were more than a few raised eye brows in the room at his laughter at these really suspect dogs. They are big dogs too but he certainly loves them. Personally I have a problem with big aggressive dogs in households with children but I guess you’ll have to read his book to see what his own pet philosophy is. I won’t even mention what happened to the family cat.

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 The Kindle book I’m reading is Paul Auster’s New York Trilogy. It has been slow going. Good Reads describes it as:

‘”The New York Trilogy is the most astonishing work by America’s most consistently astonishing writer: three interconnected novels that exploit the riveting elements of classic detective fiction to achieve a radical new genre – a profound and unsettling existentialist enquiry in the tradition of Kafka or Borges. In each story the search for clues leads to remarkable coincidences in the universe as the simple act of trailing a man ultimately becomes a startling investigation of what it means to be human. The result is the modern novel at its finest which will shock, transfix and astound every reader.”

It should be an interesting discussion in November.

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The Audible book I’m listening to is Yellowface by Rebecca F. Kuang. Narrated by Helen Laser.

It is the story of two women writers. One is much more successful than the other and the less successful one is quite envious of the successful one.

 One day the two women are having lunch together and the successful author has finished her latest manuscript and is getting ready to send it off for publishing. It’s set to go.

 However as the lunch progresses ‘Successful author’ chokes on her lunch and dies. This is all in the first few pages. ‘Less successful’ author gets the idea to take the manuscript and turn it in as her own. She does this and the story takes off from there.

What is interesting though is the ‘successful author’ is Asian and there are a lot of Chinese references and mandarin language references. ‘Less successful’ author is not. The manuscript gets accepted however the fact checking now must begin as the publishers want to make sure they don’t publish the book with errors from the non Asian author. The book tours are being organised.

Publishers are really cracking down on those writers who write outside of their culture. This should be a roller coaster ride.

I also picked up a beautiful photography book from the library but I will do a separate post on it as this one is long enough.

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In other life news- photography has been a bit slow but I have put a few new photos up on Instagram (Here) of a couple photos from Cambodia.

 There is a photo club excursion coming up this coming week but I have a specialist appointment and cannot attend. Such a shame as it is a beautiful, private garden south of here. It looks beautiful. Maybe another time.

Peanny and Ollie are doing well. They are loving the warmer, sunny days of spring and love their runs after the postie bike from front yard to back yard and the rubbish trucks on Wednesday.  The road we live on winds past the front of our home and then around a curve and past the back of our yard. The dogs start in the front corner and run as fast as they can go to get to the back gate so they can see the motorbike and the rubbish trucks twice. It is very funny to watch. I am glad we have big, strong fences.

All the best to you for the coming week and I’ll leave you with Penguin’s look of the week.