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Discussion Thread 🦊 Friday 23 May 2025
(aussie.zone)
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this post was submitted on 22 May 2025
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Actually one thing I wanted to share with you guys was that somehow this week I managed to read a book! I used to be a massive bookworm when I was younger, until one of my nervous breakdowns when I discovered that I struggled to finish one page of a book without my mind wandering and me giving up. But I found this book in a street library called First They Killed My Father by Loung Ung. I have a friend from my high school days whose background is Cambodian, so I was interested. He's told me in the past that his earliest childhood memory was when they left in a boat and came here. Reading that book, man it was gripping. The things that little girl and her family experienced, Jesus Christ. It had me enthralled how she survived, how much guts she had.
When I finished the book I gave thought to something else I read recently with a chart, about how most people in Australia and other modern western countries are amongst the richest 20% of the global population. When I think "richest" I usually think of the 1%. But apparently if you have a car, have a roof over your head, shower daily, can easily access food, turn on the tap and drinkable water comes out whenever you want it, have an education and stuff like that, you are among the world's richest 20%. It really made me think, you know? And it made me feel really grateful, grateful for my life and the lives my kids live. It made me realise that I am rich in a lot of ways, and it made me feel really thankful.
Enough of my ramblings, just wanted to share my mind space of this week. Have a lovely evening you guys!
Outrageous opinion follows.
Life for homeless people in Australia is usually better than life for average people in most of the world. They still have clean food, clean water, good medical care if they walk into a hospital, clean streets. True, they often have psych problems and need care. But they don't need to worry about open sewers and such.
Um no.
Strapping yourself to ceiling beams to sleep so you don't get assaulted.
Boyo at 14 in the RMIT brewery.
i didn't say it was safe or good or something to aspire to nor a reason to not stop homelessness or help, just that there are some of the same advantages of an advanced industrial country.
Actually, fuck that um.
This is a disgusting and ill considered opinion.
ffs,
clean water is precious, sewers is precious, etc
our whole society benefits from these basics
we do need to care about everyone and stop homelessness, and it's possible, we just need the will , we need to tax mining companies etc
we know it's possible to help people because we did it during covid
I've always read books but what got me into biographies was a book called Two Pence To Cross The Mercy by Helem Forrester. It's about a twelve year old girl who basically raised her family out of poverty during the depression. She was smart and all she wanted to do was go to school. There's 4 books in the series. You feel for this young girl but that's not how she wrote the stories. She just did what she felt she had to do.
It's something that's never left me.
I loved that series. That and Janet Sandison's series called Jean In The Morning, Jean Towards another Day, Jean at Noon and Jean In the Twilight. We don't remember the depression, but it marked our parents/grandparents with huge trauma.
I may have to start a "to read" list
I'll have to look this up. We have to learn from this.
Ok this sounded interesting, and a sample reading has driven me to download Libby and start on the eBook. Thankyou 🙂
It's like Angela's Ashes but from young girls feel.
Have you read The Harp In The South/Poor Man’s Orange?
Yes and watched the series. So good.
Thankyou again, I've finished the book last night! She has such a beautiful way of writing, so descriptive. My library didn't have the 2nd book in the series, but I found the Internet Archive has it and I've started reading it too. Her parents are so infuriating!
No worries.
I love recommendations so just bought the audiobook. 🙂
You will love it
It reminds me of A Tree Grows in Brooklyn, which I read when I was about 10.
40 years later I would visit Brooklyn regularly and I would always think about the book.
You've inspired me to get off the usual screens and finally get started on a book I've been meaning to read for a while - Never Let Me Go by Kazuo Ishiguro. It's starting off really well! I'm going to go back to it after this comment, but...
I had a closer relationship to lower living standards growing up, still very much first world but things like your own patch of grass, the space to not live constantly surrounded by others, a relaxed way of living, wide open spaces and yes, having a car for many people, were all almost unattainable privileges. And just one generation removed my family came from a country that definitely had much less: I remember the constant power cuts, military checkpoints, curfews when I visited (and we were considered privileged back there, having migrated away from it all). Parents had their stories of lining up for rations, the bombings, the terror...
Yet I still often fall into the trap of the hedonistic treadmill and forget how absolutely, blinking, freaking lucky and rich I am to be where I am right now. It's easy to get caught up in how unaffordable housing is, etc, and it's not like those things shouldn't change, but holy shit most people in the world would still kill to be here in our places. We never, ever genuinely have to worry about starving... What a blessing.
And Peeler, you yourself have such a generous, creative, loving personality that is its own richness regardless of material wealth ☺️ the minis are blessed to have you as their mum indeed!
Never Let Me Go is a gut punch. I think I’ve read a few of his that really hurt
I watched the movie of Remains of the Day and it squeezed my heart in quite a unique way
Yeah that was the other book I read… the way he just kept on going when (spoiler)
I'm really happy to hear you got to finish a book. I'm similar in that I was a huge bookworm but struggle to read these days.
So it's a huge achievement!
I recently read The Revenant and The Particular Sadness Of Lemon Cake. Both were op shop finds.
The first is about a man left for dead after being attacked by a bear and his subsequent survival/quest for revenge. The second is about a girl who can taste emotions in food. Bit of a weird ending.
I still have part of the Memory Sorrow and Thorn trilogy to finish as so much was going on for so long that I got too tired to read.
The Revenant was made into a movie with Leo DiCaprio. Beautiful amazing movie.
Haven't read any those books at all but they all sound interesting.
The past few days I've been watching/listening to various renditions of The Hound of the Baskervilles.
I have come to the conclusion it's Doyle's version of a Gothic Novel.
Also that the Basil Rathbone version of Holmes, the most beloved version, is a lot different to the novels and other versions. He is kind and gentle, and the classism and racism of the novels is mostly gone.
The Lemon cake one sounds interesting, I might try that next.