Photo by Emily Miranda, featuring Cairns wetlands (North Queensland, Australia), not the kind of mangroves I imagined for this chapter … here, in the photo, the trees are taller. Down in Northern New South Wales, the mangroves are about half the size. And here, there will be crocodiles.
Good resolutions at the beginning of a year aren’t my bag but this year I thought I would keep a record of what I read the whole year.
In my teens, with no TV at home, a boring school life–working well below capacity I think now–and an almost non-existent social life, I often read a book a day. A regular bookworm, I chewed through most of the high school library in the first year, and was then provided with the truly educational stuff by the high school librarian. That lady saved me.
Mrs Murray. A short, orange-haired dragon to every other student, she loaned me many interesting and exciting books from her own collection. Historical fictions, lives of explorers, a journal purporting to be by Marco Polo, good novels. It was with her support that I managed A grades in Art History, Geography and Biology, a credit in English in my finals. I never studied, I read whatever came to hand. All of it grist to the mill.
I went on to use that formula all my life. All my learning is done by reading around in a subject. Two years ago I started a course in Dream Interpretation and I’ve collected a library of about twenty books, long and short. Now, while I’m still recording my dreams and practicing their interpretation, I’m slowly falling back into my normal reading habits.
Last year I read some great fiction that I wish I remembered better. I prefer thinking it’s because I have a lot of stories always on the go, that I don’t remember everything I read as well as I used to, but of course it’ll also have something to do with ageing. Forbid the thought.
Or maybe it’s to do with needing to keep myself severely in hand, not over-excited, not over-do it, keep myself on an even keel etc etc to float my ME/CFS riddled carcass through the sea of life.
So, book one of the year was book four of a sequence I began round about Christmas time. Those Who Perish by Emma Viskic: A Caleb Zelic thriller published by Echo in 2022. I thoroughly enjoyed all four of these detective fiction/thriller tales. Not least because I’ve been channeling an elder of 150 years ago, the days before hearing aids.
My hearing aids are working at approx 20% and the repair place is not re-opening until Monday–two more sleeps–and can’t come soon enough. There are far more women in my world now than men, yet men’s voices I can hear, and women are like they are mouthing noiselessly and I am not a good enough lip-reader.
Caleb Zelic, though a frustratingly impulsive protagonist, is mostly deaf and his story is punctuated by mal-functioning hear aids, people who don’t move their mouths when they talk, or turn away and talk so he misses important clues, etc etc. All things I could totally relate to. He’s a well-drawn character, the events he gets involved in are realistic, while at the same time a gripping read.
Somewhere in there, also in the first week, I read another detective fiction, which was entirely forgettable as I had to scan the back cover just now to help me remember it. When She Was Good by Michael Rowbotham. Published in 2020 by Hachette. Although Robotham is one of my favorite detective fiction writers, this one left nothing behind in me except for an Albanian proverb. “Nobody values the truth more highly than a liar.” The primary protagonist is a Cyrus Haven, forensic psychologist, and he just doesn’t have the charisma of his colleague, Joseph O’Loughlin, Robotham’s first forensic psychologist. Maybe I’ll chase those up and re-read them.
While out grocery shopping I tripped over a bookshop. Fatal, as any bookworm will tell you. Normally I steer my trusty mule in a different direction but this time I had to pass it. I came away with a book I’ve had on my list for over ten years, more on that in the goodness of time, and The Gift of Not Belonging by Dr Rami Kaminski, subtitled: How Outsiders Thrive in a World of Joiners. Published in 2025 by Scribe.
Just reading the acknowledgements told me it was my kind of book … more on that next time.
This is the work of an otrovert. As such it cannot be the fruit of a team effort and presents a dearth of people to acknowledge. …
Three punt pole shoes of cast aluminium, with a screw into the wooden pole, swallow tail in varying states of wear By Cmglee – Own work, CC BY-SA 4.0, https://commons.wikimedia.org/w/index.php?curid=50325485
“The basic technique of punting is to shove the boat along with a pole by pushing directly on the bed of the river or lake. In the 1870s, when punting for pleasure first became popular, the normal approach was for the passengers to sit at the stern on cushions placed against the till, and for the punter to have the run of the rest of the boat. The punter started at the bow, planted the pole, and then walked towards the stern, shoving the punt forwards. This is known as “running” the punt. It was the normal technique used to move heavy fishing punts. As pleasure punts became lighter, it became more usual for the punter to stand still – normally towards the stern – while shoving. This is called “pricking” the punt. Pricking has the advantages that the punter is less likely to walk off the end of the punt inadvertently, and that more of the punt can be used to carry passengers.[6 from Wikipedia.
I’m typing this on my mobile, so it may become an article in parts, because difficult to do justice, tricky to insert illustrations. For me, anyway.
Like have you noticed how on a mobile you can only “insert” images by tacking them on at the bottom of the article?
Just read an article about Ray Tomlinson, the inventor of emailing, on Facebook. Link below. Written in the OMGA! style, punctuated with runs of short sentences that try to wring drama out of every word.
Bet you tripped over OMGA! Just invented it, of course. That ever spreading style needs a name … I’m sick of reading a three hundred word blurb padded out to a ten paragraph drama. Oh My Giddy Aunt!
Howver, I was going to try and find out what a thousand words of fluff costs us. Back in the days of typesetting … you might’ve read about it … how each little brass letter was laboriously set into a frame, the frame set in a press, all the frames inked, paper laid over the frames and then the press screwed down. That was printing back in the 1800s.
You could almost see the cost per letter , and you can understand then why the newspapers then had maybe four pages, close typed columns, barely and illistrations. Every word counted.
Now? All of that is invisible.
Wow! I’m amazed I could even get this image! It’s from Wikipedia, as good an image of the laborious process as can be found …
https://en.wikipedia.org/w/index.php?title=Movable_type&wprov=rarw1
Boz leaves Tim in charge, seen here getting Ms Bee’s opinion on the coming changes … read Part 20 here
The bamboo grove I was thinking of when I wrote this chapter, looks just like this … though I did shift it a bit. There’s that bit of land by the creek near Azalea Bridge, across the water from Mullum High School. A lovely sunny spot in the afternoon. …
Nin gives Boz an idea and Boz goes away to follow it up … New installment here
Rita de Heer 