My reading log notebook (on the left) is full. I like to keep a written record of my reading, although I have a digital one on goodreads. For my next log, I’ve chosen the one in the middle which I bought last year at Mrs Blackwell’s Village Bookshop in Greytown. When that’s full (it’s small, it won’t take long) I’ll move on to the one with the embroidered cover from Scorpio Books. Your suspicion that I have a thing for all things book would be justified.
I’ve read eight books in the last month (August). My favourites were Be Brave, The Life of a Pacific Correspondent by Barbara Dreaver, and Memorial Days by Geraldine Brooks. Both of these are memoirs. Another notable book I read was Relearning to Read: Adventures in Not-Knowing by Ann Morgan who encourages the followers of her blog to read books in translation to widen our understanding of the world.
In her latest post, she writes that in this kind of reading:
… I am a guest in someone else’s space, given the opportunity to see how things are done elsewhere, without any attempt to mediate or dilute them for my perceived taste. This can be challenging, particularly if you are used to being centred in the books you read, but it is also a great privilege: a welcome disruption to the habits that surround us and a reminder that customs that can often seem mandatory are just choices.
Her recommendations have opened up new worlds to me, but so too have books written originally in English. Two of these I have read on the cusp of the month of August: The Mighty Red by Louise Erdrich, which I finished at the end of July, and The Calamity Club by Kathryn Stockett which I finished just after midnight last night. Another is a biography: Fulvia: The Woman who Broke all the Rules in Ancient Rome by Jane Draycott. Fluvia, born in 80 BCE, has been mis-represented in history, according to the author who sets out to make corrections to the record. In the process, she educates the reader about the lives of Roman women and the mine-field that was politics of the time. It was somewhat distressing to find parallels with today.
In between these books, I have kept up a pretty steady stream of so-called cosy crime for sheer pleasure and, perhaps, for restoring my equilibrium (or complacency?). I identified with this comment about the genre by a friend who often recommends good cosy crime books: “Reading this was like a cat soaking in warmth in a puddle of sunlight”.
Having read an article about truancy in The Press this morning, here I am not going to my 10 o’clock watercolour class. My reasons aren’t as tragic as those of students who don’t go to school, just a feeling that I’ve made a mistake enrolling in this class – although at least the two sessions I have been to so far suggest that it isn’t working for me. (Nothing to do with the very helpful and expert tutor.)
Last night I packed my bag and took some photos to use in today’s class on monochromatic tonal value scale and 3D modelling which I enjoyed last time I did the course three years ago. I was too sluggish to get through this morning’s chores (including two loads of Mum’s washing which is a task fixed to a Monday, somehow) and get there on time, even though I managed it last week.
My 2023 effortsMy 2023 3D ModellingLemons for 3D Modelling todayJug for 3D Modelling todayCopper pots for today’s class – nice shadowsKitchen scales – perhaps too ambitious for today’s class
My desk is clear of the watercolour gear I’ve packed in my bag, and there is the colouring-in book I haven’t looked at for ages. I feel a little frisson of delight looking at what I’ve completed this year, and there is one partly done. Perhaps that will be my artistic outlet! A bit like my retreats into cosy crime instead of those ‘serious’ books which too often (but not always) are put aside. (Speaking of which, in the process of weeding books from my shelves yesterday, I re-discovered a book about the Anglo-Saxons and have it open on my desk ready to read.)
Writing this post has been like giving myself a ‘talking to’. Time to persevere with the harder options, perhaps?
“Come and join our book group,” was an invitation I received last year from people I knew or had met through the WEA and the WORD festival. My last book group had lost its appeal for various reasons and I went through a period of grief, I guess, for what had been an excellent social and mentally challenging monthly meeting.
This new group is excellent. We sit in a circle in a local library for an hour once a month and each person talks about what they’ve been reading. I find this refreshing and interesting after being in a group where we all discussed the same book.
This week, in a group of about 12 plus a librarian, we heard about a range of books as usual. Mine was Patchwork, the graphic biography of Jane Austen by Kate Evans. One woman had read Marie Benedict’s book about Rosalind Franklin. Benedict writes about women who have been overlooked by history and another book grouper has read all her books. One woman talked about an article in NZ Gardener about climate change affecting trees. Another talked about a book on NZ Wildlife. There was Munich by Robert Harris, which the reader says has disturbing resonance with contemporary politics. Karen by Kelsey Grammer is about the actor/comedian’s sister who was murdered when she was 18. Another book was about growing up in Northern Territory Australia – living with snakes and living off bush tucker. One was a memoir by Stalin’s daughter.
Some books were exchanged – often they were personally owned, some picked up from little book libraries or second-hand shops. Many were library books, some ebooks. I went away feeling the richness of reading in our group, the enthusiasm for learning about other people’s lives and about the world in general. I know that there are book groups in libraries across the city – and across the country – all with a different flavour, it seems, when they report back on the Christchurch City Libraries newsletter.
Sometimes, when the books we have discussed are quite grim, I feel like scuttling back into the comforting arms of cosy crime! But, right now, I’m reading Helen Garner’s diaries from the 1970s to the 1990s and enjoying being inside the mind of a writer.
Having finished reading A Great Act of Love by Heather Rose (Allen & Unwin, 2025), set mainly in the 1800s, it occurs to me that its style is like that of Petrus van der Valden’s paintings of about the same time: dramatic, thickly layered and full of pathos. The extracts of poems, most notably Coleridge’s The Rime of the Ancient Mariner, add to this impression.
There are domestic scenesThere are voyagesThere are foreign portsThere is wild nature
The ‘big picture’ of the book is how fortunes can be overturned or reversed, you can end up in immense suffering, undergo incredible dangers, discover ways to survive all hardships and remain enriched in mind even in death. Sounds a bit grim, and I suppose it is, yet beneath our comfortable lives are the unknown lives of our ancestors who endured and perhaps reinvented themselves to build a life from which we have unknowingly benefited. This is what the author found when her sister uncovered stories of their ancestors stretching from the French revolution, to Scotland and London, then on to Van Diemen’s Land – now Tasmania – where the author lives. The story could hardly be less dramatic considering the trajectory it covers and just stops short of crossing the line from expressive to over-written. Imaginative and well-researched (the details could inspire you to set up your own apothecary’s shop or become a wine maker) this work of historical fiction is gripping and impressive in its breadth.
I loved this book and, since I’ve finished reading it, I find I’m missing the characters. They seemed so real I’d like to know what they’re up to now. I don’t remember having that experience with any other book I’ve read – except where it’s part of a series and then you just wait for the next book to come out. The two main characters named in the title are brother and sister sharing an apartment in Auckland.
The family gatherings in the book were often funny and revealed aspects of the people and relationships which you weren’t expecting. It was good to have a list of characters at the front to refer to and sort out how everyone was connected and who was who, especially where nicknames were used. I like the names – and their origins add another layer to the story.
I thought this book was a fantastic achievement particularly for a first novel. The young author uses colloquial language appropriate to the age group of the main characters and that added realism and charm. I borrowed the book from the library, but if my book shelves weren’t so full I’d be tempted to buy my own copy.
A pile of library books is waiting to be read and more are knocking at the door, so to speak, as holds arrive at the library or on Libby. Today, I completed Kind by Stephanie Johnson, the title being a reference to Jacinda Ardern’s plea that we be kind to each other during the pandemic. I was reminded of Eleanor Catton’s Birnam Wood and Fiona Farrell’s The Deck – both also influenced by political events and by Covid. Kind didn’t fill me with the same sense of entrapment and dread as those books, I was relieved to find. The many flashbacks took you out of claustrophobic lockdown and into complex lives, and out into the countryside too, from Christchurch to Arthur’s Pass to the Bay of Islands to Australia – and even to China in flash back. I was also reminded of Kamila Shamsie’s Best of Friends, as the main part of the story is about the life-long friendship of two women growing in self-knowledge perhaps, or perhaps not.
The cover blurb describes the book as satirical, which it is in a way, but not so the characters become types (with exceptions) rather than credible. Some embody rumours and suspicions which abounded during covid about criminal activity, illegal migration, and Chinese interference or culpability. Many show various ways of being kind and how that can be aspirational but also misguided and possibly lead to choices which cause life-long regret.
In the Author’s Note at the end, the author thanks her husband for ‘a certain plot point’. Which one? There are so many twists and turns. I feared I would lose track of the story lines and characters but they all linked together in increasingly suspenseful ways and soon I was completely into it, reading in my egg chair into the warm evening when it began to rain lightly and got too dark to see. I finished the last couple of pages as I cooked dinner.
On to the next book! Something a little more sedate perhaps, to be kind to myself, before I tackle the brutal demands of more literary fiction.
These cold rainy days are perfect for reading by the fire. Today I braved the cold and walked to the library to return six books which I had finished and walked home with five more. Before I begin those, however, I have started a book about Katherine Mansfield’s childhood. It’s a hard cover book with lots of illustrations and a ribbon. No map at the front but there’s a watercolour painting of Wellington Harbour 1894 on the end papers. The Matariki book in the photo beside the library books is perfect to read at this time of year because it is Matariki. Mānawatia a Matariki! (Celebrate Matariki, the Māori New Year.) Each day is getting longer. Soon I’ll be back out in the garden and probably not reading as much.
The library was full of children and was a joyous place to be. Moreover, I ran into a woman from my watercolour painting class and we sat and talked over coffee in the Foundation cafe.
What kept a grin on my face all afternoon, and even now, was something which happened before I left home. I had soup and toast by the fire which I put aside to sweep up some firewood detritus from the carpet. I put my soup on the hearth and my plate of toast on my chair and yes, you guessed it, forgot it was there and sat on it. There was a corduroy pattern in the butter. Can’t think why I find it so funny.
When the school year was divided into three terms, instead of the current four terms, we looked forward to August holidays and the first signs of spring. The month is a changeable one. Yesterday was warm. Today I walked to philosophy class at the WEA feeling the cold bite of the “beastly easterly”. Our entertaining tutor and the rapt class did something to ease the chill, not to mention the sometimes heated discussions of logic and reasoning. The class is called Arguments, Fallacies, Trickery.
After class I dropped in at the Art Gallery to take a second look at the Louise Henderson exhibition. At the entrance is this quotation:
As a retired English teacher, I will never stop reading or thinking about what I read. The philosophy class has shown me how to rev the cogs up a notch and I’ve enjoyed the ‘homework’ I’ve set myself to discover more and to understand the jargon. I can apply what I’m learning to my reading.
I’m revelling in reading and missing no opportunity to read widely. The variety available at our fantastic libraries is impressive. I’ve just finished a book set on the Kamchatka Peninsula in Russia (Disappearing Earth by Julia Phillips) and I’m now reading a book set in ancient Rome (The Grove of the Caesars by Lindsey Davis, in the time of Domitian who, incidentally, banned all philosophers from Rome) – both from the library. I was able to order a missing book in Tsitsi Dangarembga’s trilogy. It arrived very quickly, a brand new copy of The Book of Not, which follows on from Nervous Conditions. The last in the trilogy is This Mournable Body which is long-listed for the 2020 Booker Prize. I have a copy in my latest pile from the library. The trilogy is the story of Tambudzai, a girl desperate for an education who moves from her rural village to a prestigious boarding school on a scholarship during the struggle for independence in Rhodesia-Zimbabwe. Will her education give her the life she hopes to have? At what cost? It revives memories of my students’ teenage angst and struggles with anxiety and identity and with their often harrowing home lives. Add a layer of war (continual gunfire in the distance and close-up violence) and discrimination (an overcrowded African dormitory and a bully for a matron) and this character’s pain becomes palpable to the reader. I will read on anxiously to discover how Dangarembga’s character survives as she grows up. Interestingly, she remains in Zimbabwe (so far) unlike the main character in NoViolet Bulawayo’s novel We Need New Names (shortlisted for the Booker the year Eleanor Catton won) who migrates to the US and experiences poverty and racism there. In a heart-breaking scene, she and her cousins try on clothes in a mall to picture themselves living lives they know they will never have. Dangarembga has remained in Zimbabwe where she is an award-winning film-maker, playwright and political activist in a country where, like many others, a pandemic is one more thing on top of many dangers. There is no feeling nostalgic for times past, I would suppose. Instead, all of these books to some extent show virtue is a source of happiness and suffering does not exclude the possibility of joy – as in the philosophy of the Stoics interpreted for today. I may change my mind about this conclusion when I’ve read the third book.
Back in the Art Gallery, August is missing from Louise Henderson’s panels featuring the months of the year.
In a tangential mind-drift during the philosophy class this omission seemed significant. I’m not sure why. It makes a good thinking point. What would it have been like? Would it have shown a half-way point between the dark July panel and the light September panel? Did it contain something which set the exuberance of the remaining panels in motion? Has it been lost? (The answer is in this link.) Or did its owner refuse to lend it for the exhibition? I’m pleased the curator left a gap for the visitor to contemplate.
August seems yellow to me so far, less than a week into the month. Perhaps because I have just pruned the lemon tree quite hard to remove branches resting on a brick wall. I collected a bucket full of lemons from the removed branches and am considering ways to use them – limoncello? preserved lemons? lemon meringue pie?
‘When life gives you lemons, make lemonade.’ Sounds like Stoic philosophy to me.
Perhaps Popcorn will discover some answers inside the strawberry bucket.
When Zeno lost his merchandise in a shipwreck, he turned to discussions under a Stoa, or porch, hence the name Stoic. He is the founder of Stoic philosophy which seems to be based on not letting misfortune defeat you, but using it to discover new possibilities. These rescued hens have suffered misfortune, but don’t appear to be dwelling on it.
Here’s a nice thought to finish:
“Of all people only those are at leisure who make time for philosophy, only they truly live. Not satisfied to merely keep good watch over their own days, they annex every age to their own. All the harvest of the past is added to their store. ” — Seneca
Wee Jock, in the best fire-side chair, visited for 4 days.
Our winters are not severe, although they are tough for many people and we all look forward to warmer days. Where most of us live here, we’re not knee-deep in snow or suffering through long dark days and months, as in Scandinavia where they suffer consequent mental health issues – perhaps why Sweden hesitated to impose an early lockdown when spring had just begun.
Today there is a frost but, as the pattern goes, it is followed by warm sun. There is something to appreciate, even on a dull day. Yesterday was cloudy and cold, so we lit the fire earlier than usual, ate kumara soup and read our books. Outside the weather went from cloudy to stormy to rain with a bit of ice in it, to clear and even a bit of watery sun in the late afternoon.
I appreciate the warmth of thick woollen clothing which I couldn’t bear the thought of wearing in summer. My wool duvet, wool pillows and wool mattress cover are fabulous in winter – and summer (with one less layer of duvet). I am able to wash and hang my woolly socks and merino tops outside on the line – especially on a day like today.
Thank goodness that we are able to socialise (let’s hope it lasts). Meals out, card games and walks are great to keep my spirits up and keep me connected with friends. And between-times there’s blogging, emails, texts and phone calls – and, maybe, delightful news. Speaking of news, there’s always something thought-provoking in the daily newspaper I collect from the gate each morning.
Our Christchurch City Libraries are perhaps the best thing about our city. They are a connection point for everyone and a warm place in winter. There’s something magical about coming home with a pile of books. Walking home from the library last week, I was delighted to see the Town Hall fountain working again. I sat and enjoyed it for a while.
The Ferrier Fountain lifts the winter blues.
Over the last couple of months I have found myself taking the odd photo of something cheering. Here are some creative delights I’m enjoying this winter.
Here I am appreciating creativity: my winter poem, Mum’s marmalade, a fairy house at the beach, the bird feeder – an up-cycled work of art, affogato dessert at 27 Steps lit by a light installation outside, my winter-themed noticeboard.
The garden is a changing source of delight.
I’m appreciating the colours, textures and forms in the garden – and being able to pick gorgeously scented violets and wintersweet, and harvest herbs, fruit and rhubarb.
Winter delights show me that there’s always something cheering in the cold, dark and dreariness, particularly as I have the luxury of time to appreciate it.
Waxeyes (aka silvereyes) feed on the last of the apples and our sociable chooks come to see what’s up.
In the late afternoon, there’s the possibility of a contemplative winter cocktail and The Panel on National Radio.
A ‘wobbly knee’ (whisky, green ginger wine and lemon) and RNZ National.
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