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 ...