Diverting Tales

I've been flip flopping around a bit with books since finishing Eat Lolly, which was a story about an eating disorder. Lolly for Lola, the girl in the book. There was nature v nuture at play in that Lola had an absent but knownto-be mentally odd father and a very much present and food-obsessed but increasingly distant and cold mother. Perhaps not surprising given her own mother and father had banished her to an island to be a single mother at the age of 18 (so as not to shame Daddy, the respectable GP). Anyway, I then dipped into The Fortunes of Richard Mahony, but it was just too dense a read for me to cope with just now (work becoming all consuming again!) being three books in one and it's a library loan. I began reading Illywacker which is hilarious and mine but again, a massive read and then found the Cambridge Companion to Australian Literature in the library. Reading the sections on fiction has been a good way to place into context some of the books from the FAN list and is also a good prompt as to what other things are worth reading. But here I go off the track again: sorting my books out to get the FAN books together on the shelf, I found Ruth Park's Sydney which I haven't read yet but will now - as Keith and I debate the merits of visiting Sydney for a few days in July after I attend  a course!

Why is this picture on its side?

A Bridge Turns 80

Of a Boy was awful; 5 dead children - who needs it. So then it was onto The Great Arch which fitted in nicely with the 80th anniversary of the opening of the Sydney Harbour Bridge just a few days ago on 19th March. The Great Arch is "A deeply moving novel linking two centuries, two world wars and two generations inspired by the building of the Sydney Harbour Bridge - this is an epic story of faith, obsession and love and an ordinary man, an ordinary life, made grand".

Last night started to read Eating Lolly.

Catch Up

So I finished They're a Weird Mob. Such a good book and one that should be read by every new Australian. There is sage advice in this book: learn the lingo and fit in and everyone will be happy to call you mate. I then read the recent Booker prize winner by Julian Barnes, The Sense of an Ending. There was an horrendous waiting list for this book in the library so I bought myself a copy. It's a slight book and a bit midde aged-geezer-navel gazey to be perfect. But it is a good morality tale that has a knock out ending that ever-so-subtly sneaks up. Kind of cool. It would probably reward a second read.

Now reading Of a Boy, a large print edition, which is always a bit of an odd experience. This book is about 3 children who go missing on their way to buy icecreams and about an 8 year boy who lives with

his grandmother because his mother is sick, an alcoholic I think. He lived with his father for a while but now he's living with his Grandmother (not Granny or even Gran) who is feeling well past her use-by date for bringing up another child. Also at home is Uncle Rory who is housebound ever since he crashed his car and killed the mate who was his passenger. He paints at home and otherwise appears unable to bring himself to leave the house. It's sad and disturbing so far. Too many damaged people and when they are kids, it hurts especially.

Fantasy Free

I finished The Passage yesterday - I was trying hard to concentrate on its ending in a noisy optometrist's waiting room , so the book sort of ended with a whimper rather than a bang. I had thought about reading The Gift next but it's set in the fantastic location of Annar, not Australia. And right now I am not in the mood for fantasy. Not a genre I would ever choose to read and not my ideal Australian novel. The Passage was good, so nice to read of a local area, 50 or 60 years ago, before all the development we have today. Anyway, The Gift is not a gift so it can wait (and wait and wait ...)

Instead I will try a bit of dated (?) humour in they're a weird mob. Much better!

Busy, Reading

Whoops, nearly let a month go past without updating this blog. Tamarisk Row was a sad sort of book, young boy growing up under the cloud of a father caught up in the vicious cycle of gambling. Then embarked on the very good, but chunky The Trout Opera; everything in that book that I like about reading Australian literature - the land, its history and its people. This one set in the Snowy River area, from 100 years and more ago, in Jindabyne, Dalgety as well as modern day Sydney, even Murwillumbah and Mt Warning, where we visited 18 months or so ago, in Northern NSW.

I have now started reading The Passage by Vance Palmer, published in 1959. It's set on a coastal passage about a family who is scraping by living off fishing. The setting is tiny coastal settlements on the brink of subdivision and tourism. Good reading.

Economics?

Maybe not.Three books at the library today, one from The Australian's 2011 Best Books list on Keynes, the economist credited with helping lift Britain out of its financial slump in the 1930s. It looks to be quite well written and important because of its relevance to current financial issues, shall we say. The book is quite a compact, lightweight paperback. Not a big dull Economics sort of text book thing at all. But I am not sure my heart's in it. Have made a start instead on Tamarisk Row by Gerald Murnane, published in 1974.

Mary Poppins

I have just finished The Shiralee - a shiralee is a swag, a burden. Lovely story, some nice images of dusty, tough rural Australia. A bittersweet story about a drifter Dad with his little girl Buster. Made into a movie in 1987.

There are another couple of books to pick up from the library which I will try and do tomorrow. Meantime I have started reading Mary Poppins as an iBook on the iPad. PL Travers was born in Maryborough, just up the road in Queensland. The show Mary Poppins is currently on in Brisbane.