<<<<<<< >>>>>>>
Adams & Lloyd 1983
It's a zany collection of absurdities in that same oh so eccentric English manner that blessed humanity with The Goon Show and Monty Python! Done simply by taking a bunch of British place names and finding alternative (and damn plausible!) meanings for them, eg ---
"Adelstrop (n) - That part of a suitcase which is designed to get snarled up on conveyor belts at airports. Some of the more modern adelstrop designs have a special quick release feature which enables the case to flip open at this point and fling your underclothes into the conveyor belt's gearing mechanism."
This book is super special as it was one our son's favourites. It will always be on my shelf.
<<<<<<< >>>>>>>
Mitch Albom 2003
On his 83rd birthday Eddie dies trying to save a little girl at a fun fair ride, wakes up in the afterlife, finds that Heaven isn't quite the classical "Heaven" he expected, but is where earthly life gets explained to you by five people who were once there. Set in the US, a good read, thought provoking, sucks you in.
Not sure where this one came from, looks a touch travelled, possibly bought by Herself some years ago in the hope that it would help her better understand her own near-death experience.
<<<<<<< >>>>>>>
Margaret Craven 1967
A young Anglican priest with not long to live is sent to an Indian village in the wilds of British Colombia, and shares with these once proud tribes their fishing and festivals and funerals, and learns enough about life to be ready to die. Sounds heavy but it ain't, trust me. Great book.
Another one Herself came across several yonks ago, in England she thinks, looks like it's always been secondhand and brown with age. For a long time I dismissed this as one of those trendy hippie cult books (which it was sort of) from the late 1960s, and only read it for the first time about ten years back, but have re-read it since then and found it just as absorbing. And it's on my "I Must Read This One Again Before I Kick Off" list. Which (wisely) isn't all that long.
<<<<<<< >>>>>>>
Michael Dransfield 1972
This is a slim collection of poetry, from an young Aussie that was "one of the most widely read poets of his generation", which was the 1960s and early 1970s. He started writing at 14, dropped out young, lived hard and fast in the Sydney counter-culture of the day, died aged 24 from living hard and fast. I would have to admit that - while there's not too many laughs in it - he was one of the people who's style influenced my own approach to writing "poetry".
My eldest son gave me this one, have to be forty years ago, one of the many great books, movies, and music albums he's steered me towards, and for which I will be eternally grateful, as who knows, without his guidance I may have missed such other gems as "Cloudstreet", Russell Hoban, and Neil Young.
<<<<<<< >>>>>>>
Thomas Firbank 1940
Sounds unlikely as a "good read", but it's sold hundreds of thousands of copies, reprinted more than 40 times in two editions. It's autobiographical, of a young Canadian who bought a mountain sheep-farm in the stunning (trust me, stunning!) Snowdonia area of North Wales in 1931, and against the odds sets about learning the tough trade of being a fells farmer, marries a local girl, and they struggle together to make a life and a living. I've read it twice, and there's not many I do.
Another one that just materialised onto my bookshelf, looks wonderfully and eternally second-hand and brown-paged. No, I lie, just noticed the sticker, bought it at my local Book Exchange back in BC (Before Cyber-world) when there were actually such things as book exchanges.
<<<<<<< >>>>>>>
Gavin Maxwell 1960
There was quite a watchable movie "adapted" (pretty much totally re-written into fiction) from this book in 1969 with English couple Bill Travis and Virginia McKenna. But the book's an autobiographic of an English city guy who takes a wild otter to live in the wilds of the Western Highlands. It sold over two million copies in its day.
No, truly can't remember the when or where of this one. Another beat-up old paperback.
<<<<<<< >>>>>>>
Opal Whiteley 1920 (adapted by Jane Boulton 1976)
I found this at the Salvos down the Port. I was killing time, browsing the only "department" that I bother with, the book section, waiting (as patiently as I could) for Herself to get through the rest of the place. This one caught my eye, that is, the blurb on the inside cover ---
"Opal Whiteley... was a precocious six year old girl who lived in an Oregon lumber camp at the turn of the century... orphaned and lonely... took solace in Nature, writing her thoughts in crayoned block letters on old wrappers and scraps of paper... subsequently torn to shreds by a jealous step sister... pieced together by Opal several years later... published in 1920... overnight sensation..."
Boulton took hold of it all in 1976, re-presenting Opal's work in prose-poetry form, which works really well. But apparently the jury is out on the veracity of Opal's version of when and how she originally wrote it all. And have to admit, it strains the old neurones a bit to visualise the words coming from a six year old, using a crayon! But nonetheless still a fascinating bit of literature.
<<<<<<< >>>>>>>
Wendy Wood 1952
Wendy Wood apparently lived on her own in a crofter's cottage in the Western Highlands for a while after the second world war, and this is ostensibly the record of one of her years, month by month. It's very local, very domestic, very day by day, season by season, right there at the edge of the loch. If you ever wondered what it'd be like to do that, give this one a shot. If you can find a copy. (And Wendy was no ordinary girl - Google her name and this title!)
We found this slim treasure in a secondhand bookshop on our travels, and I'd like to imagine it was from the very beating heart of the Western Highlands - somewhere like Mallaig or Shieldaig or Lochcarron - but I think it was actually in England some place. But, regardless of it's origins, it's a small gem.
<<<<<<< >>>>>>>