Reading Project, 11

I’ve been in two minds whether to include study and text books in this project.

In October 2023 I signed up with Dream School run by the This Jungian Life group.

For a year, I read course studies and completed online assignments, to start to learn how to interpret dreams. This followed on from months of nightmares and a short stint with a Jungian psychoanalyst.

After the end of the course, I continued with the analyst for another year. Which brought me to late last year. Since then I’ve been reading rather voraciously and, at the beginning of the year, beginning this project.

After I read Book 31 … Bone House by Betsy Tobin I was at a loss. Though I have plenty of other books lying around, a dozen un read and many many that could do with a second or third reading, I was feeling jaded. Like it was the end of a holiday.

I felt like I needed some chewier fare, a project with a bit of heft. Picked up MDR by Carl Jung, having had it on my shelves for about a year.

Book 32 … Memories, Dreams and Reflections: An Autobiography by Carl Jung translated from the German by Richard and Clara Winston, published by William Collins, a paperback edition in 2019.

This is not a book you can just read in one sitting, or even a week. It took me well over a month, the whole of May, I might as well say, there being plenty in it for me to think about.

When I started having nightmares back in 2023, I had already thought that I needed a way to think about what was happening in my mind. I wasn’t happy with the physical world of neuroplasticity, MRIs of people’s brains firing, the whole kit and caboodle of studying flesh-and-blood brains and what looks like is happening in them, and thinking that that is the be-all-and-end-all of how minds work.

So when I fell over Jungian dream interpretation by way of the This Jungian Life podcasts, I was stoked. Seemed to me that this was the lyric metaphoric way of thinking about what happens in minds that I could relate to. Been in that mode ever since.

(Stoked is an informal adjective meaning to be highly excited, enthusiastic, or exhilarated about something. Originating in surfing and skateboarding slang, it shares the same root as feeding or fueling a fire—meaning your energy and enthusiasm are burning brightly, Google)

Memories Dreams and Reflections, MDR for short, is both Jung’s autobiography and an account of his studies and discoveries. Despite what many people think, he went about his project of exploring what happens in our minds in a scientific way. He describes his experiments and the empirical results.

He named the personal unconscious that we all have, and discovered the deeper, archetypal unconscious we all have.

(Archetype is a Jungian psychology concept of an inherited unconscious predisposition, behavioral trait or tendency (“instinct”) shared among the members of the species …Wikipedia)

And then spent the rest of his life exploring how the unconscious works with the ego—your conscious mind. But he was writing in the early third to half of the 20th century and his turn of phrase, if anything, is quite esoteric, readable by only a small number of people, and somewhat turgid for the likes of me. I knew I would have to search out those interpreting him for more modern readers. And plus, I knew also that I’d be reading some light relief.

Book 33 … Unfinished Woman by Robyn Davison, published by Bloomsbury Publishing in 2023.

Picked this up from down in the Vista foyer where there’s a long shelf under the parcel bench, dedicated to memoirs, autobiographies and some histories.

Lol, love all these prepositions one after the other “up from down in” … makes sense, I hope?

The same Robyn Davison who lived Tracks and then wrote it. From the back cover, “In 1977, 27 year old Robyn Davison set off with a dog and four camels to cross 1700 miles of Australian desert to the sea.” I had that book for years. Don’t recall where I picked it up, second hand while traveling that same desert probably. Camp laundries are the best places to pick up good books.

I already had a soft spot for camels and loved the desert. I read that book more times than I can remember.

Davison was born on a cattle station, is quintessentially Australian, and the first modern woman explorer I read about. My heroine the minute I read about her. This memoir, about the forces that set her up to wander, to travel, to always be on the move, is a gripping read.

A poor childhood, her mother suicides, and Robyn thereafter is raised by her father and older sister in an outer Brisbane suburb. She was in London for the first time roundabout the same time I was in London.

After that she goes on to do all the romantic-sounding things that women in those days usually only could read about. Marrying an Indian prince. Living in London and writing. But, you know, there are always costs.

Book 34 … The Incredible Journey by Sheila Burnford, first published by Hodder and Stoughton in 1961. This copy by Vintage Books in 2013.

Bought this for a ninth birthday present and read it hoping to discover whether it could still rip my heart out. So many books written in the past lose their numinosity when set against more modern texts. Realizing this is a function not only of the language they are written in, but also the culture that nowadays washes through our minds.

It has this in the front as a prologue…

The Beasts by Walt Whitman (1855)
I think I could turn and live with animals, they are so placid and self-contain’d,
I stand and look at them long and long.
They do not sweat and whine about their condition,
They do not lie awake in the dark and weep for their sins,
They do not make me sick discussing their duty to God,
Not one is dissatisfied, not one is demented with the mania of owning things,
Not one kneels to another, nor to his kind that lived thousands of years ago,
Not one is respectable or unhappy over the whole earth.

Sounds modern, doesn’t it?

— — — —

The first three pages are a description of the setting, which I suspect may largely be skipped when reading them aloud. But still, the setting hasn’t suffered from the encroachment of modernity. I suspect only if you live right there will you know of the depredations of industries such as milling, mining and road-making.

The three animals are introduced in the next chapter. Two dogs and a cat. They’re being cared for by a friend of their human family and his housekeeper, Mrs Oakes, while their own family is overseas. A couple of weeks before the family is due back, the animals take off for home.

A distance of about two hundred and fifty miles separated the animals from their home, with plenty of dangers along the way. Bears, porcupine, floods, cold, snow, irascible farmers with shotguns. As well as just enough kindly humans to help the animals along.

I thoroughly enjoyed it. It hasn’t lost anything in the years since I read it to my nine year old. It’s a famous story. Disney made two movies of it, but to me it’ll always be a favorite read. And by that I mean a text I take in with my eyes.

About Meld …

To all those readers keenly following MELD … I have been feeling quite doubtful about continuing it. Though I’ve written dozens of good chapters, it seems that unconsciously I’m burdening yet another suffering viewpoint character with an additional internal entity. And that, after three versions already on the same or similar theme. I’m obviously going to have to do more dream therapy.

So, while I sleep on MELD, I’ll repost EARTH GIRL. I don’t think I’ve yet posted her story on this (WordPress) blog. Lol, among 600+ posts? I can’t find it. I think offered it on Google+ back in that day.

I’ve got a nice cover for it, thank you ronnie@https://tegnemaskin.no/

The Build, 8

Late March to Early May, 2026

After a fifteen months interruption, construction at Aveo Parkside Carindale has resumed. Building 4 was to have been begun in April 2026, but Hutchinsons (the builders) started getting ready in March 2026 by taking down an additional two of the remaining Carinya home units.

I missed most of the beginning as well as the Development Update Meeting for the residents held in April, due to being in hospital for a few nights, and before and after being busy with medical concerns. So this is a catch-up.

When watching from my balcony or my bedroom windows on level two of Vista, some of what’s being done out there on the site, is often a mystery.

The first, what on earth is that pocket hankerchief of land for, where the two little houses were taken away? Adjacent to the single lane emergency road tracking through the whole property, it didn’t seem big enough for anything. One resident told me they thought it’d be a parking area. It seemed a reasonable idea. (Outlined in blue below) Thank you for the photo PV)

The second was the news that there’d be access from Carindale Street (the western boundary) and an exit onto Banchory Court (in the east) a temporary road that would be constructed for the very many truck movements expected.

Where that road would go was of consuming interest until we worked out that the narrow single lane emergency track wasn’t it.

Retaining wall being constructed beside some of Carinya’s remaining buildings along the internal emergency lane.

The first weeks in April seemed to be mainly concerned in collecting the resources that would need to be trucked away.

An almighty pile of topsoil, gathered from everywhere on the site with the displaced crows making themselves at home over the weekend. I was pretty jealous to see it all go, and hope some of it can be brought back for Building Four’s podium garden.

One of the smallest ‘work machines’ (in the words of my granddaughter) ripping down the old fence and piling that up for another truckload. One of the yellow machines made short work of the hedge. White ute in the background and a person stopping the public from falling into the site, I presume.

Reading Project, 9

Early in April, the old library in the part of our retirement village that is about to be rebuilt, was to shut down. Readers were encouraged to go there and ‘score’ any books they might like to take away. Don’t bother to bring them back was the second part of the instructions, and don’t return them to the new library the third.

Out I went with my walker, found about seventeen books that looked interesting enough to take away with me, and a cardboard box, thinking to pack them in that for an eventual delivery to Life Line, a charity that runs a massive annual book sale.

These books are now sitting on the floor in front of my bookshelves, no room for them on the shelves. Most will be one-read-wonders, so will be moved on, so no use making room for them yet.

I started with the five detective fictions, one of them a compendium of three novels. Fast and easy to read, good for the weeks that I was prepping for the medical procedure everybody loves to hate, a nerve-wracking time when easy reads are the go.

As we are now well into May, even I can see that I’m getting behind with this project. And I’ve ordered a bunch of study books. Wonder how I’ll go with reporting on those.

Book 22 … The Flood by Ian Rankin, published 1986 by Polygon. Strictly speaking, The Flood is not a detective fiction. But as the first published novel of one of my favorite authors of detective fiction, Ian Rankin, I thought I might as well take it along.

Rankin’s own introduction informed me that his various skills began with this little book (I’m assuming that like many first novels it’s about 60 thousand words, it has that heft) so could be worth it to read. He himself tells us its a young man’s book ‘all about the perils and pitfalls of growing up’.

It was a patchy read. Sometimes you can learn too much about a book before reading it. Some parts I enjoyed. Others not so much. The first of the three parts to my mind the more interesting though of it is left hanging.

Book 23 … Standing in Another Man’s Grave by Ian Rankin, published 2012 by Orion. This book is advertised with ‘Rebus is Back’ as though Rebus has been away, missing. Rankin has written nineteen Rebus books as well as nine or ten that are unrelated to Rebus. This one is about a crusty old detective, resigned from the police force and working independently, as a private eye, I assume.

Co-incidentally, on TV (SBS on Demand) I’m following Harry Bosch in much the same scenario, in the Harry Bosch Legacy. What I enjoy about both these detectives is their personal lives. They tell the stories not just of their police work but also about their private lives, and their frail humanity.

Both also have been left behind by technology and isn’t that a relatable feature of modern life? Anybody over fifty will always be a migrant to the computer age and will, by the time they’re seventy, need a guide.

There’s enough detail in the average Rebus, and the story arc is usually familiar enough, that reading it was quite relaxing. There isn’t that need to hurtle along hurry hurry to find out the end, because the end is a foregone conclusion. Rebus will solve the mystery and the perpetrator will go to jail.

Book 24 … Odd Hours by Dean Koontz, published 2008 by HarperCollins. Once upon a time I studied Koontz’s written dialogue, to improve dialogue in my own writings, and enjoyed many of his novels. The cut and thrust of the dialogue, the spare but informative descriptions. The suspense.

Then he went into the Odd Thomas series, and barring maybe one of them, perhaps the first, these are not his best. In my opinion. I think I’ll be tossing this one into the recycling bin.

Book 25 … The Survivor by Sean Slater, published 2011 by Simon and Schuster. I’ve already passed this one on to my reading buddy. It was good. Added to which, Slater is the pen name for an actual police officer though I don’t really know if that makes a difference, most crime writers are very good researchers. But not having the book on hand does mean I’m limited to the Good Reading Magazine, if they even have it in their files.

They do. Their summary … “Columbine. Dunblane. Virginia Tech. Winnenden. But Saint Patrick’s High? In his first hour back from a six-month leave of absence, Detective Jacob Striker’s day quickly turns into a nightmare. He is barely on scene five minutes at his daughter’s high school when he encounters an Active Shooter situation.”

I was pleasantly surprised that there was another detective fiction author whose style I like that I’ve never yet read.

Books 26, 27 and 28 … Inspector Montalbano: The First Three Novels by Andrea Camilleri, translated into English by Stephen Sartarelli, published 2002 – 2004 by Picador.
The Italian publication dates were …1994, 1996, 1996 publishe by Sellerio editore … have I got a treat for you … the Sellerio publishing group is based in Palermo the capital city of Sicily, and they’ve adopted … ‘The program at the origin of the publishing house is a return to a culture that Sciascia defines as “pleasant,” that is, a culture in which so-called commitment is implicit and not explicit, therefore a culture of lightness, which does not renounce elegance, a culture of ideas, yes, but in the form of beautiful things.’ [My paraphrase.]

That’s brave in this day and age. I’ll be enjoying the publisher’s statement for a while … the link https://www-sellerio-it.translate.goog/it/casa-editrice/

And in addition, Inspector Montalbano, an Italian cop show set in Sicily, was a favorite TV series about twenty years ago, so how could I resist?

Starting to read The Shape of Water, the first of the three books—they don’t appear to be a trilogy—I realized I’ve read it before, or maybe started to read it before, because I did not recall the end.

The first thing to get used to in the book, compared to the TV show, is that it is not a version of Keystone Cops, the way that the TV version often resembled. A bunch of police constables and members of the Sicilian public perpetually running after Inspector Salvo Montalbano.

In the book all these people have their own personalities, and it’s good to get to know their differences. OK, yes, there does appear to be at least one Keystone Cop, and that is the officer most often left behind to man the radio, (I’ll find his name …ah, Cantarella) He does have all the hallmarks of a comic turn. Though I bet in Italian he’ll be funnier than he is in English.

The Terracotta Dog and The Snack Thief are the second and third novels. Both are also full of interesting geographic and historical detail and cultural ambience. These are extras, of course, for all non-Sicilian readers.

One thing I really enjoy is Inspector Montalbano’s relationship with his cook. She’s the mother of a pair of miscreants, one of whom Montelbano put in jail. The inspector is a total foodie and Aline leaves him with a stream of interesting dinners in his fridge.

Then there’s Livia, his girlfriend. The love of his life, she lives on the mainland. They enjoy their separate/together lives until they meet the snack thief in the third novel. Then they talk about getting married. But we only get Montalbano’s POV and he has doubts. There’s no resolution so far. I expect this conundrum to continue to be debated further on in the series.

Montalbano’s love-hate relationship with his second-in-command, Mimi Augello, is mercurial with a bit of ‘plain speaking’ involved. When Augello is well-meaning, Montalbano is savage and vice versa. Augello sounds ready to move into Montalbano’s chair, but Montalbano is nowhere near ready to move up.

Fazio and Tortorella are his sergeants, “or whatever the hell they were called nowadays,” he says. Then there are all the rest, constable I assume, hard to tell apart, except maybe for Catarella who usually mans the phone and mangles any message that needs to passed on and having to be re-interpreted when Catarella grasps the wrong end of the stick.

I can see from my confusion that I’ll be re-reading the series to get the chain of command, so I can read a run of Italian names and know who all they all represent.

The comedy often is in unexpected contrasts. Montalbano spend the morning scrubbing his house and then himself. He polishes his shoes, dons a formal suit with “his most serious” tie, and then sits waiting for a visitor, getting more and more nervous. He knocks back a glass and a half of whisky just before his visitor arrives, and who tells him, “I’m almost blind, I see very poorly.”

The comedy in The Terracotta Dog dances around a tragic plot. We get a glimpse of what life must’ve been like during World War Two in Sicily when the German Navy used its coastline and harbours to repair and resupply its ships.

Sometimes an old cultural practice is discussed. Could the fact that the corpse was found with a stone in its mouth mean something other than is commonly understood? Huh, I thought. I have no idea. Another reason I enjoy this series so much, this dialogue you need to have with yourself to ‘detect’ the full range of meaning. I recommend these.

The books I have here are the first three of a long career. I’m keen to read more now, see if they become formulaic which is always a danger. I hope they don’t, I hope Camilleri can keep his plots fresh. I’ll be hanging on to this one for a while. Pity that it is a tome. It’ll need quite a wide space on the shelves.

Reading Project, 8

Book 21 … A Knight of the Seven Kingdoms by George R R Martin, with illustrations by Gary Gianni. This edition, being a collection of three novellas, has a complex publishing history but as a collection it was first published by Harper Collins in 2015.

After I saw the HBO TV version, I wanted to read the original, as print novels often are better at showing the complexity of characters. Which was a good move, for as well as the first story, The Hedge Knight, that the TV series is based on it, it gave me two more stories, that presumably will be televised in the goodness of time as installments 2 and 3.

A hedge knight is a knight not sworn to a lord or having land—such as Ser Duncan the Tall—and I guess would be equivalent to a ronin in the samurai tradition. Both are men who wander their countries and offer their swords in whatever battle that will give them food and shelter for a time.

Dunk (short for Duncan) is a young, tall, strong and inexperienced knight wandering the Seven Kingdoms with his squire, Egg. As soon as I read “Egg” I recalled Maester Aemon at the Wall in Westeros ( A Game of Thrones) talking about his younger brother Egg and spent quite a bit of time wondering how that worked. Forgetting that with the right question (ie prompt) Google’s AI would tell me in seconds.

Which it did. Aemon was two years older than Egg and Egg will rule as Aegon V. At the time of these stories Aemon is apprenticed at the Citadel learning to be a maester and he will serve at The Wall.

You have probably guessed by now that I am a Game-of-Thrones tragic. And you are right. I have the book series on my bookshelf. I was a member once of a huge fan club, forty thousand plus fellow tragics, industriously discussing all aspects. Though they worked out the Jon Snow is the son of Rhaegar Targaryen and Liana Stark puzzle and I still don’t know how. I confess I just took their word for it, never could find the proof in the books.

All this is getting side-tracked from the book I’m talking about, but have the excuse that the these stories brought it all back, because it is all connected. Reading it the first time round, it seems like a light read, though the battle at the tournament is quite complex. I had to read that a couple of times, nailing down who fought who and who bit the dust.

But wait, why am I saying it’s a light read? I’m changing that. Only the first story was a particularly light read and I suppose the fact that I already knew the story visually meant I just glossed the imagery in the words.

That’s the problem with visual media of all kinds and reading books after seeing related shows. By feeding viewers with media-ideas for what things look like, viewers who are also readers tend not to read stuff that will clash with pre-“recorded” visuals and as a result miss out on a lot of good metaphor.

Such as … “The spiked ball whirled round and round the sky and fell toward his head as fast as a shooting star. Dunk rolled.”

That didn’t happen in the tv series. Someone else wielded the spiked ball and not at Dunk. Why I can still appreciate it. The other thing to appreciate is a character’s thoughts. … I failed them. I am no champion. I’m not even a hedge knight. I am nothing…

I don’t mind those thoughts, they’re what anyone would think in the situation. But … He never saw dunk the lunk, though, did he?… the twenty-five times that Dunk thought that of himself … that grated on me after the fourth time. (Maybe not twenty-five, just felt like it.)

In the next story, The Sworn Sword, (p119) there’s less introspection as there is more interaction between Dunk and Egg. They are on the road, traveling to their next meal.

This story is book-ended by the two corpses hanging in a cage at the cross-roads where Dunk and Egg stop for a minute for a break and again on their way out. They’re to deliver a barrel of wine to a place called Standfast and happen to stay there, to help the inhabitants get out of a scrape they have with their neighbors about water rights, a complex quarrel. Dunc ends up fighting the opposition’s champion.

The third story is The Mystery Knight (p233). Coming away from Stoney Sept, Dunk and Egg are well supplied. As they near a town, they first see a traitor’s head on a spike on the town walls.

Two and a half pages of Dunk’s ruminations follow, about a law that allows septons to be decapitated for merely talking because … “words are wind” after all … he says. Egg puts his thoughts in where applicable and the whole is one of Martin’s stylistic manoevres to thicken up the story line with historical descriptions including the Targaeryan succession through Bloodraven.

Six days later they arrive at a ferry crossing. Here, again, as they ride toward the inn nearby, there are possibilities of informing the reader about money, as in how little they have, “twenty-two pennies, three stars, two stags, and an old chipped garnet, ser …” Egg informs us and Dunc.

All three stories give the feeling of meandering. The pace is slow while Dunc and Egg are traveling, they are on horseback, with the horses probably walking. Fights are fast blow by blow accounts of action.

Between the slow travel and fast battles unfold long sections of story needing close attention. There’s a lot of detail being slipped into every paragraph. Story-pearls are being seeded in at all times. Early in the story we learn about Bloodraven’s history. At the end we meet him, and learn that he is Egg’s cousin.

I found this book in the YA fiction section in the bookshop where I bought it. The book is probably classed as young adult fiction due to the single story line, the youth of the POV characters, and because it is illustrated.

The amount of detail in it, though, suggests an adult read. Words, phrases, clauses and sentences all contain seeds and reminders that these stories are part of the whole rest of the Westeros culture. It’s one of those books I read fast for the plot and again, slowly, for the complexity.

.Illustration by Gary Gianni.

Links, 1 …

That is, links between Mongrel, part 1 of the series and Meld, part 2. Ordinarily these might be called back-stories telling how various characters got to the point that they enter the story.

Though in this case, it’s the ongoing premise that needs more explanation than I can fit into the main tale. So I have recruited a group of supporting characters to tell their side of events, in the hope that they will then just slot you into the cycle.

This was a 500 word Flash Fiction try-out that describes Claire King’s secret project. If you’ve been reading long enough you’ll probably recognize the Dolphinate, who live in the Delta in Lodestar.

This little painting represents a bunch of new life in a petrie dish.

1. Rita de Heer, The Dolphinate Download

Mongrel: 46, 47 and 48

Last three chapters. But not really THE END.

It was hard to figure out the cut-off point between Mongrel and Meld. In a way, the whole of Mongrel is Tardi’s backstory and set-up for his role in Meld.

I felt that, with at least the main character a familiar person, we might all be able to better understand the new scenario. Experience it through his senses, as it were. It was hard to write and it’ll be hard to understand. But I hope you’ll find it intriguing.

— — — —

I’ve seen most snakes in the wild, but never a death adder. Like most bush-walking Australians I was always on the look out for them. Very scary. I’ve known several people who thought they killed one, only for the animal to turn out to be a blue-tongue skink.

Image from https://wildlifeqld.com.au/common-death-adder/ Check out this link for all the variety of colors of death adders.