Teddy Bear Tuesday

I can't tell you anything about where this little bloke comes from. There is nothing written on his label (or not by me, anywhere, there is some maker information that appears to be in Chinese characters). Again I expect I bought him in England in the 1990s. He is 3cms tall and warmly dressed, obviously for a Northern Heminsphere winter. I love his blue coat with the yellow trim, I guess his mum didn't want him to get cold! Again I love the raised arms and the expression, saying 'pick me up Mum, I need a hug'. So much cuteness in such a little package!

Reading

Despite saying a few posts ago that I was going to read the Millennium Trilogy this month, I was seduced by the local library on Friday night and came home with a huge bag of books which need to be read first.

I've just finished Dead Europe by Christos Tsolkas.  It won The Age Fiction Award in 2004, apparently.  I have only heard of the writer because he won the Commonwealth Writers Prize last year for The Slap, which I was actually looking for in the library at the time.  It was out so I borrowed two others of his to see what they were like.

For the first 100 pages (a quarter of the book) I was reminded why there is a certain class of gay fiction that I dislike.  No matter how well it is written, the sex scenes are always too frequent and too boring, and heterosexual sex is treated as brutal and unpleasant.  Then the actual story got to me.  It is essentially a gothic horror story set within the context of Greek peasant myths and the modern day experiences of Greek migrants in Australia.  A lot of it was unpleasant to read, but I couldn't put it down.  In context even the (frequent) graphic sex scenes were totally relevant, just like descriptions of vampires feeding would be relevant to a vampire novel.

I can't remember which of his other novels I borrowed last week, but it isn't The Slap and there are only three others that I know of, but I will definitely be reading it, with considerable expectations (even if I do have to look under the bed before I can sleep at night!)

For light relief I am now reading some true crime, about a woman who stabbed her partner repeatedly and then cut him up and cooked him.  Well, it was what came out of the bag next!

Sort of a recipe

I accidentally created a new recipe the other day.  It was so nice that we have had it twice since.  It barely deserves to be called a recipe, but it was so nice that I am going to put in here anyway.  And I went to the trouble of taking photos!

I often bake large chicken fillets in the oven with variations of teriyaki type sauces.  Nothing original there.  But the other day I had some blood oranges and decided to see what blood orange juice and soy sauce did together.

Forgive the pun, but they are BLOODY MARVELLOUS together!

Of course you can only buy blood oranges for a brief season, though you can get blood orange juice sometimes in bottles.  It is expensive though.  I expect that ordinary orange juice would be yummy too.

I juiced a blood orange.  It gave about 1/4 cup of juice.  Fish out the pips if you can be bothered - I did get rid of most of them.  Then add soy sauce to taste - the first time I added another 1/4 cup of kejaps manis, which is the thick sweet Indonesian style soy sauce that we love in our family.  That rather overpowered the juice, so the second time I used slightly less than 1/4 cup of ordinary soy sauce and that was better.

I used two large chicken fillets to feed four of us, accompanied with a big salad and bread rolls.  Cooked vegetables would also be nice, and the carbohydrate of your choice - rice, noodles, potatoes, couscous, whatever.

They take about 45 minutes in a moderate oven, turning them halfway through and basting.  Serve sliced nicely and with the sauce spooned over them (a couple of spoonfuls each).

I used my wooden juice pokey thing because it makes me feel like Nigella.  It is of course entirely possible to juice an orange in a far more boring and utilitarian way.  Also, the wood stains when you use it with blood oranges!

Bobby also fancies himself as Nigella.  Wrong gender, mate!  And wrong in so many other ways!

The dog loves nothing more than home cooked chicken, in any guise.  So when I am cooking it she hangs around in the kitchen looking hungry and adorable.  She usually gets a mouthful when it is being served..

Stitches and Craft Fair

I went to the Stitches and Craft Fair at the Exhibition Buildings last week. And a good time was had by all!  I decided not to do any classes, as I wasn't really in the mood.  So I spent my money on THINGS instead!

From top to bottom:

Three books (obviously).  I had been looking for the Paintstiks one for a while.  I have quite a few Shiva sticks and have played with them, but this book pulls the techniques together quite succinctly.  The Stitch magazine (OK, not a book as such) I used to be able to buy in the newsagents but they haven;t had the last few copies, so that will be fun to read.  And the collage book was an afterthought, not actually bought at the fair but at a bookshop afterwards.  It looks like fun and I want to brush up on my collage skills, not that they are much to brush up on in the first place so maybe improving them might be in order.

Middle photo - yarn.  And two postcards from one of the yarn sellers showing some of the amazing stuff they do.  The two cones are (left) a fine dark denim merino (I know it looks black here) and the right hand one is a fine black and glittery mixture of cotton and stainless steel.  No, that is not a typo.  I think it might either be that Japanese Habu stuff, or else is similar.  They had a scarf there knitted in stocking stitch with the two yarns together and then lightly felted.  It looked amazing.  The yarns are incredibly fine and I will probably go bonkers trying to knit them together on biggish needles, but I don't have (and don't like) a knitting machine and want to have a go.  The turquoise and purple and green is actually a Habu yarn, raw silk I think, which I will knit in a very simple shallow V shaped shawlette/scarf thing on big needles.

Bottom photo - beady things.  A bead mat, which I had never got round to buying.  A twirly thing for making paper beads, and sparkle Mod Podge for sealing paper beads in a sparkle arkle way.Some new beading needles.  And a new set of pliers and things, because I am always losing the cheapy ones I have and because these come in a pretty case and include, I think, tweezers and a reamer, which I didn't have.

An expensive but fun day!

Wordless Wednesday

Teddy Bear Tuesday

There is a place name written on the sticker on the bottom of this tiny teddy, but it must have got wet at some point because it is too smeared to read. But that most likely places it as having been bought in England in the 1990s. He is 3 cms tall and the scooter is 3cms long, making him perfectly proportioned!

I love the air of innocent childhood about him. He is playing and having fun. The scooter is nice and colourful (good visibility - a thoughtful safety feature!) and he has such a natty green scarf around his neck.

In October I am reading...

Carrying in my handbag - The Scorpio Letters by Victor Canning.  I had never heard of him before, but found several of his books in my father's extensive collection.  He wrote lovely, jolly, old-fashioned thrillers that are perfect handbag material.  By the look of it he was enormously prolific and I look forward to reading more of his books.  The hero is flowed but handsome and brave, the heroine is sassy and beautiful, the villains are proper villains, dashing but evil and villainous.  They romp all over Europe.  Sometimes they (both sides) use guns, sometimes blunt instruments, sometimes drugs.  At one point the hero and heroine monster a villain with - cats!  He is violently allergic and he cracks under the pressure of wheezing.  No cats were harmed in the making of this scene.  The heroine is easily as capable as the hero and saves him on several occasions.  What's not to like!

I recently finished Bloodless Shadow by Victoria Blake. This was picked up at the church fete, and I haven't been able to find her other books in the normal bookstores I have been to since reading it.  This is a pain because I want to read the others in the series!  It is the first of several about a private eye called Sam (as in Samantha) Falconer, who lives in London and has strong ties to Oxford, the book being set between the two.  It is rather cliched in many ways - she has a tortuous family background, unlucky in love, weird eccentricities, she's not Inspector Morse by any means but you get the picture.  But it is engagingly written and, if it makes me want to read the rest of them, it is obviously not too cliched to be beyond redemption.  The title is rather meaningless in the context of the story, but it's a good title.  I know Oxford pretty well, and it's always nice to read about places that you instantly recognise.  I also know the part of London she lives in slightly - I never lived there but did spend the best part of week there in a hotel and recognise most of the places mentioned.  It was the sort of whodunnit where the whodunnit was rather secondary to just enjoying the story.

Then I read Beyond Black by Hilary Mantel.  I know I mentioned Hilary Mantel in a blog post relatively recently.  And this was one of the books I mentioned in my Book Meme as being in my to-read pile.  Well, I read it.  And it blew me away!  I knew I liked the author but this has made me want to search out each and every one of her other books and read them, stat.  It is the BLACKEST of black comedies, indeed it truls is beyond black.  It's about a medium, and her career, and her assistant, and her childhood, and the pack of fiends who follow her around.  You never know whether to laugh, cry, or hide your head under a pillow when you are reading it.  (Which would make it hard to read, obviously, but might protect you from the fiends).  You are left wondering, at the end, what the hell happened!  And you WILL look over your shoulder every time you hear an odd noise for a while.  Love that woman.

Now I am alternating between two books which are quite capable of being read bit at a time.

I've borrowed the newly released Australian Ghost Stories by James Doig from the library.  It contains, well, ghost stories obviously, dating from 1867 to 1909.  James Doig has an enviable life.  He trawls through old magazines and literary collections from nineteenth and early twentieth century Australian literature, and publishes anthologies.  OK, he has a day job too, as an archivist.  Lucky bastard.  Why can't I do that?  I have also read his Australian Gothic collection.  Quite recently.  Recently enough to know that some of the stories in this latest collection were also in that one.  Can't he find enough good ones?  Or does he hope no-one will notice.  If you were that passionate about the reading material you would want to own both collections anyway, so I think he should have not had crossovers!  That aside, it's a good collection.  I;m halfway through it.  It includes authors such as Mary Fortune, Marcus Clarke, Ernest Favenc and Rosa Praed.  (Look them up yourselves!)  Of the half that I have read so far, (6 stories - one was very long, there are actually 17 stories but I read half the actual book last night) 3 have been in other collections, though I am not sure whether they were his or not - but I have read them before.  The other three contain two of the best ghost stories I have ever read - The White Maniac : A Doctor's Tale by Mary Fortune, and The Mystery of Major Molyneaux by Marcus Clarke.  I look forward to the others.

The other book is On the Home Front " Melbourne in Wartime 1939-1945 (second edition) by Kate Darian-Smith .  (The fact that it is the second edition is relevant, it was revised with extra material).  This should be a wonderful book - imagine all the richness of the social history of the home during the war.  But it is tedious.  George referred to it as like reading a laundry list, and he's right.  OK, it is a PhD thesis turned into a book, and they rarely turn out well.  But it COULD have been turned into a real page-turner.  It is dull, dull, dull.  And there are no pictures.  As Alice said, what is the point of a book without pictures?  I have to own up to something here.  I shared a final year class with the author in 1983.  She obviously worked harder than me, and was brainier than me, 'cos I got a god-awful degree and she is a professor and a PhD and all that.  I wanted to be an academic, I just wasn't smart enough or prepared to work hard enough!  But I am damn sure I could have turned this material into a better book.  Humph.

I am going to spend a fair bit of the month reading the Millennium Trilogy (the girl with the dragon tattoo and the other things).  I;m looking forward to them!

Wayland's Smithy

Wayland's Smithy is a Neolithic long barrow in Oxfordshire near the White Horse of Uffington.  Wayland was supposedly a smith (blacksmith) Germanic god.  Handy to have in the days of horses, presumably.  I guess his modern equivalent would be a motor mechanic god!

Legend had it that if your horse lost its shoe and you left a silver coin at the site, in the morning your horse would be reshod.  Presumably the franchise for that was passed down through the generations!  With a renewed interest in things Druidical and whatnot over the last 150 years or so, apparently some people leave votive offerings there once more.

The day I visited Wayland's Smithy, a hot summers day in, I think, 1990, it was occupied by a group of layabouts drinking beer.  It retained some of its magical feel, however.  The whole area is said to be riddled with ley lines.

Wordless Wednesday

Teddy Bear Tuesday

This little chap is only 2.5cm tall. The picture is bigger to show off his details. According to the sticker I put on the bottom, I bought him in Salisbury, in England. I should have dated them too! But there isn't much room on the bottom of a tiny bear. It would have been some time in the 1990s, as that's when I was living in England and collecting bears.

I love the wistful expression on his upturned face. He looks as though he is saying 'pick me up, mum, and give me a cuddle!'

Road Trip!

George got a call on Friday morning about a job in Koroit, which is about 350 kms west of where we live.  It's a four hour drive each way.  Both the kids had made arrangements to meet up with friends, so he suggested that the dog and I come along to keep him company.  So the road trip was away!

Koroit is a tiny town in the Western District of Victoria, which is prime farming land.  Volcanic plains, very fertile, very bucolic.  I hadn't been that way for ages so I;m not sure how it fared during our lengthy and destructive drought, but recent rains have certainly greened it up and it all looked very lush.  I went to Koroit on a school camp in Year 8 and haven't been back since, but retained fond memories of it.  The coastal area, not very far away, remains familiar as we have been for several holidays at various spots along there.  We stayed inland this time, however.

I found this sign nailed up outside a shop.  It amused me because I live in Glen Waverley, and I was in Koroit, which, as I mentioned, is 350kms to the west of Glen Waverley.  There were other old station signs there too.  I can't remember what the shop was, but obviously the owner liked old station signs.

This is an old post office.  It is actually still the post office.  But it is of historical interest because the Australian author Henry Handel Richardson (real name Ethel Florence Lindesay Richardson - like the Brontes and George Elliot she thought she had a better chance of publication under a man's name, and personally who would not rather be called Henry than Ethel!) lived there for a while when her mother was post mistress.  The Richardsons moved around quite a lot and it is certainly not the only old post office in Victoria with a plaque stating that she lived there. According to Wikipedia these places include Chiltern (I have seen that post office too), Queenscliff and Maldon (I cannot go to Maldon in case I bump into a member of a certain family, which has more members than the Mafia, and who still, I think, resent me because their son/cousin/etc dumped me in 1983!)  (I did take a photo of the plaque but you can't read it, it is rather worn and needs polishing!)  I imagine most non-Australian readers will never have heard of her.  Many Australians of my age had to read The Getting of Wisdom at school.  I disliked the book but rather liked the film, partly because large slabs of it were filmed at Ormond College, where I was living when I saw the film.  In later years I read her trilogy The Fortunes of Richard Mahoney and rather enjoyed it, in fact I've read it twice and will probably read it again at some point.  It is a faintly fictionalised account of her childhood and is a fascinating way to learn a lot about the history of Victoria.

Koroit was largely settled by Irish immigrants, and the local history society has an interesting map in its front window, showing the local surnames that came from the various counties of Ireland.  I was amused to notice that none of them came from Waterford, though they came from many other counties.  That means that I am not related to anyone in Koroit.  If any of them had come from Waterford, I would have been.  My mum says (quite seriously) that we used to only be related to half of Waterford, until X married Y, who was related to the other half.  So for the last couple of generations we are related to the whole of the city, and probably the county. This is the original school house in Koroit, dating from the 1850s, and is apparently one of the only Irish model school houses still in existence in ... Australia?  The Western District?  I can't remember.  Anyway, it is a distinctive style; the two 'wings' on either side are classrooms, and the bit in the middle is the teacher's residence.  It is no longer a school, of course, there is a modern primary school elsewhere in the town that looked rather inviting.

Bobby snuck along for the ride.  He had heard that there are lots and lots and LOTS of lady sheep in the Western District.  You're right, Bobby, there are - but they don't climb trees!

Bobby thought you should read a bit more about Koroit's Irish heritage.

It was a pleasant day out, but very tiring.  An 8 hour round trip leaves one feeling very stiff and sore!  And poor George had to spend four hours at a fire scene working very hard.  I explored the delights of Koroit.  Which are not quite sufficient for four hours, actually.  But there were two excellent tea shops which made very good coffee indeed, and I poked around very happily, and went for a long walk, and then rescued the dog from the car and took her for a long walk, and read my book, and read Facebook on my phone, and enjoyed the country air and a mild sunny day.  And got to spend lots of quality time with my hubby :)  I forgot to take any knitting, which was a shame, but I spend the whole trip down helping George by taking notes and making phone calls for him, and then it was getting dark afterwards, so there wouldn't have been any real car knitting anyway.

Birthday Loot

I had a very gratifying umpty umpteenth birthday a couple of days ago.  Not a significant number, but a significant number minus one.

Loot was acquired.

George gave me this gorgeous pendant.  It is an early 20th century print encased in resin in a silver setting.  It may or may not be Ernest Shepherd, the jewellery assistant had no idea what George was talking about!  I love that this is a mixed media technique that I know a lot about, translated into high quality silver smithing.

The flash bounced really badly off this.  Wombat gave me Michael Palin's diaries from the Monty Python years.

 Baby Bear gave me this exciting account of the REAL Robinson Crusoe.  Someone pointed out to me that I have an eclectic taste in literature.  They are dead right!  And unbeknown to me, Baby Bear has joined the whole reuse and repurpose art thing.  Apparently some time ago she cut up all her Mr Men books from her babyhood and turned them into cards.  This is obviously the first one I have seen!

 I always buy myself a birthday present.  It was these two books.

 My mother-in-law bought me this apron at a country show recently.  Not because she thinks I need to spend more time in the kitchen, but because she knows I enjoy doing just that, and thought I ought to be more colourful when I do it.

One sister-in-law made me this gorgeous little bag out of Moda fabrics and hid this resin necklace in it.  I might use the bag for a sock knitting bag.

And George took me out for coffee.  Doesn't everyone eat chocolate mousse for breakfast on their birthday?  Bobby helped.  He thought it might be too much for me to manage on my own.


My mum gave me a gift card and my other SIL is recovering from food poisoning so is rather out of action at the moment.  All in all I had a lovely day and felt thoroughly spoilt.

Wordless Wednesday

Teddy Bear Tuesday

I have decided to start a new regular posting thing.  So welcome to Teddy Bear Tuesday.  I have been collecting little bear figurines for years.  Sometimes I have bought them in places I have been visiting and putting stickers on the bottom to remind me where I bought them.  George found this old printers' block tray in an antique shop in England and gave it to me to display them in.  Over the years some non-bear items have been added.  I thought I would write about one per week.  That will keep me going for a long time!

The Adventures of Bobby the Ram, Part 3

Bobby and his friend Momo the Lemur have had a wild week. They went to see Despicable Me, in 3D, and now want their own minions.

They went to see the Tim Burton exhibition, and were not frightened.

And they abandoned all ideas of a healthy diet, in the face of this huge bowl of fat chips!

They also went to the Melbourne Show but George has not downloaded those photos yet. I believe there may be scenes of alpaca loving in those.

Proper exhibition and film reviews may follow in a later post, if I am ever at home. I have been out every day for the last seven, mostly doing school holiday stuff, and am reduced to checking Facebook on my phone, and not much else computer wise.

Book Meme - a completely different one

It's ages since I did one of these"

Instructions:

1) Look at the list and bold those you have read.
2) Underline those you intend to read.
3) Italicise the books you LOVE.
4) Reprint this list so we can try and track down these people who’ve read 6 and force books upon them.

1. Pride and Prejudice - Jane Austen
2. The Lord of the Rings - JRR Tolkien
3. Jane Eyre - Charlotte Bronte
4. Harry Potter series - JK Rowling

5. To Kill A Mockingbird - Harper Lee
6. The Bible - does reading half of it count?
7. Wuthering Heights - Emily Bronte
8. Nineteen Eighty Four - George Orwell
9 .His Dark Materials - Philip Pullman
10. Great Expectations - Charles Dickens
11. Little Women - Louisa M Alcott
12. Tess of the D’Urbervilles - Thomas Hardy
13. Catch 22 - Joseph Heller
14. Complete Works of Shakespeare - again about half
15. Rebecca - Daphne Du Maurier
16. The Hobbit - JRR Tolkien
17. Birdsong - Sebastian Faulks
18. Catcher in the Rye - J D Salinger
19. The Time Traveller’s Wife - Audrey Niffenegger
20. Middlemarch - George Eliot
21. Gone With The Wind - Margaret Mitchell
22. The Great Gatsby - F Scott Fitzgerald

23. Bleak House - Charles Dickens
24. War and Peace - Leo Tolstoy
25. The Hitch Hiker’s Guide to the Galaxy - Douglas Adams
26. Brideshead Revisited - Evelyn Waugh
27. Crime and Punishment - Fyodor Dostoyevsky
28. Grapes of Wrath - John Steinbeck
29. Alice in Wonderland - Lewis Carroll
30. The Wind in the Willows - Kenneth Grahame
31. Anna Karenina - Leo Tolstoy
32. David Copperfield - Charles Dickens
33. Chronicles of Narnia - CS Lewis
34. Emma - Jane Austen
35. Persuasion - Jane Austen
36. The Lion, The Witch and The Wardrobe - CS Lewis
37. The Kite Runner - Khaled Hosseini
38. Captain Corellis Mandolin - Louis De Bernieres 
39. Memoirs of a Geisha - Arthur Golden
40. Winnie the Pooh - AA Milne
41. Animal Farm - George Orwell
42. The Da Vinci Code - Dan Brown
43. One Hundred Years of Solitude - Gabriel Garcia Marquez
44. A Prayer for Owen Meaney - John Irving
45. The Woman in White - Wilkie Collins
46. Anne of Green Gables - LM Montgomery
47. Far From The Madding Crowd - Thomas Hardy
48. The Handmaid’s Tale - Margaret Atwood
49. Lord of the Flies - William Golding
50. Atonement - Ian McEwan
51. Life of Pi - Yann Martel
52. Dune - Frank Herbert
53. Cold Comfort Farm - Stella Gibbons
54. Sense and Sensibility - Jane Austen
55. A Suitable Boy - Vikram Seth
56. The Shadow of the Wind - Carlos Ruiz Zafon
57. A Tale Of Two Cities - Charles Dickens
58. Brave New World - Aldous Huxley
59. The Curious Incident of the Dog in the Night-time - Mark Haddon
60. Love In The Time Of Cholera - Gabriel Garcia Marquez
61. Of Mice and Men - John Steinbeck
62. Lolita - Vladimir Nabokov
63. The Secret History - Donna Tartt
64. The Lovely Bones - Alice Sebold
65. Count of Monte Cristo - Alexandre Dumas
66. On The Road - Jack Kerouac
67. Jude the Obscure - Thomas Hardy
68. Bridget Jones’ Diary - Helen Fielding
69. Midnight’s Children - Salman Rushdie
70. Moby Dick - Herman Melville
71. Oliver Twist - Charles Dickens
72. Dracula - Bram Stoker
73. The Secret Garden - Frances Hodgson Burnett
74. Notes From A Small Island - Bill Bryson
75. Ulysses - James Joyce
76. The Bell Jar - Sylvia Plath
77. Swallows and Amazons - Arthur Ransome
78. Germinal - Emile Zola
79. Vanity Fair - William Makepeace Thackeray
80. Possession - AS Byatt
81. A Christmas Carol - Charles Dickens
82. Cloud Atlas - David Mitchell
83. The Color Purple - Alice Walker
84. The Remains of the Day - Kazuo Ishiguro
85. Madame Bovary - Gustave Flaubert
86. A Fine Balance - Rohinton Mistry
87. Charlotte’s Web - EB White
88. The Five People You Meet In Heaven - Mitch Albom
89. Adventures of Sherlock Holmes - Sir Arthur Conan Doyle
90. The Faraway Tree Collection - Enid Blyton
91. Heart of Darkness - Joseph Conrad
92. The Little Prince - Antoine De Saint-Exupery
93. The Wasp Factory - Iain Banks
94. Watership Down - Richard Adams
95. A Confederacy of Dunces - John Kennedy Toole
96. A Town Like Alice - Nevil Shute
97. The Three Musketeers - Alexandre Dumas
98. Hamlet - William Shakespeare
99. Charlie and the Chocolate Factory - Roald Dahl
100. Les Miserables - Victor Hugo

I don't know what happened here.  I was adding tags to old posts and accidentally republished this one from a couple of years ago.  And I obviously had no brain in operation at the time as I had already read most of these then but didn't bold them.  SO I have edited the list to show the true state of affairs!!

Book Meme - Day 30

Day 30 - What book are you reading right now?


So finally, and a little sadly, I come to the end of the Book Meme.  It;s been fun!


I am currently reading The Return of the Dancing Master by Henning Mankell.  I have already mentioned, somewhere, my fondness for the Kurt Wallender books by this author.  According to Wikipedia, this is supposedly part of that series in a loose way, but having almost finished it, I think I can say pretty definitely that the only connections are (a) it's Swedish and (b) one of the minor characters is the brother of one of the murder victims in Sidetracked, the fifth Wallender book.


That's all rather academic, actually, as it is such a good book that I only found myself missing Wallender rather peripherally.  It's fascinating and I thoroughly recommend it.  It;s always hard commenting on the writing style of someone who is translated into English, but I have now read nine of Mankell's books with about four translators between them, and they are all wonderfully written.  I think he may come under the heading of 'genre writers who would never win a ... prize (say Booker Prize, Pulitzer, whatever) because of being a genre writer, but who should because of the quality of their writing'.  My favorite examples are Ruth Rendell/Barbara Vine and P.D. James, but he's certainly up there with them.


The book meme has been great fun, and best of all it has got me back into more regular blogging.  I just hope that will continue!

Book Meme - Day 29

Day 29 - Saddest character death OR best/most satisfying character death (or both!)


I have already blogged about Vera Brittain's books Testament of Youth and Chronicle of Youth.  Well, they get another guernsey here too, for the saddest death scene.


I have read both of these books repeatedly and was obsessed with Vera Brittain for many years.  Many, many years.  I'm feeling a bit better now but I will probably reread them again int he next year or so.


Roland Leighton dies on his last day at the front before coming home on leave.  It's bad enough in
Testament of Youth, where the image of Vera waiting by the phone in a seaside hotel to hear news of his arrival, and the eventual phonecall, reduces me to floods of tears every time I read it.  But it is even worse in Chronicle of Youth, which is the (presumably edited) diary she was keeping at the time, and is much rawer.  In this we discover that she fully expected him to whisk her off and marry her hastily, and that a desk job had been fixed up for him. 


EVERY SINGLE TIME I READ ONE OF THESE BOOKS I HOLD MY BREATH WAITING FOR HIM NOT TO DIE THIS TIME.


I am pathetic.  Who cares!

Book Meme - Day 28. and the Adventures of Bobby the Ram, Part 2

Day 28 - First favorite book or series obsession


Probably the Chronicles of Narnia and the Swallows and Amazons books, as previously blogged.  I was about five when I started reading them.


That wasn't very interesting, was it?


So without further ado I will update the adventures of Bobby the Ram.  Our hero was last seen on the top of Mount Ainslie.  He enjoyed the rest of his time with us in Canberra (or, as I just mistyped it, Canberaaaa).

He listened to music (I think it was Linkin Park).

He drank long cool drinks (it's a lemon lime and bitters, don't worry, he is not being corrupted by us!)

He indulged in a spot of photo bombing.  (Black Mountain Tower, I think).

He very carefully coloured within the lines.

He met some metal creatures that appeared to be sheeplike.  Both he and Momo the Lemur were dubious, but posed bravely in the winter sunshine.

Then we went home to Melbourne.  On the drive through the Monaro Plains, near Cooma, he stopped to check out some local talent.  Thought they were quite cute, but decided that the urban environment was rather more him, really, so off to Melbourne we went.


And he has settled in nicely, is a real family animal, and occasionally gets to go out and do things.  He's content.  And we love him.

Book Meme - Day 27

Day 27 - If a book contains ______, you will always read it (and a book or books that contain it)!


After much thought I have decided that there is no definitive answer to this question, not from me anyway.  There are lots of things that will entice me to think about reading a book, but none of them will be enough if the book sounds dodgy in other ways.  In other words, what I think I mean is that the inclusion of one or more of my favorite topics, etc, does not necessarily guarantee an enjoyable book.


But for a list of the things that are more likely to make me want to read a book:


Magic realism (yes, I know curmudgeonly people say that is the same as fantasy.  I think it is slightly different.  I could draw a Venn diagram but then I would look obsessive and geeky.  Like I usually do).
Apocalyptic fantasy.
Interesting detectives.
Occasionally, really good romance writers.  (There aren't many I like).
Historical fiction - again it has to be really good.
Apparently, Steampunk and Mannerpunk!  
Old-fashioned thrillers (sometimes).
Well-written social history (either in non-fiction or fiction form).
Real crime - which is nearly always badly written (why is that?) but I am a bit obsessed with serial killers.
Psychological mysteries.
Craft books!


&&&&&&&&&&&&&&&&&&&&&&&&&&&&&&&&&&am


And as promised, some pics of the book signing with the frabjous Andy Griffiths.  Knitters please note the stitch holder used as punk safety pin on koala.

Book Meme - Day 25

Ok, so 26 always goes after 24 doesn't it, to be followed by 25.  Whoops!!




Day 25 - Any five books from your "to be read" stack


My 'stack' is more like a mountain range.  This is a selection from the more visible bits near the top.


Jodi Picoult, Songs of the Humpback Whales.  I have read quite a few of her books and enjoy them, though she annoys me with her shameless pushing of buttons - as mentioned in a previous Book Meme post, though I can't remember which one.  It's a bit like chocolate - I know it;s not all that good for me, really, but I keep going back.


Stieg Larsson, The Millenium Trilogy (Ok, that's 3 books, but I will probably read them in one go). Well, everyone is talking about them, and reading them, and they have been recommended by a number of people whose judgement is usually pretty spot on.  If I hate them, the church fete will get them next year.


Hilary Mantel, Beyond Black.  NOT because she won the Booker Prize last year!  I discovered her ages ago.  Over the years I have read her books Fludd (which I desperately wanted to like, but was ambivalent over) and A Place of Greater Safety, about the French Revolution in general, and Danton in particular, which was the most fabulous book I read in that particular year, which must have been 1993 (because it was published then and I know I got it brand spanking new from the library).


George R.R. Martin, The Game of Thrones. Because Baby Bear was given it for Christmas and enjoyed it, and we often swap books.  It is one of those humungous fantasy novels that has sequels to keep people hooked.


John Pilger, Hidden Agendas.  Because I have known of his stuff for many years but never read anything.


This does not necessarily mean I will read these immediately next, but as I said, they are near the top, so who knows?

Book Meme - Day 26

Day 26 - OMG WTF? OR most irritating/awful/annoying book ending


Tim Winton, The Shallows. Everybody I know raves on about Tim Winton.  I always had it in for him because he won the Vogel Prize the year I entered it.  OK, my MS was a pile of crap, but even so, it was personal!


I found this is the library a couple of years ago and thought I should at least try to read one of his books.  I didn't like it that much but I did persevere - it was short, he's meant to be one of Australia's best living writers, yada yada yada. It was OK.  It was the short of book that forces you to put quite a big emotional commitment into reading it.  I started to care about what happened.  And then all the whales died anyway.  I hated the ending!  I don't automatically expect a happy ending to a book, but it felt like a cop-out.  It felt like a kid knocking down his Lego creation because he was bored with it.


++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++


Wombat has a Drama assignment to do.  I usually have to help him with school work, but at least one was fun!  He had to pick a film or TV performance and analyse it in terms of use of voice, movement and space.  He made it really easy by choosing Christopher Lee as Count Dooku in Revenge of the Sith.  He's only on screen for a few minutes, which made it easy to analyse fully.  And his performance is a real gift!  It was so simple and fun to answer the questions.  And Wombat was able to pick up most of it himself with me making notes (and even showed knowledge of some quite sophisticated dramatic conventions - I guess at those countless hours watching TV has paid off!).


On Saturday we went to a book signing by Andy Griffiths, childrens' author extraordinaire , who was delightful and genuinely pleased to meet his fans.  He was also obviously genuinely thrilled that Baby Bear produced two first editions of his earlier books to be signed.  Pictures may appear on Facebook when I download them.  Maybe even here.


George and I made a major effort in book sorting yesterday.  We have sort of finished, in a sense - the boxes of books still exist but they have been sorted into SPECIFIC boxes.  This counts as progress.

Book Meme - Day 24

Day 24 - Best quote from a novel


I can't find the exact paragraph, so I will have to quote the first bit from memory.  This is certainly one of my favorite quotes of all time:


From Titus Alone by Mervyn Peake, 'I need a cynic for a friend'.  There's another sentence or two, but this is the bit that always sticks in my mind.


I am crazy about the Titus Groan books, also known as the Gormenghast Trilogy.  I first read Titus Groan when I was at school, and the other two a couple of years later when I was at university, and have reread them a couple of times since, the most recently a few years ago.  While looking up a link on the Internet for this post, I discovered that they are considered to be the forerunners of Mannerpunk, of which I had never heard.  Apparently it is a weird mixture of novels of manners and, well, a less steam-related version of Steampunk.  I know that Steampunk is very trendy right now, but I have been obsessed with it ever since I read The Difference Engine and Tim Powers a long time ago.


I shall have to take some time to absorb Mannerpunk.

Book Meme - Day 23

Day 23 - Most annoying character ever


Widmerpool from A Dance to the Music of Time naturally comes to mind, but he is MEANT to be annoying and he is a valuable theatrical device.


So Steerforth from David Copperfield.  I hate those smarmy charmers who know they can bat their eyelids and everyone, male and female, young and old, will  fall in love them, with fatal consequences.  He is the first I can remember in a book (I read Dickens at a precocious age) and I have met too many of them in real life.


OK, Steerforth is meant to be like that, too, and is also a useful theatrical device.  But I hate him more.