Category: Fiction

I’m back with the living after three weeks of fighting with my left eye. I won’t go into the details as I once heard Germaine Greer say, One should not use body parts in conversation once over the age of 50 or you’ll be very boring. So I’m standing by that.

I have managed to get a bit of reading done but not a lot. I gave up on The Animals in that Country. by Laura Jean McKay. It is for the July book group. I read 50% and for me it was just irritating and I am the first to admit I do not appreciate books where things happen to animals. I have met others though who really enjoyed the book so I will leave it to individuals to form their own opinion.

I had to pull my Kindle out of a drawer to read the past couple of weeks as I spent a lot of time in dr waiting rooms and I appreciated the large font. I have been enjoying the book, The Day the World Came to Town by journalist, Jim DeFede. He writes about the history of the small town of Gander, Newfoundland and Labrador, Canada in the wake of the September 11th attacks. The small city embraces the welfare of the many people stranded there from all the planes that could not enter American air space. It is a wonderfully uplifting story of the kindness of people when life gets tough.

For our shared reading group at Fullers on Monday nights we are reading Dubliners by James Joyce and I really like these short stories. We read four stories each week and discuss them a bit once finished with each story.

I also attended a couple of book launches the past two weeks at Fullers. One was Chloe Hoopers Bedtime Story which was quite moving. She tells the story of her husband who was diagnosed with a terminal type of leukaemia and the doctors said chemo would not be effective. She had to work out how to tell her children their father was going to die. She has written an entire book of grief and children and how to approach it. However, our audience felt better once she told us her husband’s cancer mutated six months later, chemo did become effective and he is now in remission. I hope it lasts.

The second book launch was Wendy Davis introducing her book, Don’t Make a Fuss: It’s only the Claremont Serial Killer. In 1990, Wendy was working as a social worker in Palliative Care in a Western Australian hospital. Her office was located in a more isolated area of the hospital and when a telecom worker asked to use the toilet (in uniform) she didn’t think anything of it. Suddenly though he had grabbed her from behind, put a cloth over her mouth and was dragging her towards the bathroom. She fought hard, kicked him harder and he apologised to her and ran out. She was able to get to a nurses station and report it to police and the telecom office. But, being female and the police being as they were, no one took her seriously. Telecom made excuses for him and continued to employ him. The police never took a statement and sent her home with her husband, who was also employed in the police department. She was very traumatised and eventually moved to Tasmania. Then in 2012 (I believe it was), she heard on the news that this same man had been arrested as WA’s worst serial killer having raped and killed several young women. Suddenly she was contacted and gave evidence in his trial. The killer had gained more confidence and escalated in his attacks on women since her experience.

Her book details how she felt by not being taken seriously, and how the whole case affected her. She joined a Victim’s Support group in Tasmania when flashbacks came back to her upon hearing the news he had been arrested. The psychologist suggested she keep a journal, which she did and that became the book. You could hear a pin drop in the audience as she recounted the experience. Her message, is to definitely make a fuss and make sure authorities take your story seriously. I am sure police practises have changed (hopefully) in dealing with assaults on women in our current times but women still need to be assertive in these types of situations of assault or bullying.

The Telecom company eventually apologised profusely to her but nothing more ever came from the police department.

That pretty much wraps up my last three weeks of bookish news. I hope to get a few more things read in the coming three weeks. However it might still be slow going.

I will leave you with one of my photographs of some beautiful Tasmanian fungi.

Good morning. There has been quite a bit going on and I have not been able to write much over the past week or so. First off I had a trabeculectomy on my left eye and presently, I have no vision in it but do have heavy duty eye drops and pain I am struggling with. Having to get used to reading with one eye hasn’t seen me do a lot. It is going to take awhile to settle down and we don’t know if the vision will come back.

The saddest part of the procedure is I had to cancel the order I had with Motorworks for my 150cc Italian scooter due to arrive in Australia in August/September. I don’t feel I should be on the roads with one eye.

I did finish The Promise by Damon Galgut and I am hoping to get to Wednesday night’s book group to discuss it. I think it was a powerful book about families, interactions around funerals, dysfunctionality all against four decades background of South African history. There is a lot packed into this book. I can’t say it was a fluffy read by any means and hard to enjoy but the characters were well drawn, the climate within the family around the funerals and the ramifications of the promise during those decades made for quite a riveting story. I’m looking forward to the discussion with the others.

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The four books I have enjoyed very much are the motorbike travel novels I downloaded from Audible by Sam Manicom. Sam is a British motorcyclist who spent six years riding around the world on his BMW motorcycle. It is one of the best travel series I have listened to. He wasn’t an experienced biker when he decided he was going to travel the length of eastern Africa in the 1980s. The first book is called Into Africa. The deciding factor for him to begin was the Ethiopian war had ended even though there was still quite a bit of unrest around him in the other countries. Sometimes naivety can be useful.

What is so good about his writing is the amazing detail that he balances out throughout the books regarding history, terrain, the people, the cities and villages and the people he meets. He has many really interesting experiences, both positive and negative and frankly, I am surprised he survived.

The second book is Under Asian Skies as he travels from Australia northwards to Asia and much of that book covers India, Pakistan and Iran. Again the same format. By now he has met a female partner and she is travelling with him as pillion.

The third book is their trip that his German girlfriend, Birgit goes on with him, Distant Suns. He asks her to continue with a new adventure but she agrees only if they can go through Africa again and she can ride her own bike. Now we have her on a BMW with no experience getting her first miles in Africa. It is the later 80s by now, almost the 90s. She turns out to be a great navigator, and has the social skills to get through some very tricky border crossings. Once they arrive in South Africa they travel to Brazil and ride to the southern tip of Chile into Patagonia, back to Argentina and north along the pacific highway into Peru and up through Central America. Their trip in the third book ends at the Mexican border.

The fourth book I’m currently listening to, Tortillas to Totems, has them riding throughout Mexico and into California then exploring the American west and their goal at this point is Alaska. The point I’m at now is they are soon to go into Canada on their way to Alaska but it is almost September and I think the weather might be a concern as they head to Alaska. They have two months to spend in the USA, then will head back to the UK.

The detail of his memory in these four books is quite astounding, however he said Birgit kept scrupulous diaries and he noted quite a bit down too. I admire travellers who can do that. I find by the end of the day when I travel I am so tired, I can barely write down the name of the town or hotel I am in.

While I have lain in bed with my eyes closed for several day, my cold compresses over my eye, I am vicariously living their trip and it has really kept my spirits up.

Another reason books are so important in contributing to life in so many ways.

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In the meantime, I am picking my way through The Year of Magical Thinking by Joan Didion because I am attending a Theatre Royal performance of it in June.

It is described as:

This highly personal account of loss through the lens of hope unpacks a surreal and overwhelming time in Didion’s life as she faces the sudden loss of her husband John, and later her daughter Quintana. Deeply moving, sometimes funny, and ultimately joyful, this is one woman’s story of the journey to find acceptance, and the lessons learnt in letting go.

After a critically acclaimed sellout premiere season in Melbourne, this production is a must-see for all fans of great writing and drama.

The Year of Magical Thinking is presented by special arrangement with Samuel French Inc., and Concord Theatricals Company. This production was developed for the stage by FortyFiveDownstairs.

Upcoming things to look forward to:

My photographer friend in Sydney and I are planning a road trip in NSW in early August for approx 10 days to share photography skills together. I am really looking forward to that, one eye or not! Fortunately I look through my camera with my right eye and that works well.

We were going to have gone in July but she has some things happening in July and I see that Fullers Book Shop is hosting Geraldine Brooks at the Theatre Royal on the 27th of July to launch her book Horse. She is in conversation with Heather Rose. Our book group will be reading Horse towards the end of the year. I am really looking forward to both.

This is as far forward as I care to think at the moment. As I go along I am enjoying time at home with family. Mr. Penguin is just now off his crutches and driving again after six weeks recovering from his third hip replacement.

Our dog Ollie, has had a torn ligament in his back leg and is on restricted activities. That is fun. Have you ever tried to restrict the activity of a Jack Russell terrier?

Now I am laid up just a bit, but we all deal with health issues pragmatically here. It is a part of aging at times and we just focus on what we can do and the good things around us. That means not following any awful news or interacting with others about it. We were very happy with our federal election results and that kept us happy too.

You just never know what is around that next bend in the road do you? You just keep riding.

I have been reading a bit lately and I will tell you about the travel books by the same author in a post to come. I am not quite finished with the second one but enjoying it very much. More information on that to come.

I also have some new books to share and I need to continue with the book group read of The Promise by Damon Galgut. More on that too later.

But for today, I have been learning a bit more with my camera with the help of a good friend in Sydney. We are planning a road trip with our cameras hopefully the end of July. I will fly to Sydney then we will do a New South Wales road trip with our cameras. I am looking forward to it very much. But more on that later too.

For this Sunday I will leave you with the following photos.

I drove from Hobart south to Police Point and then stopped in Dover. There was a rally of old mustang cars zooming around down there and I watched them go by as I set my tripod up on the side of the road overlooking the Huon river. It was a pleasant day out. My Sydney friend encourages me to have a Pam day as she does with her Judy days. That means you get all the camera gear loaded into the car and spend a day away from the world enjoying the opportunity to take photos of places we haven’t investigated lately. One might also call it a mental health day.

I guess this post wraps up the week. I’ll keep reading and post up some bookish news next time. Stay well.