"The Book Thief"

As you know, I am in a book group here - marvellous women, lots of fun & laughter & sometimes, the occasional chat about our books.

I finished reading "The Book Thief" today, & you MUST read it, it is absolutely one of the best books I have ever read. Written by Markus Zusak, the narrator is Death, telling the story of how he collects the souls of the dead during World War II.



Death focuses on a little girl named Liesel & her life as a foster child who cannot read, but learns after she stole her first book, which she found near the grave site of her little brother. The premise sounds just awful, but trust me, this is an EXQUISITE book.

I found it very hard to try to read the first time, given the style of writing he uses as the character Death, but I gave it a second go, & am so glad I did. It is heartbreaking in it's descriptions & yet so uplifting & beautiful - you must read it & let me know what you thought of it.

Spring has Sprung!

Wow, spring is finally here! How lovely to be just wandering around the garden: the weather is mild, the smell of all the is blooms filling the air, & I'm seeing all the flowers & the bulbs smiling at me. We've had so much rain lately in the region, with lots of awful flooding wrecking people's homes unfortunately. Jeremy took some fantastic photos of the Creswick flooding, you can have a look at the Ballarat Courier's photo gallery here: http://www.thecourier.com.au/multimedia/15806/flooding-at-creswick.aspx

I took some photos of the garden just now, so I thought it best to share xx

The Australian Briard Calendar 2011

Can I just tell you how excited I am about our 2011 Australian Briard Calendar? How sensational is that cover? That baby briard is named Nanook & what a little stunner she is. What a perfect cover girl, what a model to show how truly beautiful the Briard actually is. All beauty & brains (well perhaps not our two as they are quite daffy, but they are very beautiful).

The members of the Australian Briard Forum started producing our own Calendar here in Australia to help us fund our Briard Rescue Service. It was too much to expect that the Rescue Team, who work so hard to help briards in need, should also shell out the costs of doing so in an ongoing manner. They would say that they did not mind, part of the love for the breed, but it was just not right.

So here is this lovely Calendar. The photos are taken by the owners & then submitted for the "Calendar Competition" in a bid to get a page. Luckily there is a team of people available at my work who do the selection process as I believe that this makes it as unbiased as possible. I think they have done a marvellous job this year as we had 282 photos submitted - huge!

If you would like to buy a 2011 Australian Briard Calendar ($25.00AUD plus postage), you can buy it either on Ebay or via this link: http://www.briard.com.au/calendar.htm