Author: TravellinPenguin

I won’t talk about this wonderful book The Labyrinth by Amanda Lowry too much as there are conversations everywhere online about this Australian Miles Franklin winner. Except to say I really loved it and felt sad when I finished. I loved the characters with all their flaws. I liked the fact the author didn’t go overboard in describing them yet they were well enough drawn I could see them in my mind. I loved the pace of the book. I loved how there weren’t tied up solutions to all of the issues shared by the various characters. It is a book I would recommend to others and wouldn’t mind reading it again. It will be discussed in more depth at our February book group and I look forward to that.

But it did have me researching labyrinths. I hadn’t thought about them before. Not at all. I had to see how they differed from mazes. One can get lost in a maze and the object is to enter it, then find your way out. A labyrinth doesn’t have tall shrubs at the edges. It is a designed path, often made of rocks where one can meditatively walk and then arrive at the centre where meditation can take place. It is calm and peaceful. You would not get lost in it.

I wondered if Tasmania had any labyrinths one could visit so I googled it and found one in a council bush reserve about 45 minutes from where I live. I live in the Cascades area. Potters Hill is across the river and south.

I thought as my first project of undiscovered Tasmania for 2022 I would visit and get a photo. Yesterday was the day I chose. It was warm out with a cool breeze. I followed google directions in the car and it took me to the front door.

I parked in a pullover at the bottom of a hill and followed the sign. No motorised vehicles allowed. I walked 400n metres up hill along a tree lined path. I saw many rosellas flying amongst the trees. Upon reaching my destination a large field opened up and to the right there it lay. There were swooping swallows everywhere around the trees. I had a 360 degree view of the land and water around me. If you look at the map you can see the amount of water around this area. I hope you enjoy the photos.

Who would have thought the first book of the year I explore turned out to be such an adventure. I have ideas of combining future books with photographic experiences if at all possible. It is something different that gives me thought. Enjoy the photos.

Like everyone, everywhere, time has slipped past quickly and it has been a busy time. I’m having a technology break over the holidays and will be back in January with new books, plans and possibly a project, hahaha. Those that know me will chuckle at that.

We are having an Icelandic Christmas this year. Our family is all in North America and friends have been catching up during the month. We will have a quiet dinner on Christmas Eve and on Christmas Day we have some presents for the neighbour kids and some new books for ourselves. We plan to read over the next few days.

Tasmania has opened up to the world as of the 15th Dec., and our Covid numbers, although not high, are increasing. Lovely to stay home and not run around with a mask all the time. Mr. Penguin has been enjoying the Australian author Chris Hammer and his crime books. I am reading the Labyrinth by Amanda Lohrey for the beginning of February’s book group at Fullers bookshop. Looking forward to it. I am enjoying this book very much.

There are new books to open as of tomorrow, some fiction, some non fiction and a photography book.

By the way, if you love Penguin books there is a new reference book called The Penguin Modern Classics Book (just out!) edited by Henry Eliot. It lists every Penguin Modern classic ever published with illustrations of all of the covers and lists at the back of the books year by year. (Kaggsy- it is written for you). The index is extensive too. I love it!!!

The Armchair Traveller has me listening to a book of short stories by a Haitian author as Haiti is the random country selected for me. More on that later.

Keeping this brief, I wanted to say how much I appreicate my online, bookish friends and although I never get a chance to comment on all the blog posts I read, I enjoy them and I am always close by seeing what you’re up to. Let’s hope 2022 has all of us staying well and moving forward and finding much to enjoy in our world that really is full of beauty. Sometimes we just need to look for it!

I might add, this photo regarding the Find Fullers bus ad competition saw me winning a $50.00 book voucher to their 101 year old shop I love so much.

I went to our end of the year Book Club Christmas get together the other night. Fullers book shop have 9 book groups of 12 people each. The event probably had close to 50 readers who turned up for drinks and nibbles at a lovely hotel in the city. We had a raging rain storm during the event with loud thunder which Tasmania rarely hears, lightning flashing past the windows and many areas around Hobart were flooding.

We calmly ate, chatted and then we had a ten questions trivia quiz about the books we read in a power point presentation. Book vouchers went to the top three who answer$20.00 book voucher to the store. It is always welcome.

Readers also had a survey to fill out before our end of year event and first and foremost we wanted to know what books were the most popular with the group. At the end of the event we were given a list of books for next year up until June, 2022. We were all itching to get that list. I am sharing all of it here with you.

The Group’s Most Popular Reads of 2021

I laughed at this list as my favourite book was City of Ghosts, followed by the Graham Swift then the Master and Margarita. Boy, am I ever out of step.

The list for 2022 is as follows:

February: Amanda Lohrey, “The Labyrinth” (2021) – Miles Franklin Winner / Tasmania
The Labyrinth is a hypnotic story of guilt and denial, of the fraught relationship between parents and children, that is also a meditation on how art can both be ruthlessly destructive and restore sanity. It also shows Tasmanian author Amanda Lohrey to be at the peak of her powers.

March: Abdulrazak Gurnah,  “After Lives” (2020) – Nobel Prize Winner / Tanzania
In 2021, Abdulrazak Gurnah was awarded the world’s highest literary honour, the Nobel Prize, for “his uncompromising and compassionate penetration of the effects of colonialism and the fate of the refugee in the gulf between cultures and continents.” His most recent novel, Afterlives, follows the interlinked stories of a group of friends in East Africa who live and work and fall in love in the shadow of a war that threatens to snatch them up and carry them away.

April: Niall Williams, “This Is Happiness” (2019) — Ireland
This Is Happiness is a tender portrait of a small Irish community – its idiosyncrasies and traditions, its paradoxes and kindnesses, its failures and triumphs – and a coming-of-age tale like no other. Luminous and lyrical, yet anchored by roots running deep into the earthy and everyday, it is about the power of stories: their invisible currents that run through all we do, writing and rewriting us, and the transforming light that they throw onto our world.

May: Louise Erdrich, “The Sentence” (2021) – Indigenous / Native AmericanLouise Erdrich, Pulitzer Prize and National Book Award-winning author (and bookshop owner), is widely acclaimed as one of the most significant Native American writers today. In The Sentence, a small independent bookstore in Minneapolis is haunted by the store’s most annoying customer. Flora dies on All Souls’ Day, but she simply won’t leave the store. In this stunning and timely novel, Erdrich creates a wickedly funny ghost story, a tale of passion, of a complex marriage, and of a woman’s relentless errors, and a bitter pandemic year many of us will never forget.

June: Damon Galgut, “The Promise” (2021) – Booker Prize Winner / South Africa

The winner of this year’s Booker Prize, The Promise is a taut and menacing novel that charts the crash and burn of an Afrikaans family, the Swarts. Punctuated by funerals that bring the ever-diminishing family together, each of the four parts opens with a death and a new decade. 
The characterisations are razor sharp, the dialogue dramatic, the action gripping. As we traverse the decades, accomplished author Damon Galgut interweaves the story of a disappointed nation from apartheid to Jacob Zuma.

July: Laura Jean McKay, “The Animals in That Country” (2020) – Arthur C. Clarke Winner / Science Fiction / Australia
As disturbing news arrives of a pandemic sweeping the country, hard-drinking, foul-mouthed grandmother Jean realises this is no ordinary flu: its chief symptom is that its victims begin to understand the language of animals — first mammals, then birds and insects, too. As the flu progresses, the unstoppable voices become overwhelming, and many people begin to lose their minds, including Jean’s infected son, Lee. Bold, exhilarating, and wholly original, The Animals in That Country asks what would happen, for better or worse, if we finally understood what animals were saying.

August (?): Sei Shonagon, “The Pillow Book” (1002) — Classic / Japan / Translation (depending if enough copies can be acquired).

Our Classic read of the year is The Pillow Book, a fascinating, detailed account of Japanese court life in the eleventh century written by a lady of the court at the height of Heian culture. Written at the same time as The Tale of Genji, this book enthralls with its lively gossip, witty observations, and subtle impressions of a vanished world.

In a final note, Fullers bookshop has another competition going. They have a large advertisement on the side of one metro bus that drives around Hobart. If you see it, snap a photo of it, send it in to them and each week they award a $50.00 gift voucher to the lucky winner. I spotted it this past week on my way to the gym. Snapped a photo, then photoshopped the beloved Penguin onto it and off it win. Here’s hoping!