This book of short fiction is another of my Library discoveries: I’ve heard Helen Garner’s name a lot — she’s pretty big in Australian literature — so I grabbed this book of short fiction to gain a taste of her work. It’s pretty awesome; the stories focus on the dynamics between people in short episodes. Some of the stories are longer and more involved, and others are only a page or two. She uses different styles of voice and flow, all convincingly. Garner’s writing is really sparse, not a word wasted, but there is so much conveyed, the priorities and attitudes that make up a person’s whole personality are immediately real. Their lives, with all the pain, tedium, joy and humour that make up normal lives, feel clear and believable. The actions and dialogue of the characters are similarly thoughtful and perfectly paced, and the settings are flawless. The precision of Garner’s writing is awesome; this book was a very good introduction to her voice.

(Oooh, and I found some more: some of her articles for The Monthly. Fantastic stuff.)

The White Album– Joan Didion

A random book! I grabbed this one off the sorting shelves at the library because…well, because I had a bunch of others and her blurb looked interesting. And damn if it wasn’t interesting! The White Album is a collection of essays by US journo Joan Didion, reflecting on a few different aspects of American culture at the close of the 60s. As someone who doesn’t have any experience with US culture in the 60s (apart from general cultural understanding and references to it in the Simpsons), it was eye-opening to read about it from the perspective of someone watching its close. Didion’s disillusionment with the way the ideals of the 60s played out is worth chewing over. The emotive power behind the push for revolution that fascinated a lot of people in the 60s seems betrayed or washed over by the influence of media, adopted by many as a social trend rather than a true commitment to change. The essays in The White Album pull apart social meaning as embodied in US institutions like Hollywood, Ronald Reagan’s house, and assorted major social/political figures from the 60s and 70s, and I loved it. Not due to schadenfreude (WHERE ARE YOUR GODS NOW?) but because as you strip away false icons, you create room to find true ones. Didion looks at icons of powerful personal significance to her — unexpected ones like the Hoover Dam and an orchid breeder in Malibu — and from there finds meaning and relevance in a period of cultural chaos. This is the most potent thing the book gave me, I think: a challenge to accepted cultural elements that are supposed to be embraced, the freedom to express disappointment or regret when those cultural elements don’t deliver on their promises, and an example of finding meaning and truth outside those elements.

In Defence of Food — Michael Pollan
I heard an interview with Michael Pollan in 2008 where he discussed the opening line to In Defence of Food and the principles by which to eat that he reaches over the course of the book. The opening line “Eat food. Not too much. Mostly plants.”, when discussed in a bit more detail, was seriously eye-opening for me and triggered a way of thinking and perceiving the standard Western food culture. Over the following years, I changed a lot. I already thought of myself as a healthy eater, but as read more — food and cooking blogs especially — I realised how many little fibs I’d bought into in my food purchases. Gradually, most of the processed stuff we bought disappeared from our pantry, as M and I got better at making our own stuff. I read The Omnivore’s Dilemma, Pollan’s first book, which examined the way food gets to our tables — looking at agriculture, abbatoirs, hunting, growing, etc. It was awesome and really set the path of growth for the way I now look at food. So it was a bit of a surprise to remember that I never got around to reading In Defence of Food until now. It was fantastic. I spent a bit of time nodding in agreement — “Ah yes, Michael, well put. I would have said the same myself.” — but nipped that in the bud. It’s short, arresting and well-written. It’s divided into three parts: the first is an explanation and history of nutritionism and a discussion of the problems that have emerged as a result. The second is a history of the Western diet (changes in agriculture and industrialised food processing, for example) and how our diet got to the state it’s in. The third is the “now what” bit: an explanation of how to break free of a lot of the problems inherent in our food culture and how to find out what to eat. It’s a fantastic book: it’s clear, short, gripping, interesting, logical, and enthusiastic. While I admit it matched the way I feel about food and eating already, so I’m a bit biased: I loved it. It’s exciting and positive and liberating.

Sweet sauerkraut stockings I like Mr Pratchett’s writing. After a fairly long-term dalliance with the audiobooks of the Discworld series (as read by the totes awesome Tony Robinson), I got into reading the books proper comparatively late in life. I have a clear memory of a schoolmate cackling uncontrollably reading Pratchett’s Bromeliad Trilogy in primary school. She read bits out to me and I cackled similarly and thought this Pratchett cove would be well worth investigating further. Being swift of mind and action, I got into reading my first Pratchett novel some 19 years later. Anyway, here we are: the first two of the Ankh-Morpork City Watch series, starring the fine Sam Vines, Carrot Ironfounderson, Sergeant Colon and Corporal Nobby Nobs (and others). The City Watch series is set in the Discworld’s capital city, Ankh-Morpork and the books lightly parody motifs from cop movies/tv shows/books. They’re fast, funny, clever, and the characters are likeable, believable and good to be around. In short, they’re on par with most of Pratchett’s excellent Discworld books. (High five, Terry!)

Special Topics in Calamity Physics – Marisha Pessl

I have had Special Topics in Calamity Physics on my shelf since — err, umm — 2007? A damned long time. I don’t know why, but I’ve started it three or four times and then stopped or been distracted or whatever. And then the other day I figured I’d give it another go and bowled it over in a weekend. Far out, brussels sprout! So it’s about Blue van Meer and her father Gareth van Meer: her mother died when she was a little girl, and her father is a wandering academic whose career shifts from academic post to academic post, leading them all over the country. For her final year of high school, he decides to settle in one town for the full twelve months: she becomes involved with a standoffish, talented clique under the friendship/mentorship of teacher Hannah Schneider. They’re a mysterious group, and Blue isn’t entirely sure why she’s been accepted so easily, but after a death at a party they shouldn’t have been at, followed by more frightening events, Blue is forced to start investigating some fundamental assumptions she’s always held about her life. The book turns from a slightly sinister high-school-brilliant-young-things vibe to a murder mystery/investigation of grief and meaning to an international thriller in fairly short order, and it kinda threw me when it happened. My expectations were pretty roundly shaken. But the writing style is a hoot: a result of her father’s approach to parenting, Blue’s narrative is rich with references, commentary, identification of types, and comparative analysis. It’s fun and engaging to read, although it gets a little thin during Blue’s deepest moments of crisis. Not a bad book at all, but God knows why I left it so long to get to.

Glamorama – Bret Easton Ellis

Back on the Bret. Glamorama is Ellis’ 1998 black comedy thriller which is so crammed full of awesome there’s no wonder it clocks in at over 500 pages. You could have an eye out with this book. The characters follow on from The Rules of Attraction, but the plots of the two books aren’t really related (Patrick Bateman, the American Pyscho, also makes an appearance). Told by Victor Ward — model, club wheeler-dealer-type, glamourite and all-round fancypants — the book plays heavily on the celebrity-obsessed atmosphere of 1990′s New York clubland/fashion world. There are whole sentences that are nothing but strings of Names; Victor sometimes speaks in just song lines; the books groans with references. The sophisticated, sociopathic, internationally-influencing world of the supermodels, actors and musicians that Victor twirls through blends persuasively into the sophisticated, sociopathic, internationally-influencing world of terrorists and sadists that Victor finds himself tangled in. There’s issues of identity, value and image, and questions about reality, perception and control. The violence and sex scenes are classic Ellis, straight-up American Pyscho standard, which would probably be a bit rough if you weren’t used to it. I found Victor aggravatingly dumb and unobservant for the first part of the book: anything outside his sphere of modelling/clubland/etc. obviously baffles him. But once I accepted that, his narrative voice worked really well. As a reader, you’re sporadically thrown into the role of audience or viewer, music clues included, and then partway through the book, Victor starts dropping references to “the script”, “Makeup and Wardrobe” and talks openly with “the director” about “the set”. More film crews are introduced, until there’s conflict between the crews filming Victor’s actions, and Victor’s sense of reality seems anchored on the presence of these crews. As he undergoes crisis, the roles of the film crews change, and they gradually retreat. It’s exciting, bleak, funny and I liked it. Next up: Imperial Bedrooms.

See, here’s why I love libraries. Book shops you gots to spend coin, so you get a bit risk-averse and you’re more likely to go with what you know. Second hand book shops, less so (less coin, so less risk) so that’s a bit better. Libraries: zilch. And if you work at a uni and have a brace of libraries at your whim, well, you’re laughing. So I picked up Sontag’s The Volcano Lover at random. I didn’t read the back because it was all quotes from other people (“slippery, intelligent, provocative” and “a banquet of a book”) and I don’t get much out of such blurb-substitutes; I liked the cover, and the font, and the whole book had a nice, well-thumbed feel to it. Plus: library means free. So I borrowed it and damned good it was too. Thing is, if I’d read a blurb, I probably wouldn’t have bothered it, because it’s not at all the kind of book I normally read, and therefore I would have missed out. I like that. Low entry cost = more likely to take a gamble on not liking it = a chance to explore new stuff. It’s good for the brain, that kind of gamble. So, The Volcano Lover is an historical novel, about the lives and loves of Sir William Hamilton (an English diplomat stationed in Naples). But that is too brief an explanation: it is also about the love between he and his second wife, Lady Emma Hamilton; and the love between him and Admiral Horatio Nelson (in a strictly platonic sense); and the love between Lady Emma Hamilton and Admiral Horatio Nelson. But then that description excludes his passion for collecting, his elevating taste, his beloved Vesuvius, his first wife Catherine, the French revolution, the occupation and briefly Republican state of Naples — there is a lot going on in this book. But it’s only now when I think about it I realise how much: what a broad, tumultuous, ongoing world this book shows. The people are astonishingly vivid: you feel like there aren’t really any baddies in the book, just people who do questionable things for understandable reasons (understandable in the context of their personalities and circumstances, I mean). There’s empathy and compassion for the humans crowding this book: it’s exciting and engaging, challenging, sad and really, really interesting. I really enjoyed the introspective parts of the book, where the perspective of the collector or lover were reflected on. One of the back cover not-blurbs says the author has “produced something lovely and substantial, and shown us how we might free ourselves”. I liked that. It was beautiful, entertaining and dramatic; it was insightful, intelligent, provoking and gave me a lot to think about.

Foucault’s Pendulum – Umberto Eco

In finishing this book, I’ve finished my more-than-a-year-long Eco binge. This is the last one I’ve got on the shelf, and I’ve been in Eco-land for quite some time now. This is a pretty intense book, but like all of Eco’s stuff, it’s tremendously rich and deep and satisfying. So there are three editors at a publishing house, who are a little bored with all the occult stuff they’re working with, so they start feeding scraps of the occult manuscripts and scraps of mass culture and established facts into a program which begins randomly linking things together. From these random associations, the trio develop a plan that spans centuries and empires and has a centuries-long goal of domination and power. And then people start getting killed, and they realise the plan might have struck a little closer to truth than they intended. It’s pretty exciting and full of lush, diverse, interesting language, moods and settings. But it is also long and that’s what I had a bit of trouble with. About two-thirds of the way through I started feeling bogged down, having trouble keeping track of all the details of the plan they had developed. I had a break and then had a bit of trouble getting back into it: then I set my jaw, narrowed my eyes, brushed my hair and decided to finish it. I went back a little and found the thread again, then charged ahead. And it was totally worth it. It’s such a rich book. There’s a lot to chew on: themes of finding or making meaning in a potentially random world; finding meaning in life; history and heroics, both personal and global; and making connections to people, making connections between events and changes in the world. See? Lots going on in there. A really good book, but a long one and one that needs you to pay attention.

Extremely Loud and Incredibly Close – Jonathan Safran Foer
So on a recent flying visit to the library — I was there for a meeting that wasn’t held there and was on a different day altogether, talk about a planning fail — I paused by the sorting shelves and scooped up a bunch of books to take home with me. One was The Volcano Lover (see above), another was Extremely Loud and Incredibly Close. I like the way books arrive in my reading line of sight: in this case, I liked the cover and remembered an interview with Jonathan Safran Foer I liked (about another of his books, Eating Animals), and figured these were as good reasons as any to borrow it. Dudes, it totally rocks! What a great book. So the narrator is nine-year-old Oskar Schell, whose father was killed in the September 11 attacks. As the book unfolds and he pursues a mysterious key he finds in his father’s possessions, you get to experience Oskar’s grief, confusion, and fascinating and clever mind as he comes to terms with what happened and why. It’s beautiful. The story of the family grows and blooms, and you’re experiencing these revelations with Oskar, and you’re feeling his confusion and frustration and fear as he goes. Never — not even once, not even just a little — does Foer allow the narrative voice to stray into twee, patronising territory; not once does Oskar feel like a narrative tool or plot device. I loved it. I had to really tear through it, too: a day or so after I started reading, I got an email from the library that another user had requested it, so I had to get it back sooner than anticipated. I roared through it in about three days, and I can testify that it is totally readable and digestible in such a short period.

Less Than Zero – Bret Easton Ellis

I finished American Pyschoa while back and it was so great it left me hankering for more of Ellis’ slightly bleak, sharp, fascinating voice. Less Than Zero is all about rich teenagers in LA, in the Christmas break between college terms; they’re bitter and bored, already hollow and dry from an overdose of advantage and privilege. There weren’t many people in this book I liked, but it totally worked. It’s gripping, interesting and clever. It nudges themes of purposes, indulgence, and affluent atrophy but never imposes them on you. There’s one or two unsettling scenes, which I found harder to read than American Pyscho, since I didn’t have the option of attributing the horror to an unreliable narrator’s fevered imagination. Having said that, those scenes contribute a lot to the book and the characters, so the book would be worse without them.

Rules of Attraction – Bret Easton Ellis

Since I can’t get enough Ellis at the moment: Rules of Attraction is another fantastic one. This time it’s a group of students at uni, and the dynamics of their sexual relationships is the focus. The narrative voice shifts between the three main characters, and it’s really interesting to see the different perspectives on the same scene or conversation. One of the characters is Sean Bateman, brother to Patrick Bateman, the psycho of American Psycho. That was pretty cool: the events of the two books don’t coincide, but there’s an overlap. I liked that. Since American Psycho came next, I wonder if Ellis was already thinking about Patrick as psychopath when he brought him into this one? The environment is really immersive and the characters, though flawed and frustrating, are real and convincing, and ultimately you (well, I) end up caring about them. Another thing I really, really liked about this book: the way it starts and ends mid-sentence. I love that because it extends the scope of the story, making it feel like a much broader world than what you could otherwise find confined to those pages. Good stuff. Now reading: Glamorama, the next Ellis book after American Pyscho.

The Art of Disappearing: The Buddha’s Path to Lasting Joy – Ajahn Brahm

And now for something completely different. Stepping aside from devolution, overindulgence, and drug and sexual debauchery, here’s a book about Buddhist meditation. And a damn good read it is, too. Clear, easy language, interesting ideas and a good construction: this is great reading. I am pretty ignorant about a lot of Buddhism, especially the meditation practices, so this has been a teaching book. I worried it would be too advanced for me, since there’s a fair bit of assumed prior knowledge, but nothing you can’t figure out after five minutes with the Googles. The simplicity and clarity of the language have struck me, again and again: it’s a really easy and lovely book to read, breaking down some fairly complex ideas and encouragements to practice that could be quite challenging. Having said that, it’s worth taking your time to stop and think about what you read. It’s taught me a lot and given me a lot to chew on, regarding mindfulness, calmness, stillness and peace. Definitely worth reading.

A Walk in the Woods: Rediscovering America on the Appalachian Trail – Bill Bryson

More than anything in the world right now I want to go bushwalking. I have a fruity French dessert cooling on the bench; a cup of tea beside me; an awesome job and a shitload of books and knitting to play with, and I want to chuck it all in and go bushwalking. That’s what this book does (although I admit the urge is never far from the surface with me). I think this is one of Bryson’s best books. He combines his excellent sense of humour with involved research and human study. The relationship between him and his hiking companion, an old friend who, in intervening years has developed and recovered from alcoholism and gained a lot of weight, is really interesting and touching — the characterisation of his friend is fantastic. There’s introspection and analysis, as Bryson looks at why he — or indeed anybody — would find the hike so appealing and satisfying; and this is woven around a history of the trail, travel observations and commentary on the natural and man-made surroundings. It blends together really well.

Coraline – Neil Gaiman

What an awesome book. Short and juicy, with not one excess word or scene. It’s creepy, exciting and fun and it rocks. Coraline and her parents move into a new flat with a mysterious door that opens on to a brick wall. One night, Coraline hears the door swing open and discovers a passageway leading to a parallel world, where bizarre caricatures of her parents (and the other people in her world) live. They encourage her to stay, but she returns home: shortly after this, her parents disappear and Coraline has to go back through the door to rescue them. Totally cool and exciting.

American Pyscho – Bret Easton Ellis

I did a teensy bit of work experience in a bookshop in 2000, when American Pyscho was first blowing everybody’s mind, and it had to be shrink-wrapped on the shelf, lest some innocent browser missed the title, cover art, blurb and back-cover reviews and didn’t realise the book was moderately confrontational in its psychopathic violence and was accidentally traumatised while flicking through the pages. There are some startlingly violent chapters in here (pardon me while I clutch my pearls) and some pretty mean sex violence as well, but frankly, it works. The narrator is a classic rich yuppie riding the high that 80′s New York promised to that lot: I wasn’t there, so I can’t say for certainty it’s an accurate portrayal, but it feels very authentic. The obsessive fixation of the author with his daily routine, his clothes, his life, his coworkers’ and friends’ appearance; the details are overwhelming, suffocating. The lifestyle he leads feels hectic, desperate, shallow and occasionally terrifying. If I tried to live the way he does, well, I’d probably end up a bit odd too, but mine would manifest in obsessive cake stomping or something, not brutalising people. The question that hangs over you the whole time you read is “did he or didn’t he?” And there’s a lot to throw doubt on everything he claims to have done. Something I found really interesting is that I desperately wanted him to be an unreliable narrator. Even though I knew he was fictional, all his victims were fictional, I was already so emotionally attached that I really, really wanted him to be all fantasy. As a reader, that’s a testament to Ellis: he created characters so real and believable as to evoke understanding, if not outright sympathy, so that I wanted the horrific things to be fantasies. To summarise: violent, yes, but compelling, clever, interesting, and really thought-provoking. The themes of materialism and the lies of success really echoed and left me churning them over and over well after I finished. Pretty awesome.

Interesting (or not) (possibly not) (probably not) side note: the last Bill Bryson book I read was also about discovering America, small town America, called The Lost Continent. I read it immediately adjacent to Kerouac’s On the Road, which is also about discovering America; and as some sort of complement, read Neil Gaiman’s Neverwhere, an intensely English-flavoured book. This time around, I’m matching Bryson’s A Walk in the Woods with Bret Easton Ellis’ American Pyscho and contrasting it with Neil Gaiman’s Coraline. An interesting blend, fer sher.

On Ravelry, folks talk of going cold sheep, committing to no-yarn-buying until a certain target is reached, usually a destash goal or a time limit. I’m starting to think I need to go cold  sheep on my books, which would be cold tree or something. Only some of them are ebooks, so that would be cold…mobi?  Got a few off my list lately:

The Female Eunuch – Germaine Greer

Fascinating, stirring, occasionally annoying, and crowded with fictitious characters. This was a pretty cool book, altogether:. Took me a long time to read, because there’s a lot to get through. In case you’ve had your head stuffed under the carpet for the past billion years, this book is widely regarded as the one that set off the whole pesky feminist movement (well, that’s how it’s seen in some quarters, anyway). At its core, it argues that a patriarchal society fundamentally dehumanises women by sexually neutering them; in taking away their sexuality (defused through various bewildering methods of repression, judgment, criticism and threat), the culture takes away women’s personhood. They become objects — mother, wife, mistress — rather than people. The book explores this theory in range of life contexts, looking at attitudes towards women’s bodies, education, careers, motherhood, relationships and so on. And overall, it’s pretty compelling: while this is an older text now (first edition: 1970), we haven’t progressed so far as a culture that these scenarios are laughable or antiquated. There’s a lot to like in this book:  there’s a lot of agitation, frustration and anger, as if we needed reminding why the feminist movement needs to keep barrelling along. It’s also funny, sharp and really readable. But at the same time, there are a arguments that seem a bit strawman-ish: depictions of fictitious scenarios that are then challenged and criticised. But on the other hand, these arguments portray undeniably familiar tropes that deserve to be challenged. At times the book charged way ahead of me and I had trouble keeping up with where the arguments were going; when Greer started describing her vision for communal childrearing I was surprised and had to backtrack to find out how we got there. But ultimately, this is the kind of text that makes you open  your eyes and look around and start questioning some of those familiar tropes I mentioned — questioning leads to challenge and thinking, at least some of the time, so that alone is a damn good thing.

The Collected Short Stories of Roald Dahl (Volumes 1 and 2)

While working my way through The Female Eunuch, I was, on the side, dabbling in some dear old Dahl. Ever read the short stories? No? Just the kids’ books, huh? Well, I’ll wait — chase up…hmm,  which first…how about Kiss Kiss? Have a look. Yeah. Creepy as fuck, eh? I loved Roald Dahl’s books as a kid, not least of all because some had the thread of macabre running through them — the cruelty in Matilda, the gross aggression of the Twits, and the sinister Witches and giants (from The BFG) — and in the short stories, he really pumps it up. They’re fantastic. Many of them are creepy and clever and cunning; they’re weird and fast-moving and gripping and they are great. This collection included Kiss Kiss, Over to You (all stories about war pilots and flying: creepy, clever, thoughtful and interesting), Switch Bitch,  Someone Like You and Eight Further Tales of the Unexpected. Particularly satisfying stories: “The Way Up to Heaven”, “The Visitor”, “The Old Switcheroo”, “Lamb to the Slaughter”, “Neck”, “Mr Botibol” and “The Bookseller”. Oh, and “Skin”. And — oh look, just read them. They’re gripping and interesting and have a very vivid, Dahl-esque, English flavour.  Enormously good.

Burning Your Boats: The Collected Short Stories - Angela Carter

Whiplash! Going from Dahl’s short stories to Carter’s gave me serious author whiplash. So completely different in tone and themes. Angela Carter’s stuff is terrific: I love Nights at the Circus, and The Magic Toyshop was a corker too. Burning Your Boats is a complete anthology, containing the books Fireworks: Nine Profane Pieces, The Bloody Chamber and Other Stories, Black Venus and American Ghosts and Old World Wonders, and six other stories that were never collected (three early stories at the beginning off the book and three misc at the end). Carter tends towards the lush and detailed, and it’s interesting to read the stories in chronological order like this, because that lushness and detail is at its heaviest in her early stories, gradually thinning as her career progressed. So while I found the first three early stories a little unpromising — not bad, but not quite my cup of tea — by the time I had reached halfway through Fireworks I was pretty interested. And then The Bloody Chamber and Other Stories – a collection of retelling of fairytales — had me completely hooked. Favourites from Burning Your Boats: “The Bloody Chamber”, “Puss-in-Boots”, “The Kitchen Child”, “John Ford’s ‘Tis a Pity She’s a Whore’” and “Gun for the Devil”. Really juicy stories, ripe with action, sex, laughter and conflict, as with the best of Carter’s stuff.

The Crying of Lot 49 - Thomas Pynchon

I started reading Lot 49 in uni but never finished it. (True story.) Found it in my collection the other day and read it, cover-to-cover, in one sitting (more or less — there were toilet breaks). Oh wow, man, far out, awesome. Oedipa Maas is summoned as the executrix of an ex-lover’s will and finds herself nudged all around by hints of a conspiracy: but you can never be sure if it’s in her head or if it’s an external force she’s stumbled on. This kind of book is perfectly suited to a single-sitting reading, because the story builds momentum and you end up sustaining the perfect headspace for the creeping feeling of paranoia that Oedipa develops. Pynchon’s got a reputation for being twisty and involved and complex, but Lot 49 is readable and interesting, with plenty of motion and dialogue and interesting characters. I think it’s a good intro to his stuff — I hope so, because I’ve got V and Gravity’s Rainbow lined up next.

In a misguided moment of honesty, I decided to have a squiz at how many books I’ve got on the go at the moment: if I only count the ones I’m earnestly reading and can confidently explain what plot point I’m up to, it’s still too many. Good problem to have.

Vinland – George Mackay Brown

I was seduced by the damn gorgeous cover: muted fern green and fawn, with ghostly nordic/celtic coils watermarked over a hazy picture of a sailing ship. Serrr-wooon. Vinland, my Vinland! It tells the life story of Ranald Sigmundson, starting off with him going to sea with his Dad, leaving his poor old Mum to try and run the farm on her own. Ranald shows preternatural sea legs and good sense: he runs off from his Dad (who’s a total stinker, by the way) and joins a merchant ship. They find out later that his Dad’s ship was wrecked shortly after, and so begins Ranald’s life on the merchant ship. He shows preternatural skill at trading and bargaining and earns the ship a tidy profit. When he eventually makes it home and is reunited with his Mum, he shows preternatural skill in running the farm: he single-handedly drives out the blackguards who have been exploiting her, resurrects the farm’s good name and rules with wisdom and courage unheard-of in one so young! And so on. There’s lots of moments were someone refuses to be taken in by pomp and sasses an authority figure (usually our hero, and usually a king/prince/laird/etc.), and then the authority figure quivers briefly with rage before slapping their knee and ROARING with laughter, declaring that it’s a refreshing change to be told the truth. The sassy individual is then rewarded with a position of advisor and usually a fair whack of gold. (I suspect in real life the sassy individual would be killed fairly quickly). Our hero marries and has children, and the lives and adventures of those children as they grow and have their own children is recorded. The hero ages and his thoughts turn towards preparing himself for death.

On the whole, it’s not a bad read, but it’s a bit hard to take it seriously. The hero is preternaturally good at everything he turns his mind to, and shows wisdom and compassion beyond his years, even when he’s really old. A few of the characters are predictable and so feel easy and two-dimensional, and there’s one or two scenes whose development/endings are obvious as soon as they’re established. Having said that, it’s an interesting reflection on life and the atmosphere is lush and enjoyable. Vinland is set in pre-Christian Scandanavia, so there’s lots of revelry (mead, bread, cheese and honey, mostly), some battles, farming, and a fair bit of politics. Pretty escapist stuff, with a shake of reflection and philosophy.

so i am glad – A. L. Kennedy

My second dabble with A.L. Kennedy’s work, the first being Original Bliss, so i am glad tells the story of the relationship between (main character/narrator) Jennifer Wilson and a dude who shows up and moves into the vacant room in her share house. They’re expecting someone called Martin, so she calls him Martin: but it becomes apparent he is not Martin, but Cyrano de Bergerac, the 17th-century French writer and duellist. The way their relationship unfolds is really lovely and interesting: there’s setbacks, and both Jennifer and Cyrano have some very dark patches in their lives. But the strength and beauty, tenderness and growth that becomes apparent as their relationship deepens is touching and warming. I liked it a lot. Jennifer is a character who feels real to me: the narrative voice is convincing, fluid and articulate, especially the way she nudges against difficult matters and then darts away, to later talk about in depth — it feels a lot like talking to a new friend, as they test the waters to see how much to reveal about themselves. The change and growth in Jennifer over the book is wonderful. This isn’t a story that shirks the grime of ordinary lives, but it glows beyond it. I like it. Currently reading another one of Kennedy’s books, which I’ll talk about down the line. I like her stuff.

Quantum Man: the Undiscovered Sex – Ken Fegradoe

Okay, this one was tricky. The blurb opens with the question at the core of the book: “What does it mean to be a man in a world of dissolving sexual stereotypes?” The plot of the book is straightforward when you summarise it — it’s about the relationship between a man and his beloved partner, as they move in together and have a baby. But it covers a ton of turf in the process of answering the first question. The book explores the ideas of identity and what contributes to them — what makes a man, what makes a woman, what makes a child — and the way those ideas are challenged/demolished/reinvented in the context of a relationship. There’s a lot to like about this book: the sense of ideas bubbling and developing away as you read them, the sense of humour, the pace of the language (which isn’t necessarily a reflection of the pace of the plot, mind you: the baby’s birth takes two or three chapters). At first, I found it a bit self-indulgent and frustrating. I tend to be pretty sceptical of gender-based assertions, especially that motif of women being sacred, cosmic, in tune, emotionally fine-tuned, etc., while men have forced themselves away from their primary, intuitive understanding and civilised themselves to their detriment. I don’t think this is a gender issue: I think ignoring intuition is a person thing, regardless of gender. But I really dig the idea of fluid identity, reevaulated and reformed as your life changes and the people in it shift. So, overall: fun read, didn’t agree with all the ideas, but that’s totes okay.

Books are fun. Reader 4 lyfe, yo.

The Beauty Myth - Naomi Woolf

A major work in feminist literature, it’s kind of astonishing to realise this book was first published twenty years ago. Truefax – check Wikipedia. Most of the book could have been written in the past five years, except you’d notice the absence of references to Twitter and the whole stripping-as-exercise-no-really-this-is-what-empowerment-looks-like movement. The general thrust of this solid and stimulating tome is the Beauty Myth theory: as women have become more socially, economically, politically and sexually liberated, our approach towards women’s appearances and bodies has shifted in order to re-establish control and maintain the status quo of repression. While judgment of women’s appearances and punishment for failure to comply have been an element of life for a long time, the rise of women’s power has seen an accompanying but disproportional rise in the standard to which women are held, as well as in the punishment that women are subjected to for failure to comply. Woolf discusses the ways in which the Beauty Myth finds expression and opportunities for repression: through clothes, diet, makeup/cosmetics/cosmetic surgery and weight. I loved this book: I found it not too enraging (a risk with reading up on any feminist — no, any human rights — issues: you exhaust yourself in fury), but sobering and brain-feeding. It stimulated me and challenged me to keep challenging the world we’re all trying to waddle through.

The important thing to remember is the Beauty Myth isn’t some grand conspiracy (“Those pesky dames want the vote, eh? Let’s invent bulimia! MUAHAHA!”) but a social force that needs to be looked at squarely and consciously rejected. By having your attention drawn to it, you’re well positioned to start noticing and challenging the Beauty Myth, which is really the only way our culture will ultimately defeat it. And, frankly, once you notice it, you’ll notice it everywhere. That sounds a little ominous, but once you get your jaw off the ground and realise how crippled women can be by the way others claim jurisdiction over their appearance, you can start rolling your eyes, making comments, and enjoying a glass of wine with similar-minded folks. Thank Christ for that.

In full disclosure, I knew about the underlying theory of The Beauty Myth before reading and so was already kind of in agreement with Woolf’s ideas as I understood them. Reading the full text did nothing to change that. The book concludes with a square and uplifting chapter (square as in a solid-footed, direct eye-contact, listen-up kind of attitude) that incites people, women especially, to band together and counteract the Beauty Myth with the third wave of feminism. I’m a bit fuzzy on my feminist history, so I’m not sure what wave we’re up to,  some twenty years later: but it’s not hard to see that despite some changes, we’re still snagged by the Beauty Myth. It still handicaps the women’s rights movement, and you still hear women — especially, I’m sad to say, young women in their late teens and early twenties — saying they aren’t feminists, largely because there’s a lingering fear of being considered unwomanly, humourless and, worst of all, ugly. But that doesn’t mean the feminist movement has abated: the Internet may sometimes seem like a petrie dish of misogyny at times, but I’ve learned more about sexual diversity, acceptance, sexual rights, the lie of gender roles, and feminism/sexuality rights through the Internet than through any other medium. It’s my belief that the boom in communication the net offers is leading to a boom in seeing things from others’ perspectives, but also a boom in folks matching up ideas — folks who might not get a chance to talk to one another otherwise are suddenly matching their ideas up and this is generating momentum with the potential for wonderful social change.

Where was I? Oh, right: The Beauty Myth. Delicious brain fodder and, hopefully, a stimulus for changing the way you see our fallible Western culture.

The Consolations of Philosophy - Alain de Botton

De Botton is one of my favourite authors. I love his writing: he is funny, candid, moving and articulate. Makes me think and challenges the way I see the world. I cannot recommend The Art of Travel enough. Oh, and Status Anxiety — corking good reads, both of them. One of the biggest strengths of de Botton’s writing is the way he structures his books: he uses chapter and subchapter groupings as a way of keeping his books focused and ordered. Consolations is divided into six chapters, each targetting a particular ill of life (heartache, inadequacy, difficulties, and so on) and then matching a sample of a single philosopher’s work to it. This way, he proceeds through the works of Socrates, Epicurus, Seneca, Montaigne, Schopenhauer and Nietzsche. He keeps each chapter brilliantly concise and that’s what I admire most about his work: focus and brevity. He doesn’t attempt to go into too much detail with each philosopher, just enough to give historical context and a wee bit of characterisation, and then enough of that philosopher’s work to address the topic of the chapter. So this isn’t necessarily the book to turn to if you have to write a graduate thesis on Seneca’s attitude to grapes: but it is the book to turn to if you haven’t read a lot of philosophy, or if you’re the kind of person who assumes philosophy is some kind of ivory tower wankers’ hobby (honestly, the next person who tells me that philosophers don’t deal with real-world problems is getting a lecture about the way pro sportspeople are isolated from reality and then a freaking fork to the eye). You can really treat each chapter as a sample of that philosopher’s work, a jumping-off point.  The whole book is fun, interesting and stimulating. It’s also triggered an unexpected itch to read Nietzsche.

Original Bliss - A.L. Kennedy

So I was having a funky day the other day. I’ve hurt my hip running, so I was limping and feeling pretty sorry for myself. I’m glad it started raining — pathetic fallacy — while I hobbled to my happy place: the library near work. If there’s anywhere you can indulge in the kind of slow sidling walk which was an enormous relief on my sore leg, it’s between the shelves of the library. I was still burning for de Botton, so I was hunting for a copy of How Proust Can Change Your Life and my eye was caught by the vivid orange cover of Original Bliss. There were a few other Kennedy books on the shelf that I picked up as well, but Original Bliss is where it starts. It tells the story of the relationship between Mrs Brindle and Mr Gluck. She’s an abused, insomniac housewife in a crisis of faith and he’s a genius psychologist with an obsession with fringe pornography: she is fascinated by his work and thinks he might be able to help her find her faith, and he is in turn inspired by her and thinks she might be able to help him overcome his obsession. From this starting point, deep and complicated feelings emerge. It’s a really good read, but there are a couple of weaknesses. First, the awesomes: the dialogue is rich and real. There’s not a lot of it, because this is a novella about growth, challenge and private obstacles and so there’s a lot more discussion of what’s going on inside the characters, as expressed through their activities and internal descriptions. But the dialogue that does appear is rich, clear and catches you. Secondly, I loved the scenes with Mr Brindle. His actions are altogether despicable, but very well written. Thirdly, I loved the character of Mr Gluck (his first name — and Mrs Brindle’s) emerge as the novella progresses and you become more intimately acquainted with them). He’s real and lively and interesting and someone I’d like to meet. I didn’t have the same immediate magentism to Mrs Brindle, and it took me a little while to get into where she was coming from, but I liked her all the same. Fourthly, this book felt real. The people and settings felt real, clear and sharp and, as a reader, that really squeezes my toothpaste.

There were a couple of things I had to think about. I’m not sure if these are weaknesses in my understanding or weaknesses in the writing, but I want to talk about them. The thing about Mr and Mrs Brindle’s relationship is that I’m not sure how she wound up there and what kept her there. She doesn’t come across as a cringing victim, too frightened to move; she comes across as tired and, having lost her faith, a little hopeless but patient. I think there’s a close bond between staying with her abusive husband and losing her faith — perhaps there’s an element of self-punishment in the ritualised demanding cooking and cleaning, as well as the unpredictable violence.

I also had a problem with Gluck’s pornography addiction. The addiction itself was pretty interesting, although I was initially a little defensive about it because I don’t subscribe to the assumption that liking S&M porn makes you a damaged deviant. Later Gluck makes it clear he gets off on porn because he knows it isn’t real; that he is sickened by real-life sexual violence, but then, I’m a little annoyed that he had to say that: it’s not like a character who loves action movies has to remind the reader that he’s doesn’t really like beating people up, ya feel me?  But the “cured by love of a good woman” motif gave me pause. I’m oversimplifying that, of course. He was cured because he wanted to be and she provided the motivation, but it’s still a theme I’m wary of. I think it runs the risk of being a little glib. Similarly, I’m a bit unsure about Mrs Brindle’s actions towards the end of the book: I don’t want to give away anything here, but I’m not sure I fully understood the motivations that lead to her gambling with her life in the way she did. On the whole, I think the story works really well. The characters are flawed and interesting, and it plays with themes of crisis and resurrection and love in a mature and thoughtful way. As I mentioned, I borrowed a couple of Kennedy’s other books and I’m looking forward to having a chew on them as well. I like the way she writes and I like her characters. Good stuff: worth reading.

The Magic Toyshop - Angela Carter

I first fell in love with Angela Carter when I read Nights at the Circus which I recommend to everyone which such fervour that I’m no longer sure where my copy is (if anyone sees it, tell it I miss it and I hope it’s doing well). Angela Carter writes exciting stories with vivid, sexy prose. Something that struck me in both Nights at the Circus and The Magic Toyshop is the presence of the body. As someone who is pretty constantly aware of the presence of her own playful walking meat, it’s wonderful to read prose that doesn’t disregard the flesh. I don’t mean to imply that the books are obsessed with the body in all its sweaty, tangy, smelly glory, but I mean it isn’t ignored, either. Smell and the sensations of hair and mouth caught my attention throughout The Magic Toyshop, and the bodies of the characters are more or less ever-present and part of their characterisation. It’s a bit of a coming-of-age story, but that’s a bit of an easy and twee category to apply. The main character, Melanie, is the eldest daughter of a recently-orphaned trio sent to live with her uncle and aunt, whom they have never met. Her uncle’s cruelty, her aunt’s muteness and her aunt’s brothers’ allure are mysteries she is thrown into and needs to make sense of, as she comes to terms with her growing sexuality. The undercurrent of menace in the house must be resisted and ultimately brought to the surface and fought if she is to survive in any meaningful way. It’s a really good read, but it felt a little underworked. I felt like it lacked the depth and polish of Nights at the Circus: it felt like a book that could have come early in Carter’s career, solid but could have been improved. The characters were interesting: they felt a little fairy-tale-ish at times, especially the cruel uncle: but as the uncle was challenged more and more, the other characters began to feel more real, flawed and attractive. I think The Magic Toyshop was great, but if you haven’t read much of Angela Carter’s stuff, I’d still push you towards Nights at the Circus first.

The Anatomist - Federico Andahazi

Hmm, a tricky one: the story of the trial for heresy of Mateo Colombo, a 16th-century Venetian doctor who claims to have discovered the clitoris. The heresy trial is obviously politically motivated, and to be honest I’m not really sure where the heresy thing comes into it. He frequently dissects cadavers to study anatomy and to give lectures on same, but he has friends in high places that stop him being charged with that; the heresy thing seems to be focused on the clitoris thing.  The trial makes for really engrossing reading.  Mateo Colombo’s argument is, essentially: the clitoris is to women what the soul is to men. In men, he argues, arousal doesn’t have to lead to orgasm because the passions subside, the erection goes away, and whatever was driving the arousal vapourises, all under the guidance and will of the soul. Women don’t have a soul, so they need a physiological way to govern their behaviour – the clit . This is how I understood his argument, anyway: I could be barking up the wrong fallopian tube here.  The misogyny of the folks in The Anatomist is overwhleming: there are only two women in the book, a superlative whore (complete with ominously empowering and lascivious episodes from her childhood), the best in the city and the most expensive; and a sweet widowed nun (whose clitoris is the one that Colombo discovers).  Mateo Colombo’s vanity is aggravating (“discovered” the clitoris my arse: as if people, especially women, didn’t suspect its existence already — I had this thought in mind before I even started reading, and it may have prejudiced me a bit); the rigid religious idiocy of the people involved makes his trial a strawman trial, and the conclusion left a kind of bad taste in my mouth. I didn’t feel like Colombo had fought the odds and overcome enormous prejudice to change the world, I just felt like he wanted to be famous as the man who discovered the clitoris. Lives of others were essentially unimportant to him, except as they reflected or enhanced his reputation: his treatment of the dying pope is particularly revealing, as is his behaviour towards the previously-mentioned nun. Whenever I dislike a book, I feel like I must have missed something, like I’m just not clever enough to appreciate it or I’m not looking at it the right way around or something; but The Anatomist really didn’t do much for me. Not a terrible book, but not a lot of fun, either.

Timepieces – Drusila Modjeska

A quickie! A selection of ten essays by an excellent prose-worker, which reflect on her writing life. Really really gripping: I ended up reading the lot in a day or two, but I had to go back and renibble a lot. They’re short pieces, but you’ll get a lot more out of the book if you take the time to pause between essays and think about each one.

It’s a really interesting book. (Side note: I say “interesting” a lot, but I say it seriously and with the intention of attracting its truest meaning. I say it to mean it fed my brain, left me thinking, and gripped my attention while I was reading.) Modjeska covers a fair bit of ground, but comes back to writing and culture, especially in Australia. Part I: In “Apprentice Piece” and “The Australian”, she talks about where she came from (as a writer), who influenced her, who taught her a lot (other writers, specifically). She also writes about location and creation in “Working Room”, and about meditation, travel, place and self in “The Traveller’s Husk”. She talks about the process of writing “Poppy”, especially how it affected her, her family and so on.

In Part II, she talks more broadly about art, literature and Australian culture. “On Not Owning a Grace Cossington-Smith” discusses the concepts of value, possesion, etc.; and framing of art and artists “Framing Clarice Beckett”. She also writes about memoir, fiction and the blurring of the two: the process of constructing memoir/biographies and how as much is revealed by what is kept in by what is glossed over — the construction of a reality for the reader is achieved as much by the lies told as the truth given (“The Englishness Problem”, “Memoir Australia”). In the last essay. she describes where she sees Australian writing at the moment and where it’s going. It was a really interesting read: quite short, but totally crammed full of interesting stuff. Loved it.

The Island of the Day Before - Umberto Eco

Oh Eco, I love you. This book is the first Umberto Eco novel I read. In the space of one weekend, while at the coast with my family, I devoured it: I had to write an essay on it for Postmodernism the day after we got back. I’m glad I didn’t try and do it in the space of one weekend again, but it’s such a lush, rich, wonderful book that it probably wouldn’t be a huge burden to try and do so. It’s spectacular. It explores time, history and narrative in a truly Eco-ish way. It’s the story of Roberto de Casale, marooned on the abandoned ship, the Daphne, which is anchored in the bay of a glorious tropical island. Roberto passes his lonely time exploring the ship and writing letters to his unrequited love, “the Lady”, upon which the narrator claims to have based the story. The letters tell the story of Roberto’s past and explain how he wound up in this situation, as well as giving you a chance to figure out his character and how his experiences have changed him. As the story grows, the spectre of his imaginary half-brother, Ferrante (who emerged during his childhood as a result of a hyperactive imagination and some false conclusions about his parents), grows and Ferrante begins to take on a life of his own; meanwhile, Roberto becomes aware of the presence of another person on the ship. The mystery thickens and that’s as much of the plot as I’m going to tell you. I’ve already used the word lush in this paragraph, but I’m going to say it again. Lush lush lush: the atmosphere and the landscape in this book are lush. It feels incredibly real and beautiful — you feel sea breezes and taste salt while you read. It’s exciting. Meanwhile, the book is presenting you with some pretty awesome themes.  How do experiences shape us? What stories do we tell each other; what’s the role of the audience and the listener in the stories we tell? Does the way we tell our stories shape our personalities? Is the Other a listener, an audience, or do they have their own narrative with which you need to interact? Some of the dialogue is dense and really thorough: you have to be prepared to seriously engage here, not skim — but if you’re reading anything by Umberto Eco, you probably know that already. In his writing, everything counts. Every thread is flawless and necessary and beautiful. It’s completely worth the concentration. Whenever I stopped for a break while reading, I felt like I was looking at the world with a new mind, refreshed with warm sea winds and excited about the world; an enormous reward.

Oh man, I love this book.  Easily one of my favourites.  My Eco-binge continues with Foucault’s Pendulum, totally different in flavour but just as exciting and gripping.

Moving on: I have been guzzling books lately, some really awesome ones. Wanna hear?

Poppy – Drusilla Modjeska

On the back cover of Poppy, if you go looking for the tags, it says “Biography” and “Fiction”: it’s a memoir about her mother’s life, mental unravelling and reconstruction, questing and death, all slightly fictionalised but not completely. This fascinates me. It asked me a lot of questions about how we know people. We construct people we love through our interactions with them, which means that all the children of a person have a different person as their parent. Perhaps, to share that parent through a book means to present the essential elements in such a way that the reader can construct their own understanding of that person — which doesn’t have to be the same understanding that the writer has of that person. The book talks about some other pretty potent stuff, too: the role of women in relation to those who depend on them (in the context of a traditional husband/children arena, specifically) — what gets given away in service to those who are loved? What are the beloved taking without realising? Can love be completely given without compromising so much of the self that it is nearly negated?

There’s a lot of loss in this book: it opens with Poppy’s birth with her dead twin, a figure that reappears sporadically while examining her life. There’s loss of marriages, lovers, life, mental stability, assumptions — people are changed and broken down and rebuilt (in other words, normal life) and all of this circles around Poppy.

I first read this book in 2001, when I was in my first year of uni, and I think I lacked the life experience to make sense of a lot of the themes in it: I found in interesting and moving, but reading it now has been a very different experience. Still a good book, it challenged me to think a lot about the way lives weave together; relationships, sacrifice, and how we give to and take from those we love.

Red Shoes – Carmel Bird

While I was hanging around the Australian women writers section of the library, hunting for Poppy, I took a wrong turn at Albequerque and found a shelf full of Carmel Bird, a writer of whom I had never heard. Intriguing! I grabbed Red Shoes because it was the most eye-catching in both design and blurb content.  It’s a book about the life of Petra Penfold-Knight, leader of a cult whose followers must all wear read shoes.  The story covers Petra’s life, from the grim circumstances surrounding her birth, through her childhood and young womanhood, to her rise as a cult leader. The cult is a terrifying place, through Petra’s work.

And a damn good read it is, too: it’s told by Petra’s guardian angel, which is a motif that carries the risk of being hackneyed or trite, especially if the writer chooses to use the angel as a moralising figure, but Bird completely avoids that trap and uses the angel as an omniscient narrator with personality. The agnel’s narrative is clever, clear and funny, but also describes some extremely grim and gothic matters, and those two elements work brilliantly togther.  It’s a really, really good read.

One of my favourite things about this book is its Footnotes: the last third — about a hundred pages, in the edition I read — is explanations of ballets, artistic works, historical figures and motifs in pyshcology or mythology that feed back into the book. There are footnotes to “Red Shoes”, “Cinderella”, “Catherine de Medici”, “mandala”, “reflexology” and so on. I loved this. You read through the narrative and, when prompted, you can go and read this background/supporting stuff in the footnotes and they’re like extra threads that you weave into the story. I thought it was totally cool; an awesome way of layering the motifs and meaning of the book. Loved it. I’m really looking forward to getting some more of Carmel Bird’s stuff when I take this one back to the library.

The Love-Artist – Jane Alison

Holy freaking cow, what a great book. So: Ovid, the justly celebrated Roman poet famed for his erotic poems Amores (The Loves) and Ars Amatoria (The Art of Love), is being toasted all over Rome; but overhead, there’s a little moralistic grumbling from Augustus, the rigid, censorial emperor. To let Rome cool off a little, to have a break following the release of his Metamorphoses and to seek inspiration for his next work, Ovid takes a break to the Black Sea, where he meets Xenia, a witch, a medicine-woman and a seer. They fall in love and he brings her back to Rome. The novel covers from the release of the Metamorphoses to Ovid’s exile: his ambitions, Xenia’s visions, the culture of Rome and the politics at play are all clear and simply shown — Alison hasn’t used a cast of millions, but creates Rome with fantastic succinctness — and the way relationship between Ovid and Xenia grows and swells and changes is gripping. Plus there’s some awesome sex, witchcraft, poetry, jealousy, prophecy, intrigue: the works. I love this book. It’s fast, sensually vivid, and exciting, and really well written. Nice one, Jane!