TRANSIENT DESIRES.

DONNA LEON.

A popular author who develops interesting Italian characters, with a storyline set in Venice.  Everyone travels by boat; villains, cops, family.  The action takes place on boats, docks or moorings.   

Two American girls were delivered to a hospital.  Someone rang the emergency bell.

Brunetti is the regular hero in Leon’s entertaining series.  He and colleagues have to solve the why and how.

HOW TO END A STORY. 

HELEN GARNER.

I admit to relief when I finished this story. The end of a marriage.

A story indeed, revealed in diary format.  

The author is known for her skill in presenting readers with well written honest personal sagas.  Many of us may have shared similar days of a dying relationship.  Too true me Aunty.

However for some, truth is too close for comfort.  Both characters are writers and they are competitive.   Their individual points of view are laid bare, man and woman reeling from a great love worn out. By what?  Why?

Garner seeks answers.  Her visits with friends and a psychiatrist reveal frustration and a deep range of emotions. 

I feel the pain is too familiar and I wonder what is gained by baring one’s tear streaked face to the public.  I couldn’t do it, but literature is comfortable with the agony and ecstasy, and history will accept this into its folio of broken hearts. 

 February 21, 2022.

A trio on cosmic physics.

First.  

I read HAWKING HAWKING which was a biography by Charles Seife detailing the health, love and work of this man praised for his great brain and battered body.  He was great a subject in film, television and literature.  His life’s work in physics, astrophysics etc made me aware how little I knew of this scientist ’ world.

Suddenly I needed to something about the intellectual world of physics and astra cosmology. So I began reading. I only had a smattering of knowledge on the importance of Newton, Einstein and many others. 

It was a start.  Waiting for the book on Libby, I read the sample chapter one of Hawking’s praised book -  A BRIEF HISTORY OF TIME.  This was relatively easy going for me….?? I was amazed to find Hawking’s writing style to be so succinct that I could follow the logic of such an esteemed scientist. To a point.

Still waiting, in a queue a few months for my online library service to deliver A Short History of Time I noticed an audiobook by Neil Degrassi Tyson called DEATH IN A BLACK HOLE.

I am currently reading this.

Again I find the explanations of …the death of science … the adventure, the community of shared knowledge,  engrossing and what is more, for me, manageable.

 I am shooting for the moon reading some of the stars of physics literature but I am impressed.  When I finish my indulgent, perhaps pointless study of cosmic physiology, I hope to remember at least the adventure of science.  And the words, names, era.

Soon I may have a copy of A Brief History of Time to read, soon. Heavens help me improve?