Classic Club Spin is Coming Up

I really enjoy the classic club spin that is online now.  The rules are simple. Pick and list 20 books from your classics list or whatever list you want to choose. The Classic Club will randomly pick a number 1-20 and post it up on Monday.  Then you match that number to your list and read and review that book by July.

As I am not reading assigned classic texts I am still focusing on my TBR pile which is absolutely enormous.  So I went into my front library, closed my eyes and picked 20 books at random from my TBR shelves.  What a fun way to create a stack of 20 TBR books. So this is my list.

1. Vintage Penguin The Letters of Rachel Henning.  These letters were written between 1853 and 1882.  They give a vivid and fascinating account of life in colonial Australia as seen through the eyes of a previously sheltered young Englishwoman.

2.  Tainted Blood by Arnaldur Indridason. A man is found murdered in his Reykjavik flat. There are no obvious clues apart from a cryptic note left on the body and a photograph of a young girl's grave. An Icelandic thriller/mystery.

3.  The World's Back Doors by Max Murray. This is the story of a trip round the world. It is not so much of places as of people. The trip was begun with about enough money to buy one meal and continued for 66,000 miles. This was first published in 1927 and looks fascinating.

4. ahahaha- I picked the Tao of Pooh. How much fun (and easy) would this one be?  I love Winnie the Pooh and have not visited this book in years. Can't believe I picked it at random off the shelf.

5.  Another Penguin book. A Zoo in my Luggage by Gerald Durrell. This was written in 1960. It is about the birth of a private zoo. Journeying to the Cameroons he and his wife, helped by the renowned Fon of Bafut, managed to collect "plenty beef". Their difficulties began when they found themselves back at home, with Cholmondeley the chimpanzee, Bug-eye the bush baby, and other founder members... and nowhere to put them.

6.  Blueback by Australian author Tim Winton. A fable for all ages. Abel Jackson was 10 years old and could never remember a time when he could not dive. His mother said he was a diver before he was born; he floated and swam in the warm ocean inside her for nine months so maybe it came naturally. He had lived by the sea at Longboat Bay his whole life.

7.  An Australian classic.  Storm Boy by Colin Thiele.  This will be a reread from ages ago. The illustrations are beautiful. Storm Boy and his father, Hide-away Tom, live alone. Their home is a humpy on the long finger of sandhills between the Southern Ocean and the Coorong- the lonely, narrow stretch of the South Australian coast. The story tells of the relationship between Mr. Percival the pelican and the boy.

8.  Leo Tolstoy: A Signature on a Portrait. Highlights of Tolstoy's Thoughts. (I found some pictures I had tucked into this book of my animals. How nice.)

9.  On The Road with Charles Kuralt.  Charles Kuralt hosted the morning show on Sunday Morning American tv for years. He always featured a different spot in America and gave information about it. He had a soothing voice and I used to love watching him.  This is his biography and some tales of being on the road. How interesting.  I hope I read this soon.

10.  No One Writes to the Colonel by Gabriel Garcia Marquez.  I have been wanting to read something by this great author for years but am so intimidated by him.  I have the Cholera ?  book and his 100 Days of Solitude but know they can be tricky.  This is a great way to venture into the water so to speak.

11. Nevil Shute's Requiem for a Wren.  Despite hearing about Nevil Shute my whole life as an Aussie author that wrote the well known On the Beach I have never read anything by him. This was published in 1955.

12.  As I Walked Out One Midsummer Morning by Laurie Lee. No idea about this book, its author or where on earth I got it. It states on the back:  It was 1934. The young man walked to London from the security of the Cotswolds to make his fortune. He was to live by playing the violin and by a year's labouring on a London building site. Then knowing one Spanish phrase he decided to see Spain.  Sounds like fun. It was published in 1971.

13. Journeying East by variety of  authors. Conversations on Aging and Dying.  Spiritual teachers share their thoughts on ageing and the end of life process. Hmmm , heavy.

14. Lewis Percy by Anita Brookner. I have ever only read one of her books and that was Hotel duLac which I enjoyed. I know many people enjoy her books so this might be a good spin.

15. Oh my gosh, Another Anita Brookner book. A Private View. It says it is "beautiful book that one in impelled to read at one sitting".  We might have to see about that.

16.  The Beautiful Years by Henry Williamson. I am not familiar with this book but it has a beautiful cover. A tender evocation of West Country childhood in the golden years before the first World War.  An English read.

17.  Birds in Art compiled by Ferdie MacDonald.  This is a little hardcover, beautiful book with many illustrations and information about birds in art. There are also some poem written throughout. A happy little book.

18.  This next one is a real classic. Germinal by Emile Zola.  I know this is a heavy going classic about mining. I have read several reviews on it and it looks really good but it might be a bit hard going. Hope I can get it read in time if it is picked.

19.  The Greek Philosophers. This is written by Rex Warner and gives examples of their work. Philosophers include Plato, Lucretius, Epicurus, Plotinus, Marcus Aurelius, Aristotle and Epictetus.

20.  Questions of Travel by Michelle de Kretser. My friend loaned me this book so I will need to have a read of it soon. It looks like a bit of a chunkster but should be interesting. However she said she couldn't get into it and has passed it on to me. I haven't seen any other reviews of this book.

Well, that is my list of 20.  What a variety and all of them from my own shelves. So many people give me books and I pick them up from op shops then toss them onto the shelf.  I really should read all of them and then pass them on through the Book Phantom.  Maybe I'll have a giveaway or something. I do want to move all of them on.  Wish me luck.

Monopoly Challenge Contined...

I have finished the challenge of the Electric Company. That was to read a book with a cover that depicted a daytime scene on the cover. If you look at the cover of The Heart Is A Lonely Hunter, the Penguin Modern classic of this book does that.

I have now gone to random.org/dice and rolled the di again. It came up on St. James Place and I am supposed to read a book that is the following:

ST. JAMES PLACE: Read a book with a mostly orange cover OR a book whose title starts with J or P OR a book set in Europe OR a book by an author whose first or last initial can be found in “STJAMES”.

As I collect vintage Penguin books this will be a walk in the park. So many Penguins with orange covers. I just need to go find one on the shelf, read it, review it and I'll be back with it.  I am enjoying this challenge. It is heaps of fun, gives a lot of choice and keeps me reading. Can't ask for anything more than that.

Sunday Animals with Books -Library Posters

I found these posters online related to advertising in libraries.  If you were a child looking at these posters would you also want to read books?  Remembering my childhood days I used to love the thought of animals reading books. The cuter the animal the more I wanted to emulate it. How about you?

The Heart is a Lonely Hunter by Carson McCullers

Vintage Penguin No. 1566
1943

The Heart is a Lonely Hunter explores the problems of isolation and communication . It is the story of four people who base their existence around the deaf-mute John Singer in the earlier 20th Century in the deep south.

Carson McCullers was born in a small Georgia town and it is this town that provides the setting for her writing.  The town in the book is never revealed and I believed it was Mississippi but could have been Georgia, Alabama or Louisiana. Carson McCullers was filled with angst and grief and led quite an amazing life herself. She hated violence, perversion, injustice and was herself filled with conflict and pain.

I have ordered her biography that I found on eBay because her life sounds so fascinating.

The main characters are John Singer, as I mentioned, a deaf-mute who lives in a boarding house in a small town.
The other main characters are Jake Blount a frustrated, alcoholic political activist and a bit of a roustabout. Doc Copeland is the black doctor in the town whose scholastic ability is so advanced and he struggles to come to terms with the superstitions and untruths of his own people and the town around him.  

Portia is his daughter who works in the household of the boarding house.  Mick is the teenage girl who belongs to the family of the people who own the boarding house. They are very poor and she struggles to come to terms with the fact she will not pursue her music that she so loves as she cares for her younger siblings and goes to school.  She is a wonderful character.

Biff is the owner of the cafe whose wife dies in the story and he is left behind to deal with his lot in life. All the characters congregate around the cafe or John Singers house. It is here friendships are made. Every week these four people visit John Singer in his boarding house blindly stating their own lives and problems to him. They never know how much he truly understands but he acts like a mentor to them, albeit silent.  It is the ending of this book that is so profound. I say no more.

From the Film 1968

I saw the film of this movie years ago, I believe in the 70's. Alan Arkin played the role of John Singer and Sondra Locke was Mick.  It never left my mind as I loved it so much. Both actors were nominated for Academy Awards in these roles.

Loneliness and poverty permeates this book and if you're on a downer I wouldn't recommend reading it unless you want to be surrounded by people worse off than yourself.  The years of the depression were so hard for people in America and it is never portrayed better than in the deep south of the U.S

I loved this story. I loved all the characters. I love that they thought deeply about the issues of their time. I loved that they tried so hard to connect to others and John Singer is such a wonderful man.

This book is very much in the vein of Harper Lee's To Kill a Mockingbird or John Steinbeck's Grapes of Wrath.   

It is Southern Gothic at its best and I think everyone should read it at some time, (but that's just me.)  I was deeply moved by this book. I was always going to read it since seeing the movie but since our book group assigned it for the May book I embraced it completely.

Now I know one of my friends dislikes stories from the deep south though I've never had the conversation with him as to why (ahem....Thomas).  But no doubt he has read this ???

Carson McCullers- The Heart is a Lonely Hunter was her
first novel.

I was surprised when I looked in some of my reference books, such as great American Women Writers and another book of American Literature.  Carson McCullers was not mentioned because I certainly would include her.  Not only was she a novelist but she also wrote short stories and plays. She was an important figure in American Literature though she had such a crazy lifestyle I wonder if this wasn't accepted for the time. She married her husband and had quite a volatile relationship only to divorce and remarry him several years later. She was reportedly bi-sexual and was quite promiscuous with both men and women. She worked in New York and Europe and seemed to fit in with that whole writer's group that went to Paris. Faulkner and Hemingway were her contemporaries. I am looking forward to the biography arriving as it was reviewed quite well even though it was written some time ago.

I loved this book and I would have to say it is the best book I have this  year by far.


(This book fits into my Century of Books Challenge for 1943.)

Gilgamesh and Pets

Just a Thursday catchup this week.  Busy with various things this week but did get to find the epic poem of Gilgamesh on line and read it.  Kind of depressing with his fear of death and spending so much time writing about it but interesting to read. Now having visited Mesopatamia we can move on to ancient Egypt in the Penguin History of the World.

I thought I would do something light and fluffy and share all my pets with you. Many book bloggers have cats and some of them also have dogs. So this is my family, not having children to brag about and we love them to pieces.

Here they are in order of pecking:

This is Wally, He is 13 years old and we bought him as an 8 week old. He was in a box of puppies from a used car dealer in a car lot.  There were 10 puppies in the box from two jack russell mothers. His father was a staffordshire terrier crossed with a dachshund.  Short legs, staffy body and jack russel head.  He is the strongest willed dog I have ever met and we have a battle of the wills daily but I always win.  Food is the only thing that matters to him.  

This is Molly-Monkey.  She is 9 years old and don't be fooled. She rules the roost amongst all her brothers.  We often get our hair done on the same day when we gave a girl's day out. She was "rescued" from a pet store when I saw her there one day while buying something for a client of mine when working at Disability Services. She was way too young to be away from her mother, she fit in my hand, was cold, no water on a cement floor. The guy swore she was a 100% jack russell but she turned into this silky type terrier. He wanted $200. for her and I said I'd give him $50 and not turn him into the RSPCA.  I bought her and turned him in anyway.  The pet shop was shut down.

This is Uncle Buck, 8 years old and named in memory of John Candy. We loved his movies. I was working as a vet nurse after retiring from my speech pathology career and a girl brought him into the surgery.  He was 3 weeks old and had his head stomped on in a domestic dispute at a local house.  His skull was fractured in 5 places and I was assigned to bring him home for the weekend and keep him comfortable. Because kittens survive amazing episodes of injury at times we gave it a go.  He not only survived, has a dodgy right eye, spun in circles the first couple of months and still does when excited, we adopted him. The girl didn't want to pay vet bills so I paid them and he lives with us.  His back legs don't work for climbing or jumping but he walks in a straight line after my rehab with him and can go outdoors because we have a big fenced yard and he can't climb out of it.  He can't change tasks easily, was hard to litter train but we got there and is very cuddly and we all love each other. He is a very happy cat even if he does forget to get in the litter once in awhile.

This is Odie, aged 3.  He came into the Dog's home with his brother and sister aged 4 weeks.  I fostered the litter in my home until they were old enough to adopt. They were traumatised from 4 weeks with the cretins who had them, anaemic from a flea infestation and the bottoms of their feet were burned from being in a box that was never cleaned and filled with urine.

We cleaned them up, got them treatment and now all of them went back to the home at age 8 weeks to be adopted. They all got homes. We kept Odie because he is just too funny and was the most frightened of the lot.  His mother was a jack russell and his father a beagle. He has a beautiful jack russell head but a beagle brain.  He loves everybody, wouldn't think to growl at anyone and is the most gentle soul you will ever meet. We love him to pieces.  He is a very funny guy and the frisbee is his big obsession in life.

This is the most recent addition to the family.  Cousin Eddie named after the character in the movie Christmas Vacation with Chevy Chase. My husband, brother and a friend know every line in that movie and it isn't Christmas unless you watch it every year.  Also we needed another cat in the house as a role model for Uncle Buck.  He was a rescue kitten from the RSPCA and is now 5 months old. He is well adjusted, smoochy and has a fascination for water going down drains and down the toilet. He often wonders where it goes.  He has a large "tree" in the living room he plays on (flat pack from ebay) and loves the dogs.  He has worked out you don't go near Wally or Molly at feeding time but you can crawl in Odie's dish while he eats and nothing happens to you.  

There you have it. Our family. Hope you enjoyed meeting them.