What’s On Your Bookshelf? – June, 2022.

“I can never read all the books I want; I can never be all the people I want and live all the lives I want. I can never train myself in all the skills I want. And why do I want? I want to live and feel all the shades, tones and variations of mental and physical experience possible in my life. And I am horribly limited.”
― Sylvia Plath, The Unabridged Journals of Sylvia Plath

Well, today’s question isn’t so much what’s on my bookshelf, but what’s in the green shopping bag beside my reading chair and what’s in the car boot, which I haven’t quite owned up to yet?

Confession time…again!!!

My last confession came after I brought 38 books at the Pearl Beach Books Sale.

This confession comes after raiding the local PCYC Book Sale, which included leftovers from the Pearl Beach Book Sale. For a book addict like myself, I was in seventh heaven fossicking through a hall full of books.

I’m sure I don’t need to explain to you how tempting it was, especially as the books were only $2.50 each and my stash came under the “bulk deals” category. I paid $30.00 for my two bags full including ($5.00 worth of home made slice and rather tempting chocolate cupcakes. Yum!!)

A selfie with my new book stash today and the dog’s ear in the foreground. I think Zac was beside the book pile not underneath it.

I haven’t done a head count yet, and am still in denial. (I’ve been doing such a good job of clearing out at home and like a true addict, I’ve gone and undone it all again. However, I am still sticking to what I said after raiding the last book sale. I’m going to read them and pass them on.)

Here are just some of the titles I’ve bought home:

Frank Reid: The Romance of the Great Barrier Reef (1954), David Lodge: Thinks, Margaret Atwood: The Edible Woman; Antoine de Saint-Exupery: Le Petit Prince (in French), DH Lawrence’s: Lady Chatterley’s Lover, Harold Lewis: Crow On A Barbed Wire Fence; Simon Tolkein: The Inheritance; Elizabeth Jolly: Cabin Fever; and My Father’s Moon; Rosie Batty: A Mother’s Story; Wendy McCarthy: Don’t Fence Me In; Michael Caulfield: The Vietnam Years; New York New York: The Metropolitan Museum of Art: The City in Art and Literature; Mark Marix Evans: Over The Top: Great Battles of The First World War; Alice Pung: Unpolished Gem.

As you might appreciate, there’s quite an eclectic selection there which is one of the beauties of second-hand book sales. They’re so stimulating taking your thoughts all sorts of directions across the globe and through time. I also appreciate picking up quite a few Australian works. As much as I love to discover the world, I also love seeing my world reflected back at me in print.

Meanwhile, I’m reading Kerri Maher’s: The Paris Bookseller. It’s essentially based on the life story of Sylvia Beach who founded the original Shakespeare and Company Bookshop in Paris. However, it also follows James Joyce very closing, especially the banning of Ulysses. It’s a wonderful read, especially for anyone who has been to Paris and visited Shakespeare and Company. I went there when I was in Paris in July 1992, and had heard they held poetry readings there. I mustn’t have known too much about the legendary status of the place because I went and approached the legendary George Whitman whether I could do a reading and blow me down after reading my self-published anthology, he agreed. I didn’t know that at age 23 I was reaching the pinnacle of my performance poetry career. I went corporate when I came home, because while it was okay to take one year off and wander through the nooks and crannies of Europe, it wasn’t meant to become a way of life. As it turned out, my health went pear-shaped and we’ve also decided/needed to focus on our kids, but this has also given me the space and freedom to write which I wouldn’t have had otherwise.

Humph! I am getting a better understanding why I’m such a slow reader. I keep writing instead.

So, what have you been reading lately and what’s on your bookshelf? I’d love to hear from you!

This has been a contribution to What’s On Your Bookshelf?

Best wishes,

Rowena

Meandering Through Midleton, Ireland: the Bookshop and Author Michael Harding.

Yesterday afternoon, I stumbled upon Irish author, Michael Harding, while I was browsing through a bookshop in Midleton, Ireland. While you’d obviously expect to find a book in a bookshop, the remarkable thing is that I was there. After all, I was visiting Midleton Bookshop via Google Earth from the comfort of my loungeroom in Umina Beach – just North of Sydney, Australia.

Me in my element

Being a compulsive bibliophile, of course, I had to check out their web site to better appreciate what might be displayed in their front window. The funny thing was, it was like they already knew I was coming. Their home page features a fabulous quote from Katrina Meyer: “A book is a magical thing that lets you travel to far-away places without ever leaving your chair.” As it turns out, it’s not only books. It is also Google Earth.

How typical of me to go all the way to Ireland (even virtually) and find a bookshop?!! Not only that. I managed to find a book I really, really wanted too! The book in question is Michael Harding’s The Cloud Where the Birds Rise, with illustrations by Jacob Stack.

Temptation Overdrive

I don’t know how well you know me. Of course, most of you have never been to my house and seen the overcrowded bookshelves, and book piles breeding faster than proverbial rabbits beside my lounge chair (where I currently write), my bed and on my desk overlooking the back garden. If you had been here, you’d probably be screaming at me: “NOOOO Roweeenah! Not another book! You haven’t even read the books you’ve got, and you have more on the way. Have you no self-control?” (Said, of course, as though self-control is the pinnacle of human development, and expanding your mind is a bad thing). You might even say something truly dreadful along the lines of me being crushed to death and buried alive once my teetering book pile finally topples over. Of course, I’ve brought all this disaster on myself. All because I couldn’t say “no!”

However, in my defence, I haven’t ordered the book yet, but who am I kidding? You and I both know the sun’s not going to set today, without me clicking on that irresistible “Buy Now” button.

Michael Harding – Image unashamedly swiped from his podcast

Meanwhile, during this rather pregnant pause between spotting the book and placing my order, I did make a brief attempt at self-control and tried to see inside the book online. That didn’t work, but I did find a podcast where Alan Keane interviewed Michael Harding on The Artists’ Well: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=CrRYg1hvCh0 Now, I was really hooked, and after enjoying this interview so much, I headed off to absorb Michael Harding’s podcasts (@hardingmichael) and I’ll be lucky to find my way out the front door for the next six months. I’m riveted.

It’s at this point that I finally realize I’ve left my virtual self paused in suspended animation outside Midleton Bookshop. Goodness knows what the proprietors think of having this stranger permanently glued to their front window. Indeed, they’ve probably already had me carted away in the paddy wagon. If I’m lucky, I might just find myself incarcerated down the road from Midleton Workhouse where my 4 x Great Grandmother, Bridget Donovan, ended up during the Great Hunger. She in effect won her golden ticket out of there when she was plucked out of this sea of starving, feverish unfortunates and despatched to Sydney on board the John Knox as one of the Irish Famine Orphan Girls under the Earl Grey Scheme. Indeed, she was even given a trunk of clothing, Bible and necessities to make a decent life for herself on the other side. Chasing Bridget was why I went to Midleton today. I wanted to see where she was from, and walk in her shoes for a bit.

So, I guess this leaves us in suspended animation. Are you familiar with the works (or should I say words and ideas) of Michael Harding? Have you been to Midleton, County Cork, Ireland? Or, perhaps you have some connection to the Irish Famine Orphans who were sent out to Australia? Alternatively, you might just want to say hello and that’s fine too. I’d love to hear from you. Indeed, it would be wonderful to have a cup of tea with you in person, but such is life particularly given the current state of play with covid.

Best wishes,

Rowena Curtin

Rainbow Bike & the Bookshop…Weekly Smile

Last Thursday, while I was being led astray by detour after detour after detour, I felt a strong twitch which turned into something of a magnetic pull and before I knew it, I was inside yet another bookshop.

Yikes! There’s something about bookshops for me, which is like the call of the wild and I am absolutely powerless to stay away. Like the children being lured away by the Pied Piper of Hameln, I am always lured in,. Moreover, shame upon shame upon shame, I almost never leave empty handed. Resistance is futile. It’s beyond my control.

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Anyway, last Thursday I went on a bit of an “excursion”. To be exact, it started the moment I left the doctor’s surgery in St Leonards when instead of catching the train North towards home, I jumped platforms and was soon click clacketting my way across the Sydney Harbour Bridge, through the city and alighting at Kings Cross Station. From there, I explored the Anne & Otto Frank Exhibition at the Sydney Jewish Museum and then took a right and stumbled across Darlinghurst Gaol, which is now the National Art School. Struck by it’s imposing sandstone architecture, I HAD to explore it further especially as I had my camera with me. Before long, I was in Surry Hills, my usual stomping ground.

That’s where I stumbled across The Oscar & Friends Bookshop.

Well, in terms of budget control and not spending any money, I kept stumbling over.

Or, you could look at it on the bright side and say I only bought two books. One is a gift for my brother so I won’t give it away but the book, which I bought for myself, was very pertinent:

Tim Harwood’s Messy: How to Be Creative & Resilient in a Tidy-Minded World.

‘Utterly fascinating. Tim Harford shows that if you want to be creative and resilient, you need a little more disorder in your world. It’s a masterful case for the life-changing magic of cluttering up’ – Adam Grant

Ranging expertly across business, politics and the arts, Tim Harford makes a compelling case for the creative benefits of disorganisation, improvisation and confusion. His liberating message: you’ll be more successful if you stop struggling so hard to plan or control your success. Messy is a deeply researched, endlessly eye-opening adventure’ – Oliver Burkeman

Now, I know that when you’re a bit quirky and spend your life swimming against the flow, you can get rather excited when you finally find someone who agrees with your point of view…AT LAST!! Indeed, given the thrill of finding a so-called published expert supporting your long held philosophical stance when you’ve been as a lone ranger on a tiny Pacific atoll,  is such a relief that you don’t even question whether the author’s legit. Indeed, here’s finally the proof you’ve always been looking for that messy desks beat tidy desks. Yippee!

Anyway, as you might gather finding Tim Harford’s book is a good enough reason to smile.

However, as I’m leaving the bookshop, I spotted a bicycle, which had been painted in luscious rainbow colours and I was in heaven.

Indeed, I thought about riding that rainbow bike right up into the sky and into the heavens. That was, until I spotted the very secure bike chain.

While everyone has their own perspective of what rainbows mean to them, I love all the bright colours and how rainbows are formed by that mingling of sun and rain which must be viewed from the correct angle in what must be a fusion of magic and science.

Rainbows make me smile.

Hmm…and now thanks to Tim Harford I can ignore all the crap on my desk until my keyboard gets buried again and a rescue mission is required.

What has made you smile this week?

This has been part of The Weekly Smile hosted by Trent’s World. You can click on the linky here to check it out.

xx Rowena

 

Surviving A Booktastrophe.

It turns out that I must have been building the Tower of Babel because my tower of books came tumbling down all of their own accord.

My husband who was the chief eyewitness, swears he was on the other side of the room at the time when he heard a rumble and a crumble as my precious tower of good intentions crashed dramatically to the ground.

He’s always been wary of my dubious stacking techniques but after filling the boot at the local scout book sale and supporting our local independent bookstores and buying a few titles online and did I mention that we even raided a friend’s stash which had been bound for the op shop, the house is almost made of books.

Books, books, more books. We can’t get enough books.

Now, the problem is what to do with them all.

Yes, reading them would be a start but it will take years… decades… more than a lifetime!

Any ideas or perhaps confessions from other chronic bibliophiles?

I’d love to feel supported when the next savage minimalist appears at my door and wants to sort the place out. They always seem to point their discerning finger straight at the books: out!

However,perhaps you’ll appreciate that these wonderful misunderstood and undervalued items of clutter are actually friends and are much closer to me than soul mates. They share the rhythmic beating of my heart.

Anyway, I’m on the look out for some more real estate…I mean bookshelves. Somehow I need to find homes for the new additions.

xx Rowena

xx Rowena