At home at RIVERBEND on the beautiful Clyde: Rehoming books

Tuesday, May 16, 2023

Rehoming books

Visiting our favourite dentist in Ulladulla, Harbour Dental, is always the perfect excuse to check out the Lions Club's Preloved Bookshop and also rummage through the shelves full of preloved books at Vinnies and the Uniting Church.

Today's rehoming efforts includes a hardback in mint condition of Wilfed Thesiger's "Arabian Sands", the book about Arabia to end all books about Arabia. This particular one is so authentic, it still has its price sticker of 95 United Arab Emirates Dirham on the back. What an absolute find!

Wilfred Thesiger was born in Addis Ababa in 1910 and educated at Eton and Oxford. Though British, he was repulsed by the softness and rigidity of Western life, "the machines, the calling cards, the meticulously aligned streets, etc." In the spirit of T.E. Lawrence, Thesiger spent five years exploring and wandering the deserts of Arabia. With vivid descriptions and colorful anecdotes he narrates his stories, including two crossings of the Empty Quarter, among peoples who had never seen a European and considered it their duty to kill Christian infidels.

"Riverbend" has also become the new home for Alain de Botton's "The Course of Love"; Paul Theroux's "The Kingdom by the Sea"; "The New Silk Roads", which is a sequel to Peter Frankopan's "The Silk Roads"; and Yuval Noah Harari's brief history of humankind, "Sapiens". And for a friend in the pool I bought "What Every Man Thinks About Apart From Sex", which contains 200 pages of completely blank paper. Enjoy, Ernie!

All that "rehoming" made me hungry which we fixed with a delicious Vietnamese-Chinese meal at the Ulladulla Palace just across from the Marlin Hotel. Great food, great service, and a wonderful view out to the Pacific Ocean. If we lived in Ulladulla, we'd be eating there every day!

We're back home at "Riverbend" and still full from our large lunchtime meal. Some crackers dipped in tzatziki washed down with a glass of retsina (maybe two - or three?) should see me through until bedtime.

Googlemap Riverbend

P.S. Yuval Noah Harari's brief history of humankind, "Sapiens", is a whole 500 pages long, too long perhaps for the casual reader, so why not dip into the audiobook which a kind soul has put on YouTube - click here.

In eigener Sache!

Ich wanderte im Jahre 1965 vom (k)alten Deutschland nach Australien aus. In Erinnerung an das alte Sprichwort "Gott hüte mich vor Sturm und Wind und Deutschen die im Ausland sind" wurde ich in 1971 im Dschungel von Neu-Guinea australischer Staatsbürger. Das kostete mich nur einen Umlaut und das zweite n im Nachnamen - von -mann auf -man.

Australien gab mir eine zweite Sprache und eine zweite Chance und es war auch der Anfang und das Ende: nach fünfzig Arbeiten in fünfzehn Ländern - "Die ganze Welt mein Arbeitsfeld" - lebe ich jetzt im Ruhestand in Australien an der schönen Südküste von Neusüdwales.

Ich verbringe meine Tage mit dem Lesen von Büchern, segle mein Boot den Fluss hinunter, beschäftige mich mit Holzarbeit, oder mache Pläne für eine neue Reise. Falls Du mir schreiben willst, sende mir eine Email an riverbendnelligen [AT] mail.com, und ich schreibe zurück.

Falls Du anrufen möchtest, meine Nummer ist XLIV LXXVIII X LXXXI.

Notice to North American readers:

This blog is written in the version of English that is standard here. So recognise is spelled recognise and not recognize etc. I recognise that some North American readers may find this upsetting, and while I sympathise with them, I sympathise even more with my countrymen who taught me how to spell. However, as an apology, here are a bunch of Zs for you to put where needed.

Zzzzzz

Disclaimer
This blog has no particular axe to grind, apart from that of having no particular axe to grind. It is written by a bloke who was born in Germany at the end of the war (that is, for younger readers, the Second World War, the one the Americans think they won single-handedly). He left for Australia when most Germans had not yet visited any foreign countries, except to invade them. He lived and worked all over the world, and even managed a couple of visits back to the (c)old country whose inhabitants he found very efficient, especially when it came to totting up what he had consumed from the hotels' minibars. In retirement, he lives (again) in Australia, but is yet to grow up anywhere.

He reserves the right to revise his views at any time. He might even indulge in the freedom of contradicting himself. He has done so in the past and will most certainly do so in the future. He is not persuading you or anyone else to believe anything that is reported on or linked to from this site, but encourages you to use all available resources to form your own opinions about important things that affect all our lives and to express them in accordance with Article 19 of the Universal Declaration of Human Rights.

Everything on this website, including any material that third parties may consider to be their copyright, has been used on the basis of “fair dealing” for the purposes of research and study, and criticism and review. Any party who feels that their copyright has been infringed should contact me with details of the copyright material and proof of their ownership and I will remove it.

And finally, don't bother trying to read between the lines. There are no lines - only snapshots, most out of focus.