Thank You Lisa - It Was Well Timed

Thank you Lisa of TBR313 for nominating me for this award.  I was really getting a bit stale with blogging and my daily routine of reading the top 5 to 10 blogs in my blog list instead of reading books.  It is a lovely gesture.
I can always count on Lisa's enthusiasm to comment on my blog and I enjoy her enthusiasm for all things bookish.

Here are the rules for this award:

• Thank and link to the person who nominated you.
• List the rules and display the award.
• Share seven facts about yourself.
• Nominate 15 other amazing blogs and comment on their posts to let them know they have been nominated
• Optional: display the award logo on your blog and follow the blogger who nominated you

Seven facts about myself- You sure you want to know all this trivia?  Okay, here goes.

1.  I am a retired speech pathologist who worked with disabled people for 40 years.They are the most inspiring people ever and my favourites were the profoundly intellectually disabled adults who lived in group homes. Their smiles could light up the world.

2. When I retired I trained as a Level 2 Veterinary Nurse and worked part time in a vet practice for about 4 years. It was something I always wanted to do and it wasn't just playing with cute puppies. We had funny moments, a lot, but there was sadness and a great deal of manual labour hauling around big sacks of dog food, cleaning kennels of all sorts of stuff and mopping floors- forever. I loved it.

3. I have over 2500 vintage Penguin Books in my house and I collect them whenever/wherever I see them. I never tire of their history, stories and illustrated covers.

4. I do volunteer work for a wildlife sanctuary as a wildlife rescuer here. Last year Bonorong Sanctuary in Hobart and their volunteers rescued over 5000 animals that had been injured, hit by cars or attacked by other animals (generally dogs and cats who are allowed to run wild).

5. I grew up in Michigan and lived there the first 20 years of my life. The next 15 years were spent in Ft. Myers, Florida and then my husband and I moved to Tasmania, Australia as we wanted adventure in our lives and they had a shortage of speech pathologists. They paid for us to come there and put us up in housing if we promised to stay for 3 years. (Otherwise we paid the expenses back.) That was 26 years ago and we never looked back. We now have dual citizenship with Australia and the USA. We will live in Tasmania forever. It is beautiful.

6. I have multiple sclerosis and have been involved in quite a few research projects. I have a wonderful neurologist here and the MS support services are also brilliant. I didn't know I had it until I was 50 when it was diagnosed and fortunately 15 years later I only have a fuzzy arm and sometimes numb toes and foot. The neurologist doesn't think it will progress and I hope he's right but you just never know.

7.  I am a book blogger but half the time I have no idea what I'm doing. I love books and that is all that matters and the best thing, the very best thing about blogging and Penguin Book collecting are the beautiful, lovely people out there who have become friends and keep me laughing and reading.


I follow quite a few blogs religiously.  My routine is to feed my dogs and cats at 6:30 am - 7:00 am. Make a big cup of coffee and go back to bed with all of them while I drink the coffee and read the blogs on my blogroll on Travellin' Penguin. Here are some of my favourites (not in any particular order.)

Dolce Bellezza- She brings style, good taste and elegance to her beautiful writing about books and has a passion for translated fiction also.

Fleur Fisher- She absolutely amazes me with the amount of books she reads. She seems to have a new post everyday and I don't know how she does it. I also love her tales of knitting and her little dog Briar.

My Porch Thomas and his dog Lucy keep me entertained with this massive house renovations, trips around America, and reading all kinds of books. He understands what it is like to have a slump and I have received some good pep talks when I wanted to throw it in.  He has a humorous take on life, literature and society and he inspires me to keep laughing even when I want to run rampant slapping people with a wet noodle.  I love the photos of Lucy also. She is beautiful. He also does amazing interviews on the Readings with Simon Savidge.

Savidge Reads- He makes me laugh with all he gets up to and I loved his relationship with his Gran  when she was living. The two of them were most inspiring. He just has so much energy for everything literary.

A Penguing A Week- Karyn and I travelled to England together a couple of years back and each of us shipped 250 Penguins back. We were crazy but didn't know it. I am amazed how many of the Penguins she has read and the list of them on the side of her blog is mind numbing. I do believe she will reach her goal of reading all of them.

I Prefer Reading- I always look forward to Lyn's Sunday Poetry selection and I learned a lot from her WWI Australian poetry information. She is very devoted to the poetry and it has inspired more interest on my part in it.

The Classics Club blog- The people who have organised this are amazing and I have learned so much about Classic books and how anybody can read them and enjoy them. They aren't as intimidating as I once thought they were and now I have read some I love them. It also opens up a whole new world of books. Too many for my lifetime.

The Age of Uncertainty- I have been following this blog for sometime now and he makes me laugh like no other blogger. A bookseller from England, he has a wonderful style of looking at the world and he makes you think about the weirdest things. I hope he never stops writing.

Whispering Gums and ANZ Lit Lovers blogs- These two blogs are the best I have come across related to Australian and New Zealand literature. They have helped me learn about the past literary history of Australia and to appreciate however small our overall population is related to the rest of the world, our literature is right up there at the top.

A Guys Moleskin Diary- I always make sure I read every post because I love the way this guy in San Francisco can dissect a book, either fiction or non fiction and make me think about a lot of issues. He is the only person I know who says he never reads in bed and must read almost every waking hour.  He is very inspiring the way he incorporates literature into his life. I enjoy him very much.

Behold The Stars-  This blogger has done more for me learning to appreciate the classics than anyone else I know. She is amazing how she goes through the difficult classics with a sharp, defining mind to present the best of these.  I would need to read some of these books 10 times to get out of them what she does in one reading.  Her love for Zola and her pet chickens, budgies and parrot (that she also writes about is nothing short of total passion.)

Winston's Dad- Stu keeps blogging about his beloved translated fiction no matter how tough things get for him. I admire the way he discusses his learning difficulty yet you'd never know he has one. He has an astute mind, he loves his dog Winston (who is poorly right now) and translated fiction. He has given me a greater understanding of the world of translated fiction and I thank him for that. I always look to see what he reads.

A Striped Armchair- This young Texan woman is an inspiration also.  She has health issues that plague her and yet she keeps coming back to the things she loves- books. In all sizes and shapes. I love her take on various things she picks up in the library and although her posts may be sporadic at times due to her health concerns she never wavers in her quest to learn new things.

James Reads Books- I enjoy the way he talks about his secondary school kids he teaches and how he thinks about the books they should be reading.  He reads a lot and quite often he is thinking about how his students will react to something.  It is good to keep up with what young people are reading and thinking now I am out of the business of children. I also love his basset hound and stories about California.

TBR-13- Lisa is great is how enthusiastic she is.  She loves the challenges, new books, and is always there to offer words of wisdom and encouragement. She comments a lot and any blogger can't help but appreciate that. Thanks Lisa for your input and friendship.

We love our travels through the blogs.

There are more blogs to read and gather inspiration from so this list by all means is not complete but they all offer encouragement in various ways. If you aren't familiar with the above blogs, have a look and see for yourself how much fun the world of book blogging can be.

Winter Shake Up-

It is now very much the dead of winter in Tasmania and we have been having shocking storms. We received 10 - 20 cm of rain across the state in the last three days and there is still more to come.
Our front yard has so much water in it that all three dogs are confined to the house which is making for interesting little tasks related to the kitchen floor.

Seeing the dogs running about the yard trying to dodge raindrops that come down at the speed of sound is quite entertaining.  Towels await by the back door. Mop and bucket are nearby and thanks for old lino on the kitchen floor.

I am in a reading slump well and truly.  I tried to do too much, I tried to keep up with reading challenges, other people's blog ideas, web page links to bookish things and now I have decided that all I really want to do with the next half of the year is to be true to the Penguin who travels Tasmania in search of vintage Penguin books.

My Penguin book collection continues to thrive with a couple of good friends finding them for me on their trips to op shops. I will share some of the newer finds here in future.  I am not doing anymore challenges. I am not going to read from any lists. I am going to read as the mood strikes me. I am going back to my true nature.

I think book bloggers try to do too much.  I have now done about 240 posts to date so I feel I know what the book blogging world is about.  I am going to only read the books that grab me, like I used to do. They might be classics or they might be crime novels. They could be literary fiction, non-fiction or utter trash. I might just read short stories for awhile or magazines.

I am also going back to the format of the "Travellin' Penguin" in that we "travel".  Tasmania is a beautiful state and I am going to show it off more here with my scootering to Op shops and bakeries and mountains with the motorbike sect. It is a big part of my life and I am going to put those photos up. Sometimes there will be a book in the post, sometimes there won't.

I plan on turning my blog into more of a journal. A journal of seeing the world, reading the books I love, talking about the films I see and the plays I read in my play reading class.  Whatever strikes my fancy will be put on this page.

I have planned a trip to go to Melbourne because in the dead of winter one needs something to look forward to. I have rented a little studio apartment in the city centre for 6 nights and I plan on doing bookish and bikish (such a word?) things.    I am also going to see David Suchet (the man who plays Poirot in the BBC series) in the play The Last Confession. More on that later.

This blog will be with me on that trip and there will be photos.  I'm simplifying the blog, I'm simplifying my winter life here and for now I'm going back to the mop and bucket and the towels to finish drying off my very wet friends who share this house with me. Stay tuned, I will be back.

Four Friends by Robyn Carr

I do like this cover.

Today I went and got groceries, came home, made a hot coffee with almond flavouring in it (really, it's quite good) and am about to settle down to a "fluffy" book.  "Fluffy books" are those you can read quickly, they have happy endings, everyone is a good friend to everyone and the bad people get what they deserve. Sometimes you just feel like "fluff".

I'll seriously get back to Moby Dick and the Richard Flanagan WWII book next week.  My husband, T.  is about to go visit family in the USA and Canada for 3 1/2 weeks and I am going to be taking care of all the creatures that live here.   It will be a pretty quiet month with just the dogs and cats for company and of course all of my books.  Still winter but was very mild yesterday and today and we got in a 240 km bike ride with a stop at a bakery and a cafe.  These days are very good.

The book Four Friends (by Robyn Carr) starts out with one friend throwing her junior husband (by ten years) out of the house for cheating on her and everything he owns onto the front lawn.  She is also getting her kitchen renovated so I am wondering if she is going to start up something later on with the lovely man doing her kitchen.

The other friend has a wonderful family, great kids and everything is perfect until she stops at her husband's place of work to quickly meet him for lunch and runs into his Personal Assistant in the restroom in tears. As they go along talking about the PA's relationship problem the friend suggests she go to a marriage counsellor.  As they continue to talk the PA thinks this must have been recommended because of the friend's husband's affair he had and the whole office talked about 6 years before and isn't the friend Gerri just wonderful to not have thrown him out and forgiven him.
Oops, the cat is out of the bag as Gerri never realised for a minute that this happened.

Author Robyn Carr

Well she has just confronted him and it is all about to hit the fan.  I know by the time I finish this book I will be craving something with more substance but hey, we all have books for different moods.  I am enjoying reading about all the problems and I know everything is going to work out so I am not too worried about it. Though the characters don't know it will all work out yet. They're pretty depressed right now.

Another reason I'm putting up this post is because I have had a couple of comments from my last post that comments are being directed to Google and not going up as before.  I need to see if I have sorted this out.  I noticed there are help pages directed to this problem but I have not had a lot of time to read it. So if people who do comment regularly have any problem please bear with me.  We all know Google and Facebook are monsters onto the universe and don't seem to have too many scruples if you don't keep a tight rein on them.

I hope everyone is having a pretty good week and do let me know what you're reading for your mood...TODAY ! More soon.

Sunday Market and Short Stories

As you have heard me go on and on about we are in the middle of winter. Being a motorbike enthusiast amongst other things I do not like this cold, wet weather. Sunday is usually our day for the club ride but this past Sunday was just that little bit too chilly to deal with.  For one all the clothes we have to wear weigh so much and I just didn't have the energy to put them on.

My good friend Kate rang me up and said it was a good day to do the Glenorchy Market with her 15 year old daughter. That sounded much better than wearing my weight in armor and gloves and helmet so we decided to meet out there.

The Glenorchy Market held every Sunday year around.

 For one you get homemade doughnuts for 6 for $2.00.  Also the coffee is hot and not too bad. Glenorchy is a 150 year old city that is just north of Hobart.  They have a huge warehouse on the showgrounds property and every Sunday is it turned into a market.  It is full of junk.  Nothing of great value here. It is dusty, has food vans parked around it, people who seem to be on their last leg at times and we love it. There are big tables of books and I usually find a Penguin or two.

The only Penguin I found this week was a reprinted Monica Dickens book I didn't have and as I don't buy reprinted Penguins for my collection I thought I would leave it there.  I know I didn't have it and the man selling it was trying to make a living and it was only 50 cents?  Do you think I gave in and bought it?  Yup.

However as we wandered around  eating our doughnuts and waiting to get a hot coffee and sit down and chat I came across another table with a few books on it.  It was a pretty book, looked like part of a set you would get through Reader's Digest or something like that. 

A beautiful, old book of short stories.

It looked new. I picked it up to leaf through it as Kate and Sarah were looking at clothes.  Turns out it was a 1947 book called A World of Great Short Stories edited by Hiram Naydn and John Cournos.

On the title page it states that it is 115 stories, the best of modern literature.  I looked at the copyright page and there were roman numerals MCMXLVII.  The book appears to be brand new, put away out of light, never opened, it practically cracked when I opened it.  I could not believe it was so old. Over 60 years old.  I wondered where it had been all these years. Probably on a farm property, in a big library with books that were never read or stored in the sun.  It was marked $4.00. The cover is beautiful and when I opened it up the short stories are from authors all over the world.  There are short stories from America (the book is American), Britain. France, Belgium, Spain, Italy, Portugal, Germany, Austria, Switzerland, Holland, Denmark, Norway, Sweden, Russia, Poland, Finland, Czechoslovakia, Hungary, Yugoslavia, Rumania, Bulgaria, Greece, China, Korea, Japan, India, Iran, Arabia, Syria, Armenia, Turkey, Burma, Annam, Thailand, Phillipines, and one story from each country in South America.

Our deck of cards.

Then standing there looking through it I remembered the game that James plays with the deck of cards on his blog James Reads Books (here).

I began telling my friends about it and they thought that was a great idea so we said we'd look for a deck of cards at the market.  I found a big deck of cards for sale on one of the tables, extra large cards, and thought that was it! 

I brought my cards home and wrote the page numbers the stories begin on, two to a card and three page numbers on a few.  I shuffled the cards and put them back into the box.

The game is played like this:  Put the name of a short story or the page number where it is located in the book if only one book is used and shuffle the cards. Read the story that comes up and then write about it. The focus is one a week so you can read 52 short stories in a year.  I don't think I'll commit to a day, will just do when I have some free time and not working still on Moby Dick!

When I got home I was quite pleased with myself for finding such a gem of a book and a deck of cards all for $6.00.  What a cheap form of entertainment. Stay tuned folks and we'll find out if this book of stories is any good together.  Feel free to join me if you like. Something to get through the winter months and beyond.

Cousin Eddie, now 8 months old.

I had to include Cousin Eddie in this post. He loves the playing cards when they are shuffled in
front of him.  Maybe I'll let him pick the first short story we read.

Winter Blues and Books

We are well and truly enmeshed in winter here and it is all a bit blah.  You know the feeling. Grey dreary days. A bit of drizzle but not enough wet to do the garden any good. The birds look cold outdoors. Days are short.

Books abound but having to push myself to get through them though some are much better than others.    I'm still going with Moby Dick.  I put it aside for a bit while I read Moonstone for July book group. I am on chapter 60 right now so a fair ways still to go.

On a bright note Moonstone by Wilkie Collins had enthusiastic discussion at our book club meeting. I think we talked about it for almost 2 hours plus other books we are reading.

It is a wonderful book if a bit wordy but that was what they did when it was written in the 1860's.  The book is briefly about an Indian moonstone that is supposed to be the birthday gift of an aristocratic young woman. She receives it without any problem but it goes missing the night of her birthday and the rest of the book is trying to find it. The moonstone is actually a rather large diamond so it is quite valuable.

The story is broken into parts told by various narrators that are involved in the story.  The mystery is solved and that's all I'm saying. There was a lot of humour, more than I expected, in the book.  It was most enjoyable and though long because of the wordiness (can take several pages to get up a staircase) we all enjoyed it in our group as we discussed it while eating chocolate and drinking tea.

For a totally opposite book I also read Orange Is The New Black by Piper Kerman. Many of you will know it is also a television series, one of which I am totally addicted to and am anxiously waiting for season two.  I ordered the book at the library months ago and it finally came in.  I enjoyed the book though I must say there is more action on the t.v. series.  By the time the book arrived at the library I had watched all of series one so I was very familiar with it.  I found it to be an interesting story of a woman's year spent in minimum security prison.  I found it interesting that she actually didn't get to prison until 10 years after she committed her crime by which time she was out of the drug carrying business and quite settled with her life and about to get married. I wondered by then what the point was of locking her up.  But society doesn't often explain itself sensibly so this was another example.

Another book I have just started from the library is a series of stories called Raft by author and doctor Howard Goldenberg. I read a review of this book on an Australian website, sorry, I can't remember whose.  It is the true story of a man who works with indigenous people in Australia and the review made it sound quite interesting.  I am just about to start it.

Last, but not least our August book club read is Richard Flanagan's latest, The New Road to the Deep North. This is a memoir of his uncle and his experiences during WWII. Richard Flanagan is from Tasmania and is one of Australia's top writers.  He is also quite outspoken about environmental issues which are largely ignored by our government recently and he stirs a few pots.  However the book is quite separate from that. Should be an interesting read.

That's the news from this part of Hobart and nothing too exciting happening right now.

Animals asleep in various warmest parts of the house, mainly under blankets and donnas. It is too wet and cold for scootering, we're drinking too much coffee, tea and milo because the heat is comforting and trying to sort out reading for this month.

Looking forward to spring. What are you up to this week???