Travellin' Penguin

Like everyone, everywhere, time has slipped past quickly and it has been a busy time. I’m having a technology break over the holidays and will be back in January with new books, plans and possibly a project, hahaha. Those that know me will chuckle at that.

We are having an Icelandic Christmas this year. Our family is all in North America and friends have been catching up during the month. We will have a quiet dinner on Christmas Eve and on Christmas Day we have some presents for the neighbour kids and some new books for ourselves. We plan to read over the next few days.

Tasmania has opened up to the world as of the 15th Dec., and our Covid numbers, although not high, are increasing. Lovely to stay home and not run around with a mask all the time. Mr. Penguin has been enjoying the Australian author Chris Hammer and his crime books. I am reading the Labyrinth by Amanda Lohrey for the beginning of February’s book group at Fullers bookshop. Looking forward to it. I am enjoying this book very much.

There are new books to open as of tomorrow, some fiction, some non fiction and a photography book.

By the way, if you love Penguin books there is a new reference book called The Penguin Modern Classics Book (just out!) edited by Henry Eliot. It lists every Penguin Modern classic ever published with illustrations of all of the covers and lists at the back of the books year by year. (Kaggsy- it is written for you). The index is extensive too. I love it!!!

The Armchair Traveller has me listening to a book of short stories by a Haitian author as Haiti is the random country selected for me. More on that later.

Keeping this brief, I wanted to say how much I appreicate my online, bookish friends and although I never get a chance to comment on all the blog posts I read, I enjoy them and I am always close by seeing what you’re up to. Let’s hope 2022 has all of us staying well and moving forward and finding much to enjoy in our world that really is full of beauty. Sometimes we just need to look for it!

I might add, this photo regarding the Find Fullers bus ad competition saw me winning a $50.00 book voucher to their 101 year old shop I love so much.

I went to our end of the year Book Club Christmas get together the other night. Fullers book shop have 9 book groups of 12 people each. The event probably had close to 50 readers who turned up for drinks and nibbles at a lovely hotel in the city. We had a raging rain storm during the event with loud thunder which Tasmania rarely hears, lightning flashing past the windows and many areas around Hobart were flooding.

We calmly ate, chatted and then we had a ten questions trivia quiz about the books we read in a power point presentation. Book vouchers went to the top three who answer$20.00 book voucher to the store. It is always welcome.

Readers also had a survey to fill out before our end of year event and first and foremost we wanted to know what books were the most popular with the group. At the end of the event we were given a list of books for next year up until June, 2022. We were all itching to get that list. I am sharing all of it here with you.

The Group’s Most Popular Reads of 2021

I laughed at this list as my favourite book was City of Ghosts, followed by the Graham Swift then the Master and Margarita. Boy, am I ever out of step.

The list for 2022 is as follows:

February: Amanda Lohrey, “The Labyrinth” (2021) – Miles Franklin Winner / Tasmania
The Labyrinth is a hypnotic story of guilt and denial, of the fraught relationship between parents and children, that is also a meditation on how art can both be ruthlessly destructive and restore sanity. It also shows Tasmanian author Amanda Lohrey to be at the peak of her powers.

March: Abdulrazak Gurnah,  “After Lives” (2020) – Nobel Prize Winner / Tanzania
In 2021, Abdulrazak Gurnah was awarded the world’s highest literary honour, the Nobel Prize, for “his uncompromising and compassionate penetration of the effects of colonialism and the fate of the refugee in the gulf between cultures and continents.” His most recent novel, Afterlives, follows the interlinked stories of a group of friends in East Africa who live and work and fall in love in the shadow of a war that threatens to snatch them up and carry them away.

April: Niall Williams, “This Is Happiness” (2019) — Ireland
This Is Happiness is a tender portrait of a small Irish community – its idiosyncrasies and traditions, its paradoxes and kindnesses, its failures and triumphs – and a coming-of-age tale like no other. Luminous and lyrical, yet anchored by roots running deep into the earthy and everyday, it is about the power of stories: their invisible currents that run through all we do, writing and rewriting us, and the transforming light that they throw onto our world.

May: Louise Erdrich, “The Sentence” (2021) – Indigenous / Native AmericanLouise Erdrich, Pulitzer Prize and National Book Award-winning author (and bookshop owner), is widely acclaimed as one of the most significant Native American writers today. In The Sentence, a small independent bookstore in Minneapolis is haunted by the store’s most annoying customer. Flora dies on All Souls’ Day, but she simply won’t leave the store. In this stunning and timely novel, Erdrich creates a wickedly funny ghost story, a tale of passion, of a complex marriage, and of a woman’s relentless errors, and a bitter pandemic year many of us will never forget.

June: Damon Galgut, “The Promise” (2021) – Booker Prize Winner / South Africa

The winner of this year’s Booker Prize, The Promise is a taut and menacing novel that charts the crash and burn of an Afrikaans family, the Swarts. Punctuated by funerals that bring the ever-diminishing family together, each of the four parts opens with a death and a new decade. 
The characterisations are razor sharp, the dialogue dramatic, the action gripping. As we traverse the decades, accomplished author Damon Galgut interweaves the story of a disappointed nation from apartheid to Jacob Zuma.

July: Laura Jean McKay, “The Animals in That Country” (2020) – Arthur C. Clarke Winner / Science Fiction / Australia
As disturbing news arrives of a pandemic sweeping the country, hard-drinking, foul-mouthed grandmother Jean realises this is no ordinary flu: its chief symptom is that its victims begin to understand the language of animals — first mammals, then birds and insects, too. As the flu progresses, the unstoppable voices become overwhelming, and many people begin to lose their minds, including Jean’s infected son, Lee. Bold, exhilarating, and wholly original, The Animals in That Country asks what would happen, for better or worse, if we finally understood what animals were saying.

August (?): Sei Shonagon, “The Pillow Book” (1002) — Classic / Japan / Translation (depending if enough copies can be acquired).

Our Classic read of the year is The Pillow Book, a fascinating, detailed account of Japanese court life in the eleventh century written by a lady of the court at the height of Heian culture. Written at the same time as The Tale of Genji, this book enthralls with its lively gossip, witty observations, and subtle impressions of a vanished world.

In a final note, Fullers bookshop has another competition going. They have a large advertisement on the side of one metro bus that drives around Hobart. If you see it, snap a photo of it, send it in to them and each week they award a $50.00 gift voucher to the lucky winner. I spotted it this past week on my way to the gym. Snapped a photo, then photoshopped the beloved Penguin onto it and off it win. Here’s hoping!

Windows are open and the sun is shining. The eastern half of Australia has just been inundated with rain the past few weeks. And like everyone else I keep saying, Can you believe it is the end of the year already? Okay so getting on with it.

Books: I finished the audible book The Happiest Refugee by Anh Doh that is a biography that spans from his treacherous arrival into Australia as a small child aboard a leaky boat, attacked by pirates, hunger and all kinds of danger. It is amazing they actually made it thanks to a German ship that picked them up. He details his family’s activities, the highs and lows of life in Sydney and he really does have an indomitable spirit. He is very successful as an artist and comedian and I enjoy his tv series as he paints a portrait of his featured guests while talking to them. The guest is then presented with the final portrait at the end of the program. Anh’s Brush With Fame featured on the ABC (Australia).

I have also visited my Lonely Planet Armchair Traveller book of writings and music from the countries of the world and Random.org picked Peru for me a couple of weeks back. I downloaded a book of short stories by Peruvian author Julio Ramon Ribeyro. The book is titled Marginal Voices: Selected Stories. I am loving these stories and his writing is just brilliant. It is narrated by Kenneth Lee, part of the Texas Pan American series, University of Texas Press 1993. Translated by Dianne Douglas.

Amazon describes the book as:

Julio Ramón Ribeyro has been widely acclaimed as Peru’s master storyteller. Until now, however, few of his stories have been translated into English. This volume brings together fifteen stories written during the period 1952-1975, which were collected in the three volumes of La palabra del mudo. Ribeyro’s stories treat the social problems brought about by urban expansion, including poverty, racial and sexual discrimination, class struggles, alienation, and violence. At the same time, elements of the fantastic playfully interrupt some of the stories. More importantly, Ribeyro’s characters are culturally diverse, yet they share a common destiny—a life nourished by illusions that falls short of their expectations and invariably leads to solitude. As the characters become swept up in circumstances beyond their understanding, Ribeyro shows that the only freedom or dignity left them comes from their own imaginations.

I am enjoying these stories very much. The writing is excellent and the characters very well defined. I have also been listening to the music listed on the page of the Lonely Planet book through Amazon Music or Spotify. It is just wonderful to be able to stream music from other countries so easily. Artists: Eva Ayllon, Arturo Cavero, Bareto and Los Mirlos to name a few. I have decided to use Audible for the books I read suggested by the Lonely Planet Armchair Explorer. I can stream the book at nighttime or while driving. The same goes for the music. I am really enjoying this project and using my audible credits are useful and I also have time to read my other copies of book books.

Life and Fate by Vasily Grossman- Our shared reading group finished this book last night. We applauded the end of it. Then we had a round of Vodka shots and our facilitator Ebi did a Russian phrase for Salud. We also enjoyed a table of black bread, caviar, sausages, pickled onions, blinis that someone made with smoked salmon and sour cream. A few of the members that had Ubers coming later stayed on to enjoy their shots of vodka. The vodka was packaged in a beautiful carved glass bottle with lovely foil labeling and made in St Petersburg. It was such a fun evening. Now we are on break to read other books over our summer. New events will begin at Fullers in February.

One more project I am “diving into- as the popular trend of the moment”….is a photography project I am just getting off the ground inspired by the book launched at Fullers Undiscovered Tasmania by Rochelle and Walter Dare last week. They are a couple with a young daughter who explore the hidden areas of Tasmania and put their photos up on Instagram. Instagram name is “LetsGoDare”. They were approached by someone who wanted them to turn it into a book and to make a long story short, that is what they did. None of the iconic tourist areas of Tasmania are presented but instead they visit small country towns, wildlife areas and beaches that are out of the way.

I’ve been wanting to do some photography away from the iconic areas that everyone sees when googling Tasmania and I have bitten the proverbial bullet.

I bought a Tasmanian map and a book of camping areas and places to see around those areas and am starting to explore in the southern part of the state. I have decided I will share this project on this blog but in separate posts called Exploring Tasmania or something similar. Have not decided on that title yet. I have quite a bit of bookish activity on during the year so will keep books separate from photography. That way if you’re not interested in both fields of interests you can ignore those posts.

Another area of interest I want to do in 2020 is a new bookish feature called From My Shelves or something similar. Still thinking. I have quite a few unusual books of interest on my shelf, some read, some not. I thought I’d feature a specific book from my shelf just to share it with readers. I have books on the classics, cookbooks, photography books, reference books, etc and things I inadvertently come across here and there. I know how much I like to see a book displayed. It will be more like walking through a bookshop, picking up the book and thinking….I wonder what this is about. No review of the actual story or characters, just a review or display of the book.

In summary for 2022 you can look for: Photography with the Penguin. The Penguin shares books on our shelves. Bookish activities and short synopsis or reviews and Lonely Planet Armchair books from other countries. I think the Penguin will need to have some new outfits made.

I’m getting a jump on 2022 as no doubt others will be doing soon and I do look forward to seeing what you will all get up to in our new year. Stay well. Get vaccinated.