Category: Fiction

(Quote by Charlotte Carpenter)

It has been awhile since I was here but wanted to wish everyone well for the new Year and hope your Christmas is/was going well. We aren’t much of Christmas people anymore. We do enjoy the day but our priority is giving funds to the local animal welfare groups in our city.

Yesterday I took Ollie and Peannie to the dog beach. After a few months of rehab, Ollie’s leg has healed enough he can play with other dogs. They had so much fun and really wore themselves out. They both came home and crashed out. I think they had smiles on their faces.

I finally finished the book Flights by Olga Tokarczuk. Because I took so many notes on my Kindle Scribe it took me a long time to read it. The next book on my list is Zadie Smith’s book Fraud. I’ve not read her before but have heard so much about her. I will also be choosing a random book off my shelves to begin. I will randomly select three books and choose one of the three to get stuck into. I will need to speed up my reading or allow more time to get through all the books coming up in 2024. I am not the fastest reader in the world.

With my eye sight being so low now in my left eye I look like a budgie, focusing on the print with my right eye.

I find kindle books much easier and faster to read as I can adjust the font size so I think the majority of my book club reads will be kindle and I will also try to mop up more TBRs from my shelves.

Earlier in December I met my good friend from Port Macquarie in Sydney for 5 days.

She and I saw the Dictionary of Lost Words by the Sydney Theatre Company at the Opera house. We enjoyed it very much and laughed at all the big groups of people around us in the audience. They were all book clubs. How fun would that be. Your whole book group goes to the Opera house.

I also spent some time with my photography friend who lives in Sydney that I missed when in Sydney the end of May because she came down with Covid. It was a fun week but I was glad to leave on the 8th as Sydney was 41 C (105.8 F) that day. We went to Central station that morning and boarded a train for the 6 hr journey to Port Macquarie. I enjoyed the trip but it is S L O W ! So many stops.

I stayed for a few nights with my friend. I have never been there before. It is a beautiful city.

The highlights were attending the Glass House performing arts centre to see the indigenous dance group, Bangarra. It was excellent performance and the dancers are incredible. We also had lunch at the Koala hospital grounds that includes the historic Roto house. Just beautiful. I adopted a koala for a year while there and receive mail outs about how Roto-Jazz is doing.

wrap this up with some of the phone photos from the last month . I didn’t take my big camera as my friend and I spent time at theatre (no cameras allowed), shopping (just a nuisance when holding ags) and having a cocktail every night, (takes up too much space on those tiny tables).

This year had it ups and downs, as usual so I look forward to the clean slate of a new year. I also look forward continued chatting with my blogger friends who I have enjoyed very much this past year. Here’s to the next year into our world of the unknown.

……I will never finish. (Maud Casey)

Hi everyone. I had a fun bookish and theatre week again this week.

Books I’m reading now: Homework by Tassie author Helen Hayward. I went to the launch of this book Thursday night. The blurb on the back states-

When Helen Hayward had her two children in London, 25 years ago, she found looking after them easy. Loving and looking after her kids was straightforward. However loving and looking after her home was not. She had long been instructed to put her career first. So she did. Yet what to do with the mushrooming laundry by the bathroom door? And what about if she actually liked cooking? Home Work is a series of personal essays motivated by three questions. 

1. Is there an art to running a home?
2. Can it be a satisfying thing to do?
3. Has the work we do around the home ― which accounts for roughly a 1/4 of our waking hours ― something important to teach us about life itself?

It is quite a fun read and she raises some interesting questions.

Friday night saw our end of year all Fullers book group members get together at Fullers book shop with drinks and nibbles. It was also announced what books we’ll be starting the year off next year.

The Fraud by Zadie Smith kicks off February. Followed by 2023 Booker Prize winner Prophet song by Paul Lynch. The Sri Lankan tale of Chai Time at Cinnamon Gardens by Shankari Chandran and Question 7 by our local Booker prize winning author, Richard Flanagan. I am looking forward to reading all of them.

I am still working my way through Olga Tokarczuk;s book Flights. There is so much in it I don’t think it is a book that can be rushed.

I am also travelling through audio with the 125cc Honda trip of the 73 yr old man, Simon Gandolphi, riding from Mexico to Tierra del Fuego at the bottom end of Chile. This is the book I listen to in the car and when I can’t sleep so it will take awhile to finish it.

To end the week Mr P and I enjoyed a 50 yr anniversary if the song, Tubular Bells at the Theatre Royal. It was a fabulous, amazing 60 minute piece of music by two musicians who are incredibly talented. I remember when Tubular Bells first came out in 1973. It was the beginning of a lot of electronic music at the time. The two musicians in one hour played six guitars, four keyboards, two sets of drums, a mandolin, a glockenspiel and a set of tall pipes with a mallet. The lighting matched the music. It was a full house and an exuberant audience. Such fun. Last night was their final performance after 15 years, 500 performances in 20+ countries. We loved it. Wonderful they ended their run in Australia’s oldest theatre, our historically beautiful Theatre Royal. (I might add Tubular Bells was played in the movie The Exorcist which I have never seen nor wanted to see)

On that note 🎶🎶🎶🎶 I will leave you for a couple of weeks. Tomorrow I fly to Sydney for the annual Girl’s week out my friend and I share every year. A week of theatre at the opera house one night (A Dictionary if Lost Words is the play), some shopping, maybe a gallery, a book shop and two, and cocktails in the evening.

I also plan one day seeing my photography mate who I went to see in June for 5 days but she had Covid and we missed each other. That trip became a bust except I did enjoy Sydney.

On Friday we do the six hour train to Port Macquarie , where my friend lives, and attend the Bangarra dance performance in their event center, The Glass House. I may be able to get to the Koala hospital there which I would find very interesting. Then home on the Tuesday. A fun packed 9 days.

As my second planned photography workshop in July fell apart with jy health, I am hoping all goes well for this third attempt. 🌻

I am also looking forward to returning home and spending a leisurely, quiet Christmas with Mr P, our dogs Ollie and Peanut and our cats Grizzy and Cousin Eddie.

Looking forward to following my blogger friends and see what you’re reading and doing this month. We all send you our best.

…is the ability to plug into the shared wisdom of mankind.

I had a very bookish week this past week. I began the book Flights by Olga Tokarczuk. It won the International Booker in 2018. As I began it I immediately became confused so had to google a few reviews. From that I learned the book is comprised of 116 vignettes if the world of travel and those who are constantly on the move in our world. Knowing this I am now sorted. I need to finish it for Feb book group so I will stroll through this book to uncover its secrets. I have not read this author’s work before but the Guardian states that she is a household name in Poland.

I attended a book launch of Ian Terry’s photographic historical trip of George Augustus Robinson at Fullers during the week. Uninnocent Landscapes.

Together with over fifty sharply observed and carefully crafted black and white tritone images, Uninnocent Landscapes features an introduction by Tasmanian art historian, curator and essayist Greg Lehman and essays by Rebecca Digney, Roderic O’Connor, Nunami Sculthorpe-Green and Ian himself. These provide an invitation for open and honest dialogue to better understand the past and current impacts of invasion and colonisation of lutruwita in general and of George Augustus Robinson’s ‘Friendly Mission’ in particular. The conversation was facilitated by Stephanie Cahalan, non-fiction writer and researcher. (Fullers event blurb)

For more than two years Ian Terry followed the route of George Augustus Robinson’s 1831 Big River Mission, which is credited with ending frontier violence in Van Diemen’s Land. Accompanied by 13 Aboriginal envoys, Robinson walked around central Van Dieman’s Land before meeting 26 survivors of the Lairmerrener and Paredarerme people. He promised them safety if they stopped fighting the colonists. They met with Governor Arthur in Hobart shortly after and were transferred to Flinders Island, where almost all died.

Ian’s project was to photograph the landscapes Robinson passed through as an act of truth-telling about colonisation and dispossession, and acknowledgement that his fortunate life in lutruwita/Tasmania comes at the expense of Aboriginal Tasmanians. (Tas Museum)

It was a very well attended, interesting evening.

I also went to Theatre Royal Thursday evening with a friend to see another bit of history from Tasmania.

Jane Franklin and the Rajah quilt, the story of ex governor Sir John Franklin and his wife Lady Jane Franklin.

Another enjoyable evening.

Other things to share below:

A bit of Hygge set up at home next to my reading chair to get me through dreary days.

And…

Photography this week was a bit limited by life being too busy and unpredictable weather. I had watched a you tuber photographer, Mark Denny talking about making photos into stories. The main photo is the overall landscape and the follow up 2 or 3 photos make up the parts. I will leave you here with the story of the reserve behind our house.

Stop and notice the tiny items in the world.

What fun thing did you do this week week? 🌲🌲🌲