Penfriends

 When I was young I had penfriends in various places around the world. Diane in Australia and I have been writing for over 50 years. I also had friends I wrote to regularly in Germany, the Virgin Islands, the US and other interesting places. It was a great way to learn about other countries. It is unfortunate that as we age or move on with our lives these intimate friendships dissolve. I have just read a book by Geraldine Brooks, one of my favourite authors, called Foreign Correspondence.

Geraldine Brooks writes of her childhood penfriends, an attempt to leave the confines of what she saw as a very isolated Australian childhood. Her first such friend also lived in Australia, but she soon gathered up a variety of other letter writers from the US and Israel. After many years she decided to contact these penfriends and this book describes how these relationships evolved, how their lives had taken very divergent paths, and the new level of unanticipated relationships she developed. 

This is not a long book like her wonderful novels, it is an easy read and also a prizewinning book. Enjoy.    

     

 

This has been my reading all weekend. It is a very detailed description of the author's growing up poor in Australia, his dead beat father, and the sometime adventures he and his siblings got up too. It has many detailed chapters of his sexual exploits as a young teen, then when he joined the Australian Army, with his mates out at night in Brisbane and Sydney. Some of this was almost lascivious, I certainly learnt things I did not know! Eventually he joins the army and is sent to fight in Vietnam. While I am only half way through this very long but interesting book I wanted to give readers of this blog the opportunity to download a copy too. The book continues with his adventures in Vietnam, his impressions of the war and his service, and the impact on his psyche when he returned home. The opening chapters are set in a mental hospital where he is recovering from the impact of PTSD. It is riveting reading, the chapters are short, and the story rolls along like a good Australian yarn. Well worth purchasing.        

Starting Again

 I have decided to reprise this blog which I really enjoyed writing. My life became very busy since 2016, I have had two major concussions which were eventually traced to sick sinus syndrome, a heart condition, and I now have a pacemaker which regulates any change in the timing of my heart rhythm. This has meant a lot of reading has been done in the last five years. One year I read 106 books. I record all the books I read and have now joined two book clubs where I discuss what has appealed to me the most of the books I have read in the previous four weeks.

So to begin the revitalised blog here is my first offering.

 

This is the story of a follower of the Hasidic faith, a very Orthodox Jewish sect who slowly loses his faith, moves into the secular community and eventually loses his whole family. It is an insight into both this unusual belief and its treatment of members. The subterfuge Shulem has to undertake to leave a sect which has been his whole life is both sad and stunning in its description. Well worth reading if only to give you an understanding of the damage such religions can do to kind decent human beings.