[photo credit: "Independent Study" by flickr user eflon]
I’ve been scrimping and saving to pay school fees and buy new textbooks over the next couple of weeks, which sadly means no money to spend on books. In lieu of spending money, I tend to spend more time perusing bookstore websites, compiling elaborate wishlists of all the books I would buy if I had unlimited funds. That, and looking at bookstores and other peoples bookshelves and books on flickr or tumblr. Here are a few visual delights to cap off your relaxing, productive, eventful weekend: One, two, three, and my favourite, four.
On the reading front, I’ve been snuggling in with Richard Dawkins’ The Greatest Show on Earth at night time, I love how he writes about science in way that makes it accessible to those, yours truly included, who aren’t scientifically minded. I’m going to one of Dawkins’ lectures in March, which I trust will be equally illuminating. I started reading Australia’s favourite literary son (?) Tim Winton’s for the first time, but I wasn’t much impressed. I stuck with Cloudstreet for about forty pages or so, but decided against slogging through another 400 pages. Maybe I just picked the wrong Winton to start off with?
I’ve had to move a whole shelf of books this week as my library, ahem, sister’s old bedroom/spare room gets repainted – all those tomes read, reread and unread. And every book has a particular memory attached to it, either where and who I was when I read it, where I bought a book, why I bought it and so on. I like the idea of creating a personal history through my book collection, and I suppose that now this blog plays a large part in that too.
The only Winton I’ve read is ‘Dirt Music’ and I wasn’t overly impressed by it either. Oh, and I’ve also read ‘The Bum Thief’ which is also by Winton so maybe that counts too. Classic! Bit disappointing to hear about ‘Cloudstrreet’ since it’s been frequently touted as one of the Great Australian Classics.
Holy crap, I didn’t realize the Bugalugs Bum Thief was Winton! How un-Australian of me! I read the Lockie Leonard books when I was younger too, somehow slipped my mind that he wrote those as well. So, I have read Winton, just not his novels aimed at adults!