Back From Sydney- Company and Books

I had a good trip to Sydney. My sister in law was supposed to have arrived on the Wednesday from Canada and I was to meet her at the airport. However after a Canadian blizzard and then a plane with engine problems the flight from Toronto to Los Angeles was cancelled. The following day the flight from Los Angeles to Sydney was full and a seat could not be found so she finally arrived on the Friday morning.

As I had arrived on the Tuesday that left me with almost 3 full days to get into all kinds of book trouble in Sydney.  On the Wednesday I headed straight to Kinokuniya, which is a large, Japanese owned book store in the heart of Sydney.  For those visiting Sydney who have not been there before it is a large, lovely book store in the Victoria Galleries on George Street across from the Queen Victoria building.  Although the books are new I love looking at the large selection of art books, classic fiction, travel writing and Japanese inspired stationery and pens.

Their Facebook cover page

I probably spent a good hour or so just looking at all the books. There is a large section of Books about Books.  I love those books.  I found a wonderful book called "Books- Over 100 Top Ten lists" but more on that further on.

I also like to look at all the classic fiction. They must have every book on classic fiction known to man (new books of course). The have big racks of Penguins and Vintage and I love looking at all of the covers and series. Then I walked down to the travel writing section. There are books about people travelling in country by bicycle, camel, motorbike, walking, sailing. If you can move your body from point A to point B it is in the travel writing section.  I stayed strong and did not buy any as I have many TBR travel books of my own and I am participating the TBR challenge until 1 April.

Next stop was the stationery section. Beautiful Japanese papers, pens with ink of every colour, blank journals (don't you just love the myriad of blank journals on the market).  Then their is the art section which has art history, large coffee table books, graphic books on shelves that seem to not end, graphic arts and all genres of Japanese lit that I can hardly begin to comprehend.  There are some additional areas that are quite large of all books printed in Chinese and Japanese languages but sadly, not speaking or reading these languages I can only look at the covers.

The reference and academic sections also take a large part of the store and I spend quite a bit of time looking at the anthologies of writing from many countries as well as text type books about Australian Lit, American Lit, English Lit and literature books from many other countries.

It is a wonderful store to browse in. So far I had not been too tempted to buy any books. I promised myself I would go in with the attitude of simply browsing.

Then I saw this on the New Books shelves.

All book bloggers share a love of bookish lists.

This book has big heavy pages. It feels wonderful in your hands. There are so many illustrations of book covers. And there are over 100 lists relating to  Top 10 books. It was published in 2014 by Bounty Books which evidently is a subsidiary of Octopus books. I was not familiar with this publisher.  Okay, I picked it up. I also looked through it. Yes I also walked straight to the front counter and put my hard earned cash on the counter and they put it in a bag I bought (yes I saw it on the way to the cash register and it was love at first site. )

Have I read it yet?  No.  I am doing the TBR Challenge until 1 April aren't I. Did I read even one list?  Well I actually did. The book fell open to that page. Do you believe that? Yes I read the page about the top ten Enduring Romantic Heroes in Books.  I did have to know what kind of lists are in this book. According to the Table of Contents the lists revolve around the following categories.

Compelling Characters, Imagine That, Out of This World, Relativity, World of Books and Page Turners. 

It is rather vague but I have I even thumbed through to check out more of the lists? No, I am going to treat myself with this book on April 1. Then I will find a very comfortable seat and I will look into all 100 of the lists.  I might even find a challenge in this book of things to read for the second half of the year.

In the  meantime I continue on with Pat Conroy's Beach Music.  I have to admit I am not reading much this month. It is summer here. We do have company staying in our house and we are exploring Tasmania. We are eating, drinking and laughing our way around this great state of ours. We are filled with good Tasmanian red wine, soft drinks, cheeses, meats, fresh summer berries and produce. We try to read at night after days in the sun and on the road and all we can do is fall asleep.

We have visited the Wooden Boat festival down at the harbour that is held every 2 years. We have also had lunch at GrandVewe. It is a sheep dairy farm with a wonderfully modern restaurant where you can taste their variety of cheeses and then have a glass of wine, or beer or a great cappuccino, Devonshire teas and lunch as one looks over the river and the fields of green and sheep. It is truly beautiful. Photos of each are below.

Wooden Boat Festival- 2015

The view from the restaurant at Grandvewe

We will be forging our way through February quite quickly I think with many more adventures on the agenda. Tuesday will be a seaplane trip off the coast of the state so stay tuned as the Penguin does more travelling in his home state.

A Little Holiday for a Week

On The Move

I am going to have a little hiatus in Sydney beginning tomorrow so I won't be around the blog much.
My sister in law is visiting from Canada and I'm meeting her in Sydney and we're going to hang out once she gets over her jet lag a bit.

While she recovers I hope to visit a couple of book shops I didn't get to last visit, eat some lovely Chinese food in Chinatown, get to the markets and generally relax a bit without a household a dogs and cats and people.

Then on Sunday we'll come back to Tassie and she'll enjoy our sights here for a month.  It's going to be a busy time. We don't get many relatives visiting from North America so it's always lovely when they do come this far.

On the book front I am still reading Pride and Prejudice. I'm almost finished and hope to read on the plane. I have my ear plugs ready for the noise of a small squeally child that I know will sit somewhere close to me.

I am still enjoying the book but do find it slower going. I have gotten used to the language (pretty much) and I love the people in it and their little dilemmas.  I find myself re-reading passages because I like the sound of them so much. It is a complete escape from modern life in this, our year of 2015 with all the media coverage of the awful things in life.

I wouldn't mind being in a horse and carriage going down back roads on the way to balls and all of the gossip that occurs at them.

I will be back before you know it.

Monday Moods

I must laugh as I have realised since I retired I really like Monday.  It seems like a clean slate, the beginning of a new week, much like the new year but on a smaller scale.

Looking ahead to bookish goals for this week there is one major one really. That is to finish Jane Austen's Pride and Prejudice.  I am one of the one or two people in the world that has not read this book.

American Lit classes never covered it and I must say it isn't the most recommended read in Australia either. However I felt I could not live a lifetime without reading it.

I won't review it. What could I possibly say that hasn't been said by a million people before me. I am enjoying it though. Very much.  I have the boxed set of Jane Austen Penguin classics books and I don't know if it is the story itself or the cloth covered book I am enjoying so much. I jest.

The beautiful cloth covered Penguin Classics
There is a specific set of 7 Jane Austen books that I have and am now enjoying.

 I was told I must read at least three Jane Austen books to get the language in hand. Well that has not been true. I have figured that out rather quickly and if I were to read it out loud I think I might sound rather English instead of this cross between an American and Australian accent I now have.

The copy I am currently reading

I must say I did google the words. "Which Jane Austen book should I read first?"  It was a toss up between Sense and Sensibility and Pride and Prejudice. I will read Sense.... next.

I quite like this Penguin copy of the book too

I have seen the films and mini series of both and did enjoy them. So I sort of know which way the story goes.  I do enjoy Austen's sense of humour. I am thankful for that because the books wouldn't be what they are without it. I love her observations of people. She really had a knack for it. (I realised what a scholarly sentence that just was.)

I would dearly love to own a copy of this book.
I collect the Penguin Illustrated classics and haven't acquired it yet.

I really enjoy all of the various book covers these books come with also. I thought I would scatter a few of them throughout this post.  I just can't see reading Austen on a kindle. I think you must have the covers because most of them are quite gorgeous. However I did find a couple I didn't like.

 Not much else is happening this week. Today is Australia Day and we have a lunch with friends today. That will be fun.

This is just bizarre.

Wednesday is my bike club day.  Nothing like reading Jane Austen and riding with a motorbike club the next.  Kind of defeats the image of the tough biker.

I am getting ready to go to Sydney again next week.  I have five nights there but will address that more next week.  I am meeting my sister in law who is arriving from Ontario, Canada. She has had enough of bitter cold and snow and is spending a month here. I hope Tasmania warms up a bit for her. It still has a ways to go to qualify as summer here in most people's books.

Jane Austen as pulp fiction. It does make me laugh.

That kind of wraps up this Monday. Stay tuned to see how the week turns out here on Friday.

Happy reading and what books are you reading this week? What other activities will keep you busy?

Grand Ledge High School - Class of 68 Book Club

As many of my book friends know I emigrated from the USA to Australia.  I actually originated in a little town of about 5500 people when I lived there in the 1950's and 1960's.

The state of Michigan. Grand Ledge is in the middle of the mitten.

I left Grand Ledge in 1973.  Recently I was playing around on Facebook and I found a Facebook page for the Class of 68 in Grand Ledge.  I checked it out and suddenly all of these memories came flooding back.  I joined the group and have been chatting to many of my past classmates.  I had not heard of anything to do with all of these people since I was in high school.  It has been a really fun experience.

Grand Ledge High School - we all left from Grade 12  in 1968

Well to make a long story short we decided to set up a book group. Many of my past classmates have moved away and we seem to be scattered all over the place now. But some loyal classmates have stayed in Michigan and it has been great fun to visit them.

Our book group is called....Grand Ledge Class of 68 Book Group.  We might think of something more original in future but we have now started on the first book assigned.

To set up the group all of us put forward two books and one topic of interest.   I have written all of the names onto little coloured slips of paper and put them in the Book Jar.

March Book

April Book

Today I gave the jar a good shake and the paper book nuggets were scattered onto a bed in the spare room.  Then Cousin Eddie, my 14 month old kitten came in and thought he would check this out. It looked like a lot of fun to him. So I asked him if he wanted to choose the books.   Of course he did.

Travel Writing - Free Choice for May

The inaugural book for 1 March is Beach Music by Pat Conroy.  Cousin Eddie picked To Kill a Mockingbird by Harper Lee for the April book and he chose a Travel Book of any kind for May. Each of us will read a travel book and then talk about where we went and what we did, what we saw. This is not going to be a standard book group. We are going to do lots of fun things. We will read literary fiction but we will also be reading a variety of crime, spy and adventure books.  We have several men in this group which is excellent because men aren't known for joining book groups.

I folded up the titles so Eddie wouldn't cheat and read them.
He had a great time checking these out.

Cousin Eddie grabs one and our May book is chosen.

 We have created a separate Facebook page for our group and we will use it to discuss the books at the beginning of each month.  I think the Penguin and I are going to have a great time with our very diverse group.

The Wind Up Bird Chronicle- Whew !

What an amazing book this is.  This is a good length novel of more than 600 pages and it never stops for a minute. One starts reading it and meets Toru Okada at home in Tokyo, Japan.  

It seemed mundane enough as I met Toru and his wife. It all seems simple enough as they share a breakfast. Then the cat disappears.  Toru consults psychic sisters to see if they can shed some light on this and we're off and running.  

As I read this book by Haruki Murakami I felt as though I was on a journey. A very long journey. Every page I turned was as though visiting a different place, a different country. There are twists and turns as Toru is flummoxed by the strange phone calls and the psychics that now become part of his life.

As I was thinking about the disappearing cat,  his wife disappeared.  There is no indication of anything being wrong with the marriage so that is a surprise.  

As he walks around his neighbourhood looking for the cat he meets an unusual 16 year old girl in the back yard of one of the houses.  A very strange friendship ensues.  There is also a very haunted house in the area that plays a significant role.  Enter a very old war veteran with horrific stories combined with a scheming politician relative and somehow all of this comes together to make up a terrific story.

This story is about the elusiveness of love, the atrocities of war, the scheming of politics and the ongoing actions of a very passive man trying to sort out all of this as it relates to his everyday life. He is trying to get his "normal" life back but everything only becomes more bizarre.

Toru is a passive man. He is a very passive man.  He can become quite irksome. The only problem I had with this interesting novel is that all these very weird things are happening to him and he just takes it sitting down. Give him another cup of tea.  

He does not get wound up much about anything. When he realises his wife is not coming home from work he really doesn't seem to do much about it except to ring her workplace.  If I were him I'd be checking with the police or the hospitals. I'd be doing something more than ringing her workplace.

I loved the way that all of these eccentric events came together to make up a very surreal, magical journey and how it appeared to become all so logical as the story progressed.

I enjoyed this book very much and part of me did not want it to end.  Yet I wanted things to start making sense. I will offer a warning though of some quite graphic situations that are most disturbing. Some chapters are definitely not for the faint hearted.  I found myself skipping over a few pages here and there when it got to be too much. I got the picture and did not need quite so much description.

This book was published in 1995 but not translated into English for another couple of years. In any case it counts for my Century of Books challenge.  

The first time I read a book by this author was several years ago when our book club discussed Norwegian Wood. I enjoyed that book very much, mainly for the visual descriptiveness of it. I thought it was beautiful.  It was very different to this book. 

After reading two of his books I am definitely looking forward to reading more of this author. I think his descriptive language is entrancing and the story certainly didn't bore me.  I could predict nothing.
I did have to let go of any kind of rationale thinking and completely disappear into this story. It was a story I didn't want to surface from.