Spring Staycation 2014

The river entrance at the end of Raukawa Rd.

Counting on the fact that early September often tends to be pretty nice, weatherwise, I'm taking
this coming week on annual leave.

I created a bit of a bucket list for the week. Two of the things on it were exercise and taking more photos, and already I've done some of both. Lovely day today and I woke early, so by just after 8.30 I got on my bike and then decided to head out to Ashhurst and see if I could
find where the bike path by the river starts on the Ashhurst road, seeing as it hasn't reached Palmie yet. Mission accomplished, with a break at the Wetlands Cafe in the Ashhurst Domain.

The track - Ashhurst is 3.2 km from here. 

View of the river and ranges.

End of the track at the Ashhurst bridge. 

Wetlands Cafe, Ashhurst Domain. Feijoa frappe, National Geographics.

This weekend

Having stumbled across Cozy little book journal's subblog (is that a word?) My Shakespeare Year, I spent much of yesterday afternoon and evening reading it. Her aim was to read all Shakespeare's plays in a year (nine months actually). By the way, I love these crazy goals. Reading the whole Encyclopedia Britannica, obeying all Biblical commands for a year, cooking your way through Julia Child, going a year without buying anything new...the Extreme New Year's Resolution genre. The closest I ever came was the year I decided I was only going to read fiction by women. Non-fiction wasn't subject to the same restriction. And I believe I did, although I may have given myself a dispensation if Terry Pratchett published something new.

Sadly, Mary Beatnik ran out of steam midway through the year, but I still salute her. She read 22 of them, including several of the very obscure ones. And I enjoyed her blog, with it's Wordles and Lego and sock monkey Scenes from Shakespeare, and have put a hold on a book she reviewed: Shakespeare saved my life: 10 years in Solitary with the Bard, by Laura Bates.

I'm also reading Bossypants by Tina Fey, which is rather scattershot, but very funny (duh). We've also downloaded the Kindle app, so we can get Dirty Politics as an e-book. It's cheaper than the print, which  most people think is the way it should be. Not me - I'm a librarian. I know that the argument that it costs so much less to produce is absolute horsefeathers. An academic (I'll call him Todd) recommended we buy a particular book last week, and when I checked it and compared the print price and the electronic price, I choked and ordered the print. The email exchange then went:

Me: Ordered a print copy. The electronic price was horrifying for a book published in 1998.
Todd: I know! The same price as the paperback!!
Me: Ha! That's for individuals. For a library, for multiple users, it was more than 4 times the print price! [360 USD, if you're interested.]
Todd: WHAT???!!!*(&(_($%^%$^!!!*





*Todd's actual response has been amplified for dramatic effect.

A moment of happiness

​Have you ever had the experience of seeing a book somewhere, and then looking for years for it without success? And then finding it? It's a moment of almost pure happiness and anticipation. 

The first time this happened to me was a book about cult books (books that attracted a cult following like The hitchhiker's guide to the galaxy) that appeared on National Library's new books shelf and then seemingly vanished without a trace. I must have searched their catalogue for every combination of words meaning 'cult' and 'novel' possible. I might even have gone through all books with 'cult' in the record at one point. 

I can't remember how I found it, or even the explanation of why the best efforts of a professional searcher had failed to locate it. But I did find it - by accident of course, years later. Happiness! I'm not sure the book itself quite lived up to years worth of curiosity, but still. 

I've just had that experience again. At my high school library, there was a collected works of Shakespeare that had an insert of photos for each play. Even plays that get produced once in a blue moon, like Cymbeline​and Pericles​. Photos from British productions with actors like Alec Guinness, John Gielgud, Claire Bloom, Sir Laurence Olivier, and Vivien Leigh. The latter two starred in Shakespeare's celebrated gorefest Titus Andronicus. ​I read quite a few of Shakespeare's plays with the encouragement of those photos. 

Of course, I left school without noting down the publisher, and ever since then I'll occasionally flick through old Collected Shakespeares in second hand shops on the off chance. 

Today I discovered that book on Massey's shelves. I'm happy. 

In other book news, I've finished reading Angle of repose, by Wallace Stegner, a great novel about the American West, marriage, success and many other things. I'd never heard of Stegner before reading Crossing to safety as a book club book. (Yes, of course I belong to a book club.) He writes wonderful descriptions of landscape (New England in Crossing to Safety) and environment, and both books contain fascinating portraits of marriages. Both, now I come to think of it, of women in love with their husbands, but ambitious for them in a way their husbands' are not. 

Also, I passed on to David the book about Putin, who ate it up, and is fiery with indignation.