📘Oh the places you go….September

At the end of last month’s post I left you enjoying the sights and sounds of the Wild West,….I then moved across the country a bit to try and discover ‘lost treasure’ before crossing the Atlantic to visit three very different places ……..after which I felt it was time to go home to Australia 🇦🇺

Lost Oklahoma Treasures – W Craig Gaines 2021.
Misplaced Mines, Outlaw Loot & Mule Loads of Gold (nf)

If you ever want to know where there might be a hoard of buried treasure in the state of Oklahoma then this is the book for you!
One to dip in and out of and maybe generate interest in that ‘treasure hunt’ you had in mind
Full of snippets of information/legends/tall tales about gold/cash/jewellery that for one reason or another was hidden in various ‘counties’ and mostly never recovered. One section on social history of the state was interesting reading but lost on me with no prior knowledge of all the ‘international owners’ of the land (Native Indians – French – Spanish).
Chapters on Shipwrecks, Outlaws and their Loot as well as The Indian Nations made good reading. If you like following along with a map this might be of interest to you – I found it on Hoopla
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• The Galway Girls – Susan Colleen Browne 2018
  Two best friends search for their heart’s desire in this small-town romantic story set in Ireland……The Galway Girls is a warmhearted tale of women’s friendship and of love lost and love found among the misty green Irish countryside!

A soft easy to read novel about two ‘young neighbours’ in a small village who share their feelings about the happenings in their lives as well as those of their families. Full of family relationships, farming on a small scale, fun goings on, old love – new love, hopes, expectations, disappointments
#4 in a series (Village of Ballydara) so there were a few references to things that happened in earlier books that made me think it might have been better to have read them in order but I was after a G book and this fitted the bill. Anyway they’re all there on Hoopla so they might be just right for summer reading!

• Tangier in the Rain – Fabien Grolleau 2022.
  In 1912, Matisse is feeling a little fed up. In Paris, Picasso is hogging the limelight, so Matisse decides it’s time for some fresh air, a little space, and a different kind of light. That’s it, he’ll cross the Mediterranean and start painting a new kind of nature. He’s going to Tangier. Problem is, when he finally gets there, it starts raining

Another new way of reading for me – a graphic novel. Seemingly there are readers who only read this style – let’s just say it served it’s purpose in providing me with a book that covered the letter T.
A simple story with illustrations (more refined than a comic book) seemingly about the time Matisse visited Morocco and it rained!

You might like to read this article about that visit and how it influenced his style of painting at the time 👇

Did You Know That Henri Matisse Went to Morocco?

• Return to the little coffee shop of Kabul – Deborah Rodriguez 2016.
  The honest, entertaining and life-affirming sequel to The Little Coffee Shop of Kabul, featuring the same loveable cast of characters……

Fitted the letter K but oh dear what a slog. The second of (now) three books centring around the infamous coffee shop but unfortunately (for me) It didn’t seem to have the freshness the first book had – the whole storyline was so drawn out plus interest in the different lives of all the characters certainly wasn’t there the way it was with the first book.
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Lillian’s Eden – Cheryl Adam 2018

The Eden referred to in the title is a small town on the coast of New South Wales – Lillian and her family move there to ‘look after’ Aunt Maggie. Aunt Maggie is on her husband’s side of the family…a rather dysfunctional family.

Aunt Maggie is Eric’s mothers sister, she is unconventional, the ‘odd one’ – as well as knowing all the family secrets she also has all the family money The story begins with a family visit to Aunt Maggie hoping for a loan but instead they get offered the house next door (owned by AM) on the proviso Lilian cleans, cooks and generally looks after her AM.
“Butter her up and she’ll leave it all to us” is Eric’s way of thinking
Lillian does that under suffrage because Aunt Maggie can be a bit of a tyrant but as the months go by she and Maggie become friends – each needing the other – almost dependent on each other. A ‘humorous’ at times yet reflective read about life within a 1950s family in rural Australia.

A is for Alice, my mother (and gt grandmother’s) given name as well as part of the title of one those novels that passed me by in my younger days. Alice Springs in the Northern Territory was a bit rough and ready when we visited in the early 1990s so goodness knows what it really was like at the time it became part of the focus of the novel

A town like Alice – Nevil Shute 1950.
Jean Paget, a young Englishwoman living in Malaya, is captured by the invading Japanese and forced on a brutal seven-month death march with dozens of other women and children. A few years after the war, Jean is back in England, the nightmare behind her. However, an unexpected inheritance inspires her to return to Malaya to give something back to the villagers who saved her life.

We’re back home now (after ‘wintering’ in FNQ) but as things haven’t gone the way I hoped recently I’ve only just begun to read this book…..however I’m really enjoying the style of writing with the solicitor Noel Strachan narrating his efforts to find his client’s heir (Jean Paget) and guiding her through the process of realising her inheritance. I’m sure I’ll enjoy the rest of it……

https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/A_Town_Like_Alice

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And there you have it…..
My attempt at matching letters of the alphabet to place names/countries
Of the 26 choices I made, just 4 were a disappointment

Letters and Places 2024

📘 April – A is for….
📘 May – Have book will travel……
📘 August – Where to now.
📘 September- Oh the places you go….

Sharing with What’s on your Book Shelf Challenge

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