TravellinPenguin

A Bit Late with Simply Sunday

Posted on August 5, 2019 by TravellinPenguin

Snip20190720_1 Well, I finished The Other Typist by Suzanne Rindell. I listened to it on audible and the narrator, Gretchen Mol did an excellent job reading this book.

Penguin and I immersed ourselves in 1920s New York City where this story takes place. Rose, a plain orphan girl grows up and finds work in a New York City precinct police station in the typing pool. She resides in a share room in a boarding house that is run by a WWI war widow with a small child. She doesn’t fit in with the others and keeps to herself. A real plain Jane. She enjoys her work as she listens to criminals give statements, records what they say and types it up. She is infatuated with the Sergeant who oversees much of what goes on day to day and doesn’t entirely trust the more arrogant Lieutenant who is really in charge.

One day a very sophisticated young woman, Odalie, arrives as a typist in the pool. Dressed to the nines, a fashionable bob, all heads turn. Rose becomes very infatuated with Odalie, envies her appearance, her character, her fashion sense. She is really taken in by Odalie.

The story is how Odalie ingratiates herself into Rose’s life and completely takes over. Rose moves into her beautiful hotel suite that Odalie lives in, goes out to illegally run boozy clubs, wears her clothes. Odalie becomes Rose’s life. Where does Odalie get her wealth? hmmm

The story is told in hindsight as Rose relives her life from the time she met Odalie to her current circumstances. She is in a mental institution/jail. How did she get there? What happened? You will have to read the book to find out. No spoilers here.

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bluejumper I found this to be an average though unforgettable read. I enjoyed the time period very much. I enjoyed the location. I thought the tale was quite predictable as events unfolded with a few red herrings thrown in. It was entertaining to listen to through bluetooth as I drove around running errands. It was worth 30 minutes of listening to at night as I set the sleep timer before I would drift off to sleep. I was interested in Rose and Odalie but I really did wonder why Rose couldn’t see what was coming. It was quite obvious. I had many theories and I kept listening because I wanted to know if I was right. I was most of the time but not always.

It was just fun fiction without too much energy having to be spent. If this is your type of book you might enjoy it. I did.

I have been studying photography a great deal. Studying Photoshop and learning how to blur backgrounds, clone out unwanted items in the photo, how to change colours, brighten landscapes.

Charlie 2 copy My friend who has an adopted greyhound named Charlie had a play date with Odie at the beach. I had him involved in a photoshoot and was very happy with the results. So were his owners. We have another play date scheduled for later this week.

I’ll try to get some of my travel photos up for Thursday or Friday this week. I have been sorting them into categories. Doors and windows, portraits, street scenes, landscape, animals. It has been fun. I’ve even changed some backgrounds in some of them.

The weather here has been a warm wintry 12 or 13 degrees C during the day which has been very pleasant for photography and walking my dogs. I’ll share a couple of photos I took of them yesterday. They were happy to run around in the reserve behind our house.

I’ve started a new book. A travel diary by an Australian author. Actually she is from the UK but now lives here in Hobart and I am enjoying her daily diary she kept during her travels in Australia just after 9/11 in 2001. More on that later. So until then, say hello to Penguin, Odie and Molly.

Molly 2 — 14 year old Molly (Molly Melodrama as a friend calls her)

Simply Sunday

Simply Sunday–21 July

Posted on July 21, 2019July 21, 2019 by TravellinPenguin

It has been a quiet week here (for a change). Our Play Reading class is about to start a new play next week. Good Reads describes it as: Snip20190720_6

“Ring Round the Moon by. Jean Anouilh, Christopher Fry (translator). NYTs Brooks Atkinson called it a work “of many moods… wistfully romantic, satirical, fantastic…” To make his points about love, Anouilh invented a story about twin brothers — Frederic, shy and sensitive, and Hugo, heartless and aggressive. To save Frederic from an unhappy marriage, Hugo distracts him by bringing to a ball a beautiful dancer who entrances everyone. The twins are played by the same actor. “Beautifully translated with wit and grace and style,” said critic George Jean Nathan, that plays “like a theatrical miracle.”

Jean Anouilh – June 23, 1910. He died 23 June, 1987.

“Anouilh was born in Cérisole, a small village on the outskirts of Bordeaux and had Basque ancestry. His father was a tailor and Anouilh maintained that he inherited from him a pride in conscientious craftmanship. He may owe his artistic bent to his mother, a violinist who supplemented the family’s meager income by playing summer seasons in the casino orchestra in the nearby seaside resort of Arcachon.”

I think we will have quite a bit of fun reading this. I didn’t know Stephen Fry translates pieces of literature. I’ll let you know how we go with this.

BOOKS:

I finished the Australian book, My Mother, A Serial Killer by Hazel Baron with Janet Fife-Yeomans. Wow, what a tale. I will never forget these characters. I found it most interesting to follow the family dynamics throughout their lifetimes with everyone knowing the crimes Dulce, the mother, committed and how their children coped with this knowledge. I thought it was written very thoughtfully and although the crimes were committed, I didn’t feel any of it was sensationalised for the reader. Great journalistic reporting.

I am now reading the book, The Other Typist by Suzanne Rindell, published in 2014. I remember reading reviews about it at the time. It sounded interesting so I picked it up where it has been sleeping on my bookshelves since.

I am planning a real crackdown on my TBR piles of books. Looking at a serious challenge for the remainder of this year and the first half of next year. We’ll see. More on that later.

The Good Reads blurb is as follows:

“A haunting debut novel set against the background of New York City in the 1920s…

Confessions are Rose Baker’s job. A typist for the New York City Police Department, she sits in judgment like a high priestess. Criminals come before her to admit their transgressions, and, with a few strokes of the keys before her, she seals their fate. But while she may hear about shootings, knifings, and crimes of passion, as soon as she leaves the room, she reverts to a dignified and proper lady. Until Odalie joins the typing pool.

As Rose quickly falls under the stylish, coquettish Odalie’s spell, she is lured into a sparkling underworld of speakeasies and jazz. And what starts as simple fascination turns into an obsession from which she may never recover.”

I love the time period where it takes place, the early 1920’s. I love that it is in New York city. I love remembering about typewriters!! I loved typewriters. I loved the sound they make, the way the type is imprinted onto the white, crisp paper. The nostalgia of it all.

I remember when in university doing my Masters degree in the early 1970’s at Central Michigan University. I had an electric typewriter. It was a high school graduation gift.

I had a report due and spent quite a bit of time on it. I thought everything was fine. Content, structure, you know what I mean. It was handed back to me to do it again. “Why?” I asked. “Clean the letter /e/ on your typewriter. It has a slight smear on it. You cannot deliver professional reports if the keys on your typewriter aren’t clean. So off I went, cleaned the key, typed the entire thing again and turned it in.

Younger people out there….. you have no idea.

I am also reading a library book that came in about the early days and photographs of Annie Leibovitz. I’ll do a separate post about this book. It is called Annie Leibovitz: The early years, 1970 – 1983. I’m finding it very interesting at this point.

The rest of the week went by with my dogs, cats and I pretty much holed up. Mr. Penguin was house sitting for a friend. The wind howled into Tasmania from the Southern Ocean for five consecutive days. We had quite a bit of rain earlier in the week. Lots of snow on the mountain. I won’t take the dogs out in the strong winds because there are too many gum trees around here and the branches are known for dropping when you least expect it.

We watched some Netflix, read, studied photography, fed and watered animals and cleaned up hairballs and litter. There is always laundry and Odie had a bath and is very fluffy this week.

That’s our week. Hope yours was under control. See you later.

And just for fun…….

Snip20190720_3 — Mr Penguin gets home from house sitting and Cousin Eddie helps him unpack.

Snip20190720_4 — Odie has a bath and becomes a big fluff ball.

Snip20190720_5 — This is how we spend cold, very windy nights here.

images — We’re all staying warm. See you next time.

Fiction

Top Ten Tuesday- 16 July

Posted on July 16, 2019July 12, 2019 by TravellinPenguin

Do you believe it’s mid-way through July already? It’s time for a Top Ten Tuesday and the subject for today is Ten Bookish Characters in Books (that I have read and enjoyed).

I found it interesting that these bookish characters I enjoyed spent time with me when I was younger. Though I still revisited several of them in later life.

Snip20190712_2 1. Anne Frank loved her books in the Diary of Anne Frank. It surprises me how much I think of and remember her and often wonder what would have become of her had she not perished in the Holocaust. Snip20190712_3

2. Atticus Finch is a bookish character that many of us know from To Kill a Mockingbird by Harper Lee. I loved him in both the book and the film. Gregory Peck certainly did justice to him in the film version. A lovely character.

3. Elizabeth Bennet and all of her sisters, for the matter in Pride and Prejudice by Jane Austen were certainly bookish characters. I often wonder how much more we would all read if we didn’t have tv, Netflix and the internet. It becomes harder and harder to focus on books at times of tiredness when these are Snip20190712_4 available. We must be strong! Snip20190712_6

4. Liesel Meminger shared her reading with us in the wonderful story of The Book Thief by Markus Zuzak. What a great book that is.

5. Jay Gatsby had that huge library in The Great Gatsby. He must have been a reader to have had so many books in his home. Another wonderful tale I have read a couple of times. F. Scott Fitzgerald.

6. Francie Nolan in A Tree Grows in Brooklyn and other characters in Betty Smith’s books were readers. Francie would sit on the fire escape outside of her Brooklyn apartment and read during the summer days. A character I continue to love. Snip20190708_5

7. Jo March in Little Women by Louisa Mae Alcott. Who doesn’t remember the influence she had on our reading as a young person. I can still see her sitting by the fireplace reading her books. An image Snip20190708_7 that will remain forever.

8. Clare Abshire in the Time Traveller’s Wife by Audrey Niffenegger. Although she was an artist I will always remember her as a very old woman sitting in her chair when her husband revisits her once more, reading a book and sees Snip20190712_7 her sitting there. An unforgettable image.

9. Dorothea Brooke in Middlemarch by George Elliot. She had such high hopes of working with that awful husband of hers that she thought she would assist. She was most certainly a reader. That early life was certainly a disappointment. Snip20190712_8

10. This is one non-fiction character who sat in his study with his wife Helen and good friend Seigfried Farnon in front of a roaring fire reading their veterinary journals and books. I’m referring to the well known veterinarian, James Herriot. I remember the scene fondly from the wonderful series with Christopher Timothy playing the lead role. Mr. Penguin and I went to Thirsk in the early 1970’s to tour the areas the books and series mentioned. We were fortunate enough to meet the wonderful James Heriott in the flesh. We visited his surgery along with about 12 other people and chatted to him. We saw the little border terrier that he is often pictured with and he signed our

Snip20190712_1 — James Wight, the real James Herriot

book. It was unforgettable to us.

What an eclectic collection of travels through wonderful books and characters this little meme has been. Snip20181102_18