Labour Weekend

I find it rather ironic that I am busy working on writing for both my employers on a long weekend which is designed to commemorate the introduction of the 40 hour working week. Unfortunately time frames are often short and deadlines must be met.

I am still busy reading 'Still Alice' but am almost finished. It is a very honest account of a highly intelligent woman descending into dementia, It makes one consider options if they should develop this, not an outcome one would wish for their lives.

I have just started a new talking book, it is:
 

"I left my wedding dress hanging in a tree somewhere in North Dakota. I don't know why that particular tree appealed to me. Perhaps it was because it looked as if it had given up and died years ago and was still standing because it didn't know what else to do..."

In her deliciously funny, heartfelt, and moving debut, Cathy Lamb introduces some of the most wonderfully eccentric women since The Divine Secrets of the Ya-Ya Sisterhood and The Secret Life of Bees, as she explores the many ways we find the road home.

From the moment Julia Bennett leaves her abusive Boston fiancé at the altar and her ugly wedding dress hanging from a tree in North Dakota, she knows she's driving away from the old Julia, but what she's driving toward is as messy and undefined as her own wounded soul. The old Julia dug her way out of a tortured, trailer park childhood with a monster of a mother. The new Julia will be found at her Aunt Lydia's rambling, hundred-year-old farmhouse outside Golden, Oregon.

There, among uppity chickens and toilet bowl planters, Julia is welcomed by an eccentric, warm, and often wise clan of women, including a psychic, a minister's unhappy wife, an abused mother of four, and Aunt Lydia herself--a woman who is as fierce and independent as they come. Meeting once a week for drinks and the baring of souls, it becomes clear that every woman holds secrets that keep her from happiness. But what will it take for them to brave becoming their true selves? For Julia, it's chocolate. All her life, baking has been her therapy and her refuge, a way to heal wounds and make friends. Nobody anywhere makes chocolates as good as Julia's, and now, chocolate just might change her life--and bring her love when she least expects it. But it can't keep her safe. As Julia gradually opens her heart to new life, new friendships, and a new man, the past is catching up to her. And this time, she will not be able to run but will have to face it head on.

Filled with warmth, love, and truth, Julia's Chocolates is an unforgettable novel of hope and healing that explores the hurts we keep deep in our hearts, the love that liberates us, the courage that defines us, and the chocolate that just might take us there.

I am finding that I miss so many bits when listening in the middle of the night that I often lose track of the story. I may need to always rewind the book to find out where I remember finishing the previous night.

 

I have also purchased more books for my kindle - it has become a habit I am finding hard to break. I often wonder if it is any different from walking into an amazing library and being overwhelmed by the quantity and quality of the books there. I always took home more than I could read so perhaps this is a carry over from the days when I could read print books.  

 

My life is becoming more and more hectic as spring flashes by and summer is just around the corner. My work for CCS is expanding exponentially and the detailed work required often tires me. I dislike using my remaining sight too intently for fear it may leave me descending into less sight and more difficulties with coping.

I have now finished 'The Umbrian Supper Club' which I found to be a tad boring. I am beginning to wonder if Marlena de Blasi has begun to run out of topics to write about which makes her books appear to have stretched every last fact to extend the book. 

I am now enjoying;


I thought this book was nonfiction, although I missed the movie I thought it was a story about a real professor. I was quite shocked when a member of WLM told me it was a novel. It certainly reads like a memoir.

Alice Howland is proud of the life she worked so hard to build. At fifty years old, she’s a cognitive psychology professor at Harvard and a world-renowned expert in linguistics with a successful husband and three grown children. When she becomes increasingly disoriented and forgetful, a tragic diagnosis changes her life--and her relationship with her family and the world--forever.

At once beautiful and terrifying, Still Alice is a moving and vivid depiction of life with early-onset Alzheimer’s disease that is as compelling as A Beautiful Mind and as unforgettable as Judith Guest's Ordinary People.





On my VRS I am listening to


n 1984, architect Scott Warren comes to China on a scholarship to study Daoist buildings, just at the time when the liberalisation policies of Deng Xiaoping are unfolding and Chinese people are experiencing new freedoms. Twenty-three years later he returns, to honour his dead wife's request to take her ashes back to China. He encounters a country that has been propelled into international commerce, culture and politics that has Western-style prosperity yet continued human rights restrictions and one-party rule. In this complexity, Scott confronts painful memories and revisits the past, which merges dangerously with the present. (less)

I am enjoying reading this book though falling asleep before the 15 minutes I set to turn off means I seem to have lost track of the plot. Another novel, again I thought it was non fiction, its portrayal of the huge culture shift in China is evocative.





I have also bought some more books for my kindle, mostly those recommended by WLM.





With more than two million copies of her novels sold, New York Timesbestselling author Geraldine Brooks has achieved both popular and critical acclaim. Now, Brooks takes on one of literature’s richest and most enigmatic figures: a man who shimmers between history and legend. Peeling away the myth to bring David to life in Second Iron Age Israel, Brooks traces the arc of his journey from obscurity to fame, from shepherd to soldier, from hero to traitor, from beloved king to murderous despot and into his remorseful and diminished dotage.

The Secret Chord provides new context for some of the best-known episodes of David’s life while also focusing on others, even more remarkable and emotionally intense, that have been neglected.  We see David through the eyes of those who love him or fear him—from the prophet Natan, voice of his conscience, to his wives Mikhal, Avigail, and Batsheva, and finally to Solomon, the late-born son who redeems his Lear-like old age. Brooks has an uncanny ability to hear and transform characters from history, and this beautifully written, unvarnished saga of faith, desire, family, ambition, betrayal, and power will enthrall her many fans.

I have enjoyed all her other books so hopefully this one is just as gripping.

Spring

We are having the most beautiful spring days. I am almost tempted to get my summer clothes out to wear on days when it is warm. I love the longer days when I can write, walk, work in the garden and sit outside to read.

I have just finished reading:

A uniquely personal insight into the Middle East from one of Canada’s most respected foreign correspondents

In 1976, Nahlah Ayed’s family gave up their comfortable life in Winnipeg for the squalor of a Palestinian refugee camp in Amman, Jordan. The transition was jarring, but it was from this uncomfortable situation that Ayed first observed the people whose heritage she shared. The family returned to Canada when she was thirteen, and Ayed ignored the Middle East for many years. But the First Gulf War and the events of 9/11 reignited her interest. Soon she was reporting from the region full-time, trying to make sense of the wars and upheavals that have affected its people and sent so many of them seeking a better life elsewhere.

In A Thousand Farewells, Ayed describes with sympathy and insight the myriad ways in which the Arab people have fought against oppression and loss as seen from her own early days witnessing protests in Amman, and the wars, crackdowns, and uprisings she has reported on in countries across the region.

This is the heartfelt and personal chronicle of a journalist who has devoted much of her career to covering one of the world’s most vexing regions.

I really enjoyed this book, I kept listening during the night when awake and followed the insightful thinking about modern Middle Eastern politics. This is a book well worth reading to learn more about what is causing so many issues in this part of the world.

 

On my Kindle I am reading:

  

 

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