Unputdownable.

It was a lovely sunny weekend in Sydney so I decided to go to the park and start Room by Emma Donoghue which, I was assured, by both the bold print on the cover and a conversation with my mum, "I would read in one sitting". I thought this was pretty unlikely because I'm just far too easily distracted by interesting shaped twigs, talking on the phone, checking Facebook and all of the delicious breakfasty foods that are available on the way to and from the park. Predictably I didn't finish it in one sitting but it was so engrossing I was late for my Halloween party plans and when I got home that morning at 3am, extremely drunk, chicken burger in hand, the first thing I did was pick it up and start reading. 


Room is the story of a woman and her son being held captive against their will. Told from the perspective of an incredibly curious five year old boy who has never seen the outside world other than the images he sees on TV. This subject matter could so easily have descended in to cheap, tacky, manipulative territory but it's genuinely imaginative and unsentimental. Sometimes it's even funny. It still haunting me a little today. You may or may not read it in one sitting I just recommend that you read it sober. 

Water world

Today I decided to try Tim Winton's new "coastal memoir" Land's Edge. Look, even as a freckly, ginger who grew up in the Snowy Mountains, I completely get the whole "deep affinity with the sea" thing. I know how diving in to the salt water can be like taking a strong, mood altering substance and there's something about Australian beaches in particular, even if you only visited them once or twice as  a child, that create a certain sense of nostalgia. In short l think most of us probably have romantic notions about the ocean. Which is why reading a couple of hundred pages about someone else getting emo about the salt, waves, sand and sunshine, no matter how well written, just feels like an enormous, snoring-great self indulgence. On the upside the pictures are great.

Candice Bushnell attacks teenagers

While we all live in hope that SJP will leave the SATC movie franchise alone and we never, ever have to see it on the big screen again, Candice Bushnell is still churning out the books. This next one, Summer and the City, is due in 2011 and is a teen prequel to The Carrie Dairies. Tweens and toddlers remain safe. But for how long?

Mad Men watch...

"When God closes a door, he opens a dress." This, and other Roger Sterling witticisms from Mad Men, will be published in an actual Sterling's Gold book now pre-orderable. How many seasons til Peggy writes a memoir we'd actually read?


Via Jezebel

Two great loves combined

The Smiths/Penguin books mash up poster series from Hunting Bears.

Via mixed plate blog

Top 5 creepy new releases just in time for halloween...

Genuinely scary books that are being unpacked and placed on to book store shelves now.

Childs play

The fine folks at thepoke.co.uk  are helping you deal with your Mad Men separation anxiety via their new collection of Mad Men Mr Men. Featuring...

Read a full edition of the issue titled Mr Sterling gets Angry here.

Pride, prejudice and poor punctuation

Everyone on the interwebs is talking about Jane Austen's sloppy subbing skills . It turns out she wasn't the  the pristine literary stylist most imagined, in fact, she got super liberal with her use of colons, capitals and commas when they weren't actually necessary (and here I was thinking spinsterhood was the only thing we had in common!) Obviously Jane's editor had to get busy with red marker and everything was heavily edited before it went to print. This is not that unusual it's just that Jane's brother Henry fuelled the myth that she never put a letter out of place when, a year after her death, in 1818 he wrote, "Everything came finished from her pen".

National Book Award finalists

The day after the Man Booker Prize was handed out, the nominations for the National Book Award were announced in the US. The fiction shortlist includes Peter Carey’s Parrot and Olivier in America (he can get nominated because he has dual citizenship) and  Patti Smith’s awesome memoir Just Kids for nonfiction. Predictably what everyone is talking about is the notable absence of Jonathan Franzen’s Freedom especially since his novel, The Corrections, won the award nine years ago. 

Here is the full list of finalists:

Fiction
Peter Carey, Parrot and Olivier in America
Nicole Krauss, Great House
Lionel Shriver, So Much for That 
Jaimy Gordon, Lord of Misrule 
Karen Tei Yamashita, I Hotel

Nonfiction
Barbara Demick, Nothing to Envy
Megan K. Stack, Every Man in This Village Is a Liar
Patti Smith, Just Kids
John W. Dower, Culures of War
Justin Spring, Secret Historian

Poetry
Kathleen Graber, The Eternal City
Terrance Hayes, Lighthead
James Richardson, By the Numbers
C.D. Wright, One with Others
Monica Youn, Ignatz

Young People’s Literature
Paolo Bacigalupi, Ship BreakerKathryn Erskine, Mockingbird
Laura McNeal, Dark Water
Walter Dean Myers, Lockdown
Rita Williams-Garcia, One Crazy Summer

James Franco wrote a book

What a wonderful excuse to post this picture of him...

Here's what the New York Times has to say (and it's all good)...

"Too often, our comfort zones are our tombstones. We settle into numbing patterns and that’s that — wake me when it’s over. Not so in the frenetic world of James Franco, whose ambition over the past few years has manifested almost as performance art: he’s been affiliated with multiple M.F.A. programs, in fiction, poetry and filmmaking; he’s angling to add “Dr.” to his name, having recently become a Ph.D. aspirant at some shabby school called Yale. Oh, and in case your particular comfort zone is a cave, he’s a pretty successful actor, too.

Now he’s a published author. So often with young writers, we read regurgitations, remixes, short stories like pop songs we’ve already heard 500 times. This isn’t the case in Franco’s first story collection, “Palo Alto.” Its best entry is “American History,” in which high school freshmen must articulate the pro- and anti‑ slavery arguments of the mid-1800s. Franco sharply merges historical elements with a modern-day social commentary that makes you wonder how much we’ve actually evolved in post-bellum America. In another story, “I Could Kill Someone” — a wild romp in which the narrator decides to murder his locker-room nemesis — the bouncy, pubescent voice at first seems discombobulated, but ends up perfectly mirroring the undulations of a teenage mind: “In the old days, you could duel. Emotions have been around forever. I wish I had a girlfriend. Or someone.”

Read the full story here

And here's another picture for good measure...

Those left behind

Simon Cowell: The Unauthorised Biography by Chas Newkey-Burden has topped the annual 'books left behind index' compiled by Travelodge UK. The hotel chain collects around 20,000 discarded books throughout the year across their 452 rooms and this year thrillers and crime stories replaced the popular chik lit novels the list usually bulges with. Here's the top ten...

1. Simon Cowell The Unauthorised Biography Chas NewkeyBurden
2. Ooh What a lovely Pair Ant Dec
3. The Storm The World Economic Crisis and What it Means Vince Cable
4. The Lost Symbol Dan Brown
5. The Girl with the Dragon Tattoo Steig Larsoon
6. Breaking Dawn The Twilight Saga Stephenie Meyer
7. The Girl Who Played with Fire Steig Larsson
8. Eclipse Stephine Meyer
9. The Girl Who Kicked the Hornets Nest Steig Larsson
10. Eat Pray Love Elizabeth Gilbert

Yep, all books it's way better to leave in a hotel room rather then display on your shelf.

10 cent books (and other rare and exotic items)

Each weekend my parents run a military style raid on the flea markets, garage sales and deceased estates of the greater Southern Highlands region. The planning begins on Friday night when they plot a route and pick what they think will be the strongest targets. Dad is on the look out for vintage hi fi equipment and records and Mum for homewares (she posts her latest finds on her blog). Like any successful search and rescue mission the day begins at dawn and most Saturdays they're on the road just after 6am, though as I decided to join them today, that was pushed back to 7.30. 

First stop was the Moss Vale flea market where despite the loud cries of, "rare and exotic items sold here" by one of the stall holders, most things were fairly common and local. I was very happy to pick up a few great books for just 10 cents! Including;

Maestro by Peter Goldworthy (I loved this when we studied it in high school)

Jack Kerouac's sort-of memoir Doctor Sax

Picnic at Hanging Rock + the sequel/deleted final chapter The Secret of Hanging Rock 

both by Joan Lindsay.

After a few quick purchases at some Bowral garage sales we went to Dirty Jane's on Bong Bong Street.

 They have  an amazing collection of Penguin classics from the 60's and 70's.

I knew I wanted one but $8 now seemed expensive for second hand books. I finally settled on Clock Without Hands by Carson McCullers.

I think this will be my last post about Freedom

On the odd occasion it's good to know as little as possible about a subject . I'm pretty sure my binge reading of reviews of The Social Network contributed to how dissapointed I was with the film and I ran a similar risk when I started reading Freedom after over-indulging on too many opinion pieces.


It's hard to write about a book that's been so exhaustively talked about already so I'll tell you this; it's definitely as awesome as the majority of those opinion pieces suggest. The book, as I'm sure you know, follows the very complicated, very middle class lives of Patty and Walter Berglund who meet at college, marry, move to the suburbs and have kids. You'll notice the deliberate  absence of "falling in love" in that sentence because that part is definitely debatable. 


It really is the ultimate book club book (Oprah knows what she's doing) as I don't think I've ever felt such a strong need to discuss every tiny aspect of book with anyone who will listen and it's so easy to read (my friend Huey got through it one sitting and it's the size of dictionary, or at least what I remember the size of a dictionary to be. It's been a while.) Anyway there's definitely a lot to say and many ways to interpret what happens.


See, I thought it was about settling. Patty "settles" for marrying Walter and that decision affects every aspect of her life and particularly her relationships with her friends, family and especially, kids. It reminds me of that Thoreau quote, "the mass of men lead lives of quiet desperation". That was Patty for shiz. She was faking it and there's only so long you can keep that up. I think a lot of people settle for someone so they can get on with a picture-perfect suburban life thinking that's what happiness and freedom is. Eventually they'll realise that those things can't fill all their emotional and intellectual needs so they self destruct (and the blast effects everyone) and then they probably get divorced and go on a year long holiday to find themselves in Italy, India and Bali... oh wait no, that's another book.


It's probably worth mentioning at this point  that I didn't like any of the characters. I mean they were fascinating but also deplorable. It's not by any means an uplifiting story. It's 562 pages of  sad, frustrated, spoilt people making each others lives miserable. Wow, this isn't the sales pitch I thought it would be when I started writing.


Anyway back to the different interpretations of it's themes. My friend Jacqui thought it was about about the tension between safety/security and freedom, and how in the west we are hungry for both and demand them as our due. She thought the whole environmental theme as back-drop was what lifted the book into 'portrait of our times' territory ie we want the freedom to do what we want with the land and earth, but we are destroying it in the name of that freedom, just like we destroyed Iraq in the name of freedom. And just like Patty destroyed Walter in the name of freedom.

So, yeh, it was heaps deep. 


You should definitely add it your reading list.

Manning up

Howard Jacobson aka "the Jewish Jane Austen" won the Man Booker tonight for his comic novel, The Finkler Question. He's $80,000 richer. I feel as tired as he looks. Time for bed.

This week my Mum recommends...

"Norweigan book readers love Elling. With four books in the series, Ingvar Ambjornjsen has become a cultural icon.  It is a story about two guys recently released from a mental institution facing the challenges of everyday life and living on the fringe in Norway. Set up in community housing, everyday activities like shopping, using the telephone or going to a restaurant are almost impossible tasks.   Elling was nominated for the 2002 best foreign film award. A must read. Four stars."

Check out my Mum's awesome blog here.

Shelf Chic

Over at Flavorwire they've compiled a list of literature’s 10 Best-Dressed Authors and because Kate Moss and Alexa Chung haven't written books yet these lovely people made the cut. 

Anais Nin

Tom Wolfe

Donna Tart

William S. Borroughs

Oscar Wilde

Crazy man arms!

 A first look at Tina Fey's new book of essays, Bossypants.

Better book titles

Better book titles is a blog for people who don't have thousands of hours to read book reviews or blurbs or first sentences. Their covers allow you to understand the core message of the book in just seconds. Enjoy!

Junot Diaz: The Brief Wondrous Life of Oscar Wao

George Orwell: 1984

Virginia Woolf: Mrs. Dalloway

David Foster Wallace: Infinite Jest

Jonathan Safran Foer: Extremely Loud and Incredbly Close

Blink: Malcolm Gladwell

The Girl with The Dragon Tattoo: Stieg Larsson

The New Yorker App or "the greatest Youtube clip ever"

I'm a few days late with this, but it's too good not to share...

The Franzenfrenzy. Cont.

So, he's the first author to get a cover of Time in a decade and then Freedom gets a glowing New York Times review and then... the hating starts! The publishers must have been totally high fiving themselves over the frenzied response when they were suddenly interrupted by... Oprah (against Franzen's wishes) choosing it (over the Mandela biography) for her almighty  Book Club. 

The drama just won't quit. On Monday publisher HarperCollins UK confessed they printed the wrong version and the one doing the rounds is a draft that has no less than 50 spelling and grammatical errors. As this was securing a thousand more column inches around the world, two guys rushed the stage at the London book launch and stole Franzen's glasses OFF HIS FACE. They held them (briefly) for ransom for 100, 000 pounds.  I'm about three quarters through Freedom at the moment and it is really fantastic but I feel like the publicity campaign probably has more plot points at this stage.

Frazen, second from the left, from his appearance on The Simpsons.

Along with Michael Chabon, Tom Wolfe, and Gore Vidal

Something about Mary

This month for book club we read Mary by Vladimir Nabokov (although when it was first published he was going by the pen name V. Sirin). It's a short memoir of a displaced Russian man living in a German boarding house. With age he's developed in to a cold and introverted character but he becomes flooded with emotion again when he starts to reminisce about his first, youthful love, Mary. I won't say too much as it such a small novel with an interesting and discussion-worthy twist at the end. It relies heavily on suspense and anticipation in a similar way to Ian McEwan's On Chesil Beach which is to say it's a pleasure to read but you get quite desperate for the conclusion so you can be put out of your anxious misery. Or is that just me?

The reader: Tim Brunero

I met Tim at a party. We went on one date and I never heard from him again... until six weeks later when I ran in to him at a function and he had completely forgotten who I was. Tim doesn't have a great memory for faces but once he remembers who you are he is a fantastic friend. 

These are his three favourite books of all time.

The Children's Bach by Helen Garner is a beautiful modern Australian work. It speaks about love, lose, pain, family and the constant irritating itch that is existential angst. Garner is just brilliant in her perceptiveness. I always give a copy to any girl I'm dating to show how deep I am.

Catch-22 is a hilarious satire, with great dollops of surreal comedy thrown in. No book has had such an affect on me.  

The Slap is a fascinating experiment. By devoting a chapter to each major character's perspective on a single event Tsioklas keeps us hooked. And shows how one incident can be viewed so many different ways. It is also a thoroughly contemporary Australian story.