Travellin' Penguin

Wow!  It seems the past week has gone quickly.  I’ve been looking at the books I want to focus on in the new year and throughout 2025. 

Adam’s group is reading 2666 by Bolaño and as I mentioned before I don’t know anything about it.

Well last night I listened to an hour You Tube video about it and I have decided I am not going to read it. I have read quite a bit of Book 1 of the 5 books. But it sounds like Book 3 is nothing except the rape of young women. Book 4 is about all the ways young women were killed.  I do not need this in my head so I am bowing out of Adam’s group until May when I see what book is picked them.

In the meantime the other group I was in,  but stopped in order to participate in Adam’s group is reading several Australian books and it looks very promising to fulfill wanting to read more Australian literature.

Rayne runs several groups through Fullers and they now meet in an historic hotel in the city in a separate room. It is a nice setting. I have contacted her to see if there is availability in one of those groups.

If so I’ll be reading the other doorstopper book over the summer, Praiseworthy by Alexis Wright. This book won both the 2024 Miles Franklin award and the Stella award.

Good Reads describes as:

Praiseworthy is an epic set in the north of Australia, told with the richness of language and scale of imagery for which Alexis Wright has become renowned. In a small town dominated by a haze cloud, which heralds both an ecological catastrophe and a gathering of the ancestors, a crazed visionary seeks out donkeys as the solution to the global climate crisis and the economic dependency of the Aboriginal people. His wife seeks solace from his madness in following the dance of butterflies and scouring the internet to find out how she can seek repatriation for her Aboriginal/Chinese family to China. One of their sons, called Aboriginal Sovereignty, is determined to commit suicide. The other, Tommyhawk, wishes his brother dead so that he can pursue his dream of becoming white and powerful. This is a novel which pushes allegory and language to its limits, a cry of outrage against oppression and disadvantage, and a fable for the end of days.

I’ll let you know if this goes ahead.

********************

Now for a bit of a palate cleanser-

I am listening to another David Sedaris book for some light relief. I do enjoy his audible books as he narrates them and having seen him twice at the Theatre Royal I can see him in my head as I listen. The current book I am enjoying is called:  Dress Your Family in Corduroy and Denim.  I really enjoy hearing him talk about his partner, his siblings and his parents. He does such a great job of portraying his father’s dialect. Makes me laugh. 

I have decided I quite like palate cleanser books. It is the book one reads between the more serious and thought provoking books and I plan on interspersing this through the more serious books I pick up in 2025. I usually call them a bit of a ‘fluffy’ book. Warm and comforting books or those that make me laugh.

********************

The other book I am reading (and this will surprise some of you. It certainly surprised me.) The book is called Arriving Late: The Lived experience of women receiving a late autism diagnosis by Jodi Lamanna.

This book is about older women learning they have autism at an advanced age. 

I debated whether to share this information or not but I might as well. It might encourage others. I have spent several hours over the past couple of months with a psychologist who specialises in adult autism. 

I now have a Support Level 1 diagnosis that didn’t surprise me as I always knew there was something there. I am not going to wave a flag about it or discuss it again on this blog. But it has explained a great deal to me around my communication with people, and interactions with others as well as closer relationships I have had and friends lost over many years. 

There is a great deal being published now about the masking women have done over the decades around autism or neuro-diversity that hides it. Usually it has been males who get the diagnosis as they present much differently to women.

I had to laugh as I now understand my obsession with collecting 3000 numbered Penguin books in six continents. Thankfully there are no second hand book stores in Antarctica. If only they’d not had numbers on their spines.

I have learned I am better at projecting expressively and not so great at listening and picking up a lot of body language of others as I merrily talk over them. Also the over the top interests in technology, photography, metal detecting, dog training, book collecting, lapidary, wildlife, fungi, insects, etc and studying almost everything known to man in every country on every planet.

There are three support levels for a diagnosis and I am no 1. Number 3 is much more severe and is often easily identified socially in our broader world. Level 1 and probably types of level 2 are better hidden.

So there you have it. Now having learned all of this I can begin to change the behaviours that give me grief and I am excited about that. Like the woman in the book states: it is just accepting who you are and understanding why you deal with life situations a bit differently.  What I am sad about is I am 75 yrs old and I wish I’d had this diagnosis 50 years ago but not much I can do about that now as not much was known about females with autism in the olden days.

I feel I am in good stead though with people like Temple Grandin, Grace Tame and Hannah Gadsby. My psychologist has suggested I read more about these women as well as other successful women who are neuro-divergent. I might but not rushing into it.

So let’s not dive any further into this. Like talking about body parts as an old lady, this could become quite boring too to others so it’s just another journey in life like the MS has been. I wish I could hit the lottery more easily as I seem to hit health issues over the years. 

I hope everyone has a good week and I, for one, am excited about 2025. 

🌻🌻🌻What can 2025 possibly bring? 🌻🌻🌻

Samuel Johnson

It’s been a very busy couple of weeks. I arrived home this past weekend after spending a fun week in Sydney with two of my closest friends. There are a few photos floating around on Instagram and I’ll pop a couple at the end.  

My computer completely bit the dust the day before I left. I run it into the ground really with all the software for editing photos and hammering emails to family and friends. It was time, so off it went to the Apple dealer to be destroyed and sent off to recycling. I was happy that Apple computers turned in after their use by dates do not go into landfill but are recycled into other goods. 

I read an interesting little book on the plane. A little hardcover of The Gentleman from Peru by André Acimen.  

A group of young people staying in Europe at a resort while the boat they are travelling in receives repairs. They notice an older gentleman who observes them daily. They invite him to join them and it turns out he has quite a relationship with one of them. It involves sunny days, young people enjoying themselves, a very pleasant European air. Then the mystery increases and some time travel emerges. . I read it in two sittings. I would have finished it but the two hour flight from Sydney wasn’t quite long enough. 

I mentioned earlier I had begun Yellowface awhile back by Rebecca Kuang. If you remember the protagonist wasn’t quite the writer compared to her friend who is a success with her writing. While at lunch the good writer chokes to death and the less successful writer steals the finished manuscript her friend was about to submit. Of course, it is a runaway hit and from then on the proverbial hits the fan. I picked it up again and finished it off. It is overall just an average read, I think. A bit predictable and I would have edited it more tightly if I had a chance. I got bored towards the end. There are quite a lot of repetitive thoughts occurring with our protagonist however I love the concept of the story but believe it’s been done before. 

The other book that has just entered my life might be more of a challenge. Adam, of the Fullers book group has just announced our book for February. Not only February but also March and April. The book of 900 + pages is one I’ve not heard of. It is called: 2666 by Chilean author Roberto Bolano. It’s a long book but is actually comprised of five shortish novels. Bolano was working on it when he died prematurely in2003 at the age of 50.  He was ill for awhile and was working on 2666 as a way to ensure his family’s financial security after his death. Initially, he wished for it to be published as five separate novels, but the decision was taken by his executors and publishers to consolidate the five books into one volume.

We will read parts 1, 2 and 3 for February. Then part 4 in March and part 5 in April. I have no idea what it is about and the cover is bizarre but I look forward to exploring new territory. I will get started on that soon.

I downloaded it on my Kindle scribe as I’m sure the book will be big and heavy with small print. My eyes don’t cope with small print anymore. I had a pleasant surprise a couple of days ago when I received an email that people who own a Kindle Scribe can now write and draw on the pages. They turn the writing into a note on the same page as the text and then move the text to accommodate the note. I love to scribble in margins. The email also stated that they are planning on increasing the size of the margins so there is more room to write. There is also a tab at the top of the page and if you click on it a page pops up with all the notes taken through the book. I think it will be great for book group as I can pop that page up and have all the notes in chronological order at a glance. You gotta love technology advances.

On that note I will move along here. Not much else exciting is happening this week. Maybe my trip to the dentist tomorrow but hopefully not too exciting. Our neighbour’s dog is coming over for the day as they have workmen at their home and they work so we are watching their labradoodle, Missy. She is quite active and I hope she wears my two terriers out completely. They will love it.

All the best for the rest of the week.

Sydney Harbour

I am about to begin my 15th girl’s week out as an annual event with a dear friend. We have so much fun visiting galleries, shopping, attending a play at the Opera house and having our nightly cocktail.

I arrived Friday as I wanted to visit another dear friend over the weekend. We had a lovely time and I spent time meeting her daughter and her grandson who helped me enormously with transport. It is always lovely to put a face to a name I hear a lot about.

Friday I was supposed to leave Hobart on Qantas at 11:35 but the plane was delayed until 3:30. Sydney was clouded in and I was afraid we wouldn’t be able to land but after circling around we did. It was pouring down and the Uber driver, a retired Romanian guy was lovely. He made sure I got right to the front door of the small hotel we are staying in. Traffic on Friday night black sale weekend, end of week traffic and in pouring rain is something else. Finally got into my hotel about 8 pm.

Met up with my friend Saturday and Sunday and as she is my photography friend. Guess what we talked about. Really lovely to see her.

Flying up I brought a Japanese novel with me. The Bookshop Woman by Nanako Hanada. Very light weight book, I thought it would be a good airplane book. I was wrong. I found it tedious and boring and could not finish it. before we landed I wrote in the front. Passing this on to whoever finds it. In the back I wrote “Let me know where this book ends up. A photo would be great”. I included a bookish email address I have but rarely use. I then left it on a shelf in the women’s bathroom in the Sydney airport. It will be fun to see if I ever get an email.

Something funny happened today after I arrived back at the hotel on this very hot, humid day after seeing my friend. While waiting for the lift a woman and her adult daughter came in and stood beside me also waiting for the lift. I heard them complaining about the humidity and I turned and said “it’s pretty high isn’t it? Where are you from?” “Tasmania! ” they replied. Then the woman looked at me and said, ” I know you, you’re in the Fullers book store book club.” I was leaving the group I was in at the time and she was coming into it. I joined a different group they run. It was so funny as we both chatted about Fullers on the way to our rooms. Small world.

That about sums up a pretty full on weekend. I’ll need to get a different book to read on the way home next weekend.

Looking forward to more adventures during the coming week.

PS- I did get to spend quite a bot of time doing some street photography. Much more exciting than Hobart.