The Lit Girls

Cue Romania!

2009-05-17T05:18:00.004+10:00

'The Balkan girls, they like to party like nobody.' - Elena (not me, idiot)

Sunday, 5:28 a.m.

I love, love, love me some online video. SBS has posted the Eurovision semi-finals, and OH MY GOD, YOU GUYS. I generally avoid the semis because I like the competitors to be a surprise on the night, but I couldn't resist. I've got a LOT of time to kill right now (I'm here until 10:30 a.m., and I've been alone in the Tower since Tim left at about 1:30 a.m., and while we're on the topic, can we all pour one out for the Boston Bruins? [sigh]) and four hours of EuroTrash seemed to be the way to go.

I was not wrong. I think Finland is my favourite so far (how old is he?), but Azerbaijan has some yummy tronic dancing girls and I'm an easy sell. (I swear to god, one of them just mimed fisting. Inappropriate, Azerbaijan! Or are they just going for the voting bloc that got Serbia up in 2007?) And hey, if you want old dudes in sequins and borderline racism, we got that too!

I was also reminded for some reason of Billy Connolly's joke about his beard having turned 'Turkish hooker blond' as he got older. Can't think why that would have been....

And in case you were wondering, this is apparently what an anti-crisis girl looks like. I'm not sure which of those words is the biggest lie.

Cue Catherine Wheel.

2009-05-17T01:45:00.008+10:00

'This is good news... for a change.' - Tim

As you might have gathered, the observations haven't been going brilliantly. No fault of ours, fortunately, except in the sense that Tim is trying to get the telescope to do things it's never done before and so it's uncharted waters, but it's still been a bit much for him. With sincere and fully merited respect to the crew of people who have managed to keep this beautiful and intricate piece of machinery working for several decades, it seems that a fair bit of kludging goes on here, and while that's an important and useful skill, it can make unpicking subsequent errors quite tricky. There's been a lot of work involved, is what I'm saying.

Though not for me, clearly: I'm still just doing my overnights, pretty well oblivious to everything else. This shift is my last, sadly, and I'll be on a plane back to Sydney around 5:00 p.m. tomorrow. I would love to come back someday, though it's extremely unlikely that I'll have the opportunity, so I'm trying to soak up as much of it as I can. Tonight's excitement was that I got to drive the dish manually, which is the thing I was most afraid of doing, even though the likelihood of my causing a disaster is pretty slim. Everything went fine, though, due in no small part to Tim's presence. We had to take manual control unexpectedly because...

Oh dear. I've painted myself into a corner here. I've been trying to avoid talking too much science, mostly because I'm not confident that I have a good enough grasp of the details to be able to communicate them accurately, let alone clearly. But to tell this story I have to acquaint you with some of the more basic operational stuff, so please bear with me and my dodgy metaphors:

So. In this photo, you can see the Dish and the Tower (the three-story lighthouse-looking building on top of which the Dish sits). The angle of this photo gives you a good idea of how the Dish moves: it can move in a circle around the Tower like a train on a small circular track (this is called movement in azimuth), and it can move up and down in an arc, as if the pointy bit that sticks up were drawing a rainbow across the sky (this is called movement in zenith).

With me so far? Good.

The hitch is that it can't move fully in either azimuth or zenith. In azimuth, it is limited by cables that can wrap around the base of the Dish, so you end up with only about 265˚ of movement in either direction. In zenith, it's limited in two ways: 1) you don't want to crash it into the ground, so you can only start observing at about 30˚ off the ground/horizon; and 2) the Dish can't do a complete arc and will stop at about 1.2˚ off full vertical. This gives you a range of a bit under 60˚ in zenith. (The only time it goes to full vertical is when it's being 'stowed' (stopped and locked in place), and you have to move it there under manual control - the computer doesn't do it.)

If you try to exceed any of the limits in either azimuth or zenith, alarms will go off and the Dish will shut down, and you'll have to move it manually back into an acceptable range. This is what happened tonight: the source we were tracking ended up directly above the Dish for about 10 minutes, and because the Dish can't go to full vertical, we got the alarms and hoo-ha. We waited until the source had moved back into an acceptable range, and then we went upstairs to the Old Control Room (that's the one you'd have seen them using in the movie) and I pressed the required buttons and tweaked the required dials to get it down to 2˚azimuth, at which point the computer could take over again and tracking could resume. It was awesome in the literal sense of the word: I couldn't (and still can't) take in that my hand was moving 1,000 tonnes of metal and cable and genius. I am quietly falling in love with this telescope.

Unfortunately I was unable to have one of the biggest-deal experiences of being here, namely riding and climbing the Dish. While I wasn't sure that I'd climb all the way up (the pointy bit at the top of the photo? Yeah, there.), I was very keen to ride it: what happens is, they tip it all the way down on one side (a bit more than it is in the photo), and you climb up onto a staircase and into a little caged platform thing. You then stay on that platform while the Dish is moved to full vertical for stowing, and once it's stowed you walk across the Dish and climb up to the top, if you want/need to. I wasn't sure if I'd be able to manage the climb - I'm fine with heights as long as I feel secure, but I wasn't sure how I'd go with the open air around me - but I was definitely keen to ride it up.

There was a great opportunity for me to do this first thing on Thursday morning, the first day of observing, because the Dish had to be stowed so that some work could be done to prepare for Tim's daytime observations. Unfortunately, after conversations with some of the Dish staff on Wednesday night, Tim had sussed that there were already problems presenting themselves and he had to make an early-morning phone call on Thursday to try to sort some things out. This made us a couple of minutes late getting down to the Dish, and they had gone ahead without us, and because they only allow you to climb when the telescope's not in operation, for obvious reasons, and there were no other down-times planned for the time I'd be here... yeah. No riding the Dish for me. My fervent hope is that I'll be able to come back at some point and I'll get to try it then, but for now I'll have to be happy just to have run it for three nights. Which isn't all that hard, really.

Cue Smackmelon.

2009-05-16T03:50:00.008+10:00

'This is why I'm constantly giving my money to con men and joining cults: it's my damnable sense of the romantic and the picturesque.' - Jacob

Saturday, 4:02 a.m.

The thing about being here? Is that it's kind of terrifying, and gives you way too much time to think when fueled entirely by caffeine and processed foods. I'm trying to stick to good stuff, to peppermint tea and VitaWeats and apple cake I made for us at home, but sooner or later the snackies kick in and the next thing you know you're eating packet 'cream' of 'chicken' soup with chocolate NutriGrain bars crumbled in like crackers and drinking rocket fuel. Thanks at least in part to my effed-up body clock I'm wanting to nosh on something pretty much every hour, and I didn't bring a wide-enough variety of foodstuffs to sustain me without raiding the telescope's pantry for fakey-fake goodness. Want to know how fakey-fake? I'm craving McDonald's because I want real food.

I know.

I have to say that I kind of like the silence, much more than I expected that I would, though admittedly it's silence for a given value of silence: you can hear the Dish from all the way back outside the quarters, which is almost a full kilometre away. It's only a faint hum then, and only when it's moving, but it's there just the same. From here in the Control Room it's much louder, with all the creaks and cracks and mechanical whinging you'd expect from a 1,000-tonne telescope, and you've got lots of other ambient noise to contend with: the heating system, the notification noises on the computer (which are all set to be various bird calls, and in case you're wondering, the Bad Thing sound is a cockatoo), and the various alarms that you're always trying to avoid but sometimes forget about. Like the Dead Man's Handle set-up, which requires resetting by the operator every 14 minutes and 40 seconds. In theory, it's hard to miss: the primary panel with the countdown clock and the reset button is just above and to the right of the main computer (at which I am seated), and there are two accessory reset buttons at either end of the long desk on which the computers sit, as well as a motion detector that will reset the clock if it picks up any movement within the first four minutes of the count. But the panel is just outside of my peripheral vision; the accessory buttons are far away from me; and the backs of the chairs come way over my head, so unless I stretch my arm up the motion detector doesn't register me. All of which means that I have set the alarm off twice now, which is not a problem in that it buzzes for 10 minutes before it goes to the outside world, to give the operator a chance to wake up/finish making tea/come back inside/whatever before waking up innocent bystanders, but is a problem in that it scares the bejesus out of me.

That all having been said, though, I like having just those noises around me. I'll probably raid Tim's Terabyte of Music later this morning when the sleep dep is really kicking in, but for now it's quite lovely and peaceful to have only the sounds of the Dish: the whirring and purring when the telescope is slewing; the blowing of the vents and the barely-audible electronic buzzing of the computers; the whipbirds and bell miners and magpies who keep watch over Tim's programs and let me know what I have to do. I'm happy here.

Cue Stevie Nicks.

2009-05-15T20:19:00.006+10:00

'I'm feeling witchy.' - Tim

Friday, 8:20 p.m.

My current shift started about an hour ago, and I'm already worried about my staying power. I didn't get as much sleep today as I'd have liked, thanks to a group of visiting high school science teachers who are here for a weekend astronomy conference. It's a pretty awesome program, bringing teachers from all over Australia, and predominantly from rural areas, to Parkes to learn exciting stuff to add to their curricula, and I have no gripe with that. The problem is that they're teachers, which automatically means that you can't tell them anything (I say that as the daughter of a teacher, the niece of two teachers, the friend of many teachers, and a teacher myself), and they're science teachers who are here with other science teachers to worship at the altar of geekery, so the level of social skills is maybe not so high overall. And they reckon they're pretty special being here, which doesn't help. So when they're told by a mere staff member that the door to the women's quarters needs to stay shut because there's an observer sleeping all day (an observer who, unluckily, has the room closest to that door and therefore the common spaces where everyone congregates loudly), they don't give a damn, because a staff member is not someone they're interested in listening to - she doesn't even have a badge, for crying out loud! And thus if it's easier for them to keep propping the door open, well by god, they're going to do it. So poor Jenny kept shutting the door all day long, trying to keep things quiet for me, but the teachers were convinced they knew better, and kept re-propping it.

The teachers did not know better.

At any rate, I woke up pretty much just as the weekly barbecue was starting, which was good in a way, as I'd wanted to have dinner with a few of the staff I liked who only work weekdays - I leave on Sunday, so this would be my last chance to see them. Unfortunately, I got bumped from my seat at dinner (my mug of tea was in that spot for a reason, genius), and ended up at a table full of... visiting teachers! I sat very still and ate my food quietly and made my escape as soon as I could, but it wasn't nearly soon enough. I was near tears at this point, from the tiredness and the jangled body clock, and it didn't help that I had just learned from one of the staff that, due to a problem with some filter somewhere, all of the observations Tim and I had done for the first 36 hours were junk.

Tim, poor bugger, had had his own run-in with the teachers earlier in the day, while he was trying to sort out the problem that had effed up all the observations. The teachers came into the Control Room en masse and made such a ruckus that he had to shush them because he couldn't hear the guy he was working with, who was sitting only a foot away from him. And if that wasn't bad enough, 10 minutes later he had to do it again. All I could think of was my Dad, who would have turned around with That Look and snapped, 'You are GUESTS here, darlings. Behave yourselves.' Bad enough from kids, but these were grown men and women, and there is no excuse.

I realise I might sound harsh, but it's all a good example of how extreme circumstances can bring out the worst in people. It's tight quarters here, and the staff are overworked and often underslept, and, well, let's just say that I've met a couple of folks who I'm guessing would have been in specialised/selective schools throughout their formative years and are the best argument for public schooling I've ever seen. Parents, please: expose your children to normal humans. Your babies may be gifted and talented in all sorts of ways, but proper socialisation only comes from participating in society. Your kids need to learn to play well with others. I've seen what happens if you don't allow that to happen, and NO ONE THINKS IT'S CUTE.

[/ rant]

Anyway. As I said, I'm a bit worn tonight. My eyes are a bit blurry and scorched-feeling, and the fluoro lights and the computer screens aren't helping. I mean, I'm fine, and despite all my bitching I'm still thrilled to bits to be here, so all of this is just trivial and by-the-way. It's just... at some point you start expecting adults to behave like adults, you know? If you're visiting a place, you treat it with respect. If you're in someone's workspace, you do your best not to get in the way. You treat everyone with courtesy until/unless they give you a reason not to. You do not ever, EVER assume that you are special, because you are not. In fact, the more special the experience feels to you, the less special you are likely to be to the experience, if you follow me: it is a once-in-a-lifetime chance for me to be here, and I am fortunate enough to be one of the handful of people in the world who will ever have the opportunity to do what I'm doing. But I am well aware that The Dish and its staff do not need me (and they certainly don't need a bunch of high school teachers from Far West Woop Woop). I need them, and it therefore behooves me to make it as easy as possible for them to give me what I need.

Naturally, Tim worked all this out a long time ago: if you're nice to the people who Get Stuff Done, your stuff is much more likely to get done. And I think most people know this on some level, but they fall down by failing to realise that the people who Get Stuff Done are rarely the people with the fancy titles. Those people are often of great help, of course, but when it comes down to the daily nitty-gritty, they aren't the ones who will feed you or house you or make sure your paperwork gets to the right people on time. If you work in an office, get to know the admin staff. If you spend your time living at telescopes, get to know the support staff. These are the people who make the place run; they know the ins and outs and arounds; and they always have the best gossip.

But enough of this. There's more than enough wondrousness around me here to distract me from my bitching. The sky... wow. It's huge. It seems to stretch forever, even in daylight; at night it defies description.

And it's dark. The darkness here is much darker than the darkness I'm used to. I'd forgotten what real darkness actually looks like, and here? It is absolute. And because we're coming up to winter, it's pitch by 6:00 p.m. and stays that way for more than 12 hours. I keep forgetting how dark it is and stepping outside without a torch, only to take two steps and have no idea where the hell I am.

The flip side of this is that the sunshine seems really white, really clear. Maybe I'm used to the haze of the city and the ocean, but the light here is messing with me. The strength of it - not the heat, but the light - plays with my brain in some way that makes me feel like it's much later in the day than it is. Couple that with the dark dark darkness that kicks in so early and I'm misestimating the time by two or three hours all day and night.

And there are animals! Kangaroos galore, of course, because it's kind of a safe haven for them, but also rabbits and all kinds of beautiful birds. There are galahs, which I love beyond all reason, and a couple of different kinds of parakeet in garishly bright colours, and then tonight, on the drive up to the telescope from the quarters, we passed an owl sitting like lawn statuary on the side of the road. It was the first time I've ever seen an owl in the wild, and it was profoundly disturbing because even as we drove by I could feel it judging me. Owls, man. They're intimidating.

The kangaroos are my favourite, though. I know around here they're more like pests than anything, but they're so...I don't know, different. They've got these really sweet, goofy faces, like rabbits, stuck on these massive bodies that move in exactly the wrong way. They hop. That is not right.

The narrow road between the telescope and the quarters is densely lined with trees on both sides, which separate the road from the big paddocks where the kangaroos hang out. On our first day here, as Tim and I walked up the road to the telescope, the 'roos had taken up positions amongst the trees all the way up, and it was hard not to feel like we were on parade. This is the closest that Tim has yet been to any kangaroos, and he was equally impressed and spooked by the stern way they watched every step we took. This was surpassed, though, when a mob went hopping across the road all around us. Because the paddocks are fenced, most of them chose to follow the same path across, where there were open gates in the fences on both sides, but what made it quite funny for the human observers was that the path they followed was the old train tracks, and they went across in tight single file, right on each others' tails, so it looked for all the world like a bunch of kangaroos playing train. Awesomer.

Anything you can do...

2009-05-15T06:16:00.009+10:00

Well, hell, if J can hijack the blog to read whatever she damn well pleases, I can hijack the blog to talk about other things. And what I want to talk about at the moment is Parkes.

Some of you will know that I'm currently installed at the Parkes, NSW radio telescope, affectionately known as The Dish (yes, the one from the movie, and it's exactly like that). Tim, beloved flatmate and astroboy extraordinaire, was given a week's observing time out here, with the first 80 hours being continuous. Amazing though he is, even he could not manage that by himself, and when no other astronomers were available he asked if I'd be willing to pitch in. So here I am, running the telescope on the first of three overnight shifts: entirely alone, utterly unqualified and having very little concept of what I'm actually doing. Tim has promised to explain it to me better in the near future, but for now, all I'm doing is entering the same set of commands into a GUI over and over and keeping an eye on several computer screens to make sure nothing 'weird' happens. Which, you know, assumes that I'd recognise weird if I saw it.

The bigger part of my job, which hopefully I won't be called upon to do, involves making sure that the telescope doesn't crash into the ground or burst into flames. Those of you familiar with my track record with household appliances might be surprised that I'd be trusted with such a task, but what The Powers That Be don't know won't hurt them. An interesting aspect of this, though, is that my complete ignorance has nothing to do with my lack of astronomical qualifications or experience: Parkes is the only radio telescope still in operation that has to be operated on-site. All the rest of them can be done by computer from wherever you are in the world, but Parkes is old-schoolin' it and demands your constant physical presence in the Control Room (whence I write this entry). Everyone arrives here having no idea how to do it no matter how much other observing experience they've had, which is kind of heartening for me.

On the flip side, this degree of back-to-basics-ness means that it is not unlikely that I will be called upon to drive the telescope manually. Which is terrifying, frankly. I mean, I don't doubt that I could do it, but... look, right now I'm getting a minor case of the shakes (I've been up for 24 hours, less a three-hour nap that concluded 14 hours ago), and I really wouldn't trust my hands or my brain to do anything more complicated than make tea - and that includes carrying the tea up the steps to the Control Room without losing most of it.

I've also got a bit of that weird, addled euphoria that kicks in at a certain stage of exhaustion, so I'm bouncing around in my chair and singing loudly and giggling at nothing. What kills me is that Tim only went to bed a few hours ago and he had been working - and doing serious work, not just pushing buttons in sequence like I am - for 19 hours straight at that point, without even a meal break, and it barely showed. How the hell do you do this sort of work on those hours? I am only managing to be upright at this point thanks to his incredibly vast musical collection, which is bringing me back into contact with bands from my misspent yoof whom I saw dozens of times and fully adored and have since forgotten completely. Most of this happened in the move from tapes to CDs; a lot of my cassette collection never got replicated, and I am just now realising to what extent my life is the poorer for it. (Hi, Velvet Crush! Whatever happened to you guys?)

I hope to do a couple more entries because I have heaps more to say. The sky alone... I wouldn't even know where to start. It's just bigger here, in defiance of all logic and natural law. And The Dish itself is spectacular. It's mesmerising. In the middle of some truly spectacular scenery, it still manages to be the most beautiful sight in view. I'll try to put up some photos soon, not that they could ever do it justice.

In other, more Lit-Girls-y news, I have finally gotten around to _To the Lighthouse_, and in the words of Dorothy Parker, 'This is not a novel to be tossed aside lightly. It should be thrown with great force.' So after about 35 pages I'm giving it zero strings and chucking it at the nearest wall, with firm instructions for the stream-of-consciousness types to bite me. If you want my attention, earn it with a good story; don't try to trick me into feeling impressed because you talk in circles and struggle to stay on top of your own fancy foofaraw. I'm not that easily fooled, Woolf. Not by a long shot.

My Next Task: Glee ... with an e!

2009-04-05T21:17:00.006+10:00

I was thrilled when Melanie recommended Anne of Green Gables by L. M. Montgomery for this project. And then disappointed when I realised E and I had agreed we'd only review things we hadn't read before. And then smug when I remembered that this is (at least half) my blog and I can do whatever the hell I like. And I like Anne. I like her a lot.

I devoured the Anne Shirley stories as a young girl, gobbling them down one-after-the-other. But it was Anne of Green Gables, the first of the series, that I read and re-read and re-re-read between the ages of about eight and fourteen. While I remember enjoying others in the series (Anne of Avonlea and Anne of the Island particularly) it was Anne's early experiences small town Avonlea that have burnt themselves into my memory: Anne carrying all her "worldly belongings" into the farm for the first time; Anne declaring Diana Barry to be her "kindred spirit" and "bosom friend" immediately on meeting; Anne's constant dedication to finding the best "scope for the imagination" in any situation.

Anne was intelligent. She was opinionated. She was dramatic. The fact that she always had to explain how her name was spelled

"When you hear a name pronounced can't you always see it in your mind, just as if it was printed out? I can; and A-N-N looks dreadful, but A-N-N-E looks so much more distinguished. If you'll only call me Anne spelled with an e I shall try to reconcile myself to not being called Cordelia."

just sealed the deal for a J-A-C-L-Y-N who wanted to be all those things, too.

XOXO

Review: Midnight's Children

2009-03-27T14:32:00.007+11:00

The previous post's image felt about right as a review, although admittedly a little light on critical engagement. A month later, I've got nothing to add.

I've seriously been racking my brain, attempting to come up with something to say about Midnight's Children. Something that hasn't been said before. And better. By someone else.

Nothing doing, I'm afraid.

Midnight's Children is everything you've heard. It's "huge, vital, engrossing ... in all senses a fantastic book" (Sunday Times). It's "the literary map of India [...] redrawn" and "a country finding its voice" (New York Times). And yes, London Review of Books, it's a "brilliant and endearing novel."

It took the Booker in 1981, when it was published. It took the Booker of Bookers in 1993 and again in 2008. It's on Time's Top 100 Novels since 1923 List.

How could I give it anything other than Five Strings?

XOXO

Interim Review: Midnight's Children

2009-02-10T12:42:00.005+11:00

It's like this. (With less masculine arms, admittedly.)

XOXO

Welcome to the world, baby boy!

2009-02-05T20:15:00.003+11:00

Seth John Goldstein

Born: 05 February 2009 at 12:20 p.m.

Weight: 3.8 kg

Length: 52 cm

Parents: Radiant

Friends and family: Beaming

Everyone: Totally and utterly in love

Super-huge congratulations to Trace and Ev, and to the Goldstein and Raper clans. We have a baby, y'all!

XOXO

Meet my new girlfriend.

2009-02-02T13:42:00.004+11:00

Her name is Sarah Vowell, and I LUUUURRRRRRVVVVVE her.

So yeah. I still haven't finished This Is Your Brain on Music, and don't even talk to me about Virginia Woolf. She is still not a presence in my life, and we're all just going to have to make our peace with that.

But don't get me wrong, I've been reading. I've been reading up a storm... if you consider reading Take the Cannoli three times in a month to be 'a storm.' That's not all I've read, I hasten to add: I also got through Created in Darkness by Troubled Americans (the McSweeney's Press humour collection, which was awesome), as well as Nick Hornby's Shakespeare Wrote for Money (laugh-out-loud-to-myself-on-the-Red-Line funny). But Take the Cannoli and Assassination Vacation brought me back to reading in a big way.

All of you who know me (which, let's face it, is all of you) will be familiar with the particular brand of ish that I went through in the last several months. It hasn't been good, and there were a million and one ways that it reverberated through my life. But one of the most troubling, to me, was that I found it really hard to read. Reading has always been my #1 displacement activity: it's what I do when I'm sad, or fretful, or bored, to make me feel happy and relaxed and entertained. I get sucked into books to the exclusion of pretty much everything else around me; when I go to someone's house for the first time, I make a beeline for the bookshelf; I get twitchy fingers when I'm deeply into a book and have to put it down. I've been like this for as long as I can remember. It's what I am.

So you can understand, then, why it was so unsettling for me to find myself unable to focus on print for more than a couple of minutes at a time. I felt like (still yet another) piece of me had been suddenly and inexplicably ripped away, and I didn't know what to do about it. I kept trying to read, retreating to old favourites like Douglas Adams and [heart] Nick Earls [heart], but I'd struggle. The only things that seemed to hold my attention were Jacob's 'Gossip Girl' recaps from Television without Pity, but as awesome as they are (and they are - go, run, read them now. I''ll wait), they didn't fill the hole that losing my book love had created.

This all changed when I picked up Take the Cannoli. To be fair, the shift had started with Hornby's Shakespeare, but as that's a collection of columns, I still didn't get the feeling I was reading a single-entity book. Take the Cannoli, while also a collection of essays, felt much more book-like to me, and I suddenly felt on much more solid ground: I was excited and moved, I laughed and cried, and I tore through it while desperately not wanting it to end. All of this was heightened when I went on to Assassination Vacation, her story of touring sites related to the assassinations of U.S. Presidents Lincoln, Garfield and McKinley: I actually fell asleep hugging the book to my chest, and not because I had dozed off while reading it.

I like my room tidy. This may come as a shock to anyone who has lived with me, but it's true: my decorating inclinations lean more toward minimalism than any other aesthetic; unfortunately, I also have an abiding devotion to books, stuffed animals, and Japanese kitsch, and this plays hell with my attempts at clean lines. So I live with the conflict, mostly comfortably. At the moment, this means that my books are migrating from my bookcase downstairs to my bedroom upstairs at an alarming rate. Most of them end up on, in or beside my bed, even if I'm not reading them right that second. I like having them close to me, falling asleep with them and waking up with them and knowing that they're there whenever I need them. It's about way more than the text; it's their feel and smell and size and shape that I find comforting. It's about the pages I fold down so I can find favourite lines quickly. It's about the stains on the pages from sloppy laksa or suntan lotion, the sand between the pages and the weird water-marks from that time I dropped it in the bath. I'm glad to have it back. I feel like myself again.

Review: A Thousand Splendid Suns

2009-01-25T11:06:00.007+11:00

(Better late than never, right?)

I finished reading this assignment a couple of weeks before Christmas and, caught up in the antics of the silly season, quickly moved onto my next (Midnight's Children if you're wondering) before posting my review. Big mistake. Big. Because it's now four-and-a-bit weeks later and I can't quite remember my initial response to Khaled Hosseini’s A Thousand Splendid Suns. But I do remember E saying, during my last visit in Sydney, "I'm not a fan of plotty books" and, now, I think I see her point.

As I see it, you’ve got plot, characters, and language. A novelist takes these three, simple ingredients and, if s/he’s an adequate cook, makes something perfectly palatable. Or, with a bit of culinary flair, s/he can take the same three items and whip up something absolutely delicious. It’s like… toast with tomato or bruschetta, you know?

All my favourite novels create something inspiring, delightful, magical with at least one, but usually two, of these elements. The language in Vladimir Nabakov's Lolita is so lyrical and incendiary that it's impossible, as a reader, not to get sucked into Humbert's doomed dream. Tim Winton's Cloudstreet takes the basic Australian stereotypes - Sam, the born loser at the racetrack, the clock-work efficient war widow, Oriel - and infuses them with such recognisable, conflicting, inner lives that we can't help but love them. And the oldest plotline of all – two people meet, fall in love, and live happily ever after – is unstitched and re-assembled so confidently in Audrey Niffenegger’s The Time Traveler’s Wife that you almost forget how simple the initial premise is.

All of which is just a way of trying to identify why A Thousand Splendid Suns has faded so quickly from my mind and here’s where I got to: Hosseini, in setting out to unveil the inner lives of women “whose suffering has been matched by very few groups in recent world history”, has created a novel overwhelmingly driven by its plot but which lacks the supporting features of either great language or really engaging characters necessary to bump it up to Great Novel status.

So, the plot (and it’s not an un-interesting plot): the intertwined lives of two Afghan women – or girls, as they are at the start of their stories – during the decades of civil war, Soviet invasion, political upheaval, and Taliban control between the early-1970s and -2000s. Mariam, the illegitimate daughter of a Herat businessman, is married off to Rasheed, a widower twice her age, following her mother’s suicide. Laila is the daughter of Rasheed and Mariam’s neighbours in Kabul, who Rasheed first rescues and then marries following the destruction of her home and the death of her family during the civil war. Initially combative when Laila enters her home, Mariam slowly warms to the younger woman following the birth of Laila’s daughter, Aziza, who is, unbeknownst to Rasheed, not his child but that of Laila’s childhood friend, Tariq. I don’t want to give away too much for those who are yet to read it, but it’s probably not too major a spoiler to say that Laila’s attempts to escape the physically abusive Rasheed, find Tariq, and escape to Pakistan before the birth of her second child – taking Mariam along with her – drive the later action and, ultimately, leads to tragedy.

It's a well-constructed, if somewhat melodramatic, plot. Its foundations in actual places and historical events, about which I admittedly don’t know a great deal, give the novel real gravitas at moments, such as when medical staff turn Laila away, despite the fact that she’s in labour, because the hospital no longer treats women. The devastation caused in the bombing of Kabul is sharply drawn, as is Laila and Mariam’s fear of being arrested and beaten by the Taliban when they venture into the street unaccompanied by a man. As a story aimed at shedding light on the lives of women shrouded from common view, A Thousand Splendid Suns is perfectly readable. But without more than a plot to drive it, I can only award Two Strings.

XOXO

A belated holiday gift, from us to you.

2009-01-19T22:23:00.002+11:00

This is how they dance 'til they DIE, y'all.

XOXO

Happy New Year!

2009-01-02T16:23:00.003+11:00

The Lit Girls would like to take this opportunity to wish you all a very lovely 2009. We'll return to our usual nonsense once the social whirl has abated. (By which we mean, when we've put down the Christmas candy long enough to suck the chocolate off our fingers and start typing again.)

XOXO

Interim Review: This Is Your Brain on Music

2008-12-20T01:52:00.003+11:00

This is going to make me sound like a snob, but it has to be said: I do not understand how this book ever became a bestseller in the U.S. Same goes for Guns, Germs, and Steel for that matter. They are too bloody hard.

They wouldn't be too hard for most of the people I know; I mean that they'd be too hard for Joe Public, and a fair few Joe Publics have to buy a book for it to hit the New York Times bestseller list, which both of these did. I suppose you could make the argument that people wouldn't have to read them, just buy them, and that's true. But I can't believe that ALL of those people bought the books and NONE of them read the books. So either people in the U.S. are much smarter than I give them credit for, or so few books are being bought that a relatively small number of science nerds can throw off one of the most important measures of English-language book success. I'm not sure which of those ideas is more upsetting to my world view.

Look, these books aren't unfathomable, and I don't want to put anyone off reading them. But neither of them is the 'pop science' you might expect from such big sellers. This Is Your Brain... is easier reading than Guns..., but not substantially; I think the difference is more down to the scope of the books rather than the level of the content. I'll talk more about this in the full review, though.

In other news, my Christmas books have all arrived, and I've had to put the box on a very high shelf to keep me from diving right into them. Must resist!

XOXO

Why I Can't Be Trusted

2008-12-14T19:55:00.005+11:00

So despite the stated aim of this blog being to broaden our literary horizons, I have to cop to slacking: I have now started the third book that was entirely my choice, rather than a recommendation from Jac. I have picked them all from the recommendations y'all have sent in, so I'm not a total degenerate, but To the Lighthouse is still hanging over my head, and in the meantime I've picked up This Is Your Brain on Music: The Science of a Human Obsession by Daniel J. Levitin. This was another of Tim's suggestions, and like my two previous reads was selected as much on the basis of accessibility (it was sitting on Tim's shelf) as my interest in it.

I'm only a couple of chapters in, not even enough for an interim review yet, so I won't talk much about it. I will say that it's a bit drier than I'd expected, but I think that's because Levitin's introducing the music theory and science on which everything subsequent will be based, and it's hard to jazz up (no pun intended) information that dense.

As for To the Lighthouse, I am committing here and now to reading that while I'm in Boston, i.e. in the next three weeks. It's the least I can do, and it'll keep me from tearing through my Christmas books too quickly. I hit up Amazon for a bunch of books, and I'm wicked excited:

* Shakespeare Wrote for Money by Nick Hornby and Sarah Vowell

* Take the Cannoli: Stories from the New World by Sarah Vowell

* Assassination Vacation by Sarah Vowell

* Created in Darkness by Troubled Americans: The Best of McSweeney's Humor Category

* Talking Right: How Conservatives Turned Libralism into a Tax-Raising, Latte-Drinking, Sushi-Eating, Volvo-Driving, New York Times-Reading, Body-Piercing, Hollywood-Loving, Left-Wing Freak Show by Geoffrey Nunberg

Apart from the last one, which is by the author of the recently-read and -reviewed Going Nucular, it's a bit of a McSweeney's fest. I mostly hate Dave Eggars (in a really annoying way, because I fully respect a lot of things he's done with his life, but there's just something about him that's crying out for a good kicking. See also Butler, John.), but I do love a lot of what comes out of McSweeney's, especially from the folks who manage not to take themselves too seriously. The extracts I've read from Created... about killed me, and I think I'm going to have to fight not to devour it the second it arrives ('I'm ravenous, Fran.').

Shakespeare... is the last installment in Nick Hornby's Polysyllabic Spree collection, and if you like the idea behind this blog, I would urge you to check them out: there were two previous books, The Polysyllabic Spree and Housekeeping vs. the Dirt, which were also published together as The Complete Polysyllabic Spree. Over a few years, Hornby had a regular column in the Believer, the McSweeney's magazine, in which he would talk about the books he'd bought and the books he'd read in the last month. The interesting wrinkle, though, was that the Believer has a strict no-meanies policy, so if he didn't like a book, he couldn't talk about it by name. (This policy was designed to ensure that the Believer would remain a safe space for writers, where they could discuss and contribute without feeling at risk of an attack. I'm not entirely convinced of the validity of this policy - it's a bit touchy-feely for my liking - but it seems to work just fine for them, so whatever.) As a result, his column was much more a conversation than a critique, and over time became an interesting discussion of why we like what we like. Hornby has no time for the pretentious literati, and that's surprisingly refreshing. And he's a complete riot to boot, which always helps. Not being a regular subscriber to the Believer, I had thought that his column had finished, and I was thrilled to see that there was a new collection.

Sarah Vowell features prominently on the list as well, and I'm pretty excited about that. I've been meaning to read her books for ages, but I don't think she's particularly well-known in Australia (the McSweeney's cabal doesn't seem to have much distribution there, which surprises me a bit): you'd be more likely to know her as the voice of Violet in the movie 'The Incredibles' than for her writing or NPR (radio) work. I'm happy to finally have my hands on a couple of them.

While none of these were recommended, and therefore don't qualify for the full review treatment, I will let you know if any of them is particularly spectacular. I don't intend to make a habit of discussing 'outside reading' on this blog, but I also feel that good books are worth making noise about. There's far too much ordinary in the world to ignore the good bits.

XOXO

Review: Going Nucular

2008-12-03T09:59:00.009+11:00

So yes, I loved it.

Those of you who know me know that I am a language dork. I like talking about it, reading about it, and thinking about it: how it's used, what it means, where it came from. Geoffrey Nunberg has similar interests and infinitely more knowledge, so I was bound to enjoy his work. And I did: he's funny, insightful and articulate. And the articles are short essays (mostly transcripts of his NPR pieces, with the odd magazine bit thrown in), which means that it's a good book for the way I read (mostly bus rides, with the odd bit before bed thrown in).

The San Francisco Chronicle said, 'If there is such a thing as a standup linguist, it's Nunberg.' While I wouldn't go that far (I reckon that'd be Richard Lederer if it's anyone), I do agree with the basic sentiment: he's funny and accessible without talking down to the audience. He's also topical, taking his inspiration from events of the day and investigating the role that language plays in them. This does mean that his material doesn't always age well - I've also just read The Way We Talk Now, his collection from the early- and mid-'90s, and some of the pieces do feel a bit dated - but even so, it's interesting to watch him pull it all together.

I will say that I didn't enjoy either of his books as much as Lynne Truss's Eats, Shoots and Leaves, but Nunberg and Truss are writing very different books: Nunberg notes that his books are not for the 'grammar sticklers' - which seems to be an unnecessarily narky dig at Truss - but it's not that Nunberg doesn't care about grammar; it seems to be more that he's interested in meaning and usage, not in grammar for grammar's sake. I don't think that's all that far from Truss, really (her argument that good punctuation is important because it's the good manners of language, rather than just because it's grammatically accurate, would indicate that they're actually pretty close) but Eats... is much more instructional, while Nunberg's essays are more observational in nature, and they have a very different feel as a result.

I would heartily recommend either Going Nucular or The Way We Talk Now to anyone who's interested in language, even if - or even especially if - you don't consider yourself a grammar stickler. Four strings.

XOXO

Interim Review: Going Nucular

2008-12-01T10:22:00.006+11:00

Yes, yes, I know I'm meant to be reading To the Lighthouse. I'll get there, but it involves a trip to the library and setting up a membership and blah blah. In the meantime, I picked up Going Nucular: Language, Politics, and Culture in Confrontational Times by Geoffrey Nunberg. This was one of Tim's recommendations, and, conveniently, it was living on our shared bookshelf.

And I LOVE it. Love love love. I'd not heard of Nunberg before, though he has a regular spot on NPR's 'Fresh Air', but he's excellent: smart, funny and with lots of insight into the uses of language, particularly in public life. I won't get into too much detail because I suspect I'll get through it pretty quickly and will return with a full review then, but go read it. Absolutely.

XOXO

No Rest for the Literate

2008-11-26T18:19:00.009+11:00

I'm starting A Thousand Splendid Suns by Khaled Hosseini (A double-recommendation! Thanks to Uncle Mr Bill and Auntie Fran). Of the 2 books E offered me for my next task, this one was at my local bookstore when I popped in this afternoon. I know absolutely nothing about it and haven't read The Kite Runner either so it's my introduction to this author. I'll have an interim review in about a week, I'd say.

I'm also starting Howl and Other Poems by Allen Ginsberg. It hasn't been recommended by anyone - so isn't officially a LitGirls task - but it is the next reading for my bookclub, which meets next weekend. I listened, during my years (and years) as a performance studies undergraduate, to various recordings of Ginsberg reading Howl, but haven't returned to it since, nor read any of the other poems in the collection. I've always struggled with reading poetry, much preferring to listen to it be read by someone who's taken the time to get the rhythms and stresses right (and yes, if that's Stephen Fry, I won't complain). But I'm really looking forward to getting into this Beat Generation classic. Of course, if anyone knows where I can access any online audio files of Ginsberg's readings, I'd appreciate that, too.

xoxo

The Voices in my Head

2008-11-25T17:49:00.009+11:00

(AKA Review: The Fran Lebowitz Reader)

I really wanted to like The Fran Lebowitz Reader. Really, I did. And I pretty much expected I would: it’s one of E’s suggestions and I trust her taste; it’s observational humour and that’s usually a hands-down winner for me; and it has stood the test of time (remember, most of the individual pieces were written in the ’70s and ’80s and yet it’s still out there, making good sales and keeping its writer fed and clothed despite her almost two decades’ writer’s block).

And yet? Didn’t love it.

Why? Because of the voices in my head.

Lebowitz is unabashedly, outrageously, completely American. She’s East Coast American. New York American. She is, let it be known, a Capital N, Capital Y New Yorker. With a great many of the pieces in this collection consisting of carefully crafted anecdotes about life in that megatropolis (of which "Diary of a New York Apartment Hunter" is by far my favourite), you are never not aware of that fact. Fran Lebowitz equals New York, here.

And yet, there’s something in the tone in this collection – particularly in the early section “Metropolitan Life” – that doesn’t feel American. Or more precisely, it doesn't sound American. While the subject matter is decidedly so, something in the writing style, choice of words, sentence construction, doesn’t fit. It’s a little … out of whack, somehow. So I’m reading these pieces, smiling, enjoying the tricky callbacks and creative puns when a direct reference to Christopher Street, or a sweater, or Walter Cronkite crops up and I’m completely thrown because – in my head – the whole book is being read aloud by Stephen Fry.

Now, that’s not normal for me. Yes, I love Stephen Fry. No, I don’t usually hear his voice in my head (although this definitely tops my Christmas Wish List this year). But I suspect it comes back to the writing. There’s a – and I can find no better way to describe it, so work with me on this – decidedly British tone to a lot of the pieces which then clashes with the American-ness of its content. Lines like

[…] it is not feasible to bring into one’s own home all the desirable accoutrements of discotheque dancing such as deejay, several hours of tape, and the possibility, slim though it may be, of meeting one’s own true love.

are just screaming “British!” to me. It’s the same with

It was with considerable approval that I listened one Sunday evening to my weekend host instruct his chauffeur to drive us, his guests, back to New York.

Until the last two words, that is.

And while this experience lessens as the book continues, it was so strong initially that I couldn’t get passed it. I started to wonder, “is this a new literary technique Lebowitz is pioneering?”, “is it a greater comment on the subtleties of writing in the English language?”, “Am I going bonkers here?”. In the end, I simply couldn’t reconcile my imaginary, British voice-over with the ever-present American auteur herself and it ruins the book for me.

I love you, E but I’m sorry I’m just not with you on this one.

The Fran Lebowitz Reader: only Two Strings of Pearls from me.

xoxo

PS: Yes, I’m fully aware that this post probably says far, far more about me than it does about The Fran Lebowitz Reader but there you have it: it’s my blog and I get to write about Stephen Fry if I want to.

Challenge issued and accepted!

2008-11-23T22:19:00.004+11:00

J has chosen my next book: To the Lighthouse by Virginia Woolf. I haven't read much Woolf, only Mrs Dalloway, I think, but if I remember correctly I liked it well enough, so I'm happy to give another of hers a go. I'll have to re-join the library in the next couple of days to get hold of it, but I'll check in again soon and let you know how it's going.

XOXO

Recommendations, and Thoughts on Being a Chucker

2008-11-23T10:43:00.005+11:00

A few things to say. First, recommendation from Another Matt:

* The Pursuit of the Millennium: Revolutionary Millenarians and Mystical Anarchists of the Middle Ages by Norman Cohn

* Hyperion by Dan Simmons

* The Pillars of the Earth by Ken Follett

* The Name of the Rose by Umberto Eco

Second, I have decided to put Guns, Germs and Steel back on the shelf for a bit. While I am enjoying it a lot more now, it's just taking me way too long, and as a result the blog is lying fallow. Since Rule #1 of having a blog is: Post, stupid, I feel like I need to get going on some other books in the meantime. I do fully intend to come back to Guns... in the not-too-distant, but right now I need something a bit more portable (much of my reading time occurs on buses and in random stolen moments). I'm awaiting directions from J, and will let you know when she has assigned me something new.

In the meantime, here's what I would say about Guns...: it's an important book, and more people should read it. There's a lot of great information in it that sheds light on human development around the world, and Diamond goes a long way toward his goal of beating the crap out of those my-people-won-because-we're-just-better arguments. But the problem is that the book is pitched too high: the people who are able to get through it (and I don't just mean people who are able to comprehend the information, but people who would are devoted enough to read the entire thing) are almost certainly going to be the people who already agree with him and are looking to back up their own arguments. Which isn't to suggest that the book is wasted, because Guns... is, as far as I know, the first book to collect all of the data and present it in one place, and that makes it very useful indeed. But it's hard going, and I can't pretend otherwise.

So my verdict (for now) on Guns, Germs and Steel is this: Read it, by all means - it's certainly worth the effort - but expect to have to put some work in. I would also advocate dipping into it over an extended period rather than trying to do it as I have. It's too much information to take in all at once, for me at least, and trying to cram it all in over a short time just means that I'd have ended up missing important pieces of the puzzle.

XOXO

Further Recommendations

2008-11-14T17:06:00.003+11:00

Two more lists have come in.

Matthew suggested:
* Midnight's Children by Salman Rushdie
* To the Lighthouse by Virginia Woolf
* The Yiddish Policeman's Union by Michael Chabon
* Atomised by Michelle Houellebecq
* Life of Pi by Yann Martel
* Vernon Goodlittle by DBC Pierre
* True History of the Kelly Gang by Peter Carey
* Cloudstreet by Tim Winton

Toby suggested:
* His Dark Materials by Philip Pullman
* The Accidental Buddhist by Dinty Moore
* Watchmen by Alan Moore and Dave Gibbons

These lists of recommendations are starting to make me think of Italo Calvino's If on a winter's night a traveller... in which books are classified as follows:

- Books You've Read
- Books You Haven't Read
- Books You've Been Planning to Read For Ages
- Books Dealing with Something You're Working On At The Moment
- Books You Could Put Aside Maybe To Read This Summer
- Books You Need to Go With Other Books On Your Shelves
- Books You Mean to Read But There Are Others You Must Read First
- Books Too Expensive Now and You'll Wait Till They're Remaindered
- Books ditto When They Come Out in Paperback
and (my favourite)
- Books That Everybody's Read So It's As If You Had Read Them, Too.*

On reflection, that last was the real impetus for this little project. There are so many books I feel I've semi-read, having listened to friends and family rave about them over the years. And here's my chance to reshelve some titles from the last to the first category.

Better get on with it, then.

xoxo

*This is not the full list but you get the drift, yeah?

Nice one, Tamara.

2008-11-13T12:17:00.004+11:00

So J just texted me asking if I could pick a new book for her to grab at lunchtime, as she's in for Jury Duty and has almost finished The Fran Lebowitz Reader. I suggested Maximum City by Suketu Mehta or, if she couldn't find that one, A Thousand Splendid Suns by Khaled Hosseini. I haven't read either myself, so it was just luck of the draw. We'll see what comes of it.

You'll note that I've changed our header per J's last post (LOVE). I also want to note Anthony's remark about the need for 'a book club for sophisticated ladies of a certain disposition'. I suspect that might find its way into the header at some point as well.

In other news, I'm enjoying Guns, Germs and Steel heaps more now that I'm into the section about human evolution and diseases and their contribution to the whole mess. I like my life sciences, what can I say. It's good, though, because I no longer despair of finishing the damn thing. I will get there, and I'll even enjoy it. More to follow.

XOXO

You Guessed it: More Recommendations

2008-11-10T21:50:00.006+11:00

Tamara suggested:
* Eat Pray Love by Elizabeth Gilbert
* The Corrections by Jonathan Franzen
* The Edible Woman by Margaret Atwood
* Mrs Dalloway by Virginia Woolf, and then ...
* The Hours by Michael Cunningham

Tam's summation of the first was "trashy but with a literary bent" which I heartily endorse as the LitGirls' new tag-line.

A review of The Fran Lebowitz Reader will follow in a day or two, promise.

xoxo

Still more recommendations

2008-11-10T17:28:00.003+11:00

Sorry, but I kept forgetting to post this. Uncle Mr Bill (thanks!) sent through the following:

* The Book Thief by Markus Zusak

* Incident at Twenty-Mile by Trevanian (a Western!)

* A Thousand Splendid Suns by Khaled Hosseini

I'm getting antsy to be finished with Guns, Germs and Steel and move on to whatever comes next. I'm not sure if we've explained this to you-all yet, but J and I decided that the easiest way to split up the books would be for us to switch off picking books for ourselves and picking books for each other, so since I chose Guns for myself, J will pick my next book for me. (And because there are enough books on here that neither of us knows, this will end up being more random than it seems at first glance.) I'm hoping for something a bit more plot-heavy than this one has been, and that's not something I'd normally say, so I must be struggling with it even more than I'd realised.

XOXO

Interim Review: Guns, Germs and Steel

2008-11-08T15:50:00.004+11:00

So. This book has been much more of a struggle for me than I'd expected. I enjoy science writing as a rule, and I don't need it to be especially pop-sciencey to enjoy it: I generally find that the facts are interesting enough on their own to sustain me without a lot of dressing-up. But you still need to be able to tell a story if you want to keep my interest for 457 pages, or even 7 pages, and I'm not convinced that Diamond can do that.

Well, no, that's a bit too harsh. I think he probably can tell a story, but in this book it feels more like he's tried to write a book-length journal submission. I'm having trouble working out quite what doesn't work for me about his style: it's not that it's dry, exactly, nor is the density of it really a problem for me (though it is seriously dense); and it's bugging me, because I feel like I should like it more. I'm certainly learning a lot, and about things that interest me, so why can't I get into it as much as I'd like? (For those who don't know, it's an examination of why certain cultures ended up so much more technologically advanced than others, and the repercussions of that advancement on other aspects of human history. It's comprehensive and honest, and goes a long way toward putting a nail in the coffin of those 'some races are just better' arguments that make me long to punch people squarely in the balls.)

That all having been said, I should note that I'm finding it much easier going now that I'm a good ways into it, but I shouldn't have to get almost halfway into a text like this before it grabs me. Tim said that he'd started it a few times and never got far, and I now understand why; were I not reading it for Lit Girls, I suspect that I would have chucked it aside by now. And that would have been a shame, because there is a lot worth reading in it: it's one of those books that answers questions you hadn't realised you wanted to ask by filling in blanks you hadn't realised were empty. And Diamond has done most of his work (his 'real job' is as a biologist studying bird evolution) in the South Pacific, so he has a great deal of knowledge about the history of this part of the world, and that makes it more interesting to me: having grown up in the U.S., I didn't even get the tiny amount of education about this history that Australian students get. But... I don't know, I still don't love it. And the people I know who like it are really passionate about it, so I feel like I must be missing something.

Anyway. I'll post again when I've finished it, and we'll see how I feel then. Cross fingers it will continue to improve.

XOXO

Yet More Recommendations

2008-11-06T19:36:00.003+11:00

They're coming in thick and fast now.

Paul suggested:
* The Master and Margarita or Heart of a Dog by Mikhail Bulgakov
* The Butcher Boy by Patrick McCabe
* Slaughterhouse Five by Kurt Vonnegut

Melanie suggested:
* A Christmas Carol by Charles Dickens
* Almost French by Sarah Turnbull
* Anne of Green Gables by L.M. Montgomery
* Mary Barton by Elizabeth Gaskell
* A Year of Wonders by Geraldine Brooks

Lynn suggested:
* Bliss by Peter Carey
* The English Patient by Michael Ondaatje
* Small Gods by Terry Pratchett

I have to say, there are many goodies there I've not read so I'm keen to get them on my list.

Keep 'em coming, people. This is fab!

xoxo

Off and Reading

2008-11-05T19:42:00.005+11:00

A quick post to let you know I've started my first project; it's Elena's offering - The Fran Lebowitz Reader. My review post will follow when I've actually, you know, read it.

But, based on the number of pages E has folded over - her time-tested method of marking particular pages that have something she wants to return to, read again, share with friends - it's going to be a great read!

Kisses,
J

More Recommendations

2008-10-29T10:58:00.008+11:00

Yay! More recommendations have come in. Caitlin has posted in the comments (thanks!); others have come back via e-mail.

My Dad suggested:

* Any books by Elizabeth George, Dennis Lehane or Dick Francis (mystery/crime)

* Agony at Easter: The 1916 Irish Uprising by Thomas Coffey

* Sarum: The Novel of England, London: The Novel, The Princes of Ireland: The Dublin Saga and The Rebels of Ireland: The Dublin Saga by Edward Rutherfurd

* 700 Sundays by Billy Crystal

* W.C. Fields by Himself: His Intended Autobiography by W.C. Fields

* Cagney by Cagney by James Cagney

Bernie suggested:

* And the Band Played On: Politics, People, and the AIDS Epidemic (1980-1985) by Randy Shilts

* The Electric Kool-Aid Acid Test by Tom Wolfe

* A Farewell to Arms by Ernest Hemingway

Paula suggested:

* Stones from the River by Ursula Hegi

* The Secret Life of Bees by Sue Monk Kidd

* Water for Elephants: A Novel by Sara Gruen

* The Given Day by Dennis Lehane

Auntie Fran suggested:

* A Thousand Splendid Suns by Khaled Hosseini

* Three Cups of Tea: One Man's Mission to Promote Peace... One School at a Time by Greg Mortenson and David Oliver Rein

* The Other Queen: A Novel by Philippa Gregory

Irena suggested:

* Shopgirl by Steve Martin

* To Kill a Mockingbird by Harper Lee

* Coraline by Neil Gaiman

Harry suggested:

* Hot, Flat and Crowded by Thomas L. Fredman

* Born Standing Up by Steve Martin

* Contents under Pressure by Edna Buchanan

* Never Let Them See You Cry by Edna Buchanan

So many to choose from! I'll post more as they come in. And while I mentioned that J and I have agreed to draw straws on who reads what, I plan to start right into PT's suggestion of Guns, Germs and Steel, as it's on my shelf already (borrowed-into-stolen from a former next-door neighbour, and I feel guilty every time I look at it because I still haven't read the damn thing). I'll let you know how I go.

xoxo

Recommendations

2008-10-28T18:15:00.007+11:00

A few people have already submitted recommendations! Tim posted his in the comments section for the first post; other people sent theirs along to me by e-mail.

Anthony suggested:

The Double: A Poem of St Petersburg by Fyodor Dostoyevsky (oy vey)

The Periodic Table by Primo Levi

Adolf Hitler: My Part in His Downfall by Spike Milligan

The Third Policeman by Flann O'Brien

Orlando by Virginia Woolf

PT suggested:

Anathem by Neal Stephenson

Cloud Atlas by David Mitchell

Factory Girl by Leslie Chang

Guns, Germs and Steel: A Short History of Everybody for the Last 13,000 Years by Jared Diamond

Maximum City: Bombay Lost and Found by Suketu Mehta

Cath suggested:

Marching Powder: A True Story of Friendship, Cocaine and South America's Strangest Jail by Thomas McFadden and Rusty Young

The Damage Done: Twelve Years of Hell in a Bangkok Prison by Warren Fellows

(Cath notes: 'All the books I read relate to life in a foreign prison or people who get busted for drug smuggling and then end up in a foreign hellholle.' Make of this what you will.)

XOXO

First reviews

2008-10-28T16:40:00.009+11:00

It's harder than I expected to write reviews of books, even - or maybe especially - ones I know well and love completely. I've given Jac three books that I more or less know by heart, but I'm still struggling to come up with interesting things to say about them. I'm just going to dive in and hope that what I write makes sense; fingers crossed that I'll get better at it over time.

Perfect Skin: Nick Earls is one of my favourite authors. He's Australian, from Brisbane (well, actually born in Northern Ireland, but has lived in Brisbane since he was a kid), and I think what I love about him is that he writes like my friends talk, if that makes sense. Better, obviously, because he has the luxury of multiple drafts, but it still feels very comfortable and familiar. A stellar example from Perfect Skin:

I think you'd like it, Ashley, Oscar says. It's very sociological. Very influenced by the icons of our contemporary consumerist digital society.
Sounds good, Ash says, and convincingly too, though we all know that Oscar delved a little too deep into the adjective bucket to make complete sense.

See? Brilliant. I've read this book dozens of times, and that line still makes me laugh out loud every time.

Perfect Skin is the follow-up to Bachelor Kisses, but you don't need to have read that to read Perfect Skin - only the main character carries over, apart from a couple of small references here and there. I preferred Bachelor Kisses for a long time, or thought I did anyway; as time passed, I found myself reaching for Perfect Skin more and more often. I don't think it's Earls's best book (that would be The Thompson Gunner, which I also highly recommend), but it and Zigzag Street are my favourites. They're the comfort food of literature, or maybe more like security blankets: when I feel crap, these are the books I pull off the shelf. I carry them around, I read them in spare seconds, I fall asleep with them on the pillow next to me. They've become more than just books.

The Fran Lebowitz Reader: My best friend Sarah gave me this book for my birthday several years ago, and it's so battered and exhausted now I'm always a bit afraid it's going to disintegrate in my hands. It's a collection of articles and essays originally written for magazines, mostly back in the '70s. Her writing hasn't aged a bit, though: she's dry as dirt, but so, so funny. She's one of those rare geniuses who can write pieces full of one-liners that don't end up just sounding like transportation for those one-liners.

Generally speaking, I look upon [sports] as dangerous and tiring activities performed by people with whom I share nothing except the right to trial by jury.

The Reader is a compilation of two earlier collections, Metropolitan Life and Social Studies. Unfortunately, Lebowitz hasn't actually written much. Apart from the two books that were then republished together as the Reader, she has one kids' book... and that's it. A damn shame, because she's been rightfully classed with Dorothy Parker and S.J. Perelman as one of the great modern American humourists.

A Room with a View: I came to the book after falling in love with the movie. It was the first Merchant-Ivory production I saw, and it resonated with my teenaged flair for the dramatic. (And the first person to say, '...teenaged?' is barred.) The book is even better, and not just in that book-is-better-than-the-movie way. Forster writes beautifully and with surprising restraint given the subject matter (young love in end-of-the-Victorian-era England and Italy), while at the same time being a total, total bitch. It's that bitchiness - and the very considered ways in which he employs it - that elevates Room from a simple love story to a brilliant social satire:

'Come this way immediately,' commanded Cecil, who always felt that he must lead women, though he knew no whither, and protect them, though he knew not against what.

Take nothing away from the love story aspect, though: it's perfectly rendered. It's honest and passionate without being overwrought, which is a hell of a trick. And I would recommend the movie as well, if only to be reminded of what Helena Bonham-Carter looked like before she went crazy and married the 'Nightmare Before Christmas' guy.

XOXO

The gauntlet is thrown.

2008-10-28T13:00:00.007+11:00

So that we're not sitting around waiting too long (and so that there's something up here for people to read), J and I have decided to give each other three books to start with.

And I'm kicking it off. I've toyed with this for a while, but I've finally narrowed it down to:

* Perfect Skin by Nick Earls

* The Fran Lebowitz Reader by Fran Lebowitz

* A Room with a View by E.M. Forster

There are a heap of others I'd like to foist upon her, of course, but this seems like a good start. I'm going with light-ish stuff to start with for a bunch of reasons, key among which is that I want us to be able to get through these fairly quickly and onto your suggestions. Assuming, that is, that we get suggestions from you, which I really hope we will.

Over to you, J. Give me something to fill my time. And in the meantime, I'll check back in shortly with my own brief reviews of these books.

XOXO