Sunday Confessional: SEPTEMBER SOJOURNS (or the travelling book blogger fail)

I am back from three weeks of road tripping through Spain and Portugal, which was a great little adventure, even though I did not get nearly as much reading done as I had planned. Too busy! 

Initially, I was too tired after night shifts to read on the plane, watching 10 episodes of The Black Lake (a terrifying Scandinavian crime series) instead in between regular naps during our whopping 18 hours of flying time. The train and car rides in Spain and along the Portuguese coast were way too scenic to have my nose buried in a book, and my husband complained that I wasn’t much company when I had my earphones in listening to an audiobook when he felt like talking – especially as I was chief navigator next to Manuela, our tireless GPS guide, who kept sending us down wrong roundabout exits and calling for death defying u-turns in city traffic. Evenings saw me collapse exhausted after walking up and down hilly, cobblestoned streets all day, and my eyes grew heavy after a few pages. However, I did read a little bit, and even found another five-star mystery to go onto my list of favourite reads for 2017. My Netgalley ratio reached 80% at one point (which it hasn’t been for a long, long time due to my greedy requesting), so all was not lost.

As for blogging – well, a bit of a train wreck on that front I’m afraid. Even though I pictured myself tirelessly typing my reviews in seedy little hotel rooms like an intrepid war correspondent of the 60’s, in reality I was painfully battling autocorrect and bad wifi signals, and cursing my fat fingers as I stabbed away in the semi dark on my Samsung S5. Maybe I am not dedicated enough, but after three mini reviews that took me hours of cursing technology and feeling like crushing my little phone under my hiking boots, I decided that the wandering blogger just wasn’t going to be me. I am hoping to catch up on my reviews now that I have my computer back.

Sooooo – to the holiday wrap-up:

Books read: 6

      

Famous book shops visited: 2

Livraria Lello, Oporto, Portugal:

This apparently is the place that inspired J.K. Rowling when writing Harry Potter. It surely had something magical about it, and I don’t mean simply the ability to disappear like 12 Grimmauld Place – I swear we walked past it at least 3 times and it wasn’t there! So after trudging around Porto for hours (and this is one hilly city!) with DT (“dumb tourist”) tattooed on our foreheads and trying to ask for directions when our knowledge of the Portuguese language consisted of exactly 2 words between us, we finally found it at the exact moment when I was ready to give up and admit defeat. It was worth the painful calves though, as it is every bit as beautiful as described in travel blogs, despite the sizeable crowds lining up outside and the 4-euro entry fee.

Igreja de São Tiago, Obidos, Portugal:

This charming bookstore was quite a surprise, located in an old church in the historical walled town of Obidos that goes back to 1186 – so much history there! Apparently the church had fallen into disrepair and was transformed into a bookshop as part of a growing literary movement in the town. I loved this charming place, which still exuded an aura of peace and calm, totally lacking the crowds of the Livraria Lello, making it a pleasure to browse and simply enjoy the history of the place. If you are ever in the area, this town is well worth a visit and was a highlight of our trip.

Book Fairy activity: 2 

After much soul searching, inner turmoil and debate, the eeny-meeny-mo approach and room left in my suitcase decided which physical books made it into my suitcase in the end:
  

I read two of those, taking great delight in leaving them as book fairy gifts in two very lovely locations we passed through along the way: one in Vigo, Spain; the other in Nazare, Portugal (being claimed by Atlantic mist here in the picture).

 

If you haven't heard of the book fairies yet, make sure to check them out here: LINK

Now, after 48 hours of planes, trains and automobiles we made it back home to our lovely little piece of heaven, with three more days off to recuperate before going back to work. I have already requested several more books on NG in anticipation of getting some reading done over the next few days, which dropped my ratio down to 78% again– just can’t help myself! 

Currently reading:

Which is off to a great start!

In summary – I may be a failure as a travelling book blogger, but my love for both travel and books remains strong. Watch this space as I try to catch up on reviews ....

Sunday Confessional: SINGING THE NIGHTSHIFT BLUES

I'm currently in between night shifts, which basically means that I am in zombie mode, obsessively trying to snatch a few hours sleep all day (if I go to sleep right now, I can get 5 hours sleep ... 4 hours sleep .... 3 hours sleep - OMG I'm gonna die!), and all night to keep my eyes open and muster up some enthusiasm. 

With my life on hold, plus trying to study for my ALS2 certificate at work, I have been getting very little reading or reviewing done all week. And, seeing that I can barely string a few coherent sentences together right now, I thought that I would have to abandon this week's Sunday Confessional altogether. But luckily, some of my bookstagram friends came to the rescue, and tagged me in the irresistible #10thingsiwouldneversay tag. Since I started the Sunday Confessional series to share a little bit about the blogger behind but books are better, this is perfect!

10 things I would NEVER say:

1. I LOVE night shifts – please roster me on for more!
2. No thanks, I don’t eat chocolate.
3. Let’s spend the whole day in our pyjamas watching sport on TV! (well, the pyjamas bit may be something I would actually do, but with a book in hand).
4. I’m not going to add any books to my TBR list for the rest of the year.
5. Go for a hike? God, no! I hate nature. Let’s go to the nightclub instead!
6. I would rather read a steamy romance novel than a murder mystery any day.
7. I wish I lived in the city surrounded by lots of people!
8. I have a great fashion sense – my daughter always tells me so.
9. I hate the beach! All that horrible sand and salty water!
10. A lazy morning lying in bed reading my book? No way, I need to get up early to do some housework (my husband will laugh soooo much at this!).

And to finish off this bog post on a positive note, I will share my other big passion apart from books - HIKING! Nature is one of the biggest healers in my life. Surrounded by nothing other than the sound of the wind, the waves and the birds, I can sort out my jumbled brain, forget some of the sad tragedies I see on a regular basis in my job, and just BE. So before heading back to work tonight, I am going to share some of my favourite hiking pics, and spend a moment in gratitude reflecting what a beautiful place I live in.

But, and here comes the biggest confession of them all - even though I take my book everywhere and have discovered some amazing reading places, my all-time favourite reading spot is still - MY BED!

 

  

 

 

Sunday Confessional: FICTION OR LIE? NEVER UNDERESTIMATE THE VALUE OF A GOOD FISHING STORY

I recently read Ruth Ware’s great new novel The Lying Game, which I loved, and which brought back memories of a childhood game we used to play to entertain ourselves on the journey to school on a crowded train. It also threw up the age-old question: what is a lie, and what is fiction? Is it ok to embellish the truth for the sake of entertainment? Where would we be without the enjoyment of the great Aussie fishing story about the one that got away (or the one that never even existed)?

Looking for a bit of excitement

Having been a voracious reader as far back as I can remember, I realised very early on that my own sheltered and somewhat uneventful life would need a lot of fictional embellishment to make for interesting reading (or telling). I neither had four intrepid friends and a dog who would join me in catching criminals, nor lived anywhere near a wild and dangerous coastline where I could stumble across a pirates’ treasure or an old skeleton anytime soon. And even though I had suspicions that the strange man living on the first floor might have been a Russian secret agent sent to gather vital intelligence for the Russian space program, I knew that spying on my neighbours through binoculars and recording all my findings in a Harriette-the-Spy worthy notebook freaked my parents out. However, despite being a nerdy kid, I had earned a sort of strange popularity with the other neighbourhood children for organising elaborate fantasy role-playing games, which were so involved they took on the complexity of a filming of Lord of the Rings and added a bit of excitement to our city lives. Until our games came to an abrupt halt when some nosy adult discovered our secret lair, a little forgotten chamber in the cellar of the apartment block, where we had forged our blood-brother bond by branding our skin with a tyre iron heated over a candle flame. I’m not sure if it was the mother of a child presenting to A&E for a coin sized 2^nd degree burn on his upper arm or the old lady on the second floor smelling the fumes from molten lead and burnt skin that ratted us out, but a huge padlock was fitted to the little chamber and our days of excitement were over.

Never let the truth get in the way of a good story

With life reduced to its normal, boring routine, I had to resort to fiction to add an interesting element to my life. Having been asked to write an essay about our Easter weekend by our third grade teacher, I chewed my pencil for hours, trying to think of something to say. It had rained all Easter and we had spent a lot of time indoors reading books and eating chocolate. How could I fill an entire A4 page with that? Perhaps it was a desperate cry for help of my inner frustrated author or sheer rebellion, but I made up a story of excitement and adventure that must have sounded credible to my teacher, because she asked me to read it out loud in front of the whole school at the next assembly. My initial euphoria and pride soon gave way to abject terror. My parents would be there, and they would know I had lied. Lied! A sin I would have to confess to our scary stern-faced priest at Sunday confessional, and one that a few Hail Mary’s would not be able to fix. I was terrified! Imagining lightning striking me as I stood at the podium reading, I worked myself up into such a state that I was physically sick, until my worried parents waived the usual rule of having to have a temperature of at least 39C before qualifying for a day off school, and sent me back to bed. Phew! That was a narrow escape. And whilst this may have been the beginning and end of my author career, it did teach me the value of a good fishing story. To quote a friend of mine: “Never let the truth get in the way of a good story.” Just make sure to tell it when there is no one around to contradict what you are saying.

Adding some journalistic flair

My family have long gotten used to my “journalistic licence” in telling stories around the campfire, snickering quietly into their drinks but thankfully keeping quiet to point out the “slight exaggeration”. Is it a lie if you embellish the truth to make it more interesting? Or is it allowable for the sake of entertainment? There is nothing more boring than a real fishing story – I know this first-hand after having been forced to sit through hours of an uncle’s mind-numbingly boring slide-shows of his boat cruises as a child (they still haunt me in my nightmares!). But add a bit of drama, a shark circling the dark waters, a tornado descending on the beach, the fishing rod quivering under the weight as you landed Mobi the whale himself and dragged him all the way up the beach to the carpark, supplying enough meat to feed a whole village. What would you rather listen to? And in the way of a good fishing story, if you tell it enough times it begins to form its own memory, blends with the truth to take on a kind of realism of its own. Until you almost believe it yourself.

Never underestimate the value of a good fishing story

Fiction or Lie? It’s like one of those impossible moral and ethical dilemmas you read about on the internet. You decide. Just never underestimate the value of a good fishing story.

Sunday Confessional: INJURED IN THE LINE OF DUTY - THE DRSABCD OF BOOKSTAGRAM

It’s been a bit of a rough week for me, but luckily I have a very short attention span and am already getting bored with wallowing in my misery. Besides, it’s all a matter of perspective, isn’t it? 

And what better way to deal with piss than taking the piss... especially of yourself! Sometimes you just gotta take one for the team!

The selfie injury

We get them a lot at work – the selfie injury. A diagnosis unique to the 21^st century. People who, armed with phone and selfie stick, injure themselves in the pursuit of attaining the perfect digital self-portrait to post to social media. Just moving back one step to get a better angle, and they plunge off cliffs, get swept away by king waves, get bitten by snakes or mauled by lions (ok, not a real problem in our area, but it does happen elsewhere). 

I never understood such blatant disregard for personal safety until I joined bookstagram. Suddenly and inexplicably my brain has gone to mush! Soon my ordinary, everyday photos were no longer good enough. Have you been on Instagram lately? There is some tough competition out there! I needed to get better quickly, and adopt a more interesting persona than my otherwise rather unremarkable existence. 

Steve Irwin? Nah – don’t really do wild animals (and you saw how that one turned out for him).  Bear Grylls? Hmmm, as long as I don’t need to eat elephant sperm or shelter in the stomach cavity of a rotted camel, I could possibly get to a few rugged places that would  lend me a certain watered down adventure vibe. The key is rugged. Cliffs, waves, steep granite boulders. Where before the D for Danger warning light would have set all my senses on high alert, I can now picture the perfect background for my bookstagram photo. A high cliff – perfect! If I support my weight on one toe and stretch up a little bit hiiiiiigher, I will get just the right amount of cloudy sky peeking out from behind the rock to add interesting texture.

In pursuit of the perfect photo

There is an old farm shack down the road from us, a short bike ride along a dusty trail away. Rustic boards with old lead paint peeling from them, the glint of shattered glass littering the ground around it, a moss stained tin rook perched like a witches’ hat atop its crooked frame. Atmospheric. Spooky. Perfect. Except that it is surrounded by a tall fence, designed to keep bulls in the paddock. Plus, it borders a fairly busy country road.

I am totally pathetic when it comes to being a law-abiding citizen, and just the thought of a speeding ticket can give me an anxiety attack. So even though trespassing onto a deserted farm property to take a photo would be relatively minor transgression in the big scheme of things, planning it immediately took on the dimensions of plotting a diamond heist. Trying to adopt an inconspicuous pose may as well have seen me wearing a balaclava with a bright neon signs flashing over my head: “Burglar!” A burglar clutching a book under one arm – who says that criminals can’t be literate? 

Cars are now slowing down and people are looking at me.

My palms are sweaty.

My heart is beating at about 200 bpm every time I hear a car in the distance.

I am actually having chest pains (I mentally triage myself as an ATS2 and rehearse how I will explain this to my colleagues when I am being brought to the ER in an ambulance).

Suddenly this whole adventure seems like a bad idea. My courage is flagging. After a lot of mental pep-talk, and satisfied that there is no car approaching, I finally muster up the courage to grip the top rung of the fence, ready to haul myself over to claim my photo opportunity.

Bang! An almighty flash. A tearing pain in my right arm. I am being flung through the air. Lying on my back and dazedly staring at the sky a fleeting thought flashes through my mind: “F*#K! Someone SHOT ME!” The photo shows a piece of sky at a weird angle and the concerned face of a motorist leaning over me: “You’re all right, mate?”

When planning my photo heist, I hadn't figured in the electric fence!

The moral of the story – in the DRSABCD of a bookstagrammer, I failed at D!

What lengths will you go to to get that perfect bookstagram photo?

Sunday Confessional: THE INTREPID ARMCHAIR TRAVELLER

“Books are the plane, and the train, and the road. They are the destination, and the journey. They are home.” 

― Anna Quindlen, How Reading Changed My Life

Childhood Dreams

There’s that one phrase in the English language that every adult loves to ask, and every teenager learns to dread: “And what do YOU want to be when you GROW UP?”

At three, my answer would have been: “A dog!” As I disappeared under the table and hid behind my parents’ legs, giving a few growls if anyone challenged my answer. At that age, that can still be considered cute by some.

At five, I would have said: “A fireman!” And was outraged when someone pointed out that I couldn’t ever follow that dream, because I was just a GIRL!

Then came my formative years with all its angst and pain, but by then I had my answer down pat: “I want to travel!” Even in the face of my parents’ despair at my total lack of ambition and unrealised “potential”, I never had any doubt that there was a hidden recessive globetrotting gene inside me that had obviously skipped several generations of stay-in-your-own-village type people, but which now needed attention. “But there is no money in that!” people would say, usually accompanied by a frustrated eye-roll and a pitying glance at my parents, because in the last two years leading up to high-school graduation, totally unrealistic answers are no longer considered cute. “Money?” I would ask, with a vacant stare, because this reality had never occurred to me. Why would I need money? I would travel on donkeys over mountain passes, sleep on the ground surrounded by members of yet undiscovered Amazonian tribes, forage grasses and seeds and wild grubs out of hollow trees and give a big fat middle finger to Western society and its materialistic culture.

I think your childhood ends the day that you finally come up against those very barriers of money and responsibilities and find that you lack the courage to trade in your life as you know it for a donkey ride over some wild Andes mountain. Suddenly that fire in your belly gives way to a resigned sigh: “Ah well, that’s life,” as your childhood dreams go up in a big fat puff of black smoke.

The Reality

I have travelled, even though nowhere near as much as I would have liked. But you are looking at the girl who, at the age of twenty, moved to the opposite side of the world, only taking the few possessions that fitted into a small backpack, and started a completely new life away from everything she had previously known. Who, in previous centuries, would have been the “black sheep”, like the distant uncle in America who had broken family convention and whose name was only spoken in furtive whispers at family gatherings. Compared to the adventures I had in mind as a child with an overactive imagination, mine have been relatively sedate, but they were adventures nonetheless and make for a few good stories around the campfire.

Armchair Travel

To cut a long story short, this is where books come in for me. I may have to leave my physical body behind when travelling to faraway exotic places, but I still do so with the help of BOOKS! There is nothing better than a bit of armchair travel whilst your body is comfortably wrapped in a warm doona and the kettle is on. I love the dazed and somewhat confused feeling when I emerge from one of my armchair travel adventures, totally disorientated, still ensconced in a world so alien from my own reality. That’s the true magic of books, that Aladdin’s carpet quality that can create a portal into another world just by opening a book and turning the first page.

So far this year, I have armchair-travelled to 20 different countries. Since the list of ARCs I have read have controlled most of what I have read, I have been a bit like a loose leaf in the wind, letting them carry me wherever they wanted to, with no itinerary and no plan.

But there are a few locations on my radar I would love to visit in the second half of 2017: Iceland, Greenland, Alaska, Russia, China and Japan are foremost on my list. With the help of the wonderful members of the Crime Book Club on FB I have found the website TripFiction, where you can look up books by location and leave reviews. Another site where I can spend hours browsing whilst my husband yells from the other room: “What are you DOING on that computer?”

My armchair travel map, complete with links to the books which took me there, can be found here. I am hoping to add a lot of new markers to the board in the second half of 2017!

Where is your next armchair journey going to take you?

Sunday Confessional: Why my TBR Pile Never Gets Smaller

Hello my name is Heidi and I’m a bookoholic ...

After ruthlessly culling my TBR pile the other day, there are still 356 books remaining on it. A friend once asked me: "But you read all the time! Why does your TBR get bigger rather than smaller?"

I need books for survival:

Apparently you need water, food and oxygen for survival. Hang on a minute! What about books? Has anyone said anything about books?

Big mistake! I should have kept quiet, because now I’ve done it – I woke the demon! The pesky little devil sitting on my shoulder and whispering in my ear in his evil wheedling voice: “Go on, what’s the harm? Just one more new book. You won’t even notice it on your TBR pile.” After bravely ignoring it for about 5 minutes (ok, ok, maybe it was only about 30 seconds) the doubts started creeping in. 

What if there was a tidal wave, and our part of the world was cut off from any civilisation or – horror – internet? What if there was a war, a famine, an epidemic of flesh eating bacteria that saw us confined to our houses for years on end (even though being a nurse they would probably call me in to work for that). What if the pile of books I managed to stockpile up until now would be it – finite, zappo. No way would my TBR pile last me until the end of my life, no matter how Alpine it looks to me right now. I could imagine happily eating a stockpile of baked beans and spaghetti-oh’s for the rest of my life, if need be, but live off a restricted number of books? Never! Instantly regretting lending my copy of Tana French's The Likeness to an ex-friend, who never returned it, and therefore reduced my meagre fare of books for survival by one more (thus the "ex").

I instantly panicked, fired up my ipad at 2 a.m. and requested 3 more new books from Netgalley, not only because they looked particularly enticing (they did), but if this was IT, I needed a few more companions for the apocalypse. Anxiously watching my (sketchy) internet connection before the end-of-the-world scenario could interrupt the download, I watched in fascination as my Netgalley ratio dropped even further away from my goal. And my TBR pile grew even bigger. And my list of reads for the next month will demand undivided attention to get the reviews out in time. If I don’t eat, and only sleep three hours per night, I might even make it!

And this, folks, is the reason my TBR pile never gets any smaller.

Bookoholism – it’s a real thing.

Is there a cure?

Do you suffer from it?

SUNDAY CONFESSIONAL: The Dreaded DNF (Between a Rock and a Hard Place)

I DNF’d a book today.

I know – shoot me! Right?

You may as well put me out of my misery, because the guilt is already slowly killing me!

I remember my grandmother reprimanding me as a child, every time there was as much as a single pea left on my dinner plate: “There are children starving in Africa!” Perhaps it was the concept of my fussiness being responsible for a country’s famine that has instilled in me an overinflated sense of importance (don’t we love to blame our character flaws on others?). But in the vast sea of this year’s book reviews, my one single DNF is as niggly as the pea under the princess’ mattress (to stay with the pea analogy). It is a thorn in my side, a raw bellyache, a cloud hovering over my day. It will make me toss and turn in my sleep tonight, with the jilted book haunting me in my nightmares, crying accusingly: “You gave up on me, you ingratiate!” And whilst no one gives a toss about my good-little-catholic-girl like guilt, I am convinced that the publisher will blacklist me from their ARC lists and never grant me an ARC ever again. Someone give the girl a valium!

You may appreciate the general premise of this post, that DNFing does not come easily to me. As a perfectionist, I will do battle with most books, no matter how bad, just from the sense of duty of having pressed the “request” button on Netgalley – and therefore making this whole dilemma my own fault in the first place. Any measure of “I shouldn’t have” and “Why did I?”s is not going to fix that. You are looking at a reader whose TBR pile is as a high as an Alpine mountain range, and about as insurmountable in a single lifetime. I stock up on books like others squirrel away cans of food for the day of reckoning. If it wasn’t for my husband, my house would be on day-time TV, with reporters trying to squeeze through the narrow gap of paperbacks lining every available surface to get an exclusive interview for their report “Book hoarding – a new Australian epidemic?”

So yes, there is all that ... On the other hand, I find myself between a rock and a hard place. With full time work and my family’s ridiculous demands that I cook and clean occasionally, or show my face without a book in front of my nose, life is too short to spend on a book I hate, or which bores me to death. If my dusty skeleton is ever found clutching a paperback, I at least want it to be a good one, not the hundredths clone of the new Gone Girl with that killer twist you won’t see coming (because you have long died of boredom waiting for it).

So why DNF?

And that brings me to the main reason I will DNF a book – boredom. At work, we have DNR – do not resuscitate. For me, the books I DNF are the DNR’s of the bookworld – they have flatlined, and no amount of jumping up and down on their chests will revive them for me. Dead as a dodo. If I catch myself nodding off during a book – repeatedly – it’s a Gone Book to me!

The only other reason I will DNF is if a book affronts my sensibilities to such a degree that I cannot bear to be in the same room with it any more (and I am not easily shocked or surprised). I remember one instance, where a book disgusted me so deeply, that I first took it out of the room; then got up to throw it in the outside bin; and not being satisfied even with that, took the bin out to the kerb (which upset the whole neighbourhood, as bin day was still a few days away). And then I had a shower. Ugh, I still shudder thinking about it.

Do you DNF?

For anyone stumbling across this post by sheer accident, you may judge me harshly on my Sunday confessional. However, there is a slight chance that someone, somewhere out there can relate to something I said. I would love to hear from anyone on how they handle their DNFs. Do you feel guilt, shame, unbearable sadness on DNFing? Will you read on doggedly, no matter how indescribably boring the book is? Do you consume huge quantities of caffeine to give you the adrenaline hit otherwise missing in the pages? Leave me a comment, it would be great to hear your thoughts ....