Moby Dick and Other Bits

I noticed in a couple of blog posts that a Moby Dick read along has been set up for 1 June to mid July. Somebody worked out that if you read 15 pages a day you'll get through it.  Having had the book setting on a shelf for number of years and having tried to read it without success I had another look at it.

The book itself is a beautiful book.  I bought an iPod the other week and I have been downloading music onto it and decided why not download a book.  Well there was Moby Dick and it didn't cost much so I decided to give it a try. Then I decided to listen to it while holding the book and following along. I wasn't sure I'd like that but I am really enjoying it. The thing I like most about it is the narrator reads faster than I do and I had to get used to following along at a bit faster rate but I have now settled quite nicely into it.  The chapters, of which there are 150+ are very short and I am enjoying doing a few chapters at a time.

Better than that though is I am really enjoying the story so far.  The characters of Ishmael and Queequeg  are the important characters at the moment. We are only up to Chapter 11 and so far they are on the northeast coast of America and whalers and fishermen are everywhere. He has entered into a pub and found there is no place to sleep so he had to share a bed with Queequeg, a large, cannibalistic whaler from the other side of the world.  However the friendship they establish is touching and the scenes are very funny.   I read that Herman Melville never found fame in his own lifetime and I always think that is such a shame. Imagine writing the books that he did never to get recognition and then dying only to become well known afterwards and never knowing it.

I'm still working on The Penguin History of the World and will continue to do so but at a slower pace during the next month.  As the books aren't anything alike they won't interfere with each other.

Come next week though our book group meets to discuss the Tales of AJ Fikry then we have to get stuck into Wilkie Collins Moonstone which will be another kettle of fish.  Don't know how I'll go in June because I keep looking at the Kindle Deal of the Day and see these pretty interesting looking books for .99 cents. I need to stop thinking I'll read these books in between the bigger ones. It's a lot of fun though and as we're well and truly into the shortest days of the  year with winter fast approaching, I find the evenings long and need to filling.

On the other hand I have signed up to go to the gym with my husband during the week.  I have been putting it off for a long time but with my health being what it is I had a cardiologist tell me to get on with it in so many words and start becoming aerobic.  I only use the treadmill and some of the arm machines but with 30 to 40 minutes on a treadmill I might try some audio books at the same time.  I wonder if Moby Dick with go along with a track program on a treadmill.  I'll give it a try and let you know if it works.  Maybe I can get so caught up in the story I'll forget where I am.  I'm also rather worried about the whaling aspect of this book but need to keep it separate from my political beliefs of whaling. I'll try to think of it as the great literature it is.

Well that's me for the moment.  Today is a shopping and afternoon tea day with a dear friend and her wonderful 15 year old daughter so the whaling will be put aside until this evening.  I hope everyone has a good weekend and be sure to tell me what you're up to this weekend.

A.J. Fikry and Other Things

Well, once again it is Monday. Where does the time go?  A few things book wise going on.  I finished the book Collected Works of A.J. Fikry by Gabrielle Levin over the weekend.  I got to meet A.J. Fikry himself who owns a small bookshop off the coast of Maine on a little island.  He is quite grumpy at the beginning but that is because his beloved wife died in an accident earlier and he misses her. He has a bit of a problem with alcohol and one night in a stupor his valuable book, Tammerlane by Edgar Allan Poe is stolen. This was to have been his retirement fund.

But suddenly everything changes when Maya, a two year old girl is left behind on the book shop floor by her mother before she commits suicide. She wants the girl raised with books and to have a good life and she seems to think A.J. will do this.

I don't want to say too much about the story as I don't want to ruin it. However the characters are pretty quirky and good hearted. Amelia is the publication rep that comes around trying to sell books to A.J.  He also has to deal with his sister-in-law Ismay and brother-in-law Daniel.  They throw up a few twists in the book.  I especially liked the policeman that hangs around named Lambiase. He is a charming character.

Overall I enjoyed this book quite a bit. There were some uneven parts and I thought it went through the years a bit quickly. Maya is a teenager before we can blink and I think a bit of the story is lost by this but overall it is a most enjoyable read.   Our book club is going to discuss it in June and I'm looking forward to that.  One of the fun bits is at the beginning of each chapter where A.J. writes something related to an author or well known book on a single page.  It was fun looking forward to new chapters in order to read them. He compares much of his life to various characters within the book world.  If a person reads a lot they will get a lot of it for fun.  It was certainly a speedy read and light hearted enough to really enjoy with a few twists and turns that I didn't figure out until later.

I particularly enjoyed this passage from the policeman who has discovered reading.

Turns out I really like bookstores. You know, I meet a lot of people in my line of work. A lot of folks pass through Alice Island, especially in the summer. I've seen movie people on vacation and I've seen music people and news people, too. There ain't nobody in the world like book people. It's a business of gentlemen and gentlewomen.

'I would't go that far,' Ismay says.

'I don't know, Izzie. I'm telling you. Bookstores attract the right kind of folk. Good people like A.J. and Amelia. And I like talking about books with people who like talking about books. I like paper. I like how it feels, and I like the feel of a book in my back pocket. I like how a new book smells, too.'

Ismay kisses him. "You're the funniest sort of cop I ever met.' 

On to other things now. My Penguin History of the World is progressing pretty normally.  I am still reading a chapter or half a chapter (if it is long) each day when I don't get distracted by a new magazine or newspaper.  I have gone through ancient Egypt, Mesopotamia and am now into the history of India which I knew nothing about.  I am finding the chapter on the beginnings of India quite interesting and I always enjoy anything about the Buddhist faith which got it's start in northern India before Christ was born.

I have also quickly read through another book I got on sale at Daily Deal of the Day with the Amazon Kindle.  It is called Dying to Know, Is There Life after Death by Josh Logan.  I stopped reading it about 2/3 of the way through. The story is non fiction of a young Australian man who spends three years going to funeral homes, crematoriums, seances, card readers, workshops to see if he can contact his dead aunt Clare.  It starts out as quite reasonable and the fact the man just wants a definitive answer is all right.  All of us would like verification of that knowledge.

But the more he experiments with out of body experiences, channeling the dead all becomes a bit of a mind game through his brain.  I am convinced what he thinks could be spirit contact is merely his brain and his unstable nature trying to put something where it isn't.  But that's just me. Other people may be convinced. I am too much of a skeptic to believe there are other lives after this one.   I don't know why it caught my attention. I think I was tired the other night and gave in to Amazon's advertising.  I thought it seemed like a good question at the time but grew bored with this book in no time although there are some very funny parts when he encounters what he believes are ghosts.   I'll stick to A.J. Fikry.    You never knew what he was going to do.

I have had no replies yet to my distribution by the book phantom of the 20 or so books I have distributed. I had hoped someone would write and say they found a book, were reading it and loved it.  Nothing yet but I'm still going to keep giving books away because I think it will be interesting when someone does finally reply.

This is Monday, as I've said before and the beginnings of a new week.  My book club read is done. My new agey life after death book has come to a halt and I'll probably start my Classics club spin book, The Letters of Rachel Henning this week.  I am feeling like something classic with a bit of substance.  It does not need to be posted until 7th July.

I'm doing a large book cull in my front room. I have decided to get all my duplicates, unreads, and books I know I won't read off to the auction once I finish the cull. I would like to get some order in that front room of a library.  Of course I'm keeping all of my vintage Penguins.  Hope everyone has a good week and there is a beautiful pot of tea or some good strong coffee in the future that is to become this week. What are you reading this week?


This book counts towards the Monopoly Challenge as the initials of the author at in the word St James for St James Place.

Suspect by Robert Crais

I have been reading Robert Crais's books since the first one came out. He writes a series about a Los Angeles detective called Elvis Cole and his sidekick Joe Pike.  Then he wrote a few books where Joe Pike was the featured protaganist.  They work as a team and Joe Pike is particularly fun to read. Joe is the kind of guy, big, brawny, doesn't say  much, keeps his sunglasses on and kicks butt so to speak.  If we all had Joe Pike in our life things would be rosy.

The things I like about the series of books is you get a real feel for Los Angeles area and the outer suburbs. Someone wrote once (I don't remember where I read it) that if you read crime books you get a great feel for the geography of the area.  This is certainly true with these books.


So when I picked up this book as a recently released Kindle and not badly priced I was disappointed to find out it wasn't a Joe Pike or Elvis Cole book.

This book is okay. Just okay, not good, not bad.  The story was so predictable I knew the whole thing and the end pretty soon. See if you can figure out the end without reading the book. Here goes:

American K-9 soldier in Afghanistan with his dog. Bomb blows up and snipers start to follow when they are ambushed. Soldier dies, dog wounded.

Flash forward to police detectives sitting in their parked cruiser. Policeman, police woman. Bad guys come careening around the corner to make a hit on another car near them. They fly into action, gunfire ensues and police woman is shot. As she is yelling at policeman to not leave her he goes for help and he gets shot too. She dies with the words, "Don't leave me."  in his ears.

Now flash forward and policeman is moved forward to the K-9 unit. Guess who the new dog is. Yup, the Afghanistan dog and now named Maggie.   She has PTSD and so does he.  They go forward working together and the case is about the men who shot and killed the policewoman.

They have a lot of problems related to the PTSD and they both have a few health problems after being shot.   I don't know why I didn't put this book down except I was very tired and felt like reading and it was the only thing I knew I could absorb. I kept on reading it thinking my predictions would fail.   More gunfights, more sneaking around the Los Angeles area, more beating up witnesses and a happy ending for both policeman and Maggie, as the dog is now called.  I did need to check that Maggie would be okay. I didn't care so much about the policeman.  The character of the dog was wonderful. She was everything you'd want a dog hero to be,  of course. Could read minds, be protective, gentle, funny. I did like the dog. Of course, I would.

This book is written quite well but it is the story that lets it down. The characters are well written too. It is the silly story of which I have not given away.  It is a book to read only on a plane trip or at the beach. Because you never really lose your place when you look at the sailboats out  on the water or stop to eat your meal on the plane.

It was good for an afternoon of lying in bed feeling worn out and not wanting to read any of the pile of books beside the bed that would require more thought. The happy ending was feel good. But you knew from the start it would have a happy ending and all the problems would be solved. Sometimes we just need a book with an ending like that. Time to move on now.

Sweet Things for a Sunday

This past week had a few things happen that made me smile. 

 A couple of my good friends and I had our three monthly girl's night out. After a beautiful garlic pizza and chicken toscano we had this beautiful creme brulee' with pistachio ice cream.  It was by far the high moment of my week.

My beautiful cats Uncle Buck and Cousin Eddie  are starting to bond with each other and become good friends.  Uncle Buck has been with us 8 years and Eddie is only 6  months and just got his big kitty teeth.

Sure enough, there were baby ducks to watch out for in this area. I love this sign and am happy the community I was riding through takes care of its water fowl.

That's it. What nice things happened to you this week??

Time Out From Books- Joined the Hobart Walking Club

The view across one of the several marinas in the area.

I am lucky to live in one of the most beautiful places on earth and I would never leave it. I am a big follower of Miladysboudoir's blog (here) and I love the pictures she has posted up of walking in England where she lives and now Italy where she just visited.

She walks a lot. I have been loving the photos she puts up whether they are in sun or rain and she has really inspired me to get out and get to know the local area. I also dearly need the exercise.

There are still a lot of autumn colours on the trees. This old willow had beautiful little play areas under it to have tea parties and a hide out to read.

After hemming and hawing about it for ages I finally dove in and signed up as a provisional member of the Hobart Walking Club.  Today I did my first qualifying walk along the river Derwent foreshore. It was an easy, flat terrain walk and we got to look in people's back yards as we walked along the river.

I always love looking in people's back yards when on trains leaving cities and going through suburbs. You learn so much about a place by looking in back yards.   It was predicted to be 16 degrees C (52 F) and rain was 50%.  I woke up at 6 am and it was blowing a gale and raining. I thought, "Bugger- why did I have to commit to a walk today."   After letting my dogs out (the only reason I get up that early every day) they came in and we all went back to bed and set the alarm for 8:30.  I woke up and the sun was out and wind had died down.  It was a beautiful autumn day.

There seemed to be flowers everywhere.

So I'd like to share the photos of what is in the backyards of people living on the eastern shore of Hobart, Tasmania.  I live below the mountain on the western shore and I really enjoyed seeing my area of life from another perspective. This is a track I have never been on, didn't know it was there so it was exploring from a new level.  It was only a 3 km walk.

These birds are oyster catchers. I love their orange eyes and bills.  They accessorize so well when they go out.

The oystercatchers had cousins down the rocks a bit and they were a different variety.  Same orange eyes and beaks though.

More pretty flowers.

 We stopped at a person's residence along the way, had lunch and talked and I felt great because I was the youngest on the walk. Everyone was in their 70's, 80's & 90's.

Another back yard had a bit of kitsch around the bird bath.

The end of the trail looking towards the Tasman Bridge

 
They didn't think I would enjoy being with the slow turtles but I enjoyed them immensely and they had wonderful stories and adventures.  Great role models I think. I'll build up to the harder walks but I wanted to get a feel for it on this first day of something new.  Good fun.