Category: Fiction

Everybody walks past a thousand story ideas every day. The good writers are the ones who see five or six of them. Most people don’t see any.”  Orson Scott

Books

I am having a lot of winter fun journaling with my new desk space. I have a new bright lamp arriving soon too. 

Keeping track of what I want to do/read/photograph on a really cold, blowy winter’s day is great fun. I do some junk journaling too and play with a couple of wonderful sticker books I have. I even got my fountain pen filled with ink again.

I recently acquired Julia Cameron’s latest book, Walking In This World. I can’t tell you what it is about yet but once into it I will. 

I finished the book The Sea, The Sea by Iris Murdoch.  I am really glad I read it. There was so much in it. 

There is such a myriad of motivations that drive the protagonist, Charles Arrowby and the other characters that Iris Murdoch lays bare. There is human vanity, jealousy, and lack of compassion behind the various characters, especially Charles. The whole story is played out against the ocean from beautiful to terrifying. The ocean is a metaphor for Charles’ actions and mood. He varies from erratic, gentle, terrifying anger then calm.

I began the latest book by Charlotte Wood, an author who I like. Stone Yard Devotional but I can’t say anything yet as I only cracked the pages last night.

I did finish another short book by David Sedaris on audible.  It is titled Naked and it is both sad at times then hilarious.

 Sadness as he describes his mother’s death and funny when he visit a nudist colony. Non fiction memoir at its best is what Sedaris is known for.

I like hearing him talk about his family. His father and mother were unusual characters and he portrays them in both an exasperating and loving way especially as they age. They was so much dysfunction in that family between him and his siblings yet they all remained close.

He explains how hard it was growing up with OCD-compulsive behaviours.  For example he would get out of his chair at school and go over and lick the light switch, he had so many bizarre behaviours that he couldn’t control. He was bullied very much as a result of his behaviour. He spent time in his room making very high-pitched noises in his throat.  The behaviours were the only way he could comfort himself before the cycle began again.

 His visitation to a nudist colony retreat was very funny – both how he handled walking around nude and the descriptions of the others. 

 He is very good describing his observations of people which I love. I spend a lot of time going out and observing people  myself with my camera and although I don’t write about them I enjoy photographing them. 

Photography

 There is a Facebook page that is called Street Photos. Each day they take the best street photography posted in a 24-hour period and post up what they see as the best photos. 

 I submit two photos a day but have yet to be selected in the “best of”.  There are many excellent photographers on the site and people “like” the ones they think are worthy. It makes me really study how I take photos and I find they are getting better. 

Good photos of people have colour, gesture and light. They also need somewhat of a story or reason to exist. One also needs a good character, location and event. (See comment under a recent street photo I took above.

 The photo is good if you can get all six of those  features but it is very difficult.  It is more challenging if one doesn’t live in London, NYC, Venice or other beautiful cities.  One must work hard to find the equivalent in Hobart!  The biggest task is just to have that information in your head before you push the shutter. 

 I have been studying the book The Photography Storytelling Workshop by Finn Beales. It is a five-step guide to creating unforgettable photographs. I am taking lots of notes in the margins. 

So enough on books and photos.  

 Pets

We were at the vet’s again this week. We took our cat Grizzy for his final dental check after his big clean.  He is doing very well. Ollie goes every three months for an injection that hopefully keeps him mobile on his back, reconstructed leg. He is doing well and so far, no arthritis. He will be five years old in August already.

 Food

Yesterday I cleaned a few things that were hiding in the back of the refrigerator and found a bottle of Marion’s Kitchen Satay Sauce. I forgot it was there. She was a MasterChef contestant, winner?  I forget, from a few years ago and has a line of Asian style sauces and kits. I have used them once or twice before and they were good. 

I put some chicken, potatoes, carrots and onions into the slow cooker and all the sauce from the bottle and stirred it so everything is covered. The smell is wonderful as it is a really cold Sunday (10C  –  50F) as it is quite windy with the cold coming down from the mountain. It feels like 30.  S0 this is just what we will need later.

Your turn 😄🌻

 Let me know something fun you did this past week and we’ll keep the conversation going. 

 

Bye for now…

I’ve had a good week overall. I think I left off at Tuesday. Today is the King’s Birthday holiday. Can’t get used to the “king”. I forget at times the Queen is gone.

I was ready to go to my training session Wednesday but she had to cancel.So I stayed in and caught up on my reading of The Sea,The Sea. i was going to mention Charles again but found this lovely quote online under People also ask on google. Another Charles

“Charles is the central character in the book, its narrator and the definer of its perspective. He is selfish, arrogant, manipulative, prone to self-delusion, simultaneously intelligent and unwise, a glutton and a self-indulgent sensualist.”

He has discovered his young love from his youth lives nearby and he tries everything to get her back. Her husband presents as a bully and Hartley as he knows her is terrified of the whole situation. I listen to it for 30 to 60 minutes daily while doing puzzles on my iPad. So relaxing. This book really has characters you love to despise but can’t stop listening as I want to know how it all ends.

I was going to go to the gym Thursday but had to take our cat Grizzy to the vet first thing so he could get a dental done. Turns out two of his molars are side by side instead of one in front of the other. Weird but not doing any harm so didn’t need an extraction. However he has been put on a diet. He is 8 yrs old and weighs almost 10 kgs. (22 pounds).

But he does have shiny clean teeth.

Got busy with one thing and another and didn’t get there. I decided to have a long weekend of catching up on things.

I moved my desktop into the spare room that has a long desk that is part of a wall bed when the bed is in the wall. Fold the bed down and the desk disappears under it. My photography gear and books are now in there. There is pretty good light. Meanwhile the little desk it was on in the bedroom is my diary/journal writing table with a few art supplies on it. It is a nice change and quite motivating.

Yesterday was spent at Mt Field national park with three friends. We enjoyed the walk and took more fungi photos but not as many there as in previous spots. However I saw a pink robin. I have wanted to see one of those ever since I heard of them and never have. However the woman I was with was so excited she screeched and scared it off. I told my sister today if she had been with me and did that I would have popped her on the head but guess you can’t do that to friends.

We had a good time, the weather people were wrong and the predicted showers did not arise. Just so beautiful.

Well another week has disappeared and onto a new one. Back to the gym soon.

Hope all of you have a good one!

 We are having a beautiful winter here so far this year and there seems to be quite a bit of activity around.

 New Books-  Amor Towles new book has arrived and I’m looking forward to reading Table For Two. It is a series of six short stories which is a different format to his previous books I read; The Lincoln Highway and A Gentleman in Moscow. I have Rules of Civility but not read it yet. He is such a good writer.

 I just finished Flann O’Brien’s book At-Swim-Two-Birds. You must put the hyphens in the title but no idea why.

This book is very comical and I really enjoyed reading it but I have no idea what it is about and will have to read some reviews now from Good Reads readers to see what they got out of it. We’ll be discussing it in book group next week. 

 The new book group read is The Sea, The Sea by Iris Murdoch. I have only recently begun it. The blurb states:

 Winner of the Man Booker Prize 1978

Charles Arrowby has determined to spend the rest of his days in hermit-like contemplation. He buys a mysteriously damp house on the coast, far from the heady world of the theatre where he made his name, and there he swims in the sea, eats revolting meals and writes his memoirs. But then he meets his childhood sweetheart Hartley, and memories of her lovely, younger self crowd in – along with more recent lovers and friends – to disrupt his self-imposed exile. So instead of ‘learning to be good’, Charles proceeds to demonstrate how very bad he can be.

 I’m listening to an audible copy of it and it is narrated by Swazi-English actor Richard E. Grant. The narration is pretty good but he does seem to act it more in parts than just read it. I understand a few actors tend to do this with audible books from what I have heard from others. The character of Charles begins quite mildly as he wants to remove himself from the world and has bought a house in a remote seaside home in the UK. As I read along his true colours are beginning to merge and he is quite a misogynistic pompous ass.  His character is hard to like but others may disagree. I’m not that far into it yet so we’ll see how I go with him.

 On the weekend I went with a friend down to the Franklin Forest which is older growth forest and very beautiful. We were on a fungi hunt. As the group weren’t photographers but more of a land care group not much time was given to setting up tripods and getting good crisp photos of fungi.  I have now spent four days shooting fungi this winter and I am all fungi-ed out. 

 On the home front of paying more attention to some cooking (as Mr. P does most of the cooking and I want to get back into it more again) I made a very simple comfort meal of a Shepherds Pie. However it does not have a pastry bottom.

 I used one of those packets of seasonings you get in the supermarket. Like Maggi or something like that.

You have 500 grams of mince that you cook up on the stove with one chopped onion and one chopped carrot and the seasoning packet plus a bit of water. Directions are on the packet. While that is cooking you boil up four potatoes and then mash them with butter and salt/pepper if you like. Though the seasoning probably has a lot of salt in it.

 Put the mince mixture into an oven proof dish, spread the potato onto the top of it and cook at 180C for 20 minutes or so. Top it with shredded cheese if you like for another three or four minutes until the cheese melts and it is all done.

 Very easy and very good. We had enough for two evening meals with salad. 

 Those packets now come in so many flavours and if you don’t have all the seasonings on hand they are useful but we can’t use them all the time as I imagine they are higher in sodium and that isn’t good for heart health. But once  a week or so should not be a problem, if that.

 Today I went into town and after the gym did quite a bit of street photography.  I was using a wider angle lens (35mm) instead of 50 and my goal was to get more of the environment around the subject as to tell more of a story. I think I got some good ones but have not downloaded them yet.

Well that sums up the week so far. I hope all of you are well.

 By the way, I wanted to mention…as I follow several blogs and several of them are written by very prolific writers I am now only picking one post from each writer to read and comment on. I feel bad when so many people comment on my posts and I can’t get time to comment on theirs but a couple of you do quite a few posts a week and I don’t. So weekends will be the time I take to stay in touch with you and at least one, maybe two posts. I don’t get to as many books as many of you do.

 I enjoy Jinger’s format on the Intrepid Angeleno’s page ( https://intrepidangeleno.wordpress.com/).She writes about more than just books and I really enjoy that format as it is like getting a letter from a friend “back home”. Since we all have emails, text messages, etc I think I’m going to make my posts more like “old fashioned letters”. Thank you Jinger for the great idea. 

 All the best to all of you.