My Husband is a Genius!

Our books have been sitting in boxes in the spare room. Not good. They're in the way in the spare room, it's very damp so mould is a worry at the moment and I like having my books around. Keith had the brilliant idea of taking the doors off one of the hall cupboards and converting it to a temporary bookshelf! So off came the doors, on with some paint and voila!

Eventually, this shelf area will be used to make the wardrobe in Alex's room bigger, to create a bit more space in that bedroom. Brilliant!

Holiday Reading Stash

Here are the other books I got from the library yesterday - that should keep me quiet for a while!

Christmas Books

Instead of the traditional post-Christmas lunch sleep, I have just finished reading Jennifer Government. Which I really enjoyed. Time for a browse through my Christmas book, Stephanie Alexander's very gorgeous Kitchen Garden Companion. I bought it a while ago but have left it until today to dip into it. Then it will be on with the list: Carpentaria, by Alexis Wright, which is set in the Gulf country of North West Queensland. I did a library run yesterday, before the library shuts until Wednesday. I had Carpentaria reserved but then also browsed the shelves for a while, up to 'F' and found 4 other books on the list. I'm all set for the rain which has been forecast for the next five days. But today is a cracker - sun's shining, it's hot and steamy out there. A perfect Christmas Day; thanks Mr Weather Man!

31 Down ....

...259 to go! Maths was never my strong point so I may have this completely wrong .... but I think I have worked out that at my current rate, I might read 48 books per year. Which means it will take me another 5.3 years to read the read the rest of the books on the list! Cool - I'm not going anywhere!!

Jennifer Government

I finished The Fern Tattoo last night. Now for a quick entree into Jennifer Government. The front cover says "It's Catch-22 by way of The Matrix".

Australian Literature Dude

Really enjoying The Fern Tattoo written by David Brooks. The writing is beautiful, althought it contains some very long, multiple-claused sentences that are a bit of a challenge! The book is about outcasts and story-telling - it describes the process of story-telling, the mixing of truths and unreliable memories, grades of truth, half-truths and downright lies. And the stories are mostly about outcast characters.

Mr Brooks is Associate Professor of Australian Literature at the University of Sydney. Quite the dude of Aussie writing, I reckon.

The Fern Tattoo

Ned Kelly was hung last night and so that's the end of his story. The acknowledgements at the end of the book tend to indicate that Carey didn't just write a total flight of fancy. So I guess I just read a very palatable and moving version of history. Loved it.

Went to the Maroochydore Library today and this is the next read. I have no idea what it's about and can't even recall the date it was published. So will launch straight in with a totally open mind!

True History

Really enjoying this History. Nearly finished it and will be sad to put it down. I was thinking about what I could say quickly about this book and can't really put it any better than the back cover blurb. "... the legendary Ned Kelly speaks for himself, scribbling his narrative on errant scraps of paper in semiliterate but magically descriptive prose as he flees from the police." The sentences run together with few full stops but magical the writing is. Every few pages is a passage that just blows me away, the sort of writing that my 3rd form English teacher Mr Cook suggested we write down in a notebook as we came across it in our reading. Like this, for example: in this passage a policeman drunkenly fires a shot through the roof in the presence of baby George, Ned Kelly and others. In that instant, the baby's eyes changed colour from blue to "a yellow brown the colour of a ginger cat. In the heat of a furnace metals change their nature in olden days they could make gold from lead. Wait to see what more there is to hear my dear daughter for in the end we poor uneducated people will all be made noble in the fire."

Don't Pack my Books!

I have kept aside a clutch of books to read if it's possible to stay awake long enough to read in the middle of packing ...

Last night I did finish Come In, Spinner and so I will continue on with True History of the Kelly Gang.

Singapore

Nothing to do with books but this sign in a shop made me laugh. I actually don't like buying shoes. Books make me happy. But I'm still quite superficial. Whatever.

I didn't take the very chunky Come in Spinner with me to Singapore - not a good fit in the hand luggage. Instead, my book companion was Peter Carey's True History of the Kelly Gang. But I didn't read much - we went to bed very early in Singapore (very un-Singaporean, it would seem!).

This food court, called Food Republic was quite eye-catching, decorated as if it were a gigantic library. The decor was quite a bit better than the food we had but we found plenty of nice food elsewhere.

A pathologist I met at the courses I attended in Singapore was quite a reader also. We got chatting about books and she's read Christina Stead. We both agreed that For Love Alone was an appallingly sad book. She'd tried to read The Kelly Gang but couldn't get into it.

I bumped into a old colleague at the course who was carrying around several books - on his phone! He largely reads e-books now but wasn't able to find The Kelly Gang as an e-book. So paperbooks get to live another day. David reckons his family's book consumption has sky-rocketed reading e-books. They still buy the occasional "trophy book" to put on their shelves!

Meantime, for me it's back to finishing off Come In Spinner, although I would say that progress will be slow for the next little while as we gear up to move house in about 9 days!

Come In, Spinner

My amble through the odd, haunting and sometimes downright "difficult" Eucalyptus ended last night - time for something a little lighter, perhaps? I'll get stuck into Come in, Spinner. It's a chunky little read at 711 pages...

Sarajevo Haggadah

I really enjoyed People of the Book, by the way. It provided some good light relief in the breaks during the tutorial I attended. The lobby at the Westin Hotel had a cosy fire and warm sunny spots to read in, as well as something of a library of books surrounding the fire. The inspiration for Geraldine Brook's story was the Sarajevo Haggadah, pictured.

That book sure had a very long and incredible journey. Reading such a book as People is totally transporting, giving glimpses of histories I never knew existed. Magical.

Books in Melbourne

I attended a cytology tutorial in Melbourne last week, at a hotel in Collins St. Keith tipped me off about the Kay Craddock Antiquarian Bookseller just a few clicks up the street. So I dashed over on one lunch break. There were shelves devoted to Australian literature and several of the list of 290 were in stock. Most of those books seemed to be first editions and have been nicely covered

with a description of the book's condition tucked into the front cover. I bought The Long Prospect by Elizabeth Borrower, a first edition from 1958.

I'm now reading Eucalyptus by Murray Bail after finishing People of the Book last night. There was a first edition of Eucalyptus in the rare book shop but at a purchase price of $150, I passed that one over! I like the cover of The Long Prospect and it was a third of the price.


I could have spent hours in Kay Craddock's book shop - it's in one of Melbourne's many beautiful old buildings, The Assembly Hall Building.

Next, please!

Finished Rabbit Proof Fence last night and have read the first couple of pages of People of the Book. It should be a good "holiday" read so will pack it to go to Melbourne. Along with a couple of others, in case I get lots of reading time. But I'm going to Melbourne to learn cytology so it's something of a busman's holiday ...

The Books are Still Piling Up

But I'm whizzing through Rabbit Proof Fence which is a slight read but no less an incredible story. More Christmas purchases arrived. The Ada Cambridge was wrote in 1890! Which is why it's been jolly hard to find. Which is why I ended up ordering it from Amazon. It looks odd, like a text book.

This copy is from the BiblioBazaar Reproduction Series, the goal of which is to bring back into print hard-to-find original publications at a reasonable price, at the same time preserving the legacy of literary history. Write on!!

And I got Murray Bail's Eucalypt, which comes recommended by Anna and which has been really hard to reserve again at the library. I had it out at one stage but didn't get around to reading it in the short loan time I had it for; it's clearly in demand.

We're off to Melbourne for a week on Monday, so will be packing plenty of books to keep me going. Or maybe just one big fat, juicy one ... decisions, decisions ...

Rabbit Proof Fence

Finished For Love Alone last night; scary book. Started Rabbit Proof Fence, which if it's a true story isn't really a novel, is it? Not going to stop me reading it though!

The 40s and 50s

Another book in my Christmas order arrived today. It was published in 1952. My current read, For Love Alone was published in 1945. And how language has moved on since then. I keep coming across quite a few words that I think have fallen out of common usage - I sure don't know what they mean, anyway. I'd pull out the dictionary and check them out as I'm going but we've packed the dictionaries away! How about this for an example: "I am not enceinte with any instincts. I am austere." Well, I think I know what austere means... When I read material like this, I worry that we are losing our grip on the language, losing our words, like losing marbles if you like. But surely language is evolving, new words are added to dictionaries all the time. But the "old" words seem to carry more value, somehow, then all the new-fangled, sometimes slightly silly and sometimes almost "non" words we keep adding to our vocabulary... But it's not just the words that have changed so much in just a few decades. It's all the social stuff too, the manoeuvering between men and women, which is what For Love Alone is all about, really. It's another dense read, 502 pages long and I'm just scratching the half way mark. With my stack of books to read continuing to mount up, I do realise it's a huge task ahead to read all the books I want to. Luckily, they're all different and so far, have all been mostly very enjoyable to read.

And now for something completely different ...

At least, I think it will be different from the crazy read, The Godson, that I've just finished!

Christmas Comes Early

We're moving house in November and have a couple of trips away before then so we're making sure Christmas present buying is all done and out of the way. I've ordered a few books for my pressies and the first arrived from Fishpond yesterday!

The Godson

I am tearing into The Godson. Gotta love an author who was, according to his bio inside the front cover of the book, a butcher from Bondi and has been in films and TV but prefers to write. And his writing is colourful, rough and ready; bit of a boys-own sort of bodice ripper style.

His colourful side is evident in his website and I LOVE the technicolour of his many book covers!

Library Run

Godson is one of two Robert G. Barrett books on the list and I think I'll read it next; just about finished The Idea of Perfection.

Why you are Australian is written by Nikki Gemmell who has four novels on the list. The non fiction book is somewhat pertinent to our situation, waiting to apply for Australian citizenship, bringing up a child born in NZ but who's now lived longer in Australia. And Keith, on a UK passport but who's lived most of his life in NZ, is a nowhere citizen, or perhaps an "everywhere citizen" - lucky to have the choice, so as to be able often to claim ties to whichever team is winning a major sporting event!

Waiting for The Hairdresser

What to do with 10 minutes before one's hairdresser is ready to cut? Pop next door to the second-hand book shop and browse the Australiana section!

The Idea of Perfection

This is Kate Grenville. She won the Orange Prize in 2001 for the book I started reading last night, The Idea of Perfection.

I don't know anything about the Orange Prize, except that Grenville's website describes it as Britain's richest literary prize. I notice her website has a link to The Orange Prize so I will do some research.

The book somehow brings together the topics of engineering and quilting as well as being a story about a very unlikely friendship between two fairly odd characters.

This quote from Leonardo da Vinci gives a clue as to why and how: "An arch is two weaknesses which together make a strength."

Books Across the Border

Just remembered I hadn't put the couple of photos on here from our holiday in Nth NSW, Yamba and environs with a visit to Maclean, "the Scottish town" nearby. As mentioned, I bought myself People of the Book. But I am still reading my way through The Tree of Man - it's a dense read but enjoyable. It's got a lovely quiet style about it, a gentle portrait of a marriage which began in the isolation of the Australian bush and with time, the community grew around the couple; there was a war and children and now they are heading into old age, with all the creaks and groans that places on a relationship.

This was a nice sign on the bookshop in Maclean.

More Hell than Bliss

On holiday in Yamba currently, so able to read a bit. Staggered my way through Bliss which was quite hard going really. About Harry Joy in Hell. Nice enough ending though. Bought People of the Book today at the Yamba Bookshop. But might go back to the Patrick White book I started ages ago...

Bliss ...

Finished TheTax Inspector last night. Ending too weird and gruesome, rather OTT...

Tonight: Bliss.

Trying -and Loving - Peter Carey

Yes, I finished Holden's Performance a couple of nights ago. It was kind of a slow, gentle and ponderous read, a bit like the main character of the book. But beautifully imagined, such inventive writing, I thoroughly enjoyed it. Reading Holden, I really got a sense of the craft of a good fiction writer. It wasn't quite 'poetry' but the effort and cleverness of the writer, the left-of-field outlook on life was quite evident without being overstated; a very clever and eccentric writer. Give me more ...

And Carey is Murray Bail on acid. And exactly the opposite of what you'd expect from the cover of The Tax Inspector. It is out there! Full of crazy, yet ordinary, and very engaging characters. Loving it.

Bought Bliss at the Flinders Fair today - bargain at $2!

Yes, I know Peter Carey is famous and I really should have read at least one of his books by now; Illywhacker, Oscar and Lucinda... still, that's why I'm on this mission, to finally get around to all those books I really must read and discover a whole lot more!

Work (and winter bugs) gets in the way

I am still struggling my way through Holden's Performance and nearly at the end. Progress has been slowed by reading commitments of the work variety and the increased need for sleep (rather than reading long into the wee hours) due to winter bugs. I even took a study day today, to try and get on top of some of the work stuff!

Maybe tonight, I will polish off 'The Holden'.

Holden Prototype

Well, yes: Holden's Performance is sort of about cars. The story is set in post-war Adelaide which saw the introduction of, and beginning of the love affair with, the Australian-made car.

This particular car is the Holden Prototype Car No. 1 which became the definitive model for millions of Holden cars.
Photo credit: Dragi Markovic, see the National Museum of Australia website.


And I'm back in the driver's seat again, finished for now with things Singapore...

The Lure of Singapore

It seems I can be quite distractable when starting a new book. We're off to Singapore for a week later in the year and even for a week-long stay, there's a lot to choose from to see, do and most importantly, eat! So, I'm going to read this lonely planet guide and make a few jottings to plan our time, before getting seriously stuck into Holden's Performance. But then there's the very tempting Further Reading section in the lonely planet guide, for the obsessively well-prepared traveller...Particularly tempting is a "rowdy" Paul Theroux novel, Saint Jack. Might just have to give that one a whirl - I went through a bit of a Paul Theroux phase, I suppose it would have been when in my lates 20s. And there are some titles written by local literary luminaries to try out as well.