The Maroon Diaries

Hello dear readers. I'm very pleased to say that 2015 was a very good year in books for me. Especially through the autumn and winter, so many really excellent books passed through my hands. I must admit, Goodreads deserves some of the credit. Checking out their recommendations and 'other readers enjoyed' I've found a few precious ones I might otherwise never have heard of, such as The First Fifteen Lives of Harry August by Claire North. Absolutely brilliant. Each book title is linked to its page on Goodreads, so you can quickly see what kind of a book it is. 1. True Brews by Emma Christensen 2013 2. Mothers Grimm by Danielle Wood 2014 3. Awake in the Dream World: The Art of Audrey Niffenegger by Audrey Niffenegger et al 2013 4. Gypsy Boy by Mikey Walsh 2009 5. The Truth is a Cave in the Black Mountains by Neil Gaiman, illustrated by Eddie Campbell 2014 6. Another Roadside Attraction by Tom Robbins 1971 (re-read) 7. Hollow City by Ransom Riggs 20...

I dabbled in many forms of visual arts during my youth, but I didn't discover the one that really captured my heart until I was about 26 years old. It was quite an auspicious beginning, really. I was modelling for a life drawing class. We were in an art studio, and there were several art books generally lying around. I was holding a 20 minute pose when I found myself facing a stack of books on a table. Anyone who has ever done life modelling will know what it's like to have a single perspective of a particular space for an extended period of time. Mostly, it's really boring. And so, of course, I made the effort to read the titles from my almost-upside down sideways perspective (relative to the books, not the floor. I was just standing there. It was the books that were askew.) One title really intrigued me. It was Altered Books Workshop by Bev Brazelton . I couldn't wait for the break so I could look at the book. And the few minutes I had to flip through that book tu...

Hello and welcome to my annual Reckoning of the Books! Since Moonwave 's excellent comment on last year's Year in Books , I have discovered Goodreads and joined up, so you can see a really, really long list of books if you check out my profile there . And here, each title on my list links to that book's page on Goodreads, so you can find out what kind of a book it is pretty quickly. In some cases, where the author has their own website or blog, I've linked the author's name to their home sites. 1. Haroun and the Sea of Stories by Salman Rushdie 1990 2. The Minor Adjustment Beauty Salon by Alexander McCall Smith 2013 3. Animal, Vegetable, Miracle by Barbara Kingsolver 2007 4. Whole Larder Love by Rohan Anderson 2012 5. Opal - The Journal of an Understanding Heart by Opal Whiteley 1920, adapted by Jane Boulton 1976 (re-read) 6. The World Without Us by Alan Weisman 2007 7. The Lollipop Shoes by Joanne Harris 2007 8. Peaches for Monsieur le Cure...

Upon considering my previous post, I felt that the special tree right in front of my home deserved a bit more of an introduction. I've lived so close to her for so long that she has really become a part of the household in her own right. She does protect me directly from the sun and the rain, and beyond that, I feel she has a spiritual guardianship role to this little spot. And yet I still don't know her name. I don't know the proper names of a lot of the plants up here, as they are different to the ones I know from the southern states. As for her personal name, as kind as she is to me, she hasn't chosen to share that with me yet. So she's just the Tree, with a capital letter to distinguish her from all the other trees. When I first arrived, you couldn't exactly tell there was a tree there, so much as infer its existence by the presence of branches poking out of the top of an enormous tangle of weeds. An afternoon's work and a five-foot pile of compost lat...

This is the view from the door of my new home, looking out. Yes, I know. How can I still call it my new home when I've been here more than a year and half now? But something strange is happening to my sense of time as I get older. It was when one year had passed that I got the feeling of really having arrived, of my body knowing that it doesn't live in the city any more. I feel like I'm just starting to get properly set up and organised now. It seems to me now that you have to spend a full year, a full cycle of the seasons, in a place to really know it. Maybe when I get to the second year, this won't be my 'new' home any more. The beautiful tree provides shade in the space immediately in front of the hut, a godsend on hot, sunny days. It's a real faerie tree with lots of deep, mysterious holes in its trunk wherein the otherwordly may dwell - not to mention an astonishing variety of plant and fungal life forms. And just beyond that, you'll see...

If you're not from Australia, there's a very good chance that you have never come across the work of Michael Leunig , which in my opinion would be a great tragedy. How much harder it would have been to work out this whole life caper without his divine words of wisdom to guide me along the way. source Leunig is known primarily as a cartoonist, as that's how he came to be known to the world - creating regular socio-politicial commentary cartoons for The Age newspaper. He is absolutely brilliant at managing to capture an incomprehensively complex human emotion or situation in just a few scrawly little lines, but I think we'd all agree that he's not exactly a fine artist. I think it's kind of hilarious that lately he is being considered in those lofty Fine Art circles and given exhibitions and having limited editions released of his scrawlings that are selling for enormous amounts of money. I reckon Leunig would be finding it all rather amusing himself, actu...

Our Prime Minister, Tony Abbott, wants to cut the national spending on the Disability Support Pension. And fair enough. We're expensive, us sick people. I have no idea how much money the government has spent so far on keeping me alive, but I reckon if I knew the actual figure, even I would find it offensive. It's not just the sick people that are too expensive. He's cutting spending all across the welfare and housing sectors, and making it more expensive to get health care or tertiary education. The nation is in debt and in need. We all have to do our bit. For example, as of next year, people under 30 will not be able to receive any unemployment benefits until they show they have been looking for a job for six months. So if you're in your 20's, and you're on a low wage, you probably don't have much in the way of savings. If you lose your job, or you get bullied and abused at work and can't cope with it, or you get sick and can't get to a doctor a...