Sunday Night Lights

The past three days have been a blur of movement.  It's nice to have a moment of quiet relaxation before the weekend winds down completely.  (It also lets my muscles recover from a race and moving heavy furniture.)

Hope your weekend was filled with lots of great moments and perhaps a small glass of celebratory reading water and a nap.

If a Tree Falls in a Forest...

Everybody needs beauty as well as bread, places to play in and pray in, where nature may heal and give strength to body and soul alike.

      - John Muir from The Yosemite (1912), page 256.
      (Source: Sierra Club)

Today's Friday photo a glimpse of tropical rainforest and sea, a place where nature could heal.  Happy Friday!

Northeastern Australia
Late August/early September 2012 

Call a Spade a Spade?

Though knowledge to the contrary, I am beginning to think that "equinox" is Latin for "you won't sleep for a week."  The bustling combination of work, travel, too much coffee (never!) and a stack of bedside reading are still encroaching on a restful nice long sleep.  And did I mention the boxes?  I t also seems that Virgo has changed houses which according to my recently googled horror-scope means that I will too.  (+1 for internet accuracy).  And then there's the training...

In a sleep deprived, waiting for the coffee to perk haze this morning, I read this NYT article by Sarah Lyall on Abbey House Gardens and laughed heartily at the image of naked gardening, particularly when thinking how yesterday morning I dead-headed roses after my morning run and picked up a thorn.  (Apparently every rose has one.)  I see the practicality of those clothing-option warriors but I do tend toward the sunburn and a place for holding the shears.

Toss-n-Turn

If I had known that I was going to enter a sleepless night season, I would have taken a longer nap yesterday.  I also would have more heavily pondered sleeping on the plane (but reading was just too tempting).

This morning in my coffee craving haze, I'm trying to find the upside.  I took a bit of inspiration from Beth Orton in her interview with Tim Adams published in The Guardian that her sleeplessness (from motherhood) allowed her to "make connections that I maybe wouldn't normally make."  The article also contains a great quote about limitations which might just become my Monday mantra.

Ms. Orton played the Belcourt in Nashville last week and from accounts I've read from those who were able to attend, the show was most excellent.

Fall In

Last night's dreams were particularly crazy.  I wonder if it is the change in season or being back in a place that felt for such a long time like home.  I think best not to delve too much into the human psyche before a latte.

The GBC meeting this week was particularly grand so I'll again borrow GBC P@1ge's description of the evening.  I wish I could have joined.  Book club > budgets.  [Names modified to protect the knights of the reading water.}

We could have not asked for a more perfect evening for our last meeting of the summer season. With the official start of fall only a few days away, we certainly got a preview of the coming season with crisp air, a cool breeze and dishes made from K1m and T1m's share of the season's harvest. Baba ganoush, goat cheese and K1m's homemade red pepper jelly got things off to an incredible start, and that was followed by an assortment of salads featuring cabbage in one, black beans in the other, whole wheat orzo in another selection, and finally a leafy green medley. All delicious. I know my description does not do them justice...you'll have to follow up with our wonderful hosts for more details. And last, but not least, there was an apple crisp made by our always-charming host E! The greek yogurt and fresh nutmeg were the perfect touches for this yummy dessert.

Now to the book...The Sea The Sea. As Bob wrote earlier, it wasn't necessarily a pleasant read, and our protagonist was not exactly a lovable guy, but we all agreed that Ms. Murdoch has a wonderful way with words. And, as always, inability to finish the book in no way impeded our ability to discuss the book. Not an easy book to get through for most folks, but Mr. H managed to read it in two days. He said that rainy weather helped. Perhaps it made him feel as if he was at the sea the sea.

I agree that rainy weather helps my reading save the first day of the week.  Rainy days and Mondays always get me down.  (Cue The Carpenters.)

"You Maniacs"

Thanks to xkcd, I learned about Scott McCloud and the infinite canvas.  This led to a brief moment of zen during lunch on a day when my brain maxed out it's CPU and had a much too heavy for Wednesday storage load.  A rocket, a ship, a pyramid and a penny (just to name a few)...oh my!

Sad and wonderful, indeed.

Poet and Did Not Know it

My desk these days has a different view.  Still west-facing, I see a bit more sky, today's rain, and the odd adventurous bird or two.  Do new views make you think of things differently?  Or is it that a new view makes you think of different things?

For a different view on poetry, check out "Poetry's Cross-Dressing Kingmaker" by Mark Oppenheimer published a few days ago in The New York Times.  This articles highlights Stephen Burt "whose reviews bring poetry to the masses" [MO, NYT].  It's a delightful morning read with your coffee, particularly if you already have a particular disposition toward poetry and if you, like him and W.H. Auden, think "it's best just to ignore bad poetry." [MO, NYT]

First in Line

Work > play this weekend so I hope to rectify that soon with a little reading before retiring for the night.  I still have not managed to track down how I ended up with the Outlander by Diana Gabaldon but tonight I've learned this is the first in a series.  As with everything else right now, one [book/day/hour/insert suitable measure] at a time, and we'll see how it goes.

G'day

As a music-loving tourist, one of the first things I wanted to see in Sydney was the Opera House.  After a few days, it became akin to a game to determine from how many vantage points I could take a photo.  The answer:  a lot.  Here's day one of my eventual 360-degree tour.  Happy Friday!

Sydney Opera House
August 2012

And Then There Were Six

The Man Booker shortlist was announced yesterday and though Bring up the Bodies by Hilary Mantel is getting press as a favorite, I'm still partial to Swimming Home by Deborah Levy.  Sadly, this was a book I was not able to purchase for my trusty Kindle so destiny likely brings a paper copy.  Though not keen to read another book about a lighthouse immediately, I do still have The Lighthouse in my list.  The winner will be announced the 16th of October.

Hope your week is progressing better than expected and that the cooler weather brings an extra smile or two your way.

Fall Reading

I am trying to get into the mindset of a "fall back" as the September calendar rolls forward.  I'll gladly accept the cooler nights and temperatures which are gently falling during the day.  For the darker mornings, I may need a bit more coffee (and additional motivation to get running).

As a reminder, these are the upcoming reads for your autumn and winter pleasure:

    September 18: The Sea The Sea by Iris Murdoch
    October 16: The Great Gatsby by F. Scott Fitzgerald
    November 20 : The Double Bind by Chris Bohjalian
    December 18: The Night of the Iguana by Tennessee Williams

Hope your Monday is off to a cheery start.  Happy reading!

It's My Island

I started The Light Between Oceans by M.L. Stedman as I thought it would be a nice complement to my journey to Australia (the book's setting, though it had me by nearly 100 years on the date).  In the end, the described isolation reminded me more of last year's visit to Maine that my journey down under, but I could see that in less populated areas than my journey, it could definitely seem like man and island are one (to contradict the expression).

The book moved well for me.  I was captured by the struggles of Tom and his wife maintaining a "lighthouse life" on the island and too felt wonder when the boat bearing a dead man and a baby washed ashore.  What would happen next?  I could not quite guess the story line (which is a plus in my book...so to speak).  [Don't worry, I'm not giving too much away here.  Nearly every review I saw gave this tidbit away and this critical event happens pretty early on in the novel.]  I read the book nearly in one sitting (with my seat belt securely fastened in the unlikely event of turbulence).

So what did happen?  Of course, I can't spoil that, but I will say the last few chapters left me a bit disappointed as the author seemed to want to tidy up the bits which perhaps should have been left to dangle.  Admittedly, this could have been my dark brooding rather than a reader who likes to know all the "what happened".  I would give the book a shot, but perhaps more a "borrow" rather than "buy."

Have a great weekend!

Thursday Verse

It's been a rather surreal day.
I hope your week has been rocking.
It's been a longer time recovering
From the last flight docking.

A review still pending
When back to the norm
Meaning sleep in the night
and during day a fair form.

A Prism, Three Bases, and a Ring

I managed three books while I was on holiday., and number four has progressed 18% (Kindle math).  It's been ages since I've had the pleasant indulgence of that many novels in a short two week span.  A few of these even  made me forget that I was in economy seating with a 24 hour (one way) travel schedule.  Those earned an extra "+"

Expect reviews soon (translation: when I have had more than 3 hours sleep) of:

The Light Between Two Oceans by ML Stedman
Moneyball by Michael Lewis
The Newlyweds by Nell Freudenberger

My current read is Outlander by Diana Gabaldon. Ever since I began, I've been trying to remember who recommended this title for me.  I wonder if you too have had the line "If I could turn back time" continually playing in your head or if it's just my jet lag