tired

It is peculiar how a weekend of eating, drinking and laughing makes you so tired but there you are. I suppose I did work on Saturday too, but it seems long ago.

Now - books.
"U is for undertow" was a really good yarn. Sue Grafton keeps churning them out in this "Alphabet Crime" series, and unlike the Paretskys and the Cornwells has managed to keep it all fresh and interesting. She started with "A is for alibi" and now we're up to U so that is 21? books. Good on her, I really enjoy them. Kinsey is a likeable character.

"Never let me go" was a fascinating read and and just so well written, imagined and executed for something with so little plot. I can't divulge the storyline, because the atmosphere of unease the author creates is part of the enjoyment of this one. Once you realise what's happening - about 80 pages in - you are completely involved in how it's going to pan out. The narrator annoyed me intensely until I realised why she was stuck in the voice/personality of an annoying teenager. It is a "disturbing" book, to use that overused word, and very sad. I highly recommend it.

I set myself "A wrinkle in time" to read as homework before I read "When you reach me" by Rebecca Stead (people who know me will roll their eyes, because sadly, this is the sort of thing I do). I knew the Stead book, which has just won the 2010 Newbery Medal for outstanding children's literature in the USA, used the L'Engle book as inspiration for parts/part of the plot and that it was referred to frequently.

Well, I didn't enjoy "A wrinkle in time". It didn't hold my interest once they went off travelling in space and although I finished it, it was a chore. Didn't engage with the characters or the plot. I was disappointed because I know how loved it is.

I started Stead last night, and sure enough Wrinkle is first mentioned on page 8, so glad I did my homework. However, I am loving this book. Set in 1979 - single mum- appartment living in New York etc. it reminds me of the E.L. Konigsburgs and Freaky Friday type genre I loved in late primary school. I will be diving back in once I've finished writing this post.

(The photo is from our holiday. Hotel in Rue Dauphine, decorated for Christmas.
We talked about our holiday lots with friends over the weekend so now I am ready to go back again, thanks. Sigh.)

just hope it's falling in the catchments...

When I was driving past the Royal Exhibition Building on Friday, because I glanced quickly and read it wrong (I do this all the time) I thought the sign on the front of the building was advertising "A Baby Shop." It was actually a Baby Show. Where apparently you could buy a million and one useless baby products according the the LONG advertorial for it I heard on Radio 774 yesterday morning. I've loved the idea of a baby shop since seeing a picture of one in a favourite book from my childhood:



Snugglepot and Cuddlepie by May Gibbs, 1918


In other news, look what happened yesterday to the horrible plasticky roof over our back verandah:


Yes, the cliched "hailstones as big as golf balls" smashed it in the storm.
Good. Now hopefully the insurance company can pay for a more attractive roof, maybe a tin one that doesn't show the moss, leaves and possum poo build up.

I was at work when the storm hit. The hail on the roof of the library sounded like footballs. After checking the Bureau storm radar and seeing BLACK for the first time ever I did have a couple of minutes where I thought I would have to evacuate the forty or so people in the library into the workroom to escape broken glass if our many huge windows copped the stones. All was well though, and the foyer didn't flood either, which usually happens.

Very social long weekend with dinners and lunches and people. Now I have to go and get the makings for a trifle I'm taking out to a lunch tomorrow.

gardener's question time

A few years ago I filled a whole garden bed with pelargoniums (commonly known as geraniums). I know they are deeply un-fashionable - which is why I suspect I like them - but they are also drought tolerant, have really nice flowers and you can neglect them and they don't mind.
My problem is this: I planted about 6 different colours - pink, two reds, variegated red and white, pure white and a really beautiful old pale pink that came from a very old plant.

For reasons I do not understand, all the geraniums are now the same pink (pictured).
I've looked in all my gardening books and on the internets and can find no explanation for this. One of my gardening chores for March is to Do Something about this bed, but if I rip the thing to pieces and re-plant will the same thing happen again?

gold before they fall

I'm pretty sure there were only two yellow leaves on this silver birch yesterday. Then overnight,things have changed.

This is one of my favourite little passages from Tolkien:

As Frodo stood upon the threshold, Elrond wished him a fair journey, and blessed him, and he said:
'I think, Frodo, that maybe you will not need to come back, unless you come very soon.For about this time of year, when the leaves are gold before they fall, look for Bilbo in the woods of the Shire.I shall be with him.'
These words no one else heard, and Frodo kept them to himself.

mesmerizing (or mesmerising?)

I don't know which spelling looks correct? (or is correct? z looks better than s)

This book - is that word.

I don't quite know what it is about yet but it is filling me with unease as I read.
I thought it was a book about young adults looking fondly back at life at boarding school...

Wrong.

Dinner is going to be late because I got home from work and couldn't stop reading.
Oh well.

note to myself about buying op-shop books

This month, there were lots of books in the boxes that went off to charity, and all of it was fiction. Almost all were op-shop purchases. I seem to have fallen into an idiotic habit of seeing a novel in an op-shop,a book I've already read 6 months earlier, a year before, two years ago and thinking:

oh, I really enjoyed that,I'll read it again some day, better pick up a copy, it's only a couple of dollars...

What's wrong with this picture?

I just DON'T get around to re-reading. There are too many books coming out every day, week, month for me to do much re-reading except for really, really old favourites, so why do I think I'm going to read ephemeral fiction again?

Note to myself - if you buy an op-shop novel make it something you have never read and always meant to. Leave the others for someone else. Please.

(Had a series of rude, argumentative, unco-operative and just plain weird people on the phone at work this morning, so I'm as exhausted as if I've done a full day's work instead of four measly hours).

(First fire of the autumn pictured. Sunday night. Wasn't even autumn yet!)

happy birthday autumn baby

How clever, 16 years ago, to have a baby on the first day of my favourite season.
(It was a close thing, she was born thirteen minutes after midnight).

Never a dull moment with this girl (and I mean this in the nicest possible way).

Happy birthday!