very interesting list u have there, alex, and some hefty reads too! i read West's BlandGF last year --- fascinating though she gets a bit irritating towards the later chapters, but don't be put off, it's worth the effort. great -- another one doing
Don Quixote this year! over at 75-challenge where i keep my thread, we're having a kind of Don Q fest with already a few of us expressing the ambitious goal of tackling the novel this year.
good luck! let us know what u think of the books u will read...
Hi deebee1 - nice to make contact. Yes, I fear that this is a terribly ambitious list but nothing ventured nothing gained - right? I will keep in touch re
Don Quixote. I like your photo - what kind of plant is that?
oh talking of ambitious lists, good to know i got company. i fear, though, that i'm overestimating myself with the one i set out for the year. i already got 6 books on mine of at least 1000 pages each, and they're not exactly the easy reads either :-( perhaps i should call it my "reckless list"!
u got me there about that photo -- i've been trying the last year or so to find it's name, to no avail. those are flowers of a towering tree i saw on the grounds of Bratislava Castle in Slovakia. i'll let u know if i ever manage to get hold of the name.
Hooray!
I've finished my first book
Three Cups of Tea by Greg Mortenson. What a guy! I found this book quite difficult to read at times because my head kept saying to Greg "Don't go there!", "Don't do that!". The guy is quite extraordinary. He goes where angels fear to tread really when you think about it. And yet....if he didn't ... the world would be a very different place. I was most interested in the analogy of mountain climbing (his hobby) with what he has been trying to achieve in terms of raising money for a very worthwhile cause. It would have been so easy for him to say, "You know what...this is too hard." and I think many would have understood/forgiven him for taking that route. And yet he kept going. He is a living example of the virtue of persistence/commitment/resolution/determination - whatever you want to call it. What a good book to read when one is drafting New Year's Resolutions. Very inspiring.
Message edited by its author, Jan 8, 2009, 10:04am.
And now I've finished Liberty: A Lake Wobegon Novel by Garrison Keillor. It's my first Garrison Keillor book. I love listening to him on radio - those melliflous (how do you spell that word ? ) tones. It is a kind of laconic humour with which I think many Australians would find a connection. Mr Keillor has woven a tale around the concept of liberty; a value dear to the American heart and soul. I seem to be choosing books lately that are all about important values/concepts: liberty/commitment/wanting - personal sacrifice for the greater good and so on and so on. The main character is organising, for the last time, the 4th of July parade in his home town - full of small-minded people who don't want to change their ways e.g. reading the entire Declaration of Independence is their idea of a good time. He dreams of chasing higher office in congress. He dreams of chasing his lover to California. He regrets not going to art college in his youth but being a good boy and coming home to have Christmas with his folks and then being trapped and never going back. Tensions mount. Irene gets a gun. And then? You'll have to read it...
Message edited by its author, Jan 10, 2009, 2:01am.
I had to read
The Golden Ass for an ancient novel class in college and LOVED it.
Good luck with your challenge! You've got some interesting books on the list.
Hmmm, well I've finished
The Brief and Wondrous Life of Oscar Wao by Junot Diaz. There are no less than 74 reviews of this book on Librarything so probably all that needs to be said has already been covered. I did like one very short review which said "I wept for Oscar. All he wanted was to love." Well said librarianlk - Succinct. I like that. I didn't weep for Oscar. I am over 40 so tended to fight the authentic voice of one of the narrators which was definitely NOT politically correct!! I also fought the voluminous notes which I always feel obliged to read but they were challenging not just because they were long (like this sentence) but also because they were still in the same "hood" voice rather than pretending to be academic. I felt vastly ignorant of Dominican Republic history. so perhaps I am a little wiser and encouraged to read more history of the place - although by all accounts it's pretty grim. Perhaps its a book for blokes. I think you either like it or find it too tough. Interestingly when I clicked on the Will You Like It Meter, it told me I wouldn't like it - so there you go. Destiny.
This week I finished reading
The Time We have taken by
Steven Carroll. It is set in an interesting period in Australian history - just before the ascension of Gough Whitlam to power...when the generation gap seemed its widest. It is about a suburb contemplating how to celebrate its centenary. Odd that I should read this within a couple of weeks of reading Liberty: a Lake Wobegone story ! The book is a gentle observation of four characters: Vic who is dying; Rita, Vic's ex-wife who is wondering if home really is home; Michael, Vic and Rita's son who is glad to be out of the suburb but trying to make a new relationship work and Mrs Webster who is trying to solve the mystery of her now dead husband. The author explores our concept of time and memory. How we remember things...when memories become clear...what memories stay with us...and our sense of occasion/history. Reading this book is particularly poignant at the time of Obama's inauguration and finishing it on Australia Day. I would like to read Steven Carroll's other books now as I suspect they are prequels to this.
Another one bites the dust
The Zookeepers War by
Steven Conte. What a great book. My first great read for the year. I whipped through it totally absorbed in the world of Berlin. The accounts of the bombing were terrifyingly real. And then of course the damage done to the poor innocent animals in the zoo. Not a very sophisticated review I know but I really did like this book.
Message edited by its author, Feb 3, 2009, 2:57am.
Ah - another great read - this time
People of the Book by
Geraldine Brooks. For some reason I was put off the book by the first section about the lead character. I had difficulty finding sympathy for her....so left the book for some months. Now that I read the book in less than a week I found it much easier to read and I think its a fantastic piece of work. So important in so many ways. For me, the author has managed to grasp the thrill of a historical chase experienced by many family historians. It is also interesting to read this hot on the heels of The Zookepers War as it serves to remind us what is lost in war - not just lives and dignity and all those other very important things but the damage to nature and historical records. This book makes we want to learn a whole stack about different periods in history of which I'm ashamed to say I am completely ignorant. It is also a marvellous insight into an amazing art/craft - that of illustration, book binding, calligraphy et al. Great stuff. I have to say I am really enjoying the discipline of reading a book a week. I think I am getting much more out of them. I am more deeply immersed in the books rather than skipping from one to the other.
interesting books you have there - good luck with the challenge!
I know it's not on my list but for the record I read
Poor Folk by Fyodor Dostoyevsky. Perhaps a good read for these economic climes. The protagonist lives in a partitioned area off a communal kitchen in what we imagine to be a boarding house. He has a rather complicated relationship with a young woman across the way, whose window he can see from his window. The book is a series of letters between the two. His first letter, to my eyes, was like a declaration of love. But then in following letters he protests that he has only a fatherly interest in her welfare. He buys her sweets, chemises, geraniums etc whilst describing his impoverished life where he can barely afford tea and sugar and his own clothes are falling to pieces. Literature and its role is discussed as the two read and alternately practise writing to each other about their past and daily life. I won't describe much more as it defeats the purpose of reading it but I welcome a discussion with others about the little book and its observations on society in Russia at the time.
Number 8 for the year. I'm dweadfully behind!!! I can't believe it took me so long to read such a little book. The little book is
Oroonoko by
Aphra Behn. It's about 70 pages long....I told you....tiny. The library loaned me the Penguin classics edition first published in 2003 edited with an introduction and notes by
Janet Todd. Janet is the
Francis Hutcheson Professor of English Literature at the University of Glasgow and an Honorary Fellow of
Lucy Cavendish College, Cambridge. Janet used the the first printed version of
Oroonoko published on its own in 1688 as the basis for this edition. This is held in the Bodleian Library, Oxford. Janet has been kind enough to fix spelling and punctuation inconsistencies which probably makes for an easier read. There are no less than 168 notes for the text itself and some great stuff up the front of the book (a Chronology from 1640-1700 and an introduction: Aphra Behn and fiction;Aphra Behn's life;Slavery and colonization;Political context of Oroonoko;Criticism and Aphra Behn's reputation and Furter Reading suggestions) to help you on your way. I had no idea what to expect. Aphra Behn's title is Oroonoko, or the Royal Slave A True History. The title alone is enough to suggest a few question marks. Why or how can a slave be royal? If it's fiction, why is it purporting to be true? Perhaps it is true or why does the author want us to think it might be true. I read it with gusto once I discovered it was set (at least for the second part of the tale) in Surinam on the north coast of South America. I know nothing of this country but it is not too far from Barbados from whence some of my husband's ancestors came so I am very interested in that region and that time. The book gave me a real flavour of the time. There are some very gory details at the end and I was interested to note that it was adapted into a play by
Thomas Southerne in 1696 and several times since right up until 1999 by
Biyi Bandele. Is it a good story? I can't say just now. My observation at this point is that with this book and indeed Dostoyevsky I feel the need to be reading it out aloud to extract the most meaning from it. There's a bit of me that wonders if early books do have that characteristic in acknowledgement that perhaps in those times not everyone could read so stuff had to be written to be read aloud if that makes sense. The front cover illustration by the way is a detail from Hieronymus Bosch's Adoration of the Magi showing the face of King Gaspard which makes me want to go off in a whole other direction. One final point - this was written during The Restoration. Behn was a royalist. She grew up during a time when the Puritans had banned theatre and Todd says "she associated them with dishonour, joylessness, commercial values and the controlling of women." Imagine growing up where you couldn't go to the theatre if you wanted to - a very interesting time indeed !
Interesting review! Thanks! :)
--BJ
Right - no 9 - can you believe it
Suite Francaise by
Irene Nemirovsky. What can I say? It is the best book I've read in a long time. I don't know why I like it so much. She manages to capture the ordinary everyday feelings of her subjects at a time of great upheaval. The translation I had also featured some Appendices - Appendix 1 containing handwritten notes on the situation in France and her plans for the rest of the novel taken from her notebooks. She writes 1 July 1942 - twelve days before she was captured - "my deepest conviction. What lives on: 1. Our humble day-to-day lives 2. Art 3. God". It feels so contemporary it is hard to imagine that it was written nearly seventy years ago. I can't wait to read more of her books. Even though the book is unfinished it doesn't feel like that to me so I urge you not to be put off by that fact. It's not as if it stops mid-sentence or anything. In fact I think its unfinished quality adds to the haunting quality of the book - all the characters wonder when the war will end. It is an extraordinary work of art written by someone who was able to step to one side and observe the extraordinary period in which she was living.
Thanks for the review, alexdaw! I bought
Suite Francaise at a campus book sale last summer and I can't wait to get into it. I've seen it pop up in this group a few times recently, all great comments like yours, so I'm looking forward to it.
Are you planning to read
Fire in the Blood as well?
Great review!
--BJ
I'm going to try and read as many of her books as I can. I hope you enjoy it as much as I did. So poignant.
Week 18 of the year and I've only finished Book 10 - tut tut. Book 10 of course was not on my original list - why be predictable? It was another Dostoyevsky
Humiliated and Insulted - I know I know...hilarious title...you get what the title promises - perhaps a rather melodramatic tale of people who feel insulted and humiliated. My husband always says that people don't give offense - you only take it. There is perhaps a weird logic in this...I'm not entirely convinced but I do think Dotoyevsky looks at how far we are willing to abase ourselves for love and I guess there is no limit really to how much we will lower ourselves for someone we really love - no matter how ridiculous or illogical. The main character Vanya is a struggling author and hopelessly devoted to Natasha. He sits and listens to her and waits upon her as she tortures him with tales of how much she loves another and, in turn, she is poorly used by the one she loves. Needless to say, Vanya is adored in turn by a poor waif Nelly whom he saves from destitution and a den of iniquity. This book took a lot to get through and I was rewarded at the end by the epilogue which I quite enjoyed if only to have some sense of closure.
Book 11
The Spare Room by
Helen Garner. I found this at the Brisbane City Council Library on my way out: it was on the FastBack 7 day loan stand - a most sensible idea to get fast turnaround on popular books. 7 days - pish - I read it in 3!! And I really enjoyed it. My first Helen Garner book I think. I read a rather scathing review and was expecting to hate it but I really enjoyed it. After Dostoevsky it was an easy read - I zipped through it. Yes of course there are some issues with the narrator who seems weak and unable to cope with her dying friend for more than 3 weeks but guess what ???? We're all human and we all have our limits. I guess I was particularly taken by this take on death because it was the death of a friend (rather than the death of a mother or a father). What would be different about that? Well, I for one am rather apprehensive about my response to the death of a good friend. Particularly the feisty ones, of which I seem to have a few. I imagine I will be devastated. Looking after a dying parent is tough but it is to be expected in a way. Looking after a dying friend I imagine would be very confronting. One of the hardest things about death is preparing for it. Unlike birth, you don't know when the anticipated date is. You can't knit bootees for the dying. And, to top it off, dying can be rather distasteful - obviously to the person doing the dying but also to those who attend upon them. I wonder if it's all part of the secret plan to encourage you to "let them go".....perhaps it's not so secret...perhaps its just a fact of life. So to address my question for bookclub this week...what is our notion of hospitality and culture. When is it acceptable to turn someone away? Which guests must be welcomed no matter, what? Well, I had an interesting scenario last year. I was helping a very dear friend to move house. We spent two days cleaning her rental property. She was due to fly to her new home the next day 1,000km away. Of course, she stayed with me. We had the usual dramas. She locked her keys in the hire car - as you do when you're stressed and between homes - she had to leave at sparrow's fart. She is the closest thing I have to a sister. Then another very dear friend rang at 8 o'clock that night. She'd missed her connection - Brisbane International and Brisbane domestic connections weren't working all that well. Could she come and stay? Of course!!! "Kids! You're sharing a bed tonight - only one spare room." I didn't tell my 2nd dear friend that the first dear friend was staying or she would have done the martyr act and stayed in a hotel. As it was the first dear friend was trying to do the martyr act and stay in a hotel. My attitude is I'll keep taking them as long as they're willing to put up with the sofa or the floor. But I am also sympathetic to people wanting to live it up in a hotel if they can afford it. But I'd rather have everyone under my roof. I find it very difficult to turn people away. Even virtual strangers... The narrator in Helen Garner's book had a much stronger sense of boundaries and reasonable limits. Mine have to be pushed to a huge extent before I will realise that perhaps boundaries have been pushed too far. So - in answer to the question which guests must be welcomed no matter what - family then long standing friends i.e. those you have known for nearly your whole life. My dilemma is that I have very little family so I tend to treat friends as family hence my boundaries are bigger. My husband comes from a big family but his family were also into virtual foster parenting so their notion of boundaries is a bit stretched too. We both have grandparents who were put into orphanages at very young ages so I think that affects our outlook too. Things must never get to that state again. No-one - particularly the very young- should end up in an institution. Goodness. That book provoked a lot of thought didn't it. Let me know what you think.
Message edited by its author, May 3, 2009, 2:41am.
I certainly enjoyed your review of the book and your thoughts on friends and family. Having them around is the greatest. You sound like a wonderful friend to have. :)
--BJ
Goodness me!!! It's been yonks since I reported last - I'm not going to reach my target of 50 at this rate!!! So what have I read.....well the latest joy has been the Millenium trilogy - no doubt well reviewed by those far more eloquent than my good self. For those who are not familiar with the Millenium trilogy, it is a mystery/kinda family saga - well the first one is at any rate -
The Girl with the Dragon Tatoo, swiftly followed by
The Girl who played with Fire. Both fantastic books which I whipped through in a matter of days. I am at heart a stick in the mud, conservative namby pamby so it was with some foreboding that I read a book about someone with a tatoo. Silly me. The character with the tattoo is a hard prickly personality but she's a fighter, she's smart and she's a hero. This series covers all the things I love - a puzzle, an island, clever journalists who care deeply about the world in which they live, a messy family history with a deep dark past. I was hooked. I also read and enjoyed Grand Days by Frank Moorhouse. At first I loathed the main character - she was so tedious and self-conscious and if she over-analysed one more conversation or thought I was going to chuck the book out the window....but she grew on me like moss....and the book was about the League of Nations after all...and I do like a bit of history...and the other main character, Ambrose, was so intriguing....and then what they got up to was so very very intriguing...It looks a bit of a massive tome but massive tomes can be conquered if they are erudite and entertaining and this was both. The authors acknowledgements and notes at the end also make for very interesting reading....if you like authors who research their topics then Mr Moorhouse is your man. I was compelled to underline one sentence/thought in the book which spoke to me..."Every use of time required a forgoing of something else." I am gobsmacked by how little time I have despite being on extended leave....the days slip by...I realise that an hour is not very much time at all...a blip on the landscape of eons....my timetables seem a joke...anyway....that's enough for now...
Oh and one more which I finished today by Sandor Marai called
Die Glut....just a little book...very easy to read and very evocative...I particularly like that it is about two old people at the end of their lives....one of whom has certainly harboured the thought of revenge for over forty years....and what he does when confronted with the object of his emotion. One always wonders what it is like to be old and I think the author wrote this at towards the end of his life so to some degree I regard it as an authentic account of how one must feel....here is a quote...."We age slowly. First, our pleasure in life and other people declines, everything gradually becomes so real, we understand the significance of everything, everything repeats itself in a kind of troubling boredom. It's the function of age. We know a glass is only a glass. A man, poor creature, is only a mortal, no matter what he does. Then our bodies age: not all at once. First it is the eyes, or the legs, or the heart. We age by installments. And then suddenly our spirits begin to age: the body may have grown old, but our souls still yearn and remember and search and celebrate and long for joy. And when the longing for joy disappears, all that are lfet are memories or vanity, and then, finally, we are truly old. One day we wake up and rub our eyes and do not know why we have woken....." There is more...much more....but I leave it to you to discover more...
I also really enjoyed The Girl With the Dragon Tattoo :>
In fact, I'm waiting for payday (Aug 23rd) so that I can go and buy
The Girl Who Played with Fire... is there much you can say about it without spoiling it too much ?
Hi wonderlake
You will be glad you bought it....the story focusses much more on Salander and her back story or what has led her to be why she is the way she is....it's a wild ride
Another unplanned book this week. A colleague at work said he liked reading Fred Vargas and
Patricia Highsmith so I thought I'd better become acquainted with their work given that his last recommendation (The Girl with the Dragon Tattoo) was outstanding.
I am not ordinarily a crime reader but I do enjoy watching The Bill and other crime shows from time to time.
Wash this blood clean from my hand was not a bad read....I certainly kept wanting to read it til the end. I liked the idea of French police going on a work excursion to share information with their Canadian counterparts. The central character - Admasberg - is eccentric - sometimes too eccentric for me.
It's probably a fairly standard device in this kind of literature that the detective is torn between science and gut. An interesting twist was the possibility of supernatural forces at work.
If you are looking for an escape from your world for a while, this will do the trick but not be too taxing.
Message edited by its author, Sep 12, 2009, 8:17pm.
Book 17!
Great stuff. Loved how people cross themselves before they go for a swim in the ocean. Had a bit of difficulty with suspension of disbelief about whether someone would jump in a car with a complete stranger because he said her brother was in hospital and asked to see her....but then ...perhaps you would...obviously stranger danger was drilled into me!!!! But once I got over that was fascinated by the relationships - siblings, mother/daughter, grandmother/grand-daughter, husband/wife. Tis the Irish in me I know. Nothing like a good going over of entrails - the eternal search for truth.
Message edited by its author, Sep 8, 2009, 11:38pm.
Book 18
Oooh. Well I've been looking forward to this book for a long time. Me and food go together like....well...whatever....toast and jam....cheese and biscuits...chips and dips.
There was much of me that identified with the author. How many of us have been stuck in jobs far beneath our talents???? I suspect her husband is far too good to be true and should be nominated for next sanctification or whatever you call making saints.
I also strongly identified with the comfort to be derived from cookery books and their ilk. My personal favourites are my mother's collection of no less than six books on etiquette.
Mrs Beeton's Book of Household Management also has a special place in my heart and when feeling lost I always like to look up various lists e.g. how many sets of linen or towels one should have in one's abode or how to find good domestic staff. Don't accept a written reference - go and seek a personal one from a former employer and all that stuff. Great consolation in a world with no rules.
A bit of me was fascinated that the author should choose to work her way through a whole chapter on tarts (rather than jumping around for variety's sake) and the passages on lobster are not for the faint-hearted. Having said that, it certainly did not put me off my lobster mornay shared with my father and his partner on Father's Day last weekend. Turning a blind eye is another favourite pasttime of mine.
I was not enamoured of the book as much as I had hoped but I fear that is always the way with great expectations. Often they are dashed. Mine weren't dashed exactly. In fact I strongly suspect a large dash of envy on my part that our heroine had the stamina to see her project through to the end - no matter how ridiculous it might seem in hindsight - setting a goal and achieving it are not to be sneezed at. Julie Powell has done not only that but a bit more as well....bless her.
Nice review of Julie & Julia! I haven't read the book yet but I did recently read Julie's original Julie/Julia Project blog. Have you noticed that it affected the way you cook at all? I feel like reading about Julie's experiences made a little more fearless in the kitchen. I look at some recipes now and instead of dismissing them as too complicated or too much work, it's more of an adventure and a voice in the back of my mind says "if Julie Powell did it, I'll survive." Now if only someone would give me a book deal and movie option for it ;)
Book 19
Love and Summer by William Trevor
This is the first book by William Trevor that I have ever read. I feel a bit embarrassed to confess this because when I read the fly cover and saw how many he has written, I feel as if I have been hiding in a dark hole for a very long time !! There's a very nice photo of him by Lord Snowdon on the back fly cover. He looks just like the kind of gent you'd like to meet on a cold afternoon in a warm and cosy pub in Ireland. Only he lives in Devon now I believe. He has been nominated for the Booker prize no less than four times!
The story is very gentle and easy to read. Trevor manages to capture the ordinary everyday stuff of our lives that makes us who we are without boring us to death. The setting for the story is probably what would seem a picturesque village in Ireland to Aussie tourists, but possibly stifling for some of its inhabitants. The characters, whose trials and tribulations we follow, are each afflicted with their own private misfortune. The opening scene is Mrs Connulty's funeral.
Her adult children - a brother and sister - inherit the estate and some would say now own half the town. Miss Connulty looks after the bed and breakfast for travelling salesman (down to cleaning their shoes) whilst her brother looks after the other businesses. It is an uneasy relationship. Mr Conulty Jnr was his mother’s favourite and Miss Conulty had a fall from grace in her youth . Miss Connulty takes a vigorous interest in the possible threat to the reputation of a local farmer's wife - Ellie Dillahan. She is concerned that Ellie is being pursued by a passing photographer, Florian Kilderry. She entreats her brother to send Florian on his way but is unsuccessful in garnering his support.
Ellie's public misfortune is to be born a foundling. Cared for by nuns in a nearby village she is considered fortunate to gain a position as the housekeeper for a farmer recently bereaved when his wife and child died in a tragic accident. After a number of years she becomes his second wife but they are not blessed with children. As Miss Connulty feared, she falls in love with Florian.
And you’ll have to read the rest to find out what choices are made…..!
Message edited by its author, Sep 12, 2009, 8:15pm.
I read
The Story of Lucy Gault, by William Trevor earlier this year, and I have to say that it has been one of my highlights; so it's good to know that he has a new one out- which seems to have some similar themes:- bereavement, tragic accidents, love- all in a beautiful Irish village setting.
This message has been deleted by its author.
Last month I went to see the movie Balibo with my sister-in-law. It was pretty powerful stuff and we came away wanting to know more. I ordered some books from the local library and
Tony Maniaty’s
Shooting Balibo – Blood and Memory in East Timor turned up last week.
The book wasn’t quite what I was expecting. Tony in his Acknowledgements at the back of the book does state that he has tried to “recapture, through observation, archives and recalled moments, what happened in a small and very troubled place in 1975, and the experiences of returning there in 2008 with the Balibo film production…..It is by no means an authoritative history: the works of Jill Jolliffe and James Dunn, who were also in Dili in 1975, and also o f Hamish McDonald and Desmond Ball, are well recommended in that regard.”
So who was/is Tony Maniaty? Well, if you’ve seen the movie, he was the journalist who survived – the one that got away! Tony Maniaty was the ABC’s news journalist covering the conflict in East Timor in 1975. Originally from Brisbane, now my home town, he joined the ABC as a cadet journalist in 1967 “fresh out of high school”. I joined ABC Brisbane in 1982 (in much lowlier circumstance I might add) so was interested to hear what it was like working at the ABC before my time. Tony had long gone by the time I arrived. Since 1975 he has been Diplomatic Correspondent for Radio Australia, and in 1991-92 was European Correspondent for SBS's Dateline. Our paths almost crossed again when in 1993, Tony attended the Australian Film, Radio and Television School. Only I was still in Brisbane working as the Professional Development Manager and he was a student in Sydney. It was at the School that he met Robert Connolly who I met not long after when he was Associate Producer on All Men are Liars in Far North Queensland. I was supervising some internships for the Pacific Film and Television Commission. Robert then went on to produce The Boys, The Monkey’s Mask, and Romulus, My Father. He also directed The Bank, Three Dollars and now Balibo.
So, there were a few “characters” in the book already known to me – the ABC and some members of the film crew. Tony captures beautifully what it’s like to work in both areas. His book really is a marvellous attempt to capture the at times disorienting experience of recalling memories, re-telling stories and the process of filmmaking – particularly the new and very popular area of storytelling – the area of docu-drama – what is real? What is fiction? What really matters in storytelling? What story are we trying to tell?
I was a bit disappointed that there were no photos included (apart from the front cover) but Tony’s writing style is so descriptive that that begins to matter less and less the further into the book you delve. What impressed me over and over again was his ability to capture memories of growing up – reminding me of things I had forgotten that I had done too in my youth e.g. “Back then, in the halcyon 1950s, I dreamed of travel to exotic lands, not least in Africa. Unlike most boys, I penned letters to foreign embassies in Canberra asking for tourist brochures to expedite my journeys. ….bundles of multi-hued brochures tumbled into my dull life, promoting destinations, attractions and luxury hotels from Bermuda to Tanganyika…..” I grew up in the 60s but we still did that then too!!
Cinema audiences walk away from the movie with many questions no doubt and Tony attempts to answer some of these in the book. Why did the Balibo 5 ignore his advice and head towards almost certain death? Why did the Australian government do nothing? Who was Greg Shackleton and what motivated him? Who is Jose Ramos Horta?
I was 14 at the time of the Indonesian invasion and confess to very little consciousness of it or the Balibo 5. As Tony states several times in the book, the Constitutional Crisis tended to overshadow everything. My sister-in-law and I marvelled at the Production Design in the film – the seventies was perfectly captured. Those short shorts and sideburns – hubba hubba!!. For me particularly the excitement of being part of a film crew was also captured. But of course Tony is quite right when he says that the great casting is ultimately what really makes the film “authentic”.
Heading back to Balibo last year to witness the filming gave Maniaty an unreal sense of reality versus unreality.
“It’s growing harder by the hour not to see these actors as the living embodiment of the Balibo Five, and the real Balibo Five as historical figures we’ve constructed from photos, their reporting and filming, and memories laced together by family and friends. Thrust together in this Toyota, laughing and playing up, they are as they might have been in 1975; five for the road, searching for adventure and great stories. The actors are young and I’m not, but just for a moment I can feel what it was like to be in my mid-twenties…..I am bouncing along in the back of a ute with mates of the same age, I’m acting in a movie called Life; there’s no reason to turn back. I’m in the universal moment.
He witnesses another unreal moment when…
“I step into the DVD shop. It is, literally, a pirate’s cave. Every disc here has been copied from a master somewhere in deepest Asia, wrapped in cellophane and priced to the local market, a couple of dollars apiece. ……I have escaped the Balibo team; I’ve stepped out of the film world and into the real word of Dili, only to find the real world consists of an emerging Timorese middle-class consuming thousands of imported movies…..”
Tony wrestles with his role as storyteller. As a journalist, particularly for the ABC, he is meant to report what he finds impartially. Who is telling him the truth? Who can he trust? It is part of the challenge he faces when reflecting on his brief conversation with Greg Shackleton and his team. The competitive nature of television journalism could mean that his heartfelt advice to them not to head to Balibo could have been interpreted by macho males as a gauntlet.
It is ironic that on his return to Darwin in 1975 his boss advises him to lay low for a couple of weeks “I’d been back for a couple of hours and to one side I was still ’the Communist journalist’ targeted for elimination on Indonesian radio and to the other ‘the traitor undermining the revolution.’
Tony is ultimately reflecting on what it means to be a storyteller in today’s world – fact or fiction. What stories we choose to tell and the effort both mentally and physically that it takes – sometimes the toll both personally and professionally. Jose Ramos Horta for one had to leg it all over the world to tell his story, finally to the UN and anyone else who would listen. He and his family are still paying the price.
Maniaty reflects on the huge leaps forward in technology now for storytellers – at a touch of a mobile phone, in most areas, we can ring colleagues, family and friends and ask for advice, information or reassure them we are okay. We can google things we are not sure of. The producers sit on set and look at rushes on their laptops – inconceivable back in 75. The gear we use as filmmakers is much more discrete and almost weightless in comparison to the heavy cameras and sound recording gear that used to be lugged around. I was impressed by the account of the actors preparing for their roles – looking at I-pods with uploaded actual footage of the news reports from 75 to ensure their performances were authentic.
As audiences, we choose the stories we want to hear. I’m glad I chose this story.
Book 21
The White Tiger by
Aravind Adiga - started to read this at the beginning of the year and had difficulty getting into it and then had to return it to the library. Found it on the Fastback stand last week and put my mind to it. Nothing like a deadline to spur you on!! This time was much easier. I seem to be reading - quite unintentionally - books that seem to come in pairs or match each other in some way this year. I think we will have quite an interesting book club meeting next month discussing both
The White Tiger and
The Brief and Wondrous Life of Oscar Wao. Both books are written in the character's vernacular (there's probably a more elegant way of describing that, but it's early in the morning so you'll have to put up with my ham-fisted English). Of the two I prefer The White Tiger - the vernacular jarred less on my white middle-class sensibilities. Both books share similar themes I think though it has been a while since I read Oscar Wao. I felt more immersed in the main character of The White Tiger though this may have had something to do with the tight reading schedule!!!
Book 22
One of my friends once said, if you have to make an excuse for a movie, it wasn't any good. I find myself doing this with
Not Untrue and not Unkind Ed. O'Loughlin's debut novel - . By chance I happened to read Tony Maniaty's Shooting Balibo a couple of weeks before and I am compelled to compare them. Of the two, I prefer Shooting Balibo if you're looking for an account of a journalist reporting from a war-torn foreign country. I get that, in order to report dispassionately or objectively, one must distance oneself from the subject to a degree. However Ed O'Loughlin's main character Owen was so busy appearing cool that I was hard-pressed caring for him at all. My enormous ignorance of Africa and its ever changing political landscape also made me want to reach for an atlas/wikipaedia to try to follow what on earth was going on. Perhaps this was intentional on the author's behalf but it just left me confused and frustrated. I wanted to gun for one of the characters but they were all so damaged, cynical or thin that it was an effort to finish the book.
Message edited by its author, Sep 24, 2009, 7:20pm.
Book 23
The Quickening Maze by
Adam Foulds. This is another in the Booker list - this time the shortlist! I enjoyed it more than the last book I read but it was still a bit of a struggle. The book is based on real people e.g.
Tennyson and
John Clare. I must confess I did not know of the latter so perhaps some of my enjoyment was diminished through ignorance. The story concerns Dr. Matthew Allen's family, his Asylum and its inmates. The bits I found interesting were John Clare's escapades with local gypsies - particularly the account of cooking up hedgehogs in clay - "hotchiwitchis". The character of Allen's youngest daughter Abigail is endearing. She seems perhaps the only one who doesn't seem at all mad or slightly deranged like most of the adults - some are mad with grief, some with love, some with religion. I'm not quite sure what Dr Allen's variety of derangement is - pride perhaps? His daughter Hannah is deranged with boredom and composes lists of subjects for conversation on the offchance she should meet a suitable suitor. I learned some new words - nacreous - meaning pearly - and Gules - meaning red - a Heraldic term. So some parts of this book will stick with me but all in all Brooklyn is still my favourite even though it didn't make it to the shortlist.
Message edited by its author, Sep 28, 2009, 2:33am.
Book 24
The Wilderness by
Samantha Harvey. I have been reading this on and off for a couple of weeks now. It's due back at the library today so I made a determined effort and knocked off about 100 pages today. The story is about Jake who is steadily deteriorating from Alzheimers. Rather like a puzzle, we weave in and out of Jake's thoughts, dreams and daydreams as he tries to determine real memory from mis-remembering. Strong female characters feature in this story - from his mother Sara, to his wife Helen, his lover Joy and the woman who cares for him in his illness, a friend from childhood, Eleanor. I have not yet been acquainted with Alzheimers personally though I have picked up fragments here and there from the press and also through personal accounts from friends who are caring for afflicted relatives. And it is a real affliction - a torment I believe - which is why the book is so very difficult to read!! The author has captured the torment beautifully...as a reader we struggle to know what is "real" and what is "fiction" - a clever conceit if you will. So whilst not my preferred choice for the Booker, I can admire the writing, the characterisiation and the concept. For a first novel I think this is a triumph and such a shame that it wasn't shortlisted.
Message edited by its author, Sep 29, 2009, 6:33pm.
The Wilderness sounds like an interesting read. With
Still Alice putting a spotlight on Alzheimer's, I'm a bit surprised that books like
The Wilderness aren't getting more attention. But if you are interested in reading more about the disease, I'd highly recommend
Still Alice. It's a novel, written from the perspective of the person who is afflicted, and is quite powerful.
Book 25
Summertime by
Coetzee.
This is my first Coetzee book. I saw the movie adaptation of his book
Disgrace recently which I found fascinating. It really made me think. And I guess this book does the same thing. I didn't want to read it at first because it is the third in a trilogy and I thought I might not do it credit not having read the other two first. So please, take all my observations with this in mind. Having avoided reading it for quite a while - the library reminder notice got me motivated - I was pleasantly surprised to find it quite an easy read. And it is a slim volume at 266 pages. It's a bit disconcerting because the author sets it in the future - after his death - as if it were the notebooks of a biographer. There are some extracts from notebooks and a series of interviews with significant people in the author's life. Well the ones that are still alive that is.
The line between fact and fiction therefore is at once challenged. I confess to not knowing much about Coetzee's life so it probably would be a bit of fun and a detective chase to determine what bits might be real and what bits might be fiction. But in the end is that important? The reader is constantly questioning why the author is going down this path? Is he really revealing stuff about himself? In which case it's not necessarily very complimentary. But then if it was complimentary, wouldn't we as readers think less of the author because he was not quite humble enough?
As an amateur family historian this really is a fascinating read. What do we leave behind for others to determine about who we really were when we lived? Our work colleagues will have one view of us. Our lovers will have another view. Our relations will have another view again. And ultimately what do we choose to reveal of ourselves? In our diaries or jottings? An important passage, I think, from the book is when the biographer and Sophie Denoel talk about sources and their veracity. First the biographer says: "What Coetzee writes there cannot be trusted, not as a factual record - not because he was a liar but because he was a fictioneer. In his letters he is making up a fiction of himself for his correspondents; in his diaries he is doing much the same for his own eyes, or perhaps for posterity....." Sophie responds: "But what if we are all fictioneers, as you call Coetzee? What if we all continually make up the stories of our lives? Why should what I tell you about Coetzee be any worthier of credence than what he tells you himself?"
Interesting stuff indeed!
Message edited by its author, Oct 3, 2009, 8:27pm.
Book 26
The Slap by
Christos Tsiolkas
Ouf!! This has been on my to-read list for a long time. A very dear friend lent me her copy. The goal was to read it before we went on holidays together so that we could talk about it but I was too slack/slow and that's a shame because it is a book that needs to be discussed. It's not a book that I will want to read again or look back on fondly. In fact I found it deeply disturbing. Which is always a good thing, I hasten to add. Tsiolkas presents contemporary Australians in all their shades and persuasions. If I fought against anything, it was the what, to me, seemed prolific drug taking - but maybe I live in a state of denial. I also didn't like any particular characters in the book which is difficult - I usually like to gun for someone. Tsiolkas presents the story from a number of characters' points of view which is becoming an increasingly common technique these days but a no-less effective one. Descriptions of sex are pretty full-on too but I found they were from a pretty male point of view so not particularly enjoyable. The character I identified with most was the old man Manolis. Last but not least, I wanted to slap the kid, which I realise means I probably do need to discuss this book with someone - maybe a professional!!
Message edited by its author, Dec 1, 2009, 4:53pm.
No. 27
The Little Stranger by Sarah Waters
This was short-listed for the Booker Prize this year. It is one of the longer books at 480 pages. I am not fond of long books generally speaking. However this was not a War and Peace with difficult names to remember et al and was quite an easy read. I am not a great reader of ghost stories either but was quite looking forward to a modern ghost story.
I suspect there are certain conventions with telling ghost stories. A big old rundown house is always a good start and Waters certainly provides us with one. I felt very sorry for the family that lived there and wondered why on earth they didn't cut their losses and run earlier. I certainly wanted to get out of there - ghost or no ghost - it was pretty grim living there.
This is also my first Sarah Waters book and I have to confess that I probably won't rush out and borrow another one from the library unless I receive strong recommendations from someone. I just didn't care about the characters enough and it all went on far too long for how it ended up.
On to the next Booker shortlisted one .....
No. 28
A.S. Byatt The Children's Book I am not a fan of big books. They are hard to read in bed and I hate constantly calculating: how many more pages to go? As with long movies, I always believe a judicious edit could do little harm to big books. The Children's Book is a massive tome - 615 pages.
I stuck with it because the subject matter and time period interests me enormously - artists/intellectuals/bourgeois moving from the Victorian to the Edwardian era. Family history is my secret vice and that aspect of the novel intrigued me too. I think that the novel would be well served in future editions by some attempt at a family tree or at least a list of characters to remind the reader of who's who.
A.S. Byatt had a kernel of an idea (like her heroine Olive Wellwood) which she fleshed out into a somewhat corpulent work. It's not a disinteresting idea. It's about what we choose to tell children and what we don't....and how they muddle through anyway, informed or misinformed about who they are and their place in the world. We tell them "fairy" tales that upon deeper analysis are often heavily coded horror stories. The truth is often hard to tell and also hard to write. A.S. Byatt, I have no doubt, has researched her characters and time period very well. And yes, sometimes there are sermons from the mount or little lectures about periods in this history which miss their mark I find.
But the characters were well formed and interesting and I did want to know what happened to each and every one of the children - only sometimes I got lost along the way and wished I wasn't lost and that my hand had been held tighter and there wasn't so much extraneous stuff.
PS. I reckon I found an error at the top of the page on page 65 of the Chatto and Windus version - "Basil and Olive, fairy kind and fairy queen, spoke the golden speeches of blessing on married men and women, on chidlren born and unborn." Doesn't she mean Humphrey? Or am I still very confused???
Message edited by its author, Dec 1, 2009, 4:49pm.
I read once more Tolkien and discovered Lovefool by Amalia Angellinni.
Now, I will read Hemingway and wait inpatiently for Lovefool 2.
No. 29!
The Guernsey Literary and Potato Peel Society by Mary Ann Shaffer
I bought this as a gift for a friend last Christmas....one of those purchases where you really want it for yourself. Finally it turned up for me at the library. I was struggling with other books and picked this up for a bit of a relief...and didn't put it down. Very quickly I was whisked into the world of the narrator and her fellow characters. It is quite difficult to describe this book without making it sound conventional mush. And it is definitely NOT that. It hooked me with the story of someone finding a book in a second hand book store, reading it and then writing a thank you note to the person who had previously owned it. So for those of us who believe in serendipity, cosmic consciousness or whatever you want to call it and who fiercely love books, you will probably be hooked too. The book is also about journeys - interior and exterior - and about healing. Best of all the edition I read was delightfully small and not hugely thick and came with a red ribbon bookmark. I do like being able to hold a small book in my bed confident in the knowledge that I will finish it - that my arms aren't breaking under the weight of it - that when my eyelids begin to close that I can deftly whip the bookmark in before I fall into a deep peaceful slumber.
Message edited by its author, Dec 1, 2009, 5:03pm.
No. 30
The Glass Room by
Simon MawerI read this a while ago but forgot to write a review - it was when all the Booker Prize hullabaloo was going on and I was in a mad panic to try and read them all before it was announced. What a foolish endeavour!! Did you see the size of some of those shortlisted????? Wolf Hall had to be returned to the library - there was no way I was going to finish that in time! I had just started this book when a friend said - "Oh I didn't like it - too Austrian!" Well I don't know what Austrian is - cold? unfeeling? But I did like this book very much. Perhaps it was the idea of a young couple trying to create a perfect house/world for their new family when the world was becoming unhinged. Perhaps it was the account of people not quite believing what was happening at the prelude to WWII and what tips them to seek safety when the truth becomes too alarmingly clear. The characters were clearly defined and I did want to know what happened to them. I do like Glass Houses (read Bau Haus type architecture) very much and I liked the idea/premise of what happens to people who choose to live in them.
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