What I'm reading

Mornin' folks!

I told you yesterday that this was going to be a lazy weekend...and it is. Which is why I'm saying 'mornin'' at 10.45am to you girlies, coz I've not seen either my husband or my daughter yet to say it to in person!

I'm heading out to the deck soon to set up camp for the day. There is a lovely teak recliner out there with my name on it...hopefully not rainforest teak...but teak all the same. Beautiful grey and mellow wood, teak. Even better, it is on my recliner and that is on my deck, by my pool, and I'm going to be on it just as soon as I finish talking to you. It's even crawling distance from the coffee machine.

I'll be reading these:

The one on the left is my serious read for bookclub...which is on Tuesday night at our place and I'm hosting.

It is not an easy read. The Glass Canoe is a Miles Franklin Award winning novel by Australian author, David Ireland about a man who spends his life at the pub, seeing the world through his beer glass - his glass canoe.

Down the back of the Southern Cross kids were shooting butterflies. Occasionally pellets tinkled harmlessly off the tinted glass windows of the saloon bar or made little dints in cars in the car park.

They never shot at the big neon sign riding high above the pub. It was a proud sign: THE SOUTHERN CROSS. They had a natural reverence for neon.

Butterflies flew free. They dazzled the eye and the mind with their freedom. Flight was something we could never know.

At night when the butterflies had gone to bed and there were no moving targets to hit, they'd pot fireflies. We don't get fireflies down the back of the Southern Cross; fireflies were street light globes. Somebody put little shields round the globes to keep out rocks from shanghais or the human arm, but BBs or slugs couldn't be kept out. Sometimes the street was in darkness for a mile in both directions. They were sodium lights. Perhaps that was the difference.

It is an exquisitely written Australian Classic about an part of Australian life that doesn't impact on me at all. Ever. I'm finding it an uncomfortable read, full of events and situations that are not part of my reality.

On hot days we jumped fully clothed into our bottomless beer glasses and pushed off from the shore without a backward look.

It is a fascinating look into an Australian way at life that is vanishing away (I think?), but I can't read it for long without a break.

Which brings me to the book on the right.

This one's a new release. Lunch in Paris is an entirely frivolous book by fellow blogger Elizabeth Bard, and is her story of a New York Princess who falls in love with a Frenchman and moves to the world's most romantic city, Paris. Soon she realises that she is having an affair - not with another man - but with French cuisine.

I'm telling you this from reviews I've read, but can't tell you more because I haven't even opened the cover. Still it looks the ideal antidote for too much beer drinking.

A delicious love story, with recipes

Should be a bit of fluffy fun, anyhow.

Talk later, hey? The recliner's calling.

In the mean time, do tell me what you're reading. Alternatively, you could pop into the Peaceful Community and give Michelle some ideas for Egyptian books for her forth grader, or have a chat about books for emerging readers. You could even start a discussion of your own!

Hurrah!