Convicts, chicks and chocolate - what more could you ask for?

Flickr slideshow for the Book Thieves weekend away

We were reading The Secret River (Mother knows this one well!) for my Springwood book group this month. A while ago we decided that, because the book was based on the Hawkesbury River and the main character, William Thornhill, is based on an ancestor of the author called Solomon Wiseman who settled there in the early 1800s, we'd go to Wiseman's Ferry on the Hawkesbury for a weekend.

Months ago I rang the Wiseman's Ferry hotel to see about room costs and booking. I was told we didn't need to book. Last Wednesday I filled out an online booking thing and, not having had a reply in the stipulated couple of days, rang them on Friday to check. Good job I did. They were booked out. I was told they are always busy on the weekends! The man on the phone didn't hold out much chance of me getting a room in Wiseman's Ferry that weekend - there was a wedding on. Turns out he was right and, many phone calls later, we ended up having to take rooms at a place called St Albans, some way north of Wiseman's Ferry. Catherine gave the woman our sob story though and she gave us a special rate.

Not everyone was able to stay overnight. In the end there were just 5 of us staying overnight and 8 of the full group quota of 11 who were able to go at all. We gathered at Mary's house for 11am on Saturday morning and headed off in two cars. We'd not arranged a rendez-vous at our destination but figured the Wiseman's Ferry hotel, built as a home for Soloman Wiseman, would be the logical place. Luckily the girls in the other car thought so too.

Having 'powedered our noses' we headed back down to the riverside park to have a picnic lunch. It had been cloudy all morning but the sun came out as we set up the table and it was lovely by the river, feeding crackers to the kookaburra. After lunch, with champagne, we went back up the hill to the hotel, everyone grabbed a cuppa and we had our meeting.

Heather still had the last couple of pages to go. They happened to be the pages where William Thornhill is sitting on the verandah of his house looking out at the cliffs opposite. The description of the cliffs, as the rest of the story, is beautiful and Heather read it aloud to us as we gazed on the same view. We then got on with a discussion of the book, all had enjoyed it, and put in our reading suggestions for next year. We don't usually have a meeting in January because folk are away and this year it would be on New Year's Day so we've determined to go on an excursion to the movies - regardless of what film is on!

The meeting over, we said goodbye to the day trippers and Catherine, Trish, Heather, Mary and I piled into Mary's car and headed off for St Albans via the ferry. En route we stopped at a tiny little cemetary. They seemed to be a healthy lot; even in the mid to late 1800s the people were living into their 80s, 90s and even one to 100.

Finally we arrived at the Settlers Inn. We'd booked two rooms with the hotel needing to put an extra bed in one of the rooms. This seemed to be a bit of a challenge for the staff but finally we were shown to a couple of cabins out the back of the lovely old 1830s Inn. Drawing our names out of a hat, we decided on who was sleeping where and I ended up in Cabin 6 with Heather.

We had a drink in our room before going across to the Inn for dinner. The menu didn't look real great initially, there were no vegetarian or even chicken dishes on the menu and I thought I was stumped but when I asked about getting veggie something I was offered goats cheese tart which turned out to be very very tasty.

Waiting for our meal we were joined by two french men, Jean-Paul and Christophe, who ended up joining us for our meal. Everyone we met asked what we were doing there and we'd tell them about reading The Secret River. One of Jean-Paul's children had had to read it for school so he knew about it. Later we were joined by an aboriginal man, Colin, who had also read it. We also met Henry who is Deputy Captain in the RFS up there.

Back in our room we had more wine and chocolte, chatted and went to bed. Mary and Catherine were up early and out for walks early the next morning but Heather and I must've slept until 8:30 or so and were last ones up.

We had a breakfast of leftover picnic bread, salad and cheese then went for a wee walk across the river from the Inn. Saw a lovely cottage, Price Wilson Cottage, which looked idyllic. We ended up stopping in Windsor for fish and chips (the fish shop there is famous) and in an absolute downpour checked out the local markets. Then we headed south and back home.

Last night

Here is a little video of what happened in my bedroom last night (don't worry; it's clean).

Usually the cat is locked in the garage overnight and the dogs in the laundry. Somehow last night Abigail must have eluded capture and the Camp Commandant hadn't done a proper headcount. I ended up at 2am, with Abi on my chest reading Dear Fatty (Dawn French's book) with me. She must be enjoying it coz she was purring.

And talking about reeks . . .

The library has just got in a book called Auld Reekie : an Edinburgh anthology selected by Ralph Lownie and with a foreward by Alexander McCall Smith. It contains a variety of writings about Edinburgh by a variety of writers. I've only read a few pages but it looks like a nice little book to have on the shelves - might go and see if my local bookshop has it in, I've been trugging around for over a month with a book voucher in my wallet.

I dipped into it yesterday lunch time and came across this little nugget:

"The first thing that must strike any stranger is that Edinburgh is both by natural ordinance and man's contrivance a Capital. It was made to rule; it did rule; and it was robbed of its command. Its kingdom was absorbed. It became the head-place of a province . . .

You can see at a glance that Edinburgh was meant to put its stamp on Scotland, not to take its orders from London. In appearance it is sovereign to the heart of its stones . . . It is the natural capital of a divided country." Ivor Brown, Summer in Scotland (1952)

and just one more to remind GD, GT, Karen and I what we're missing right now . . .

"But Edinburgh pays cruelly for her high seat in one of the vilest climates under the heaven. She is liable to be beaten upon by all the winds that blow, to be drenched with rain, to be buried in cold sea fogs out of the east, and powdered with the snow as it comes flying southwards from the Highland hills. The weather is raw and boisterous in winter, shifty and ungenial in summer, and downright meteorological purgatory in the spring." Robert Louis Stevenson, Edinburgh : Picturesque Notes (1879)

Bookseller/Diagram Prize for Oddest Title of the Year

The shortlist for this year's Bookseller/Diagram prize has been announced. This prize, for the oddest book title of the year, has been running since 1978.
This year's shortlist can be seen at the Bookseller website, dated 22 February. Then, with appetite for more silliness whetted, the list of past winners can be seen in Wikipedia. Sadly we are too late to be able to vote for the winner. We'll have to make a diary note and try to be on time in 2009!
What's your favourite title? I think The Stray Shopping Carts of Eastern North America: A Guide to Field Identification would be hard to go past in the library, ditto Tiles of the Unexpected: A Study of Six Miles of Geometric Tile Patterns on the London Underground.
I got a heads up on this prize this year (I've seen it before) from the excellent Seattle Public Library blog. The article there also refers to a book, Bizarre Books: A Compendium of Classic Oddities by Russell Ash & Brian Lake. Titles contained in this hilarious sounding read (I will be ordering a copy for BMCC Library if we don't already have it) include: The Resistance of Piles to Penetration, Games You Can Play with Your Pussy, The Boy Fancier, Noddy Loses His Clothes (from Enid Blyton's Gay Story Book - of course) and the unforgettable A Glowing and Graphic Description of the Great Hole.
The SPL blog, as you will have seen, also contains the above picture of a book called Knitting with Dog Hair :better a sweater from a dog you know and love than from a sheep you'll never meet, a subject which I remember Sharon and I having a discussion about . . . Sharon spins her own wool you see, I wonder if I should order that one too?

The girl's like spaghetti : why, you can't manage without apostrophes! by Lynne Truss & illustrated by Bonnie Timmons

You know how there's always some little nugget of grammar that eludes you? Well for me, it was the proper use of apostrophes. I can do the apostrophes that denote missed letters as in "It's a nice day," but apostrophes used to denote ownership gave me the heeby jeebies. I am vaguely aware that putting the apostrophe in one place meant the thing had one owner and putting it in another spot could denote a thing had several owners but was never clear on which was which.

Well last night, now in the middle of my 40s, I read this gorgeous little book and it's all crystal clear.

Grammar perfectionist Lynne Truss demonstrates the correct use of apostrophes. Clearly, and aided by the lovely humourous illustrations by Bonnie Timmons, she shows how much difference the placement of an apostrophe can make to the meaning of a sentence, eg. "We're here to help you" compared with "Were here to help you".

Also by this author for children : Eat, shoots and leaves : Why, commas really do make a difference. And for adults, Eats, Shoots & Leaves: The Zero Tolerance Approach to Punctuation and Talk to the Hand: The Utter Bloody Rudeness of the World Today, or Six Good Reasons to Stay Home and Bolt the Door.

The ballad of Desmond Kale by Roger McDonald

This is an historical novel set in the early years of white settlement in NSW. Matthew Stanton, who seems to have elements of the Rev. Samuel Marsden in his character, is an Anglican minister, magistrate and sheep farmer. His aim is to grow the finest wool in NSW. In this his rival is the convict Desmond Kale, formerly assigned to Stanton but now on the run. Kale was daringly sprung from captivity and is rumoured to be doing his own sheep farming in the bush, beyond the area known and mapped by the white men. Kale becomes an hero and the subject of a ballad amongst the Irish convicts.

This book won the Miles Franklin Award (http://www.cultureandrecreation.gov.au/articles/milesfranklin/) and was chosen by someone else in my book group. I approached it with some trepidation as I usually find award winning goes hand in hand with being impenetrable where literature is concerned. Added to that, it is a big book, 636 pages long. So it was with delight that I found myself being sucked in to the story and wanting to get back to it. Roger McDonald started out writing poetry and it shows, the writing is not always easy, sometimes obscure but is beautiful and uses some of the expressions the first settlers may have used - duck mole for platypus for example.

Jane Boleyn: the infamous Lady Rochford by Julia Fox

Jane Parker arrived at the court of Henry VIII as a teenager to serve Katherine of Aragon. She married well, to George Boleyn, brother of Mary and Anne Boleyn who both caught the king's eye. While Mary became the king's mistress for a brief time before dropping off into relative obscurity, Anne held out for marriage and became one factor leading to the Reformation in England.
Jane Boleyn, Lady Rochford, serves her new queen and sister-in-law until Anne fails to give the King a son, falls from favour and is accused of adultery with several men and of incest with her brother. Anne and George go to the block but, miraculously it might seem, Jane manages to evade serious punishment.
After a period of exile from court Jane returns to serve (briefly) Anne of Cleves and then Catherine Howard. You would think Jane would have learnt to be wary but no, she wholeheartedly connives with Queen Catherine to smuggle her lover(s) into the palaces. This time when the Queen's head rolls so does Janes.
Jane Boleyn has had a bad press; she has been portrayed as the woman whose testimony sent her husband and sister-in-law to their deaths through malice and jealousy. Julia Fox attempts to rehabiliate her name. Not much is documented about Jane Boleyn's life, especially the early years, so much of this book is speculative: "Jane must have . . . " and ends up being another Lives and Times of Henry VIII and his court type book. I'm not convinced the author achieves her aim, but this is an accessible book and I did enjoy it.
A good fiction book to read would be The Boleyn Inheritance by Philippa Gregory.

The Memory Keeper's Daughter by Kim Edwards

I'd seen this one quite frequently while cataloguing and knew how popular it was from the number of requests our borrowers were placing but I probably wouldn't have read it had Gillian not suggested it. And it was quite enjoyable.

On a winter night in 1964, Dr. David Henry is forced by a blizzard to deliver his own twins. His son, born first, is perfectly healthy. Yet when his daughter is born, he sees immediately that she has Down syndrome. Knowing the pain of a child with severe medical needs and a reduced life expectancy from his own childhood and wanting Norah , his wife, he makes a split second decision that will alter all of their lives forever. He asks his nurse to take the baby away to an institution and never to reveal the secret. But Caroline, the nurse, cannot leave the infant. Instead, she disappears into another city to raise the child herself.

So begins this story that unfolds over a quarter of a century in which these two families are bound by David Henrys fateful decision that long-ago winter night.

The Uncommon Reader by Alan Bennett

This is a delightful little book that celebrates the pleasures of reading.
Chasing the errant corgis one day, the Queen stumbles upon a mobile library. She goes into the van to apologise for the fuss caused by the dogs and having done so, she feels duty bound to borrow a book. Though the book she borrows isn't very good, her upbringing binds her to finish it and when she returns it to the library next week takes another book so as not to appear rude. This second book is a much better choice and awakens a passion for reading in the Queen.
Aided by Norman, a young man from the palace kitchen who frequents the library, the Queen’s undergoes quite a transformation as she discovers the liberating pleasures of the written word. She becomes so consumed by her reading that her usual meticulous attention to her public duties suffer and her staff do their best to put her off and distract her.
"I htink of literature", she wrote, "as a vast country to the far borders of which I am journeying but cannot possibly reach. And I have started too late. I will never catch up."

The Book of Everything by Guus Kuijer, translated by John Nieuwenhuizen

This is a book group read and one that I enjoyed. It's only little and took probably about an hour to read.
Thomas's strictly religious father rules the house with his fists and insists the family live according to the Bible. But nine year old Thomas has escapes his daily fears through his imagination - he sees incredible things that no one else notices like tropical fish swimming in the canal, plagues of frogs, angels (who weep when his father beats his mother) and Jesus. He records his observations in a notebook (the Book of Everything) where he also writes down his biggest ambition: to be happy.
Then Thomas meets Mrs Van Amersfoort, a neighbour who is reputed to be a witch, widow of a restistance fighter executed by the Nazis during the war and a woman full of rebellious spirit who recognises something similar in her new young friend. With the help of Mrs Van Amersfoort, Thomas, his mother and big sister Margot throw off the tyranny of the father and step closer to realising Thomas' dream.

Skeleton Coast by Clive Cussler

This is number 4 in the Oregon Chronicles series.

I'm not finished reading this so I may just change my mind about it after I've got to the end. I am having to read this for one of my book groups and if it weren't for that I would have abandoned it after Chapter 1. As far as I am concerned it's full of nonsense, toys for the boys, macho claptrap.

One of the more ridiculous bit was where one of the main characters, Juan, who has an artificial leg, has parachuted in to the desert. When things go wrong during the jump he ends up separated from the rest of his party and tries to join a convoy of Zimbawean (?sp) rebels. He uses some plastic explosives which he had stuffed in the artificial leg, to weld said leg to a round something and used the parachute to parasnowboard along the sand to catch up with the convoy. Oh please!

The Pillars of the Earth by Ken Follett

Set in 12th century England, this is the story, told from numerous points of view, of the building of a cathedral in the fictional city of Kingsbridge.

Follett is better known as a thriller writer but tells us in the foreward that he became fascinated by cathedrals after a visit to Peterborough Cathedral which 'enraptured' him. The writing of this book took over a decade, during which time Follett continued to publish in his usual genre.
I only got to the end of Chapter 1 (p. 84) before giving up on this book. It's a shame, history is my thing and I was looking forward to settling in with a nice big tome for the Christmas holidays but I found the writing dull. The main character of that first chapter is Tom, a stonemason who, like Follett, is enraptured with cathedrals and longs to be the master mason in charge of building one. However, when the story opens, despite his skills, he is out of work with two children and a pregnant wife to get through the winter. The little family is robbed of a pig as they travel through a forest and Tom's daughter is knocked unconscious by the thief. A mysterious outlaw, Ellen, comes to their aid. Despite his wife, Agnes supposedly being his soulmate, Tom is attracted to Ellen. When Ellen reappears later, with Agnes dead only a short time after giving birth to a baby boy, Tom makes love to Ellen who declares she loved Tom from the moment she first clapped eyes on him. Tom gets over the death of his soulmate very quickly and I got over this absurd story.
In the introduction Follett writes, "Clowns should not try to play Hamlet; pop stars should not write symphonies. I should not have risked my reputation by writing something out of character and overambitious." How true.

Shakespeare's Wife by Germaine Greer

Germaine Greer attempts to rehabilitate Ann Hathaway/Shakespeare who has not been treated sympathetically by the bulk of Shakespearean commentators.Little is known of the life of Shakespeare and even less is known about his wife, but people are willing to speculate and fill in the vast gaps and Ann Shakespeare has not come well out of the speculation. Her advanced years at the time of their marriage (she was in her late 20s, he in his late teens) has led the commentators to assume Ann tricked her husband into marriage and that he later left her for many years to bring up their family alone in Stratford while he persued and acting and playwriting career in London not only for ambition's sake. His bequest in his will of the second best bed has been interpreted as evidence that William Shakespeare hated his wife.Germaine Greer, who gained a PhD from Cambridge University with a thesis on Shakespeare's early comedies, looks at the scant documentation regarding William and Ann Shakespeare and, with a good measure of social history to put their lives in a 16th Century and not 20th or 21st Century context, gives her opinion that William and Ann Shakespeare's marriage was not hate-filled and presents Ann Shakespeare as probably a shrewd housekeeper respected in her community, in her family and esteemed by her husband.
An interesting read although her detractors may argue that Greer vehemently defends Ann Shakespeare's reputation on as scant evidence as Ann's detractors do. Most of the book is fairly accessible, although I found myself skipping bits.
I do love the cover.

I'm a Stranger Here Myself by Bill Bryson

In the late 1990s Bill Bryson returned to his native America after 20 years in Britain. Bryson was asked by a colleague to document his thoughts about America for a British newspaper. This book contains those column pieces in which Bryson holds a mirror up to American culture and wittily exposes its absurdities.COMMENTS : Do not attempt to read this book on public transport unless you want your fellow passengers to arrange for the men in white coats to greet you at your destination. This is laugh-out-loud, lose-your-breath, tears-streaming-down-your-face funny.

Bad Hair Days by Pamela Bone

In 2004 former Melbourne Age journalist Pamela Bone was diagnosed with Multiple Myeloma, an incurable cancer of the bone marrow. Her prognosis was poor, with an estimated life expectancy of between 1 and 8 years. Bad Hair Days is best described by the author herself: 'This book is an account of a journey with cancer: two years of my life in which the state of the world at times seemed to be reflecting the state of my health, or - to be less solipsistic - my state of health seemed to be in a similar condition to the world's. It is not an autobiography, though there are elements of that in it. It is not a textbook for cancer sufferers, although there are descriptions of cancer treatments and the various philosophies involved in treating cancer. It is about cancer, war, journalism, chocolate cake and a few other things.'
A very moving read. As she writes above, there is stuff about her cancer, which she so aptly describes as a 'sniper' picking off one in four people at random, but also about many other things. There is no self-pity here, Bone does not rail "why me?". There is a lot of humour and a lot of hope, Bone comes back time again to the theme of the inherent kindness of strangers. We are exhorted at the end of the book to take pleasure in the here and now, not to seek for happiness somewhere else and to live life to the full.

Interior desecrations : hideous homes from the horrible '70s by James Lileks, ISBN: 0307238725

Continuing on the home renovations theme. Anxious to find inspiration for our 'new home' when it eventually gets done I reached for this little gem.

Bad taste in home decoration reached a peak, or nadir, in the 1970s, "a breathtakingly ugly period" as James Lileks demonstrates in this book. Interior desecrations show us the worst of the unlovely, unattractive, unlivable and unforgivable homes of the 1970s.

Room by room Lileks shows us hideous examples of 1970s interior design all accompanied by witty comment. I laughed till I cried over some of the pictures and their accompanying commentry. It's the perfect antidote to Country Style and Australian Home Beautiful.

Also by this author (and I'm reaching now for a couple of the library's Request for Purchase forms) : The gallery of regrettable food : highlights from classic American recipe books and Mommy knows worst : highlights from the golden age of bad parenting advice.

Exit Music by Ian Rankin

As he is trying to tie up all loose ends before retiring, John Rebus is called to his last case. A Russian poet has been killed in what looks like a mugging gone wrong. To muddy the waters a high level delegation of Russian entrepreneurs, Scottish MPs and Rebus' nemesis Big Ger Cafferty seem to be involved somehow. Things go from bad to worse when Rebus himself becomes a murder suspect. Has Rebus gone too far in his zeal to nail Big Ger?

The last in the Inspector John Rebus series. Classic Rebus shambling about Edinburgh being belligerant. Several plotlines to keep you busy.

At the moment Rebus is on TV on a Friday night and we are very much enjoying it. Ken Stott is a much better Rebus than John Hannah, much as I like him.

A thousand splendid suns by Khaled Hosseini : ISBN 9780747582977

Mariam is 15 and lives with her mother in a village outside Herat, Afghanistan. Her father visits weekly and she idolises him and yearns to be accepted by his legitimate family. When her mother dies, rather than be looked after by her father, she is quickly married off to the much older Rasheed and goes to live hundreds of miles away in Kabul.
Many childless years later she is joined by a second 15 year old wife, Laila. Initially hostile to Laila, the two women find comfort and support in each other.
All this time trouble and strife is raging in Afghanistan with mujahadeen, Russians and the Taliban all wreaking their own kinds of havoc. Life is a struggle, Rasheed is brutal and the women suffer much before reaching breaking point.
A wonderful story. I highly recommend it, as well as the first book Hosseini wrote, The kite runner.

The zookeeper's war by Steven Conte - ISBN: 9780732285166

Berlin during WW2 and Australian Vera is married to German Axel who is also the director of the Berlin zoo. The story tells of their struggle to save the zoo animals following the bombings, their struggle to survive themselves with friends embroiled in the attempt to assassinate Hitler and a neighbour only too happy to dob Vera in as a foreigner. An affair and a real twist at the end made this an unputdownable read.

Canberra here we come!

Next week I have to go to Canberra with my colleague, Gillian, to attend a conference for customers of a particular library management systems vendor.
We are leaving the mountains about 8am on Wednesday and are hoping to be down in Canberra for about 1pm in time to join a library tour - one of the libraries to be visited is the Parliamentary library. We will be there for the rest of the week, starting back home on Saturday morning. Moira, my supervisor from when I worked at HealthLink will be there too so I'll try to catch up with her and her husband, Roland.
Gillian and I have spent a lot of time this week arranging things, including over an hour this afternoon 'doing' our CSTARS for next week before we go - the online clocking on and off thing we have at work. With dinners and breakfast meetings and being away on Saturday, we have worked out we have racked up almost 2 days time in lieu. We've also been confirming hotel bookings and making sure it can all go on the company credit card, arranging a car - we'll have a fleet car which we have to pick up on Tuesday sometime and generally fiddling. I certainly didn't get through the pile of cataloguing I'd set myself.