Books I've been reading
Having a summer cold isn't particularly exciting, but then neither is my social life up here on the north coast. Most people my age would have kids or aren't recruiting, so whenever my small group of friends are otherwise busy, I need to amuse myself. That's quite easy, however, when you like to paint, print make, read or have to go out on bike to get supplies. However my bike puncture made things harder. Haven't been swimming for quite a few weeks (hate how that always gets thrown out of schedule, when I love so much a regular swimming routine...). Swimming squad is held in the evenings, quite a long bike ride away and not great when you have a cold, or when it's raining. But I could go ocean swimming, I'm just not motivated. The pressure of living by the beach and knowing to make the most of it! Loved the beach at Port Elliott and Middleton, the waves were great, but not long enough, unlike legendary Arrawarra.
Whilst I've been going through this quiet reflective patch, I found myself feeling sad, in retrospect, for myself living in Tasmania. For all the quietness of the present, I do prefer it to living there. Some things were better there, but I felt like I was serving time, an analogy suggested by Hal Porter in his writing, who disliked it similiarly and kept wondering if it was the left over aura of a penal settlement that cast the sad dark shadow. Other people have loved it, but admitted it depends on whether or not you inherit a dynamic social circle of adopted islanders. Other friends ready to settle on out of town properties have also liked it, because it suits the experience of growing vegetables and living a small town life with city proximity. But I'm just not there yet. Anyway, thinking of that made me breathe a bit fat sigh of relief, for how much improved my life is now, and what opportunities I have to add to its joy. Whilst I do miss the more civilised nature of city life there, I appreciate the openness and clean slate of now, the willingness and interest of people in my ideas because there's no precedent up here, it's a tucked away place far far from anything else.
Besides all that. This is meant to be about books. Finished Shantaram, that was a lot of fun, he had a good way of telling a story and keeping it going through hundreds of pages.
Then had a go at Dirt Music by Tim Winton. Halfway through that, I did what I always do and read the ending and then read backwards trying to piece together why it ended that way... My eyeballs got tired with that one. Reading Incredibly Close and Extremely Loud by Jonathan San Froer. The protagonist in that is a sweet precocious 9 year old brat, who is poignantly still in psychic distress over his father's death in September 11 attacks, it is so sad. Very well written, because each time you laugh at the boy's foibles you are also aware of a double layer of sadness at what motivates his actions, his behaviour and how naively he shares ambitions that are so obviously the product of his age and trauma.
Don't really need to go to the library for a while, with all the second hand books I've picked up over the last few months (op shop, Sawtell markets, the crazy book sale up at the Gold Coast markets-weird source of intellectual stimulation...) I also have The Dark Room by Rachel Sieffert to read, my copies of the New Yorker to complete, and my art books to prepare for Wednesday night when I couple of friends are going to come over and join in Art Club version 2.0! Unfortunately I don't know how I'll go getting photos of it, my phone camera has gone bad.
Whilst I've been going through this quiet reflective patch, I found myself feeling sad, in retrospect, for myself living in Tasmania. For all the quietness of the present, I do prefer it to living there. Some things were better there, but I felt like I was serving time, an analogy suggested by Hal Porter in his writing, who disliked it similiarly and kept wondering if it was the left over aura of a penal settlement that cast the sad dark shadow. Other people have loved it, but admitted it depends on whether or not you inherit a dynamic social circle of adopted islanders. Other friends ready to settle on out of town properties have also liked it, because it suits the experience of growing vegetables and living a small town life with city proximity. But I'm just not there yet. Anyway, thinking of that made me breathe a bit fat sigh of relief, for how much improved my life is now, and what opportunities I have to add to its joy. Whilst I do miss the more civilised nature of city life there, I appreciate the openness and clean slate of now, the willingness and interest of people in my ideas because there's no precedent up here, it's a tucked away place far far from anything else.
Besides all that. This is meant to be about books. Finished Shantaram, that was a lot of fun, he had a good way of telling a story and keeping it going through hundreds of pages.
Then had a go at Dirt Music by Tim Winton. Halfway through that, I did what I always do and read the ending and then read backwards trying to piece together why it ended that way... My eyeballs got tired with that one. Reading Incredibly Close and Extremely Loud by Jonathan San Froer. The protagonist in that is a sweet precocious 9 year old brat, who is poignantly still in psychic distress over his father's death in September 11 attacks, it is so sad. Very well written, because each time you laugh at the boy's foibles you are also aware of a double layer of sadness at what motivates his actions, his behaviour and how naively he shares ambitions that are so obviously the product of his age and trauma.
Don't really need to go to the library for a while, with all the second hand books I've picked up over the last few months (op shop, Sawtell markets, the crazy book sale up at the Gold Coast markets-weird source of intellectual stimulation...) I also have The Dark Room by Rachel Sieffert to read, my copies of the New Yorker to complete, and my art books to prepare for Wednesday night when I couple of friends are going to come over and join in Art Club version 2.0! Unfortunately I don't know how I'll go getting photos of it, my phone camera has gone bad.
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