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.