My wife and I visited Turkey in 1988. We had endured our first English winter and spent two weeks hugging the coastal sites and sunny beaches. We returned in 1990, venturing far from the coast to the mountains of eastern Turkey, where Kurds befriended us, and we learned a little of Kurdish culture.
In a recent blog post, I discussed how I'd repurposed a short story written for a writer's circle in the early-1990s. The tutor panned it at the time as "too vague", but I still liked aspects of the writing. So I cut out the "vague" bits and changed the tense from past to present for more immediacy.
In February 1998, I started an eight-week evening college course, Introduction to Philosophy. I was in my mid-thirties, and while I was aware of philosophers, I hadn't read their works and knew nothing about critical thinking. Our text was Sophie's World by Jostein Gaarder. And our tutor was a Marxist.
In a purple patch of writing in my early thirties, I churned out ideas and outlines for short stories and longer-form fiction almost daily. I was childless back then and had little to distract me from my notebook and keyboard. Some of my "churn" developed beyond half-baked plots — none was published.
In these heady days of Google, Wikis, forums, YouTube and social media, it's hard to believe technical books once sat on computer programmers' desks. But old-timers, like me, recall when having a reference book at hand was invaluable for learning languages, filling knowledge gaps and keeping your job.
Award-winning author Anna Funder discussed her 2003 bestseller Stasiland on the Better Reading podcast in February 2019. Having visited Berlin in 1987 and 1995, her book on the East German secret police piqued my interest. It wasn't on the shelf at my local bookshop, but I did find All That I Am.
The Miles Franklin Literary Award is Australia's premier prize for literature. And I've read four of the ten books on the Miles Franklin longlist for 2019: Boy Swallows Universe by Trent Dalton, A Stolen Season by Rodney Hall, Dyschronia by Jennifer Mills and The Lucky Galah by Tracy Sorensen.
What could be easier than writing a piece based on travel journal entries from seven nights my wife and I spent in Moscow and St. Petersburg? Well, for a start, it was way back in 1993, and I was still finding my "writer's voice". So, many entries are inconsistent and some downright embarrassing.
My first Tim Winton was Cloudstreet, bought in 1992 shortly after he'd won a second Miles Franklin Award. I've since added ten more Wintons to my bookcase. I enjoyed reading each book, but, for me, none had the wow impact of Cloudstreet. And then I read Winton's latest novel, The Shepherd's Hut. Wow!
It was my birthday recently. My brother and sister-in-law gave me a charity gift of 1000 pencils to be sent by Unicef to children in need to help further their education. The gift reminded me of my backpacking days, travelling in East Africa, besieged by kids begging for pens and pencils.
On January 11, 2018, I launched a #bookcovers and #firstsentences homage series on Instagram with On the Beach by Nevil Shute. I celebrated the 300th post on March 22, 2019, with The Natural World of New Zealand by Gerard Hutching. All books are from my bookcase. So much for Marie Kondo's 30-book rule!
In A Book of Travellers' Tales (Picador 1985), Eric Newby describes Dervla Murphy as: "Intrepid Irish traveller, mostly in Asia and Ethiopia, on bicycles or with quadrupeds, or local transport." Her tale is titled: "A lone female cyclist deals with a randy Kurd on the Turkish-Iranian frontier, 1963."
I am a sucker for a good book cover. So, while I hadn't registered the hype about A. J. Finn's debut novel, The Woman in the Window, the book had caught my eye in a bookshop. And as I am also a fan of Jimmy Stewart's Alfred Hitchcock movies, I was intrigued by its homage to the 1954 classic, Rear Window.
Writers need to shut out distractions and focus on our writing. But sometimes, we find excuses not to write: household chores, children to be fed and ferried to and from school, and lives to be led. Or we're setting up a new dog training venture. At least, that's been my excuse for the past month.
I'm not one for making New Year's Resolutions, possibly because I don't trust myself to keep them. However, while on holiday at the end of 2004, a barista with whom I made friends over morning coffee fixes talked me into writing a list for 2005. And I recently found the list and my year-end review.
It's my habit to read in bed at night. And after ten to fifteen minutes of reading, my eyes get a little tired, and I often wake to find the book resting on my face. It takes me a long time to read a book from cover to cover. So I was surprised by the size of my "year of books" pile for 2018.
The local dog club where I was a volunteer for twenty years ran a season-ending Fun Day with events like Fancy Dress, Agility Slalom, Waggliest Tail and other novelty races that changed from year to year. One of my favourites was the Sack Race, in which my dear old dog and I always placed third.
