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Not about the dying housekeeper's guide, this one (though I do want to read that later on this year).
Merely a note that I am breaking the link to the library blog on the right there for the time being. It's tired and it needs a sleep.
The name, however, is too nice to surrender immediately.
And I can thoroughly recommend the blogging platform it's hosted by.
I am perilously close to ending on a preposition there. Enough.
Well, as for TBRs with web-links (distinct from the head- or notebook- links), this is where I keep 'em. When I can be bothered listing links and recommendations, that is.
Keeping a list is, I think, often as much about where it resides as anything else. (The 'foine woines' list lives in a textfile on the desktop. And I like it like that.)
As well as making this link available here on the blog, I promise myself I will try not to write posts about books I am yet to read. I will probably fail though.
And what HAVE I read, apart from books I need to read for the July ALR? I have been poking around in sundry journals - GoingDownSwinging 26 looks and sounds positively glamorous, HEAT is up to its usual scintillating standards, the poetry in Emma Lew's collection Anything The Landlord Touches (UK reprint, also available at Giramondo though) is being slowly sampled, and I've been rereading bits of that old essentialist W.B. Yeats, from whom I need a fix every now and then. I'm dipping into Kundera's celebrated Curtain, which is a tonic and a half, or should that be seven? ten minutes in already and I've found something I can use. So clear, so easy to read. If only all literary criticism was this lucid. (Do note that at the end of that Washington Post review of Kundera's essay, Michael Dirda gives us his gmail address. Indeed.)
Delia Falconer had a terrific review of James Wood's YOU KNOW WHAT in the May ALR (it is almost time already for another.) I will also add at this point that Kerryn Goldsworthy's brief note about the tensions of meshing fact and fiction comes attached to her review of three books in the same issue of ALR, and opens up some issues in recent Australian fiction for reflection (not available online, unfortunately.)
I read almost in its entirety an enthralling article on creative industries and Marxism in Arena Journal by Paul Magee, which I was supposed to be indexing for the Australian Education Union, where I have been a temporary library techie recently. I'm unlikely to be doing that in my current temping position, where I'm cataloguing titles like Outlines of Employment Law. But I do have a room with a view, possibly the only office in my life I've ever spent more than five or six minutes in with a free view attached. I try to look out the window and stretch my eyes away from the screen as much as I possibly can. I can see the Bolte Bridge, Telstra Dome, the licorice allsorts AFTRS building, even a bit of the bay. It's amazing, and the secretary in the next cubicle comes in to get her coat from the rack and lingers, saying, 'Wow, this is such a nice office.' If I close my eyes I can imagine jazz ballet rumbles on the roofs nearby. Perhaps I shouldn't close my eyes too often.
I have read, at two sittings, the US edition of my blogger friend Mark Sarvas' Harry, Revised (prior to receiving Garner and Kureishi's new books for Mother's Day; so now they have to wait). HR will be released in Australia by Text around June (there is a Readings review here.)
I found some things to my liking there, including little echoes of one of my very favourite books, Billy Liar, whose unreliable, unforgettable narrator ("Shaddy-shaddy-SHADDERS!") I fancy Mark could have emulated rather successfully. There are certainly glimmers of the mordant Billy in there at times.
Part of me admires Mark (of Elegant Variation fame) almost pulling off a Billy Liar persona in a middle-aged man. Part of me wonders why such risks should be taken (though there is a case to be made for a film somewhere in all that). That's the part that would have liked to read a rerun of Billy Liar, I think, rather than a modern tale of LA life and love loosely entangled with The Count Of Monte Cristo. Billy, of course, had his own rich inner life and did not need (ahem!) to seek literary inspiration. But I did dally over a huge copy of the Dumas in an op-shop. One book inevitably, ineluctably leads to another.
When all's said, it is, after all, much more exciting that Tim has revived Sterne, where he writes quite often about things nobody will ever read. So get over there.
In real time, and at rather short notice (I am sorry, Kris!!) you can hear plenty of live poetry read tonight at Kris Hemensley's bookshop, Collected Works. New books by Greg McLaren (The Kurri Kurri Book of the Dead) and Meredith Wattison (Basket of Sunlight) are being launched, in a showcase for Sydney press, Puncher & Wattmannn. Supporting poets include Carol Jenkins, David Musgrave and Simon West, for a 6 pm start at the First Floor of the Nicholas Building, 37 Swanston Street (entrance just in from the corner off Flinders Lane), Melbourne.
In Margaret Throsby's beautiful Classic FM interview series, the latest download on this page will be up in a couple of hours (and I will update it then). Don't miss it, it is today's broadcast is a repeat interview with choreographer Meryl Tankard and is up to the usual standard of brilliance, including music from the work she is presenting with the Sydney Dance Company in Melbourne from next week, Inuk 2. The only thing missing is being able to see some of the dance.
Justine Larbalestier has been listening to the radio too - I haven't had a chance to check this out yet, but she says the poem that this program from Ramona Koval's Book Show featured is the last thing she read that made her cry for home. (In Justine's comments, Garth Nix pops up and tells us something startling about the copyright on that poem - Kenneth Slessor's famous 'Five Bells'.)
And it looks like Perry Middlemiss of Matilda's stint on the Book Show was put ahead a bit - I found it here. He sits in with John Derum and academic Phil Butters in a segment on C.J. Dennis' verse satire, The Glugs of Gosh. So another thing to listen to over the weekend. I do hope Perry hasn't been trying to hide this from us...
Emdashes reports regarding a new blog at the New Yorker that has a rather apt provenance: as one of its authors says, "We like to think of the book bench as a state of mind, too: a place for considering literary matters great and small—and for occasionally baring our teeth." I'm subscribing.
Over at Libraries Interact Kathryn Greenhill (of Librarians Matter) announces a prize for the booklover or librarian whom the Gale publishing company decides can best justify their love for books in song and video.
And this is just here because it's a damn good read, being something of a classic post from a great Australian blogger. Note the blog saving the accommodation crisis, slap bang in the middle. Rock and roll will satisfy my soooo-oul.
The shortlist for the ASL Gold Medal has been announced:
* The Lost Dog (Michelle de Kretser, Allen & Unwin)
* Not Finding Wittgenstein (J S Harry, Giramondo)
* Feather Man (Rhyll McMaster, Brandl & Schlesinger)
* Typewriter Music (David Malouf, UQP)
* Landscape of Farewell (Alex Miller, Allen & Unwin)
(From Bookseller and Publisher Magazine).
The winner of the award, which celebrates its 60th anniversary this year and is the oldest literary prize in Australia, will be announced at the 2008 Association for the Study of Australian Literature (ASAL) conference in Wollongong in early July.
I've been wandering around Guy Kawasaki's emerging book blogs section on Alltop.com, and I found this fairly comprehensive discussion going on around e-readers.
Sometimes an opinionated blogger (writer?) can get a lot more out of people than you realise.
David Prater's latest project, which received funding in late '07, will be posted here as time goes by. (From the Netherlands, where he now resides and from whence I believe he still edits Cordite Poetry Mag). Humorous.
Regarding the objections of some to Helen Garner's use of real people and places....look no further than this link, via Maud Newton's blog.
Ain't they pretty. Link via ReadySteadyBlog. (These are attractive too.)
Finally - I forgot to go to Clunes. And I'm a bit miffed, as it looked pretty good, and others have reported likewise. So I hope the BookGrocer posts another instalment (link via the Reasons You Will Hate Me person, she of Tuesday BookClub fame.)
But if I had gone, I probably would have missed a most convivial pub drinks (winding into dinner for some) with El (of The View from Elsewhere), Laura, David T. of Barista fame and Sophie Cunningham, whose first Meanjin comes out in June.
So I count myself lucky this time around, and look forward to Clunes '09.
In breaking news over at The Guardian, Faber launches an exciting print on demand project tomorrow. (There will be is more coverage in the Guardian Review.) This article provides a brief summary of the emerging market in POD and Amazon's attempts to get a slice of it in the US, among other things.
Peter Rose's ABR review of Helen Garner's first novel for fifteen years, The Spare Room, is online and (as a less refined person might say) SMMMMOKING.
This is probably the toughest review Garner's story about caring for a dying friend has had so far, opening as it does with the tart observation that this novella could easily have been written as nonfiction.
Hel’s pride is easily stung. As long as she has practical tasks – beds to strip and change, ‘straightforward tasks of love and order’ – she is composed, but soon she is worn out, anxious, resentful. There is no acknowledgment of her literary obligations or of her solitary nature. Hel seems most alive when she is on her own. The best writing in the book depicts sentience in solitude. A violent thrill runs down her arms and ‘seethes’ in her fingertips. Night noises lull her: ‘Something tiptoed across the leaf mulch outside my open window and paused there, breathing: to groom itself.’
Hel is almost professionally observant. Like Isabel Archer, she is ‘constantly staring and wondering’. Nothing escapes her: the neurosurgeon’s fat, penile Mont Blanc pen; the sort of men who can crack their spine and ‘make it crackle all the way down’...
When Nicola’s niece and her boyfriend pay a visit, the young woman is appalled by Nicola’s presumptuousness and her lengthy stay. Hel wants to sob with gratitude: ‘They were young, they were sane, and they were in my corner.’ While Nicola sleeps, the three of them laugh at her demands and swap stories about the inconvenience of it all. Not all readers – not all carers – will relish this Hobbesian pugilism.'
These are tough words for an uncompromising book which I am yet to read (doing that tidy thing that some of us do of getting my review reading out of the way first and saving TSR for 'afters'). Intriguingly, Rose seems to be looking for some respite himself from Garner's somewhat relentless evocation of anger as the enervating emotion it can so easily become, noting that this does not dissipate or evolve towards the novel's end.
Which makes for a powerful review from one of our best critical readers, and increases the pull of the unread book even more at my end.
(And yes, I'm also leaving it on the kids' shopping list for you-know-what day. Why do the bookshops parade all those pastel coloured books around for the day of buying big for female progenitors? Sussann's has BLACK japonaise-patterned flannel pyjamas this year. Get with the program, folks, get The Lost Dog out there for starters.)
Finally I must congratulate ABR for having such a sterling piece of criticism online for us linking folk. Luminous and numerous gold stars for you.
I was really only going to write three posts today. And then I remembered this pic of Adam Phillips' writing room, and these terrific pieces by all the bright movers and makers involved in pulling together that annual write-fest that is so important to Melbourne's up and coming literati - The Emerging Writers' Festival. I really enjoyed reading these chunks of 'writing about writing' - like a nicely risen batch of scones, they are. Make a cuppa and enjoy. (And don't forget to check out the program.)
A press release from the Australia Council has landed in my mailbox regarding their latest venture into virtual arts, MMUVE it!
Application information can be found here.
From the media release:
The Australia Council for the Arts today announced its latest virtual world initiative – MMUVE it! – offering up to $30,000 for a collaborative arts project in any massive multi-user virtual environment (MMUVE).
Following its groundbreaking Second Life artist residency, MMUVE IT! will see the Australia Council cast its virtual world net wider, offering a team of up to three artists the opportunity to develop an inter-disciplinary artwork engaging the human body in a MMUVE of their choice.
With more than 73 million participants in MMUVEs such as EverQuest, Second Life and World of Warcraft, and the recent introduction of motion-sensitive controllers such as the Nintendo Wiimote, there is great scope to develop innovative artworks in a highly networked environment that incorporates body movement and its relationship to real and virtual environments.
Australia Council inter-arts office director Andrew Donovan comments that:
‘Creative professionals worldwide are using these platforms to create cutting edge artworks; MMUVE IT! offers Australian artists a timely and valuable opportunity to explore and build the sophistication of art and physical movement in virtual worlds.’
I loved Antonia White's Frost in May when I first read it about fifteen years ago, but I did not know it was the reason for the start of the Virago imprint. Carmen Callil recalls the early days in this story from The Guardian.
Oh WOW.
From 2008, articles for inclusion in the latest Journal of the Association for the Study of Australian Literature (JASAL) will be available online as they are finalised, for study and comment.
Web 2.0 hits the study of Australian lit. And jolly good too. (Members of ASAL, of course, continue to receive the journal twice a year in print form.) To sample what's currently available online (volume 7, 2007), see here.
ASAL has a conference coming up in June-July, its thirtieth, with a theme to suit - Australian literature in a global world. The final program will be available soon.
Brian Castro, author of The Garden Book, Shanghai Dancing and other works, is moving from the University of Melbourne to teach writing at the University of Adelaide, replacing Nicholas Jose, who will be based at the University of Western Sydney before taking up a chair at Harvard in 2009.
In this report, from the Higher Ed section of The Australian, Bernard Lane reports that as chair of the creative writing program, Castro will seek to introduce regional fellowships, to raise the level of debate over Australian literature, and to hopefully produce a school akin to the renowned East Anglia program in England. He will be joined at Adelaide by award-winning Sydney poet Jill Jones.
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