Another abbreviated classic

 

 

Woody Allen quipped: "I took a speed-reading course once and was able to read 'War and Peace' in twenty minutes. It's about Russia". How would he have summed up Fyodor Dostoyevsky's not-so-short story "The Dream of a Ridiculous Man"? I would sum it up as a story that can save lives.

It begins with a man walking St. Petersburg's streets while musing upon how ridiculous his life is, as well as its distinct lack of meaning or purpose. This train of thought leads him to the idea of suicide, which he resolves to commit using a previously-acquired gun. However, a chance encounter with a distressed little girl in the street derails his plans.

 

 

In 1990, it was adapted by the BBC as a thirty-minute television special, “The Dream”, directed by Norman Stone and starring Jeremy Irons.

 

 

If you ever find yourself drifting into indifference, this small book may be worth an evening of your time. It can be read in a single sitting, perhaps with a cup of tea, yet it carries a weight that many much longer books never manage. Not that it makes any difference to me.

 

Googlemap Riverbend

 

If I were an American, I'd hand in my passport!

 

 

These days the news is no longer the news, it is the Trump news, because no day goes by without this man hogging the headlines.

But wait, there's more:

 

 

 

If I were an American, I'd hand in my passport!

 

Googlemap Riverbend

 

Don't judge a book by its cover

 

 

The Moruya Bowling Club not only offers a reasonably priced lunch but also a free book swap. I often bring a book along and swap it for another. Today's selection was fairly ho-hum until my eyes caught the title of this slim 150-page book.

We'd left home early for an appointment with my solicitor to discuss a mortgage that's falling due - no need to worry: I am the mortgagee - and then once again suffer my very efficient German doctor's "deutsche Gründlichkeit", who checked my weight, my blood pressure, and my heart rhythm, rate, and ageing strength. If only Donald Trump had a heartbeat as even as mine, we would all be sleeping better at night.

 

 

Mind you, my heartbeat did a little skip when I saw BHP jump by 88 cents to $49.36 in early-morning trading. However, Trump must've still been sulking about not getting his Peace Prize or threatening to invade Greenland again, because by the time we had finished our lunch, the shares were down to $47.92, but we still managed to pay for our lunch.

 

 

We even managed to look for some books at the Vinnies shop. Apart from a stack of CDs of four childhood classics read by Alan Bennett - The Wind in the Willows; Alice in Wonderland; Through the Looking Glass; The House at Pooh Corner - which should help to send me off to sleep for the next few nights, I also picked up Professor Robert M. Carter's thoroughly researched and footnoted book "Climate - The Counter Consensus". Its opening remarks by Paul Johnson sum it up neatly:

 

"The idea that human beings have changed and are changing the basic climate system of the Earth through their industrial activities and burning of fossil fuels -- the essence of the Greens' theory of global warming -- has about as much basis in science as Marxism and Freudianism. Global warming, like Marxism, is a political theory of actions, demanding compliance with its rules.

Marxism, Freudianism, global warming. These are proof -- of which history offers so many examples -- that people can be suckers on a grand scale. To their fanatical followers they are a substitute for religion. Global warming, in particular, is a creed, a faith, a dogma that has little to do with science. If people are in need of religion, why don't they just turn to the genuine article?"

Paul Johnson

 

 

The blurb on the back says it all: "... it's a cracker. By the end, your're left feeling ... that the scientific case against AGW is so overwhelming that you wonder how anyone can still speak up for so discredited a theory without dying of embarrassment." I'll be sleeping well tonight.

Oh, and before I forget to put your mind to rest, the book I picked up at the bowling club was about a girl who went through anorexia, bulimia, bulimarexia, strict dieting and binge eating. Thankfully, I grew up in post-war Germany with never enough to eat. It was a simpler life then.

 

Googlemap Riverbend

 

SCHLIMM by name, schlimm by nature

 

For more empty cans to fill up your empty time, click here

 

Schlimm, of course, means 'terrible' in the language which we'd all be speaking if a certain Charlie Chaplin-like person had had his way all those many years ago. And Reinhold Schlimm is the name of a certain person who left a comment on my facebook page which led me to discover his collection of empty softdrink cans. Schlimm indeed!

I guess we all have the collecting instinct in us. I started collecting postage stamps when I was a boy in Germany. Selling that collection to raise the money for my fare out to Australia put a final stop to that.

For the next twenty years I travelled light and didn't collect anything other than work experience. Since settling down at "Riverbend" I have been collecting books, at first in mint condition and, after discovering op-shops, second-hand, and movies, first on videos and then on DVDs.

I've always felt a bit guilty about my collecting habit (although not as bad as a certain model railway collector in the U.K. whose collection grew so big that his family had to move out of the house), but seeing Sclimm's collection of empty softdrink cans makes me feel slightly better. His collection is really 'schlimm', but there's hope for me yet!

And just think, Des, what a big collection of empty COKE cans you would have by now, if back then in Camp 6 you had started "doing a Schlimm"!

 

Googlemap Riverbend

 

Julian Barnes' last book

 

 

I've been a fan of Julian Barnes' writing since I read his book "Flaubert's Parrot" - or was it "The Sense of an Ending"? - and have followed him through "A History of the World in 10½ Chapters" and "England, England" and "The Only Story", and several others.

He's just turned eighty two days ago, and "Departure(s)" is supposed to be his last book. It's all about looking back, facing the future, and coming to the end of life, written in Julian Barnes' inimitable style (no, not 'inimicable', Des; that means something totally different!)

 

 

My greatest pleasure when reading his books is simply being with Julian Barnes as he thinks on the page: wry, elegant, pragmatic and self-aware. He is a warm and generous writer, and he makes me feel as though I were in the room with him, pondering life’s big questions.

This book has only just been released and won't show up in my op-shop for years to come, if ever - after all, this is Batemans Bay, and who reads Julian Barnes in Batemans Bay? Indeed, who reads at all, which may explain why there are no more bookshops in the Bay. BOOKTOPIA sell it on ebay for $34.98 - that's less than the price of one share in BHP which is just recovering from yesterday's $1-drop - so I clicked here.

 

Googlemap Riverbend