Always One Thing Or Another

Just when I thought it was safe to go in the water..................I had a minor stroke last week. I say minor because it was. I woke up one day with dysfluent speech, weakness in the right side of my face and difficulty writing and typing.

What a nuisance was my first thought. My second thought is I'm too young for this and on top of my MS what else do I need? Well, really.

The good news is it has made me evaluate what is important to read and to write. It has also taught me that I need to get on with it.  So now blogging has become not only important but it has become therapy.  

Don't even talk about drawing clothes for the Travellin' Penguin.  My right hand was dodgy at the best of times but it has slowed right down but blogging has already helped it. Drawing with a mouse has been hard but it can be done.  The Penguin might look more dishevelled than he did but he won't be naked.  But he too is ageing. Being in his third year and all. Yes, sadly Penguins  don't live as long as humans.

But we both have a lot of years in us yet and I can still ride a motorbike.  That really is the true test of ageing I think.

So things are slower here but they do go on and I for one, am glad that I woke up and can continue on with all of the things that I love (nothing  like some melodrama here).  So know we will still continue on and the Penguin will guide me through all of the books I still want to read.  After all it IS a new year so let's get on with it. And yes, I do have a lot of Penguin books to still collect.

Penguin's THE FATAL IMPACT (thoughts)

The Fatal Impact: An Account of the Invasion of the South Pacific 1767-1840 by Alan Moorehead
Published by Penguin Books 1968
Number 2773

I chose this book at random using Random.org. When I saw what I had chosen I thought "Oh no, not this." But I read it anyway, after all how bad can a couple of hundred pages be?  I'm glad I read it. I really liked it.

It was the 1770's and Captain Cook was going to Tahiti for the first of several trips. It is written in such a way that I cared about him, the crew and the Tahitians. It was idyllic. I cared what they got up to.

"It is, of course, growing increasingly hard in this machine age to understand what it was like to be on a long voyage under sail in the eighteenth century; the monotonous uneventful days, the absence (in the Pacific) of any European ships at sea, the sense of leaving civilisation far away behind, perhaps to never be regained. They sailed from Plymouth in August 1878, and towards the end of the year they called at Rio de Janeiro.  That was their last contact with the known world. The days drifted away, punctuated by storms, by the catching of sharks and dolphins, by the shooting of birds, by the minutiae of the little happenings on board that make a ship a world onto itself."

It talks of the remoteness of the world at that time and how they never knew what was ahead. In referring to Tahiti he writes: 

"We are dealing here with a time when the Far East was almost a closed book, when Africa was known only in outline, and, most mysterious of all, the immense Pacific offered the possibility of anything. It could be haunted by demons and monsters but it could also be the abode of the blessed. And now Cook brought back the proof that it really did exist, this golden island inhabited by happy, healthy, beautiful people whose every want was supplied by the tropical forest, and who, best of all, knew nothing of the cramping sophistries of civilisation."

The second part of the book is the later exploration and development of Australia. I would have been happy if it ended after Tahiti as I was in Tahiti. My thoughts were with the illustrator and the camp cook and the scientists then that ended quite tidily but we began again in Australia.

I would have preferred two separate books. But onwards we went into Australia. It talks about the development of the eastern seaboard, the seaboard, the fauna and flora to be discovered. It talked at great length of the interaction of the Aborigines. But it was anti-climatic. I was still in Tahiti. 

It went on to tell of how the Aboriginal people were effected by the invasion of white people after Captain Cook was there.

It talked of the people who came later, the fellow explorers and the whalers. 

I wouldn't have chosen this book to read but having chosen it I'm glad that I did.

Although I know much of the history there remained a lot to be learned and isn't that was really good non-fiction is?

Have you read anything about Captain Cook?

Counts for 1968 for Century of Books

The List of My Desires

The List of my Desires by Grégoire Delacourt

This is our book for February's Book club so I'm feeling a bit self righteous I have finished it so early. Usually I slide into my seat at the last minute having only finished it ten minutes before.

What does one do when one is happy with their lot in life and feels they don't need another thing? But maybe a new bag, a bath mat or a new car? But upon winning $18,000,000 dollars doesn't quite know whether to cash it in or not.  That is what happened to Jocelyne when having been talked into buying a ticket she wins.

She owns a haberdashery shop that she goes to each day. She is happily married to Jocelyn (her husband has the same name as her) and she has raised her children successfully. Yes, she is a bit overweight but her haberdashery blog is taking off and she loves the fact she is still attracted to her husband.

So she hides the cheque in her shoe and leaves it there, taking it out only to look at it from time to time.

One day, unbeknownst to her the husband finds it and while pretending to go away for a week due to work he disappears altogether taking the cheque with him.

I think the reason the author gives him the same name is so he can rub out the e and cash the cheque.

To tell anymore of this story would be to ruin it but I did enjoy it.  It was a bit of fluff and though I didn't find it very deep I must say it gives some food for thought.

Does one ever need more than one has to be happy?  Does the things one has wanted their whole life in terms of material wealth make a person happy?  More importantly did it make Jocelyn and Joscelyne happy?  Or would they have been okay going along as they had.

Read this French translation of such a book and see what happens to these two. It doesn't end like one would think. Or does it?

My Author of the Month

I said on the first of the month I would write out the Good Reads quote.  I receive one of these each day and in a bid to learn more about an author I would print the first one I get each month.The first quote of this year was one by Neil Gaiman.
 I am familiar with this name but haven't read anything by him. I can see he is a current author.

I hope that in this year to come, you make mistakes. Because if you are making mistakes...you're Doing Something. 

Neil Gaiman

Happy New Year! What kind of mistakes are you looking forward to making in 2014?

I know of The Ocean At The End of the Lane and I know of Coraline.  I was not familiar with the Sandman books of which I think there are three.  

            

 He has won many Awards that can be seen on his Wikpedia page. He writes novels for adults and children and more recently has been doing some Graphic novels.

He's been touring the United States the past couple of months so maybe you have seen him.

Has anyone read him?  What did you think?

Christmas Book Loot

Last Christmas I didn't receive one thing book related and I thought it was quite funny really.  I spend most of my days with my books and evidently people thought I probably didn't want anything more to do with them.  I could tell they are not in that addicted book state that most people who might be reading this are.

I made a joke of it to a few people and this year I ended up with books.  I earned a book voucher from my favourite indie store in Hobart. When I was in the USA my brother in Tennessee and sister in California made sure I knew where the bookstores were. We visited several.  Then along came Christmas.  In the interest of convenience my brother's family in combination with my mother sent me an exceedingly generous gift card to Amazon.  That will keep my Kindle turning over for sometime to come and is greatly appreciated because if I want something specific I should be able to easily download it on the spot.

However my favourites will always be the real deal that one holds in their hand and it is those that I am sharing here today.  If anyone has any of these I hope you let me know what you think of them. If you aren't familiar with them I hope you enjoy their beauty.  There are a couple of others but I will share them another day in their own right.  I did also acquire some more vintage Penguins for the collection but as they are early ones they are in the orange and white banded copies so won't post them up until I read them all.... ahem....

Two Literary Sleuths and Their Shared Passion

These two women have been lifelong friends and travelled the world visiting 

second hand bookshops in many countries.  This is their story. I have dipped into it

and I love them already so can't wait to get into this one. 

For The Love of Books

This is a great one for dipping in and out of.  It is a compilation as it states on the cover,
of 115 Celebrated Writers on the Books they love the most. It appears that most, if not all
of those who contributed are American writers.

The Narrow Road to the Deep North
by Australian author Richard Flanagan is being described by
everyone as a genius of a book. When I saw Tim Winton, author of Cloudstreet
at a book event recently he stopped talking about his own newly released book
to comment on this one. The following statement is from the Guardian Book Review of it online:"The Narrow Road to the Deep North is dedicated to Flanagan's father, prisoner san byaku san ju go (335), the Japanese number given to him as a PoW, one of Weary Dunlop's thousand on the death railway."
(Thanks to Kate for such a lovely Christmas present)

This is another book that strikes my fancy.  It is an interesting
course of drawing which I am somewhat compromised in doing so thought
it would be fun to have a go. I picked this up with a voucher.

Paper Bliss
I got this one with a voucher from the Sale table at my local store, Fuller's.
It is such a beautiful book with great ideas of all the ways to use
paper to make not only notebooks but also cards, decorate letters and even how
to make your own decorative paper. Fun to look through and who knows, I might get
very creative during a cold winter's day in the future.

This is another book about books.  I love these kinds of books and will have fun dipping into

it as the calendar year goes by and what a great time to receive such a book with it now being the first of January. 

This one may have some quips and quotes that pop up  here again and again.

As we just watched the fireworks on the Sydney Harbour Bridge (on TV), 2013 is well and truly behind us.  All the best for 2014. Let the good times roll.