The Details

Tegan Bennett Daylight is a guest of the 2020 (digital) Melbourne Writers Festival in a session with Charlotte Wood called 'In Which Two Friends Discuss Reading' and so I bought her latest book, The Details, on Love, Death and Reading. And although this collection of essays includes other topics, you won't be surprised to learn that the ones about reading interested me most.

The tone of these two essays, 'The Difficulty is the Point' and 'Inventing the Teenager' couldn't be more different to Debra Adelaide's uplifting book about reading, The Innocent Reader. Bennett's writing in these essays is characterised by melancholy and a sense of loss. But the loss she conveys in the essays about reading is not like the loss she evokes when show more writing about the deaths of her mother and her friend the author Georgia Blain. The loss of a reading culture in contemporary life is deeply felt, and personal too, but there is also a palpable sense of frustration about the diminishing importance of reading in our society. Because unlike the inevitability of death, the loss of reading is a choice. Being made, perhaps, by people who do not know what they are losing, and who are not aware of how that choice impacts on others. Because a shared reading culture is something that has connected us ever since the emergence of universal literacy.

This is not something I need to explain to readers of this blog. All of us who read and write LitBlogs love — and need — that sense of connection. We are all well-read, and we need to talk about the books we've read. We love it when a blogger reviews a book we've also read, often even more so when it's a book we read from long ago. Whether it's Bill reviewing Cranford at The Australian Legend or Karen reviewing Staying On at Booker Talk or Simon at Tredynas Days reviewing Old Filth or Sue at Whispering Gums reviewing Persuasion, what we love is the experience of 'being' with someone who has read the same book. Or, if we haven't read it, wanting to, and sharing connections about other books brought to mind by the blogger's review. That book talk brings back memories, ideas, opinions and emotions that are part of who we are as individuals. All of us will understand the intense frustration and dismay that Tegan Bennett Daylight expresses when she writes about teaching EngLit to wannabe primary school teachers...

To read the rest of my review please visit https://anzlitlovers.com/2020/08/06/the-details-on-love-death-and-reading-by-teg... show less