What's with today, today?

As always, books I finished reading for the first time this year. This year with links to where I've talked about them before, for added convenience. [edited to add link to Home  review] Wolf Hall- Hilary Mantel Don't know how Hilary Mantel managed to make the intricacies of Tudor politics so clear and readable, but she did. Reviewed here Bella Tuscany- Frances Mayes Self-indulgent travelogue Angel Puss- Colleen McCullough AA Gill is Away- AA Gill  The Graveyard Book- Neil Gaiman Perhaps my favourite Neil Gaiman to date. A Madness of Angels- Kate Griffin Fast paced and lots of fun, urban fantasy. More here Under a Glass Bell- Anais Nin Gorgeous little short stories that made me want to read more. The Hunger Games- Suzanne Collins One of the most talked about books of the year, reviewed here The Slap- Christos Tsiolkas One of the most talked about books of last year. I was in two minds about it though, see here and here . On the whole, not a fan. Unseen Academic...

Happy Christmas all! Hope you had a great day. I was away from my computer at the time (actually spent about half the day on the road), so sorry that the Christmas greetings are belated. I am currently in the process of writing up my list of New Books Read This Year, but for now- what I got for Christmas (aka Christmas books):                - Truth, Peter Temple (Australian Crime)               - The Little Prince and Other Stories (Collected Children's stories, including The Little Prince and                The Railway Children)               - The City and the City, China Mieville (Fantasy/Crime)               - Freedom, Jonathan Franzen (American Literature)               - The Grimm Reader, trans. Maria Tatar, foreword by AS Byatt. (Fai...

In my wanderings around the blogosphere I have come across two(!) memes that involve filling in the blanks with books you've read this year. I couldn't decide which one to do, so naturally I have done both. The downside is that you start to run out of good titles, but it was fun nonetheless. First, from Regular Ruminations ( here ): In high school I was:   Under a Glass Bell  (Anais Nin) People might be surprised I’m:   The Fire in the Blood   (Irene Nemirovsky) I will never be:   Jude the Obscure   (Thomas Hardy) My fantasy job is:   Unseen Academicals  (Terry Pratchett) At the end of a long day I need:   Love in a Cold Climate  (Nancy Mitford) I hate it when:   Housekeeping  (Marilynne Robinson)  Wish I had:   A Study in Scarlet  (Arthur Conan Doyle) My family reunions are:   Exploits of Moominpappa  (Tove Jansson) At a party you’d find me:   Looking for Alibrandi  (Melina Marchetta) ...

Points for identifying the lyrics in the title! This is a train of thought that has been brewing in my head for quite a long time, so I'm not sure if it's coherent anymore. It's also based heavily on my own personal experiences/feelings, so I'm sure not everyone will agree with me, and I would love to hear your thoughts! Basically I have been reading YA (young adult) fiction for many many years, and throughout my teenage years (and before and after) and for a while I stopped because some stuff about it annoyed me. Here is my rant: I remember when I was around 15 a friend recommended Sonya Hartnett's 'All My Dangerous Friends', about a girl starting university who goes out with a bad boy, falls in with the wrong crowd, steals, takes drugs and then leaves because she sees the dark side of it (in the form of the 'crowd's' violent retribution against a man who abuses one of their own). The basic plotline there feels a little familiar. It did to me ...

Here's an update on a future thing appearing on this blog, I know you will all be on tenterhooks to hear what I will write next. After reading Housekeeping I wanted to go out and read everything else Marilynne Robinson has ever written. But where to start? The obvious place is Gilead , perhaps her most famous book. But should I read that or Home , written later than Gilead but set parallel to it? Musing on Twitter my friend Sam commented that he was keen to read Gilead and, long story short, we decided to do a parallel read- he read Gilead and I read Home . Next step: we both review them, swap and repeat. So I'm sorry if this blog starts to give you Marilynne Robinson fatigue, but I have a lot more coming up!

Last weekend two of my friends had babies! Two! One boy and one girl. I haven't met them yet but I have seen photos and I can report that they are both extremely cute. Also from all accounts both friends + their babies are healthy, which is even more important. So very exciting times.  During this week another friend managed to get in a car accident- rolling her car right over on a wet road. But she emerged unscathed through the back window. And most importantly, her gelato was safe. Which is good to hear. This weekend another friend is moving house. So much news, and thankfully all good. What a week! My life seems unexciting by comparison. Though I did get a haircut (it's very short!), get my marks back from my last assignments (passed with pretty good marks) and manage to buy a bunch of new books. That is eventful enough for me! Edited to add picture of new haircut (coincidentally I am also dressed as a flapper for Halloween in this photo)

Another rave from me here, I loved Housekeeping , by Marilynne Robinson, and have to read the rest of her books now. Marilynne Robinson is best known (I think) as the author of Gilead , as well as Home (winner of the 2009 Orange Prize). From what I have gleaned, her major themes are religion and domesticity. While I have heard about Gilead quite a bit I have not been tempted to read it, and only came to read Housekeeping after reading a review that described it as good-but-not-as-good-as- Gilead (as well as an encounter with it in a bookshop in a moment of weakness).  But I am so glad that I did, because this was such a gorgeous novel, beautifully written. It's a novel of liminality, with recurring imagery of water and light and the sense of memory and dream. All these things seem to infuse the writing style itself, as well as informing the plot, characters and settings. And what are they? Two sisters are left by their mother on their Grandmother's doorstep, and cared for b...

I want to write a review of 'Scott Pilgrim', having recently read the graphic novels after watching the movie, but it's hard to find something to say other than "I loved it!" But I will give it a go, because after all it is a rainy Sunday afternoon, Andrew is at work and if I finish reading my current book I will immediately want to write about it instead. Scott Pilgrim is a 23 Canadian slacker, in a band but without a job, sharing a bed with his gay flatmate, Wallace (who has a job and therefore foots most of the bills) and dating a 17-year-old high-school girl named Knives Chau, when Ramona Flowers (an American delivery girl) enters his dreams and he becomes infatuated and falls in love with her. In order to date her, he must break up with Knives and defeat Ramona's seven evil exes (hard to say which task he finds more difficult, though defeating the exes is more time consuming). It's a story about love, emotional baggage and growing up. A couple of mon...

There's an age-old debate about the importance or usefulness of art- why do we bother with it? This last week I happened across a couple of quotes that talk about that in different ways: " One remark that I remember in particular had to do with his identity as a craftsman: he wanted to make solid objects that were concretely useful to the people who knew them. As a craftsperson myself, I love this outlook on art: it's not some enervated "extra" of no real value to life, but a solid, utilitarian object, like a chair or a toilet. It's not that people "can't live without" art; people can live without chairs and toilets, too. But the presence of art has a concrete benefit; I appreciated Bergman's reminder of that." - Evening All Afternoon, on an interview with Ingmar Bergman "These, with keen edges and smooth curves, were forms in modern prose which the lichened colleges presented in old poetry. Even some of those antiques migh...

Childhood books part 3 When I was a kid, I tended to prefer happy endings, and as I said before I even liked books where nothing too bad happens to the main characters. In fact, I think I still do! But there are some exceptions to this rule. I think I have come to appreciate sad books, and there are a bunch of books I read as a child that helped me to do that. There are so many degrees of 'sad', so many different feeling books, but I think there is something of a theme: the books I found most sad and discomfitting as a child are about growing up and about death. Here are some that I loved even though they made me sad: The Little Prince -  Antoine de Saint-Exupéry When going through the 1,001 Books You Must Read Before You Die with some friends, we came across this book. Neither of them had read it. That made me realise that this is a book that I think everyone should have read. How can you not have read The Little Prince? As Vizzini would say: inconceivable! It confused...

I started writing this blog post back when I read the book, but life (read: assignments) got in the way. So it has been finished in a completely different style at the last minute. But look- a proper blog post! *** Kate Atkinson's Jackson Brodie books all seem very multi-layered- weaving together different characters and different narratives leading to the eventual denouement. In 'Started Early, Took My Dog', I found it a bit too fragmented and disconnected at first, but by the end she had once again succeeded in pulling the threads together and creating an intriguing mystery and solution (with some red herrings thrown in for good measure). The slow beginnings give way to a sense of urgency by the end of the book in a satisfying way. Jackson Brodie appears somewhat late in the book, trying to find out the background of a girl in New Zealand who wants to discover the identity of her birth mother. Meanwhile, as a kind of reaction against a horrific scene earlier in her lif...

A while ago I wrote a blog post on memorable first lines in novels, today I found out that American Book Review has compiled a list of the top 100! From a quick glance at the beginning a couple of the ones we talked about are in there, but there are many, many more.  I'll leave you with one that wasn't in that blog post, but is on the list, and well worthy of it too: "Many years later, as he faced the firing squad, Colonel Aureliano Buendía was to remember that distant afternoon when his father took him to discover ice. —Gabriel García Márquez,  One Hundred Years of Solitude  (1967; trans. Gregory Rabassa)" Check it out here .

Assignments are finished, summer is icumen in, and I can almost believe I'm on holidays... Time for some more reading, blog-updating and miscellaneous adventures. Oh, and work of course. Difficult to forget that one. So here's an October update, with links! The Unbearable Lightness of Being Hungry - a food blog about Sydney restaurants, with a great name. Something from xkcd to put this whole blogging thing in perspective...

Teaser Tuesday As always- meme hosted by  Should be Reading . 'A Spy in the House of Love', Anais Nin "He smiled.  When they reached her room, and she closed the door, he examined his surroundings as if to assure himself he had not fallen into an enemy trap." p. 83

Pictures of light The shadows form a lattice on the wall The wall that glows in afternoon light Light which picks out the many-coloured bricks Bricks that stand so tall against a fearless sky Sky of a bright and everlasting blue Blue that will nonetheless fade... Fade like the shadows on the wall. Not quite a poem? A girl and a boy walked over the bridge hand-in-hand and the air around them glowed while the wind whipped past a lonely bus-stop. a fraction of the whole: fine filigree twigs against a liquid sky, brittle being in the immutable immortal.

So often it is that it is when you have a million other things you should be doing that you find a bunch of good things on the internet. And so 'tis that amid assignments, busy work days etc. I have some links for you! Firstly- Sarah Rees Brennan on murder mysteries . I found myself saying yes! That! And that! Her description of the type of novels that do not appeal, yes! Her impression of Dorothy Sayers talking to her editor about the character of Harriet Vane- yes again! All the way up to when she starts talking about the Ice House, and other books I haven't read. But maybe should, now. And a great post on Evening All Afternoon (first I've ever read of this blog, but will read more now) about A.S. Byatt's Possession and the various voices therein. Yes I do think I am displaying my biases in my choice of links today, but any talk about why Possession is great is fine by me. And lastly something very light-hearted: Smart Bitches, Trashy Books ran a competition ...

I honestly think that I read much more prolifically when I was a kid than I do now. At least, that's my excuse for having forgotten so many books. But not all forgotten books are forgotten in the same way. To paraphrase Donald Rumsfeld: there are books I remember, books I remember I have forgotten and books I forget I have forgotten altogether. For example... Witch Week- Dianna Wynne Jones I knew part of the plot of this story, but I'd forgotten the book. It drove me crazy, the story as I remembered did not match with 'Witch Week' so I knew it couldn't be it. Until I read it one day.  Turns out it was... Indian Captive: The Mary Jemison Story- Lois Lensk i  I read this book back in year 5 or 6, but completely forgot its existence until the other day. Reading a website dedicated to finding forgotten books, I came across one that reminded me of the existence of this book, reading something like 'girl is kidnapped by Indians'. There are millions of books with...

A while ago I thought I would write a blog post about my favourite childhood books. But as I came to think about it, I remembered more and more, too many to fit into one blog post. So a whole series of blog posts seems more appropriate. Various happenings (mostly assignments) have conspired to keep me from writing any of them. But today, since fate seems to be conspiring to keep me from my uni work, it seems appropriate to talk about comfort books. When I was in Year 12 at school we had to study speeches, and one of the speeches happened to be by Margaret Attwood talking about writing  and feminism. In it she describes how her young daughter and friend put on a play, in which all they did was eat breakfast, which was pretty dull because narrative needs to be 'more than breakfast'. Well when I was younger I was quite happy to read about 'breakfast'. I remember once complaining to my mum about all the horrible things happening to characters in a book I was reading, to w...

Skimming through the internet the other day I came across a reference to a line of startling familiarity, a line that made me realise some first lines stick in your head forever: "Sing Goddess, the rage of Peleus' son Achilles" (funnily enough,  I can never remember the first line proper until I see it, as my friend and I spent much of year 12 Ancient History misquoting it as "rage Achilles, rage on Agamemnon". We were also amused by the fact that 'Xerxes' backwards spelt 'Sexrex'. Yeah, mature I know.) From Homer, The Illiad Ironically, a first line that I find impossible to remember is one of the most recognisable for me. I'm not usually very good at first lines, but there are a few I'd know anywhere... "Whan that Aprille with his shoures soote" My English classes at university drummed this one into me- the first line of Chaucer's 'Canterbury Tales'. I think Chaucer is a genius, but this first line is not quite ...

A while ago I wrote about looking for book review blogs- I love reading blogs, I love reading books, and a blog that helps me find new books has got to be a good thing. I've done a bit of wandering in the blogosphere, which has been good, and I has been reflected in my last trip to the library. Here's what I borrowed: The Summer Book by Tove Jansson . I found this here , and was immediately intrigued. Tove Jansson! Writer of Moomintroll! Writing something completely different! It took me a couple of library visits to find it, but I was not disappointed. What a beautiful book. Set on a Finnish island it tells the story of Grandmother and Sophia with a style that is in fact similar to the Moomintroll books, but without the outlandish adventures and therefore allowing the characters more room to shine.  Moominvalley in November by Tove Jansson. Having been reminded of Tove Jansson I couldn't resist borrowing a Moomin book, especially as I'm not sure I've read this o...

Teaser Tuesday As always- meme hosted by Should be Reading . "Sophia was climbing very slowly now, with long pauses between steps, and Grandmother could see she was scared. The old woman stood up too quickly." - p. 47, 'The Summer Book', Tove Jansson

A while ago I read 'Fire in the Blood' by Irene Nemirovsky, then more picked up 'Madame Bovary' by Gustave Flaubert, and thought "this sounds familiar". Not that I am accusing Flaubert of copying a work written about 90 years after his, or Nemirovsky of copying Flaubert. I just noticed that 'Madame Bovary' is subtitled 'Patterns of Provincial Life', and that's what these two books provide- patterns. It's hard to describe the patterns exactly- there's the obvious (watch out there may be spoilers) pattern of infidelity in young French provincial wives, but that sounds a bit broad. There are the large country weddings, the hope of happiness that turns to discontent- or merely marriage as a chance to get away from home. While these patterns repeat themselves between books, and within books in the case of 'Fire in the Blood', I reacted very differently to the two. 'Fire in the Blood' seems all about patterns. The title...