#blog12daysxmas Day 7 Flickr Friday Photos 2012

Nine Tailors 52/53/3, a photo by Hecuba's Story on Flickr.

Well today I posted my final photo in the Flickr Friday Photos 2012 Challenge and I thought it would be interesting to look back and see how many of my photos related to books, reading and by extension libraries.

And the answer is not very many! The challenge ran for 53 weeks and we posted three photos a week on a set theme. I just posted my last one today under the final theme of "Bells" and used the image of Dorothy L Sayers' great crime fiction novel Nine tailors.  A couple of weeks back I posted an image of School Friend Annual 1964 under the theme of "Friends".

In week 41 under the theme of "Chairs" there were three photographs of chairs in Camberwell Library.  Does this count?  In week 31 under the theme of "Numbers" I posted the Jerusalem Bible open at the Book of Numbers and a Latin missal featured under the theme of "Ceremonies" in week 24. For "Rainbows" in week 16 the Coles Funny Picture Books were an obvious choice

Hai Bao, the mascot of the Shanghai Expo, was photographed with the Lonely Planet Shanghai for the theme of "Eyes" in week 8.  And the theme for week 7 was "Reading" so that focused me in a bit and the three photos were: Dave O'Neil & PD Martin at the Boroondara launch of the National Year of Reading, the Baker & Taylor bag I got at VALA2012 and Boroondara National Year of Reading t-shirt and flyers. The week before that was VALA but as the theme was "Light" I only managed to have one of the three photos on books and libraries: Peter Stansfield as a shining light amongst the luminaries of public libraries.  And that's it!

So that means that out of the159 photos I posted there were only 13  photos which had a (sometimes very loose) connection to books, writing and libraries.  I think I am quite surprised by this but I will have to ponder what it means.  I always feel that books, writing and libraries are integral to my life and they are.  But maybe one of the reasons I really like these Flickr challenges is that they take me into other worlds. With fp2012 the theme focus may have contributed, but it is hard to imagine not being able to find a book relating to each of the themes.  When I review my 366 photos for the 2012 Photo A Day Challenge which is unthemed I will be keen to see if that makes a difference.

#blog12daysxmas Day 6 Reading targets

There has been a bit of discussion during the week on Twitter about setting reading targets.  I have done that on Goodreads the last couple of years.  But I have been modest in my goals and both years I set it at 52 books, i.e. my aim was to read at least one book a week. I am gobsmacked at people who can set a target of 366 books, or a book a day.   Really my aim was to document my reading and prove to myself that I actually do still read stuff even if sometimes I have felt that I had lost the art of recreational reading amidst lots of other necessary reading.

The first year I documented my reading on Goodreads in 2010 I read 62 books (or 10 above my target) and last year 2011 I read 89 (or 37 above my target).  What will happen in 2012?  Well, despite the extra day provided by the leap year I won't be anywhere near the 89 of last year. My "read 2012" folder on Goodreads stands at 69 today BUT of these seven are books that I still have in my "currently reading" folder.  Am I really going to finish these seven books before midnight tomorrow?  I doubt it.  So stay tuned!  My total for 2012 will be at least 62, so similar to 2010. But who knows? Forbidden fruit is one of those on the list.  It's a reread but I count rereads!!

#blog12daysxmas Day 3 When we were kittens

Day 3 of Christmas brought me a parcel at the Post Office which contained:  When we were kittens!  This book, published by Clan Destine Press, is the second volume of the adventures of Dougal whose story was first to be found in Dougal's diary, also published by Clan Destine Press.  So this is the sequel we have been waiting for!

After a shaky start in life, Dougal fetched up at Lort Smith Animal Hospital with his foster-sister Shadow.  But now they both live at the Seddon Found Cats Home with Man and Woman and Miss Belladonna the Black, who as the earthly representative of Basht regally supervises operations from her jeweled throne. The story of Dougal and Shadow's initiations at Seddon were narrated in Dougal's diary.  Now Man aka David Greagg who was Dougal's amanuensis for the first book has shadow-written (yes, I know it really should be Dougal-written) a second volume with Dougal.

Dougal has his own website here where you can find out all about him, Shadow, Belladonna, Man and Woman and join Dougal's fanclub.  Dougal also has a presence on Facebook under the Gaidhlig name of Dubh Geal. So join him there if you would like to converse.

As for me, I am off to do a quick read of When we were kittens before Xena gets any ideas from it!

#blog12daysxmas Day 1 Christmas books

 

It is true to say that ever since I was very little one of the real joys for me at Christmas was the books that I got for presents. For years they were Enid Blytons or Agatha Christies or Georgette Heyers.  Fortunately the prolific outputs of these writers allowed Father Christmas and other gift-givers ample scope. In more recent years, whilst the thrill of getting new books for Christmas has never waned, it is fair to say that the number of books I have received has waxed and waned considerably.

So what was Christmas 2012 like?  Well, I can report that it was a good year!  Despite the fact that many of us have moved from giving each other physical presents and choose instead to donate to Oxfam or the like, this year I got six shiny new books! And while I was buying presents for others, I just happened to buy myself another two.  So that makes eight new books for Christmas to my way of thinking.

So what are the shiny new books that I have waiting for my summer reading?  My friend Pat gave me Victoria Hislop's The thread. The main character in this novel is Thessaloniki and the book appears to marry my loves of Greece and family history.  The foodies' guide to Melbourne and Maureen McCarthy's The convent were gifts from Penny and Mark.  The former focuses on my interests in food and cooking and eating and the latter explores the past of the Abbotsford Convent in a fictional setting but based on true stories.  This taps into my interests in the local history of Collingwood and the history of the Catholic church and its institutions in Victoria.

"This book is all about women" proclaims the back cover of Sunscreen and lipstick, a collection of short stories by Australian women that Marg and TK sent me, drawing on their knowledge of my interest in Australian women's writing. And the other two goes back to the theme of food.  Clarissa Dickson Wright's A History of English food takes me right back to the Two Fat Ladies series.  I imagine that I will never want to experiment with any of the food she talks about but I will enjoy her inimitable style. And the other one? A new Stephanie!  It's the Stephanie Alexander book in the Lantern Cookery Classics. I am not sure how many of the recipes are new and how many have appeared in her other tomes but I will enjoy reading it.

The other two books that I just happened to buy during Christmas shopping?  My interest in Robert Gibson's Gallipoli eyewitness is probably self-evident to anyone who knows my interest in family history and in my grandfather who was at Gallipoli.  I actually bought this for a couple of presents and felt I needed one myself.  And the final book just leapt out at me from the Readings Carlton window.  Artemis Cooper's biography Patrick Leigh Fermor: an adventure is Greece and Paddy Leigh Fermor.

So plenty of reading pleasure awaits me during the 12 days of Xmas!

#blog12daysxmas Day 12 Reading 2011

Today is the day I finish my #blog12daysxmas blogging challenge and will take myself back to the beginning of the blog, Hecuba Reads. Two years ago around the same time of the year, I set up this blog in an attempt to recreate reading as a joy for me, or maybe as it turned out to document the reading I already did and the enjoyment it gave me. That year, 2010, I gave myself the aim of reading 52 books in the coming year. I also wanted to document them so that I had a record of my reading for pleasure. I have posted earlier in this blog about how I explored possibilities for this documentation and finally decided upon Goodreads as my favourite site to use. Goodreads records that in 2010 I read 61 books. So I met my target.

I have just been reviewing my achievements for 2011. That involved checking through the list of titles for 2011 and taking out the ones that are still also in my "to read" or "currently reading" shelves. So what did I end up with after that? Well, in 2011 I managed to read and record the reading of 87 titles.

These titles included a mixture of fiction and non-fiction but were predominantly fiction. There were in fact only seven non-fiction titles and they were a combination of cooking, travel and biography. Within fiction there were a lot of old favourites. I always do a bit of rereading of Agatha Christie and Georgette Heyer and some of their titles, of course, appear.


Three retrospective rereads purposely undertaken are also there for 2011. I had undertaken to reread the complete works of Elizabeth Peters in 2010 and some of these titles, mainly the one-offs, spilled over to 2011. I also reread all the Dorothy L. Sayers crime titles (and few Wimsey books that others have written since her death). When Kerry Greenwood's most recent title, Cooking the books came out, I read that and then went back and reread the whole Corinna series - and the whole Phryne series. Interestingly I discovered that there were a number of the Phrynes that I had not read before. I am not sure how I missed out on them, but obviously I had. Now I am just waiting for Kerry to write and publish a few more titles and, of course, eagerly awaiting the Phryne TV series on ABC-TV this year.


This year 2012 is the first year that I have actually given myself a target on the Goodreads site and I didn't want to be too ambitious. I have just gone for 52 again. Hopefully I can meet that target again. How much is it to ask to read one book a week in 2012? And I wonder what I will read? I am happy to let my reading occur serendipitously I think. I like picking up old favorites and reading them, or coming across new items on the Hawthorn Library new books shelves, or talking to people about things they have liked. Maybe I will get some ideas this year from the National Year of Reading too.


But I am just going to keep it simple. Reading isn't a chore that needs to be done or for which I want to set commitments. Reading is just something that I do every day (or most days) for fun and enjoyment and relaxation.