This week has been pretty busy. Our Play Reading class on Tuesday continued with our Oscar Wilde theme. Not having been exposed to a lot of his work I have been enjoying it. We finished the play The Importance of Being Ernest which we all enjoyed. Then we watched the DVD of the play. It has so much humour in it. We are looking at the various types of writing Oscar Wilde produced. Serious, biblical, children’s writing to very funny and entertaining. We are really having an Oscar Wilde fest this term. We are currently reading Salome’.
******************************
I have begun War and Peace by Leo Tolstoy. What a genius this man was. I downloaded the audible version of it from audible.com and as I had a vintage Penguin Classics copy I thought I would read a long. However the two translations were very different with the Penguin Classic being much wordier.
I found the same translator on Kindle books and downloaded that copy for 99cents. Now we are in sync. I must say I am enjoying it quite a bit. Although I am only into Part II. The Napoleonic wars have just begun. I didn’t expect the humour from some of the characters and it hasn’t taken me long to jump into and start caring about everyone. A long ways to go yet.
(Narrated by Frederick Davidson, translated by Constance Garnett)
*********************************
Wednesday was our writing class. I took the bus into Hobart and walked down to the Tasmanian Writer’s Centre where our weekly (except the third Wed of each month) group is held. It is school holidays, it was sunny and a very pleasant day, though chilly, down on the waterfront. People everywhere. The best thing about the winters in Hobart is the sun shines almost every day. Really puts a different perspective on things. I noticed the big ice breaker Aurora Australis ship was in port. It is a large orange ship that goes regularly to Antarctica taking people and supplies. It is such an icon on our waterfront and I always enjoy seeing it when it is in port.
****************************************
I finished the Australian novel of The Golden Child by Wendy James. It is for our end of July book club meeting and I really enjoyed it. I will be looking forward to what the others thought of it. Lots of points for discussion. I had not heard of it before. It is about the bullying done online in a high school setting between so called friends. The ending really packed a wallop so I will say no more. It touched on many social issues that young people must deal with today and having read it I am glad there was no social media when I was in high school. I thought the book was well written, the characters very believable and as I said, I loved the ending. If you get a chance to have a quick read I can certainly recommend it.
*****************************************
The weekend ahead is looking a bit quiet at this point. There is currently a documentary called Kedi, about seven cats in Istanbul whose lives are followed around the city. It is playing at our local State Cinema in Hobart. Having visited Istanbul not that many years ago and seen all the street cats I am looking forward to seeing how this film goes. We ate outdoors at many restaurants while there and often ended up putting half our plate of food on the ground under the table for the cats while the waiters backs were turned. I hope to see this very soon.

Winter continues here. I am planning to keep reading War and Peace at least an hour a day until I finish it. So far so good.
How did your week go? Any good books happening this week?
Until next time, the Penguin and I wish you well.