Unexpected Gifts

Aww. My dear not so little anymore sister ordered me some belated birthday presents off my Amazon Wishlist which arrived this week.

I’m sure they will be making further appearances here as I get to read them and start making cookies and living like Jesus. Now I need a cookie jar to invade!

Noicities: On my Bookshelf

Well, actually, scattered around the house are the books I’m reading at the moment, thanks to little brown boxes from Amazon…

(sharing this for the Noice-ities this weekend!)

The lonely planet guide to Germany… planning, scoping out bars, bike paths, accommodation, trains, planes, history…
Generally using it to get myself excited, and to try to plan a little ahead so I don’t spend the first morning of each city wondering what to do over breakfast!

IBS for Dummies.
Now I KNOW I’m not a Dummy, but I’m liking the structure and the order of this book, which allows me to work through ideas.
(even though I started towards the back! oh and even if I don’t agree with some of the content :p)
I still wouldn’t feel comfortable pulling it out in public to read, but it’s telling me and reassuring me that I’m heading in the right direction.
You know how I’ve been doing this stress course? It’s amazing how stress you get in the actual sessions! I need to learn me some RELAXING!

Life is a verb. A doing word. It’s encouraged me to do a little free writing, which I’ll do more of once I’ve gotten this essay handed in (I’m not procrastinating, I’m rest resting it, like a piece of meat, before I go back for the final edit ahead of submitting it). I used to write a lot more, writing in note books, writing online. About me, I mean, not about the food I’m eating, or the flowers I see, but writing for me, about me, about the thoughts in my head, exploring and explaining. And I think I’m about to do more if it. I have a notebook ready to take away, one for my travel journal- for the tickets, the random, and one just for me.

I’ll be in Melbourne in 48 hours! And on a plane to Germany in 2 weeks! (I have a few cheap paperbacks for the flights, you know, to leave somewhere if I don’t feel they need to be brought home! Bookcrossing?)

xx

The Terrible Plop

Meet the Stars of The Terrible Plop:

I think the highlights from today’s Speech Pathology Australia Book of the Year Awards today in Canberra were the readings and talks…

Not everything went according to plan, but it’s rare that things do! :) I honestly do not remember much of the ceremony, as I was on official photography duty for the assosciation. Too busy thinking of how to fit the (soon to be) minister into a shot with the Speech Pathology Australia banner behind. Hehe. :)

(Winners and nominees are listed on the award site)

More speech pathology in the media: Schools failing impaired students. The ACT is one of the few places in Australia to actually see an increase in Speech Pathologist numbers recently.

Speech Pathology Australia Book of the Year Awards

Well, this has certainly crept up on us!

At the end of last year, the ACT branch of Speech Pathology Australia was asked to host the 2009 book of the year awards. We of course said yes, good to have an event to start organising for!

And the day is here! How did that happen? The presentation is later this morning at the Civic Library, and I hope it all goes according to plan!

Authors Ruth Starke (Noodle Pie), Mark Carthew (The Gobbling Tree) and Ursula Dubosarsky (The Terrible Plop) are the winners in their respective age categories for Speech Pathology Australia’s 2009 Book of the Year Awardsthe awards, and are all coming to receive them. I’m told by the others that Noodle Pie is a wonderful story and could be used in many areas of an upper primary curriculum.

“Meeting relatives for the first time isn’t easy. When they speak a different language and seem to be greedy and impatient and, worst of all, run a pretty crummy restaurant, it’s the pits. For Andy and his dad, a former refugee, returning to Vietnam is full of surprises”

First Family Heirloom

Met the little nephew on the weekend :) At times he opened his eyes and realised there were things going on around him…

I decided to give him one of my childhood books (Mem Fox’s Sail Away) that my sister had given me when I was like five… and she was 3?

Now, he’ll just have to hang onto it 25 years or so to pass it onto whichever baby around that time… right?

For a rainy day

Apparently the BBC believes most people will have only read 6 of the 100 books on the BBC big read top 100 book list.

How do your reading habits stack up? (books I’ve read in bold)

1 Pride and Prejudice – Jane Austen
2 The Lord of the Rings – JRR Tolkien
3 Jane Eyre – Charlotte Bronte
4 Harry Potter series – JK Rowling
5 To Kill a Mockingbird – Harper Lee
6 The Bible
7 Wuthering Heights – Emily Bronte
8 Nineteen Eighty Four – George Orwell
9 His Dark Materials – Philip Pullman
10 Great Expectations – Charles Dickens Read the rest of this entry »

Smells like Books

The ANU library babysat me last night after my Japanese class, which waiting for Rish. Wandering through, deciding to go in search of something to read. Past the economics texts, and the ones on the economy before the black death…

Into the over sized books, and into the linguistics section.

Skimming through Middle English dictionaries, something on phonetics, texts on teaching English as a second language, and a dictionary of the slang of UCLA.

Could have left me there for hours. No wonder a Linguistics postgrad is becoming more appealing. Nerd :)