Books, Art & Movies

I recently finished reading The Picture of Dorian Gray by Oscar Wilde and I didn’t realise it was such a dark and sad book. Brilliantly written, but so sad when you consider how Wilde’s real life turned out.

As I moved on to my next book, I made a decision to unsubscribe to almost all my Facebook news feeds and reduce my social media time.

I just wanted to read more books this year. And I felt that I was being distracted and sucked in by “online reading”, which isn’t like book reading at all, because I don’t remember anything I’ve read, even though I was “online reading” for 3 hours?!

I’m a believer of being “very selective with my input”.

Referring to: all the things that enter my head, mind and spirit.

It includes everything from TV shows, movies, youtube videos, sensationalised news, click-bait articles, Facebook comments, instagram feeds, to people, conversations, relationships and friendships.

Basically I try to stay away from things that are negative, toxic, destructive, needlessly over-dramatic and pointless.

I seriously don’t have time for that.

In my 20s, I wanted to experience everything! I experimented, explored and exposed myself to so much!

But now (I’m sure it comes with age) I am so precious with my time, my mind, my energies.

I try to focus on things that are important.

My family, my health, my friends, my relationships, my projects, my passions… and how I’m going to live the next 40-50 years of my life!

So here’s to 5 more decades of not being a slave to Social Media!

My $1 op-shopped jacket has been getting a really good work out lately. It’s a great alternative to my denim jacket or my slouchy knit cardigan.

I wore this out to a “meeting” the other day, which was really just a casual brunch with some clients/girlfriends, where we talked about work, skincare, arm toning, and having to explain cocktail names to kids.

Basically I was waaaay over dressed, and I seriously looked like I needed to work 15 years in an office to get over my whole office chic thing – ha!

I may not be on my way to being a millionaire… but doing a job I love and working with such inspiring, good-hearted, generous, and funny people makes my world go around!

Outfit:

Cue Grey Blazer (op-shopped)

Uniqlo White Tee

Frame Le Color Skinny Jeans (wearing size 25, bought 2 years ago, they are still stark black and still have an amazing fit. One of my best jeans ever!)

3.1 Phillip Lim Soleil Bag from Shopbop

Tibi Slingback Heels from Shopbop

Phew I finally finished reading Catch-22 by Joseph Heller. I’ve been reading it for 7 months haha!

In that time I also managed to read 2 other books though.

My thoughts: Wacky and quirky. First 2/3 was veeeery slooooow to get through. Last 1/3 was absolutely brilliant. It was so so funny and wicked at the end. I burst out laughing so many times (I almost never do that!).

Why did I read it?

I think I mentioned this before. I’m trying to read more classic literature – because I like reading, because FOMO, and because I scroll through so much crap on the internet, I really need to do something tricky and challenging for my brain.

I’m working my way down a “Best Novels of All Time” list. Actually I’m picking my way through the list.

My husband read this novel in high school, this was his copy, and it was on our shelf.

I tend to alternate a Classic Novel with a Modern Novel. I haven’t had much luck with the modern novels though.

So this is how I fit more reading into my life:

1) I just aim to read 2 pages every night. Sometimes I will read 2 pages or sometimes 16 page. Occasionally I’ll read 1/2 of a novel in one sitting.

2) Carry a book in my car or my handbag. While I’m waiting for someone (my kids) or something to finish (sports training), instead of being on my phone, I try to read a few pages of my book.

3) Leave books lying around the house. I like to make cute stacks. I like to collect nice cover editions.

4) Fill my spare moments with reading. When I’ve got a few minutes up my sleeve, I try to make a point to NOT reach for my smartphone, and reach for my book instead.

5) Read the book before I watch the movie. As a result, I have not watched a lot of movies haha.

6) Track my reading with Goodreads. It’s so good! I can track when I start a book and which books I’ve read in what order. It’s like tracking my running.

7) Read while doing something else that I like doing. I like to drink coffee, tea and eat snacks haha.

8) Join a bookclub or make book-nerd friends. Ok I’m not in a bookclub. But I have friends who read a lot. So I’m constantly swapping books or talking about books. And my husband is a total book-nerd too.

9) Buy cool books. I like buying books, especially from op-shops. I’m totally addicted to scoring a winning book for $2.

10) Make a list. My To-Read list is a combination of “Best books of all time”… “Best Books of 19th / 20th Century”… “Award winning books” and “Oprah’s Recommendations”.

What am I reading now?

Last year I read 13 books (a record for me!) you can see my up-to-date reading list here. Please join and be my friend on Goodreads (do I sound desperate? that’s because I am! I want to know what everyone is reading right now!)

This year I’ve only read 6 so far, but I’m cool with that.

I’ve started to read The Picture of Dorian Gray by Oscar Wilde. I’m only a few chapters in and it is an amazing read so far. I’m actually find it humourous at the moment, because it draws so many parallels with the modern day obsession with the Selfie and Instagram?!

This week, I popped over to Claremont to The Goods Shed, a new creative space for art exhibitions, installations, artist residencies, community and learning events.

It occupies a renovated heritage railway building – which is very cool – a little landscaped garden, a cafe and an outside sitting area.

I went to an event there a few months ago and I loved the space! So I followed them on Instagram and have since received little updates on events… including this art exhibition, which caught my eye and made me immediately scribble the details into my calendar:

Painting Power | Ritual, Art & Land.

It is a collection of paintings by Indigenous artists from the remote art centres of  Tjala Arts, Warlukurlangu Artists of Yuendumu, Ikuntji Artists, Martumili Arts, Mimili Maku Arts and Munupi Arts.

According to the information panels: The exhibition explores the relationship between the power of nature and the energy of ritual traditions. It considers the significance of art to Aboriginal life and its role as a bridge between the physical and spiritual realms as a way of expressing belief, tradition and contemporary life.

I thought the artworks were absolutely BEAUTIFUL!

Antara by Puna Yanima (From Mimili Maku Arts.)

I think this was my favourite. The selection of colours were stunning and shapes were just full of movement, dance and song!

Antara is a well known and significant rock hole, where women perform a dance ceremony to make witchery grubs for everyone to eat.

Kuruyultu by Eunice Napanangka Jack (from Ikuntji Arts)

The artist paints her father’s dreaming story about a group of ancestral men chasing an owl ancestor with a spear and hitting the ground with a digging stick.

I couldn’t quite see the story captured in the painting, as it was a bit abstract. But it was an amazing painting nonetheless!

It was so therapeutic to look at and filled me with a soft, gentle, relaxing feeling, like when I comb my hair or the dirt. Totally not related to the story though haha.

Seven Sisters, by Janie Kulyuru Lewis (from Tjala Arts)

That vibrant red is mesmerising. It looked like living, moving blood (not in a gruesome way, but in a life-giving way), or the heartbeat of the earth from above.

Untitled, by Mona Mitakiki Shepherd (from Tjala Arts)

Ahh, yet another gorgeous painting with universal appeal. How amazing are these colours and speckled patterns?!

They remind me of the ocean, or fields of flowers. So happy, energetic and full of life.

This is the lovely art space of The Goods Shed.

I love the old surfaces of wood and the exposed textures mixed with the clean white lines.

This is outside of the building, where you can grab a coffee from The Coffee Pod Cafe.

It was so nice to sit on the little table and chairs and enjoy the sunshine.

But this is me with my takeaway coffee about to head back into the gallery for a second look at the paintings. This time I’m not taking photos on my camera or my phone, I’m just looking at them with my own eyes to soak them up properly!

The Goods Shed
Cnr of Shenton Rd and Claremont Cres
Claremont WA 6010

Operating Hours
Monday to Friday: 8am – 3pm
Weekends: 9am – 3pm

I usually stay away from memoirs about cancer.

My husband is a walking, talking memoir of cancer survival…

And whenever I volunteer for cancer fundraising events, I hear so many inspiring and heart-breaking stories about cancer.

I’m not exactly seeking out to read yet another cancer story.

However, I picked up When Breath Becomes Air by Paul Kalanithi after hearing so many positive reviews.

What makes this story so different?

Paul Kalanithi died in March 2015. He was aged 36. He was a brilliant neurosurgeon, and outstanding researcher. He was a lover of literature. He had a brilliant philosophical mind. He was a doctor, then he became a patient. He left behind a wife and baby daughter.

He wrote it at a very particular time of his life – near the end – while faced with death. So parts of it reads like a stream of consciousness.

It’s a bit intellectual. It’s a bit heavy.

It’s a very philosophical. It’s very sad. I cried.

I’m glad I read it.

However, strangely, I wouldn’t recommend it to everyone.

Those who are looking for a general “roll up your sleeves and get practical about living the best life you can” kind of inspiration, probably won’t find it here. This book is much more of a deep, introspective, pondering look into one man’s very particular life, with very particular views.

If anything, it’ll possibly help you feel and understand what it might be like to face death with a brave and courageous heart.

…

On another note, if you’re interested, you can take a peek at my Goodreads Reading List if you like.

As I mentioned a few days ago, I’m reading Far From The Madding Crowd by Thomas Hardy and I’m a few chapters away from finishing it.

Yes it’s a romance set in 19th Century English countryside. If you like books by Jane Austen and the Bronte sisters, then you’ll probably enjoy this one.

I read my first Thomas Hardy last year and he totally floors me with his writing and language.

Here’s one of my guilty, dorky secrets haha: I like to read with a pencil nearby, so I can circle sentences  and paragraphs that make my eyes pop and my brain explode. Then I fold over the corner of the page, so in the future I can pick up the novel and quickly re-read my favourite parts of the book.

Ha!

Anyway, since I share stories, photos, food and clothes that inspires me, I feel that I have to share my favourite snippets from this book!

1) Context: Gabriel and Bathsheba [the novel’s heroine] met along the path and Gabriel couldn’t take his eyes off her.

“Rays of male vision seem to have a tickling effect upon virgin faces in rural districts: she hastily brushed hers with her hand, as if Gabriel had been irritating its pink surface with a long straw, and the free air of her previous movements was reduced at the same time to a chastened phase of itself. Yet it was the man who blushed, the maid not at all.”

2) “The rain stretched obliquely through the drab atmosphere in liquid spines, unbroken in continuity between their beginnings in the clouds and their points on him.”

3) “Bathsheba loved Troy in the way that only self-reliant women love when they abandon their self-reliance. When a strong woman recklessly throws away her strength she is worse than a weak woman who has never any strength to throw away. One source of her inadequacy is the novelty of the occasion. She has never had practice in making the best of such a condition. Weakness is doubly weak by being new.”

4) “To persons standing alone on a hill during a clear midnight such as this, the roll of the world eastward is almost a palpable movement. The sensation may be caused by the panoramic glide of the stars past earthly objects, which is perceptible in a few minutes of stillness, or by the better outlook upon space that a hill affords, or by the wind, or by the solitude; but whatever be its origin the impression of riding along is vivid and abiding. The poetry of motion is a phrase much in use, and to enjoy the epic form of that gratification it is necessary to stand on a hill at a small hour of the night, and, having first expanded with a sense of difference from the mass of civilized mankind, who are dreamwrapt and disregardful of all such proceedings at this time, long and quietly watch your stately progress through the stars. After such a nocturnal reconnoitre it is hard to get back to earth, and to believe that the consciousness of such majestic speeding is derived from a tiny human frame.”

5) “He had been held to her by a beautiful thread which it pained him to spoil by breaking, rather than by a chain he could not break.”

Ah sorry, I could go on. But I’d better not. It’s a lovely book to read.

And I can’t wait to read some of his poetry!

If you’re interested, you can take a peek at my Goodreads Reading list here if you like.

Just after Christmas last year, I finally finished the book that I had been stuck on for 5 months – The Name of The Rose by Umberto Eco.

Haha I’m not sure if it was completely worth it, because while it was lovely and fascinating in parts, it was pretty hard work to get though it.

But hey, I have been trying to read that book since 2000 and I’ve done it damn it! I will never wistfully wonder what the book is about, or how the words flow from its pages, or what it is like to experience Umberto Eco’s literary vibe.

So after that, on the other side of the literary spectrum, I decided to read something “light and easy” and I found Divergent (Book 1) and Insurgent (Book 2) in an op shop for $2 each.

They are young adult, science-fiction dystopia novels, with a thread of romance. I’ve watched the movies. The guy was hot. I breezed through the first book in a few days.

My verdict: The movie seemed to craft the story and characters much better. It was a fun read though.

I took a longer time to get through the second book because, um the teenaged drama made me cringe.

So here is my completed reading list for 2016, starting with the book I read in January 2016.

1. The Wind-Up Bird Chronicle by Haruki Murakami.

2. Anna Karenina by Leo Tolstoy

3. The Great Gatsby by F. Scott Fitzgerald

4. The Husband’s Secret by Liane Moriarty

5. All the Light We Cannot See by Anthony Doerr

6. Great Expectations by Charles Dickens

7. The Martian by Andy Weir

9. The Rosie Project by Graeme Simsion

10. Never Let Me Go by Kazuo Ishiguro

8. The Girl on the Train by Paula Hawkins

11. The Mayor of Casterbridge by Thomas Hardy

12. Me, Before You by Jojo Moyes

13. The Name of the Rose by Umberto Eco

14. Divergent by Veronica Roth

You can check out my whole list over at Goodreads, although you have to be logged in to see the list in chronological order, I think.

My favourite book of the year goes to Anna Karenina, as I often find myself thinking about the characters at random moments in my day to day life.

Followed closely by Great Expectations and All The Light We Cannot See.

The Martian as pretty cool too; I always look at a potato and smirk.

The novel I regretted reading was The Husband’s Secret. While it was a fast-paced, engaging page-turner, set in the modern day… I got to the end and I felt like I had watched a run-of-the-mill TV drama. I instantly regretted dedicating such a huge portion of my daily brain energy to it and giving up my sleep for it! Ugh.

It was highly entertaining while I was reading it and very well written, but in terms of conjuring up lingering thoughts about human nature or society, it didn’t affect or alter me in any way.