All along the bush/woodland path we walked this morning, spiderwebs festooned the greenery. Although it wasn't sparrowfart (early early), it was still early enough for the dew to have beaded on them. Beautiful, like chandeliers, or grand necklaces strewn about carelessly.
If you can't quite see this so well, try clicking on the photo to see it larger in Flickr.
Seems to be so, on this blog, doesn't it? Well, there are plenty of eucalyptus trees about doing nothing in particular different now to what they do the rest of the year, so it's nice to notice the ones with a bit of variety - autumn colour now, blossom or jacaranda in spring.
I like the variation of colour in this, from green to dead brown. We walk past this tree each week, and it's getting closer and closer to no leaves at all.
Quite happy for autumn to last a long time. It's not as cold as winter. But winter's coming, you can tell. Even if it's the milder Sydney winter, no snow or ice. But yes to frost and fog and needing the heaters on and enjoying hot water bottles and hot chocolate and cinnamon toast.
I bought Annie Dillard's book in 1994. I did know of it, but had not found it in any bookshops here in Oz. And then stumbled over it being used (in multiple copies) as beige shelf-filler at a chain furniture store. I notice that Ikea uses non-English books as filler in its stores, so they are probably at minimal risk of being bailed up, as this other store (it wasn't Ikea) was.
Could I please buy a copy? I asked. Just one. I really want to buy this book.
It's just decor.
Please?
We don't have a price on it.
Can you make one up?
(Clearly I wasn't going to give up).
OK, they said, just one copy, $10.
Done, I said, handing over the cash.
Maybe it was around in some bookshops in Sydney, but it wasn't one likely to be stocked by many. Now, I'd hunt it up on the internet (you can buy over 100 used and new copies from amazon.com, for example, I just checked). But then, back then when the world was young and the closest I'd got to the internet was some Macworld caper a computerish pal was playing with (and I never got to see, since it wouldn't work when he tried to show me what it was like), back then, to find a copy of this was phone calls and guesses.
I reread it today. It's as wise and insightful and tough-minded as it was then, and has been on each rereading in the years since I bought it. If you're interested in writing, it's certainly worth reading. It may inspire you or make you despair, but that's your response. It's a fine book. Review, including quotes, here.
How the world has changed. It is so much easier to track down obscure books, and that's just one example among many. With the increments of days, months, years, it can be difficult to remember 'then'. 'Then', for instance, when there were maybe two antique dealers in Sydney where you could find antique samplers - now, the internet offers many, available from around the world, with a broader price range. Then, when buying vintage American quilts was virtually impossible (maybe one dealer in Sydney? - hoo-wow, now you can look at, and bid on/buy, from hundreds on the internet). Then, before digital cameras or blogs or Flickr or Skype or email, let alone the other possibilities of the internet.
Everything's changed, and yet not everything. I still buy books, read books, love books, browse bookshops in the real world as well as online. You can't get Kindle here, only another very very expensive reader, so the closest I've got to reading longer work on the computer is an ebook I still haven't finished. Nope, as far as I'm concerned the book is far from dead.
It's good to step back now and then, and reflect. Of course the kids say, that's what old people do...
I registered for my second webmail email address, at Yahoo!, towards the end of 1997, but my first one (from the long-defunct-swallowed-by-Yahoo! Rocketmail) was in existence for a year or so before that. A dozen years. Not so long.
This is one of my entries in the Sydney Quilt Show, the top almost finished but the quilting (which will be simple) still to be done.
When it's finished and hanging in the show in June, I'll post a flat full shot here. Truly. And one of my other show entry.
This lot arrived recently, and having finished (and thoroughly enjoyed) Skulduggery Pleasant in audiobook form (take a bow, Rupert Degas, your voice is a wonder and a delight, I was laughing like a drain!), I am now starting on these on my daily commute.
All but Outlander were among the bargain audio books at Barnes and Noble, so there's a goodly amount of bang (or voice) for your buck here (and that's even with postage costs: audiobooks here are usually pretty expensive. Outlander alone would have cost more, if I'd bought it here, than all seven in the photo. Thanks be there aren't audiobook regions such as you find with DVD regions).
Apart from Outlander (by Diana Gabaldon, published in Oz & the UK as Cross Stitch), the rest are not books I've read before. Some are abridged, some unabridged: for a fiction book in particular, that I had read in print, an abridged audiobook could feel a bit filleted, and I think I'd find myself waiting for a particular bit and being disappointed if it wasn't included. Maybe I'll disprove this theory somewhere down the line, but for now, if I know and love a book (eg The Time Traveler's Wife), it's unabridged only for me. Conversely, if I listen to one of the above and love it to bits, I may hunt out the novel. The ones above include three nonfiction, four fiction.
My audio book listening tally so far is:
The Time Traveler's Wife
by Audrey Niffenegger
unabridged: read by William Hope and Laurel Lefkow
Rating: utterly brilliant. I loved the novel anyway, but their voices have made me love it even more. It's 16 CDs, and I've listened to it all through, um three times? And lent it to friends. Keeper. This is the audiobook that was so good, it got me into audiobooks. And if you work through that thought, Audrey Niffenegger's book was so good, on the page, that I ventured into its unabridged audiobook. Thank you, Audrey.
The Last of the Mohicans
by James Fenimore Cooper
abridged, thanks be: read by William Hope
I blogged about this. I wasn't polite. William was the best thing about it, and he was wading neck-high in sludge-like prose, poor man, doing his best (and a bunch of accents). Realised that my version of this book (and my only version, you can fergeddaboudit regarding any actual printed text) is the Michael Mann/Daniel Day Lewis film. Aaaaah.
Rating: not remaining in my collection. Probably given away anonymously, so as not to embarrass myself by association.
Skulduggery Pleasant
by Derek Landy
unabridged: read by Rupert Degas
The book's hilarious, and the audio book's hilarious too - and with an audible Irish accent, instead of you remembering to put it in yourself. Rupert's characterisations are excellent - you never mistake Stephanie for Skulduggery - and it's all just heaps of fun, with a wonderful Irish sense of humour.
Rating: must lend this one to kids. And adults. Would be great on a car journey. Keeper.
From the group in the photo:
Middletown, America: one town's passage from trauma to hope
by Gail Sheehy
abridged: read by Gail Sheehy
Abridged here was good - I'm not saying that as a slam, but this was a book I hadn't read, and I think I've gained what I wish from the 6 hour narration. Sheehy's book is based on hundreds of interviews she undertook with people from Middletown, New Jersey, which lost proportionately more people in the 9/11 attacks on the World Trade Centre than almost anywhere else. The book is a lens to consider this event, refracted through the lives of a varying group of people. Some, angry in their grief, focus in on the why, and their energy drove an unwilling government towards accountability. For others, it was the loss of a father who'd never know the daughter his wife was carrying on 9/11, or the family who lost a firefighting son/brother, or the men who worked at Ground Zero. All sorts of stories showing how this one day reached into so many lives in so many ways, and how people responded (well and not so well, she doesn't sugarcoat). Sometimes, Gail Sheehy's voice has an odd halting quality, hitching or halting where you would have expected smoothness: but what she can bring, which no narrator in this case could, is her memory of just how the people she interviewed said what they said, tone, inflection, volume. Anger, despair, hope, grief, the gamut.
Rating: good. A keeper, but I won't be listening to it again for a while. Not only do I have loots (sic) more to listen to, it's a story to let sift and settle.
The car's CD stacker has been completely overtaken by whichever is the current audiobook - I listen in the car rather than at home - and every journey now, commute or whatever, is companioned by these stories. It's been one of the good things I've learned/discovered this year.
Which one's next? Either Outlander or The Art of Mending (which I accidentally bought as audiocassettes rather than CDs, but since the car's old enough to have a cassette player too, this isn't a problem - and it was a bargain priced audiobook).
I haven't yet investigated audible.com and suchlike sources of audio downloads - the car doesn't have an mp3 socket, and I'm not sure how these would work with my internet connection in terms of time/bandwidth and associated costs. One step at a time.
Oh, and for several good reasons I listen to the radio rather than audiobooks when I'm quilting or sewing, although I know that's audiobook time for others.
Before you exclaim in horror at drowning a pretty parrot, even in champagne, rosella is also the name of a native Australian fruit. You can buy them preserved in syrup, for example, and one of these makes a sculpturally interesting (and flavoursome, but not overwhelming) addition to a glass of champagne. A change from strawberries.
Should you be fortunate enough to be at a table also containing macadamias, runny brie and sliced pear, and other such toothsome nibblies, well, you're in luck.
And if that table is surrounded by charming, funny friends, and has happy and varied conversation entertaining them, well, how good is that?
Clearly, this is a plant with issues defining itself, or deciding what it wants to be when it grows up. The mediaeval spiky weapons, fluffy yellow blossoms, sharper scarlet buds and green and burgundy leaves are all on the one plant.
I know how it must be thinking, some days - who AM I today????
I would of course tell you the name of this plant. If I knew.
Later: but I don't need to, because Pennie has named it in her comment. What a useful person Gwy is! Thank you!
I still think it's a weird brew of elements on one plant.
At the AMEA Sydney miniatures fair last year, I saw this wonderful woodwork. It stuck in my mind, so when I saw it this year, it came home with me. Apart from the superb craftsmanship, I love that it represents a vintage type of Australian furniture, the meat safe.
Apparently they could have sold it many times over if it hadn't been painted wood. I'm so glad - love the worn aqua paintwork. I won't mention the maker's name, as she does this as a craft, not a business, but she's brilliant. The doors open (the catches are so small!) and the drawer opens. Such fine, exact work.
I knew which doll's house room it was for, and it fits in so well (I'm still completing that room, so I haven't photographed it in situ).
It's only the second time I've been to the Sydney miniatures fair, and just like last year, I thoroughly enjoyed seeing the multifarious ways in which people are creating and crafting in this particular arena, on the sale tables and in the exhibition houses and displays. Fascinating. I bought a few pieces, and came home inspired with plans to work on my own ideas/rooms and get them closer to being finished.
One of those delightful self portraits children draw. Just love them.
This is from the Recycled Threads project I handed in this week (due for publication in a few months in Australian Country Threads vol 8 no 9) - I was so pleased to find the item featuring this, which I reworked.
