It’s about time.

Let’s fast forward…no, let’s rewind a couple of months then fast forward really, really quickly. Like high-speed-dubbing fast. That’s what has happened since last we spoke. Time has flown. Babies have been born (not mine!), new shoes purchased (not boots…yet), hours upon hours spent in playgrounds, fudge made, biscuits baked, weekends away enjoyed and a little toddler learns to walk, well almost! Oh yes, and my brother got married in Japan but he and his lovely, lovely wife say it was just for the paper-work and the REAL wedding will still happen here, in Australia. Thank goodness for that. I’m to be a bridesmaid.More on that when the time comes. And books! Lets not forget about the books. I have been in reading overdrive and gulped down some really great novels.

I went on an Alex Miller trip and I still seem to be on that boat. And what a boat! Lovesong, Prochowick’s Dream and now A Matter of Faith, have been such wonderful books to get into. Easy to read without being ‘easy’ if you know what I mean. Beautifully human characters with real flaws and conflict. These are the kind of books that you speed read because you just want that story to take you and you fear putting down. The kind of book that you become so absorbed in you can forget that your toddler is over reading her books and actually comes up to you and says “Book. Pack away.” Ok. I better. The author, Alex Miller is from Castlemaine, so I even started googling real estate there, my logic being that if he can write books like these, and lives there, it must be a freakin’ fantastic place to live. Getting a bit nuts? Yes. I also think that these books and his style of writing has been perfect for me at this time. I needed something to get stuck into and to just enjoy. To turn page after page without feeling as though I’m slogging through.  I actually cried and laughed and sighed and yelled out loud while reading these books. And when I’d finished reading them, I placed them on the coffee table, made another cup, and thought and thought and thought about these people who’d occupied my head for the past weeks.  You know it’s a good book when you’re washing the dishes thinking of them. These days, lil M likes to be rocked to sleep which is getting increasingly more difficult as she grows taller and I seemingly shorter. But while I rock her, I try to zone out so as to be calm and calm her softly into sleep. I think about such a range of things and tasks. Sometimes I count in my head. But during reading Miller’s novels I thought of his characters and about who they were, what they should do, conversations I may have with them. See, these books were IN MY HEAD. It was booklove. On a major scale. I had considered emailing Miller, but I don’t do things like that, not yet anyway.  I just wanted to thank him for writing. Luckily for me, he has quite a list so to the library I go. I promise not to devote all my posts to Mr Miller. That would be strange. I don’t do things like that. Not yet!

These books  have given me a little spark that I needed, too. To get back into the things I enjoy and make a proper go of them. It’s about time. No more time to be self conscious, just get into it. Why the hell not, eh? What would Alex do…

Time away from the books. Quack, quack.

Advertisement