Saturday Snapshot #4

Saturday Snapshot is a non-book related meme hosted by Alyce.

This week we're off to Hawaii.

My husband and I honeymooned there a couple of years ago. It was the perfect place for a honeymoon - lots of places to stop, relax and do very little combined with wonderful scenery, history, culture and adventure.

As per usual when I travel, I had a couple of books by Hawaiian authors in my backpack. And by the time we boarded the plane home, I had a few more books with Hawaiian themes in my backpack!

"She took a steamer to the Big Island, and before they sighted land, her nostrils burned with vog - volacanic ash and fog. This was the island of seething volcanoes, of moody Pele, volvano goddess, whose boiling exhalations consumed forests, entire villages." (Song of the Exile by Kiana Davenport)

"Malia was struck once more by the landscape of black lava, where earth's crust still burped and parted, where its flesh overflowed, still giving birth....Somewhere on this island, mountains shuddered and spewed; somewhere the earth was unstitching, showings its boiling lava veins." (Song of the Exile by Kiana Davenport)

"Whenever I land on the Big Island, I feel as though I've gone back in time. There's an abandoned look to Hawaii, like it's been hit by a tsunami. I drive the familiar road, moving past the prickly kiawe trees and black sand beaches, the coconut palms with their wild parrots....I drive the black lava fields that glow with the white rock chalk that teenagers use to declare themselves." (The Descendants by Kaui Hart Hemmings chapter 12)

P.S. It's not just teenagers who like to leave their mark :-)

Saturday Snapshot #3

Saturday Snapshot is a non-book related meme hosted by Alyce. 

Although it is St Patrick's Day I will not be posting an Irish photo, mostly because it is a country I have yet to travel to. 

Instead I will keep to my personal theme for this meme - a book related photo (or 2).

Today's journey will be to Lyme Regis. 

I visited Lyme Regis in 2007 when my partner and I traveled to the UK for the Rugby World Cup. I was happy to schedule our trip around football games ....as long as we visited a few of my favourite literary places along the way! Lyme Regis was high on my list for two very important reasons:

Persuasion and The French Lieutenant's Woman. 

View of the Cobb from Monmouth Beach

The young people were all wild to see Lyme.
After securing accommodations, and ordering a dinner at one of the inns, the next thing to be done was unquestionably to walk directly down to the sea." 

The Cobb itself, its old wonders and new improvements, with the beautiful line of cliffs stretching out to the east of the town, are what the stranger's eye will seek; and a very strange stranger it must be, who does not see charms in the immediate environs of Lyme, to make him wish to know it better. 

(chapter 11 Persuasion by Jane Austen)

The real Lymers will never see much more to it than a long claw of old grey wall that flexes itself against the sea. 

To the west sombre grey cliffs, known locally as Ware Cleeves, rose steeply from the shingled beach where Monmouth entered upon his idiocy....It is in this aspect that the Cobb seems most a last bulwark - against all that wild eroding coast to the west. 

 (chapter 1 The French Lieutenant's Woman by John Fowles)

Sunrise over the bay 

They went to the sands, to watch the flowing of the tide, with a fine south-easterly breeze was bringing in with all the grandeur which so flat a shore admitted. 

(chapter 12 Persuasion by Jane Austen)

If you get up at such an hour in Lyme today you will have the town to yourself. 

(chapter 29 The French Lieutenant's Woman by John Fowles)

Brona testing Lousia Musgroves steps out for herself 

She lead him to the side of the rampart, where a line of flat stones inserted sideways into the wall served as rough steps down to the lower walk.'These are the very steps that Jane Austen made Louisa Musgrove fall down in Persuasion.' 

(chapter 2 The French Lieutenant's Woman by John Fowles)

There was too much wind to make the high part of the new Cobb pleasant for the ladies, and they agreed to get down the steps to the lower, and all were content to pass quietly and carefully down the steep flight, excepting Louisa; she must be jumped down them by Captain Wentworth. 

(chapter 12 Persuasion by Jane Austen)

Sunrise over the Cobb looking west towards Monmouth Beach 

There runs between Lyme Regis and Axmouth six miles to the west, one of the strangest coastal landscapes in Southern England....People have been lost in it for hours, and cannot believe, when they see the map where they were lost, that their sense of isolation...could have been so great.  

 (chapter 10 The French Lieutenant's Woman by John Fowles)

Saturday Snapshot - Powderfinger

I've been a Powderfinger fan for over 15 years. My sister gave me 'Internationalist' one Christmas. On a long road trip I listened to it over and over again - it was the beginning of a long love affair.

"If you want to be a passenger
Climb aboard with me we're leaving now
Step outside and see another world
Only if you want to be a passenger"

(with Silverchair and special guest Jimmy Barnes Sept 2007)



I saw them play live at a Big Day Out in 2005. I saw Bernie do a solo gig at the Enmore and a Powderfinger performance with Silverchair in 2007. And, finally, I saw 2 of their farewell Sunset tour peformances in Sydney in 2010.

"Another day meanders by
Keeping nature's tabled time
All these things just pass you by
And you can't relax in a scheduled life"

(Sunset Tour Sydney Sept 2010)

(Sunset Tour Sydney Nov 2010)

So imagine how excited I was to receive their bio for Christmas - "The Inside Story Australia's Best Loved Band: Powderfinger: Footprints." Complete with 2 CD's of their best hit songs.

"My happiness is slowly creeping back
Now you're at home
If it ever starts sinking in
It must be when you pack up and go"

Being a Powderfinger fan for so long meant that I already knew that Powderfinger were basically a group of 5 decent Aussie blokes. I knew that any bio about them would be fairly straight forward; no surprises.
But I didn't expect boring!

"There's a weight dragging through my days that I spend trying to fill the space
That's been there since the day that we parted and made our goodbyes
There's a truth begging to be told as the blues grab and take a hold
And I just can't believe when I wake up that you could be gone."

I've never read any of Dino Scatena's work before, so I dont know if the problem was his or whether a story about 5 ordinary blokes just doesn't make for a good story. Either way it was a struggle to get through this book. Thank goodness for the many, many photos.

And thank goodness I have so many happy memories of listening to their songs at defining moments of my life  - "footprints on the other side remind me where I've been."

Retiring in their early 40's at the top of their game means that the boys from Powderfinger will always be forever young in the hearts and souls of the fans.

"Promises already gone
There's no escape it's said and done
So keep your love forever young."

I can feel another sing-along coming on!

Go to Saturday Snapshot for more photo fun.

On Chesil Beach

Saturday Snapshots is a non-book related meme hosted by Alyce. I wanted to see what it would be like to participate in my very first meme and this looked like the most appealing option for this particular Saturday. I have, of course, managed to find some pics that relate back to my favourite topic - books!

Five years ago my husband and I travelled to the UK for 3 weeks to follow the Wallabies in the Rugby World Cup.

In between games we visited many wonderful places and revisited favourite haunts from previous trips.

One of our new adventures was to Chesil Beach in the south of England. I had started reading Ian McEwan's 'On Chesil Beach' on the flight over in anticipation.

So I was prepared for the long strip of pebble beach with water in front and back! And I should have been prepared for the freezing cold southerly buster blowing in across the water the day we were there, but it still took my breath away!

The pebbles were huge and smooth from weathering, but still very hard and uncomfortable to walk and sit on.

Curiously the inclement conditions did not hinder the many fisher folk...or my determination to have a photo op, with book in hand, overlooking Chesil Beach.

I couldn't imagine how any couple (book couple or real-life couple) could manage a romantic walk along this beach! I spent my time trying to picture where the book couple would have strolled as I caressed the different sized, shaped & coloured pebbles between my fingers.

As it turned out, 'On Chesil Beach' was not to be one of my favourite McEwan books - perhaps it wasn't a book that travelled well. I couldn't really give it the undivided attention it probably deserved.

When I finished it, I swapped it in a B & B in Northumbria for a wonderful old copy of 'Mary Jane' by Daphne du Maurier instead. Too bad I can't travel back in time to ye olde London to visit Mary Jane's world!