Catching Up A Bit

A Whole Life by Robert Seethaler
Translated Fiction: German

Our Fuller's Book store Reading Group read and discussed this book this month.  I see today it has made it to the Man Booker Long List for 2016. I cannot recommend this book highly enough. I found it simply wonderful.

The writing is exquiste and many paragraphs I reread. It is only 150 pages. It really shows the skill of the writer to tell one man's life in that amount of space. There are no wasted words. Unlike a lot of contemporary books it is tightly edited. It really was a joy to read.

The book was originally published in German. The translation was conducted by Charlotte Collins. 

When I am not buying books at Fullers, Cousin Eddie and I
are playing with their bags.

It is the story of Andreas who lived his whole life in the  Austrian Alps. He had a rough childhood, grew up working for a cable car development company in his working years. Married and there was joy and tragedy in his life. I don't want to say much about it because I wouldn't want to ruin it for anyone.  The mountain plays as much of a character as do the characters. It is definitely a character directed book. People really cared about Andreas. He was an extremely likeable character and the reader feels everything he does. The time period is between WWI and WWII. Happy reading.

Playing with gum leaves in Photoshop.
Changing their colour. 

I haven't been blogging much. I have several things to catch up on. Mr. Penguin had hip replacement surgery. As he is on crutches for 4 weeks and hasn't been overly ambulatory I have been doing a lot of his jobs while he recovers. Our old 15 year old dog had to have surgery as well as we thought a tooth was broken. His gums were infected and the tooth looked like it had broken off to both the vet and me. But luckily it wasn't though the gums needed attention.  We were worried about how he would cope with a general anesthetic.

The writing group I  belong to has been compiling papers from 2015 to put into a published book for our members and that has taken a fair bit of typing, culling and organising.

The Play Reading class has started again for Term I and we are reading Irish plays this term. More on that later.

Wally came through his surgery okay. He is 15 1/2 years old.

I finished my Photoshop course and my Photography class and I am trying to consolidate some of that so I don't forget it all. I must post up some of my photographs before long.  

I have discovered Bullet Journalling and loving it. There are lots of examples on Instagram and the nickname for it is BuJo.  Google it to see how much fun it is.

Hopefully my Bujo journal will organise me to a finely organised human being. haha. But it is fun.

A bit more sorting of the Penguin Library, new finds to catalogue and photograph and another public presentation is happening tomorrow morning. I have my suitcase with the wheels full of various Penguins from different series to display for the School for Seniors on the other side of the river. I will try to get some photos so I can share it with you.

I need to take a few of the things I've been doing, break them down into smaller activities and then I should be able to post about them.

Also I might add it has been summer here and the weather in Tasmania has been glorious so lots of bike riding has been happening. One weekend we completed a 900 km ride over three days. That had me crawling for my bed once it ended.

Oh well, what is life, if not for lots of activities that are fun but maybe cause one to be a bit discombobulated over a few days, weeks or months. 

I'll scatter a few photos through this post to liven it up a bit. I look forward to hearing what others have been up to. I have been reading your blogs. All the ones on my blog list in my blog as well as quite a few new ones. Just not commenting a lot. I do so enjoy all of them. 

I'll be in touch again, soon. Promise.