Thursday, June 29, 2017

Continuing library tour

Friday:

My TAFE holidays are longer than the school holidays, I've had two weeks already. But this is the last day of the kids' term. Halfway through the school year! Tim doesn't have time off so I'll need to think of things to do with the kids. I haven't been so successful at that lately. Getting Aiden away from the iPad takes a bit of muscle power!

It's my birthday in two days. I'll be, um, 47. That isn't near 50 at all, shut up.

Yesterday I continued my local library tour. One small branch library and the big central one which I had visited before but only briefly. Compared to all the little ones, which seem to have 2 or 3 staff at any given time, Sutherland had at least 10-12 staff that I could see and probably more in the private offices. It would be good to work there, probably a bigger variety of things to do and maybe even some 'technician' tasks which I am working towards with my degree, but there is also something appealing about working in a snug little branch library. I probably won't get a choice anyway so I'm trying not to get too invested in any particular place. If I get the job. If I even get an interview. It's been so long since I had written a job application I have now rather lost faith in my submission. But I tell myself it's no big deal if I don't get it, I'm still studying and there will be other opportunities later.

While I was in Sutherland library wandering around the HSC section (resources for the last couple of years of High School) I noticed study notes for the book 'Cloudstreet' by Tim Winton. This was voted the post popular Australian book of the past 20 years or something like that so I'd previously tried to read it and disliked it intensely so gave up. Not my kind of book at all. Sad, desperate people struggling through the 1940s. Alcohol and gambling addiction, financial problems, family fights. Just depressing. Anyway, I saw the study notes so I sat down and read the twenty-page or so detailed summary of the plot and a few of the other discussions. Nothing that made me regret not reading it! But I'm glad I know the whole plot now since it's such an 'important' book. Do you have a book like that, that other people love and you can't get into? I feel the same about Tolstoy's Anna Karenina. I read mostly fantasy but I do read other things too. Just not miserable depressing things.

I have all my results back from term one, all 'satisfactory'. That is all they tell you. Hopefully when I go back I'll get to at least see my exam papers. I hate just having satisfactory/not satisfactory!

3 comments:

  1. We have a very "famous" Canadian author, Margaret Atwood. Everyone raves about her books and her writing is so "intelligent". I just don't get her books at all. Some of them are required reading in High School and I hated all of them. They made me feel stupid like I was missing a joke or they were way above my head. I love to read and read about 50 books a year, fiction and non fiction, but her books...just about kill me to plow through. The only one I could ever stomach was a fictional version of a real life murder case. All the others are too "out there" for me.

    So I totally get what you're saying!

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    1. A year after this comment... I am currently trying to read The Handmaid's Tale by Atwood and I hate it! I'm halfway through and nothing has happened. Is there a plot or is it just an exercise in depressing dystopian world-building? Doesn't make me want to watch the series either.

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  2. I don't I have read anything of Margaret Atwood's (I've certainly heard of her) but I think they've just made one into a movie?

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