buying books

Them there books sure are 'spensive these days. Sigh. If I had a dollar for every time someone said this to me...*

And I know. It's true. $30ish dollars for a trade paperback adult novel isn't a small amount of money. $30 is my share of the kitty in my sharehouse for a whole week. It's just over four days travel on your MYKI. Around 3 pints of beer - and don't try to tell me you've never dropped that in one evening without even thinking twice about it. 

Purchased and borrowed from a variety of sources.

Books cost a lot. We're such a teeny tiny market in this country, we just can't compare with America or even the UK. Things just cost more here. I'm sure that if we lived in the States my housemates and I could buy way more stuff with our $30 each a week.

I totally get the allure of Amazon and the Book Depository. But try to understand that they are basically the devil. How can we expect to have a local publishing industry if people continue to send their money to companies that don't even pay tax in Australia?

Mark Rubbo, the managing director of Readings, in a recent interview with the Design Files said: '...the huge share that online booksellers, especially the overseas ones, have is another challenge. It galls me that these monkeys don’t have to collect GST – they rip the guts out of local publishing and bookselling and on top of that they avoid paying tax.'

If you love Australian books, support them with your money. Buy books. Make a point of buying locally. If you want to buy books online, try Bookworld. It's not as good as buying from a real shop, but it's easy and quick, they offer some sweet discounts.

Perhaps aim to buy one book from a local independent bookshop each month. This is my rule, though usually I end up buying more and have to sacrifice something else - usually credit card repayments. Then source your other reads elsewhere if you want, especially if you're a voracious reader or poor  (or both). Libraries, secondhand bookshops, Bookworld, the Little Library ... or maybe work for a publishing house so you can get copies of some books (for me: Wild Awake) to keep for your own. Better yet - buy kids' and YA books - they're cheaper!

Maybe you love reading so much you want to be a book blogger. Publishers will probably be quite happy to send you books to read and review - and there's a vibrant YA blogging community in Aus, with readers from all over the world.

I just ask one thing. Bloggers, when offering your readers the option to click through and buy the book, consider not linking to those devilish sites mentioned above. You're in the business of selling books too, by recommending them. When you've been able to read a book for free, make sure you do right by its publisher, and especially its author.

Oh so many great Australian books!

There's so little money in books and publishing. Let's just make sure we put it in the right places in order to keep all the good stuff coming back in return.

*(I could buy so many more books) 

In defence of YA

You might have listened into the Radio National Books and Arts Daily program a couple of weeks ago when Andrew McDonald, Bec Kavanagh and I were there to champion our Kill Your Darlings YA Championship choices. Such a great chance to promote the championship and, though it was a very terrifying experience, it was great and scary and fun to be on the radio. I was very brave the other day and listened back to some of the program. Michael Cathcart asked us a question that I really wish I had heard properly, and responded better to, on the day. So here goes:

"Young adult fiction is sometimes seen as the poor cousin to adult fiction. Some authors I know get really frustrated when their publishers market them as young adult writers. What's it stand for?"

The idea that a YA novel is somehow inherently less worthy than a novel for adults is a really terrible and annoying belief, and one that has always driven me absolutely bananas. Worse, it ends up being a self-fulfilling prophecy. But the question does highlight what is unfortunately a quite common misconception about young adult literature and hopefully the Kill Your Darlings championship will go some way to enlightening the wider literary world. Let's call this open for discussion.

What does a young adult book stand for? As I said on the show, a YA book is about the teenage experience. The best YA books strive for - and achieve - a strong and accurate reflection of the experience of young adults. A common trait of a YA novel is a conclusion that gives the reader a sense of hope about the future, or at least a clue about how to best tackle life after childhood, after the teenage years. An adult book does the same thing, it's just that the protagonists are older.

Literary young adult novels are sophisticated, clever, philosophical. Their prose is complex, Carver-esque simple, florid, fast-paced, slow and sexy. Some YA is delightful and trashy. Some of it is awful. YA is not a genre, so all young adults novels aren't equal or comparable. A YA novel - and here I'm speaking generally - maybe doesn’t spend quite as long navel-gazing as some adult novels. Maybe. But the navel-gazing is definitely still there, picking at the fluff and feeling sorry for itself. A YA novel will probably have a strong focus on characterisation, because if you don’t get the character right a teenager is going to see right through you. Because a YA reader is discerning and intelligent.

Isn't it a remarkable talent to be able to tap into the unknowable, the complicated, the contradictory mind of a teenager? To understand them, and to create stories about them? And for them? Offer some kind of blueprint for life - without being patronising or didactic? All the best YA books do this, and they do it beautifully. I hate to think people feel frustrated by this label, because writing for young adults requires something pretty special.

So let's have some celebrations and cake for the amazing YA writers, whose characters might not have yet turned twenty! Here's to more beautifully written YA books! Let's see more reviews of YA books in our newspapers! Let's have three cheers for the vibrant international YA community!

My ideas and theories and perspectives on young adult fiction are not all my own. I've been taught and inspired by a brilliant bunch of YA enthusiasts over the years. If you're reading this and thinking it sounds familiar, you can be pretty sure I've been listening to you, and I think you are the bees knees. You might be a YA specialist like Agnes Nieuwenhuizen, Lili Wilkinson, or Cordelia Rice, who are never afraid to say what they think, and who think some pretty amazing things. You might be John motherfuckin' Green, who has a win of Nerdfighters from all over the world never forgetting to be awesome, and who writes books about kids smarter than I'll ever be. Or my mama bear: YA lover and specialist herself, who gave me the best things to read when I was a teen.

anzacs and ANZAC Day

To celebrate ANZAC Day, I finished Michelle Cooper's The FitzOsbornes At War. And cried when the unexpected thing happened. Why, Michelle, why????? Also, I ate the rest of the ANZAC biscuits I made the other day.*

Days like this make me wonder - ever so navelgazingly - about being so fascinated by war and war stories and being a pacifist. At primary school we learned to sing Eric Bogle's song And The Band Played Waltzing Matilda. I can picture us sitting in the little weatherboard house that was our school library and I first (I think) heard about Gallipoli, about Suvla Bay, and carried the image of damaged and disfigured men returning from the war to people in my mind, and how the crowd waiting for the returned soldiers didn't know how to react to it. Then in high school we watched Peter Weir's film Gallipoli. I read Rilla of Ingleside, Goodnight Mister Tom, A Little Love Song, The Diary of Anne Frank, A Farewell to Arms and all the war poets. I studied history at uni and took all the 20th century war classes. More recently I read Salinger's stories, The Montmaray Journals, The Pursuit of Love, The Quiet American. The trenches, the Blitz, Hiroshima, the concentration camps, the French resistance, silk stockings and Dig for Victory, the Kokoda trail, the Cold War, Vietnam, the first Gulf war, and the second. It's so ugly and tragic but I suppose there's a kind of macabre romance to it, which is food for all those stories I just can't put down, or put away.

Steven Herrick has written a post on visiting Gallipoli here.
Folksinger John McCutcheon sings Christmas in the Trenches, a beautiful song that tells the story of the 1914 Christmas armistice.

Here is my absolute favourite war poem:

  Dulce et decorum est
Bent double, like old beggars under sacks,
Knock-kneed, coughing like hags, we cursed through sludge,
Till on the haunting flares we turned our backs
And towards our distant rest began to trudge.
Men marched asleep. Many had lost their boots
But limped on, blood-shod. All went lame; all blind;
Drunk with fatigue; deaf even to the hoots
Of tired, outstripped Five-Nines that dropped behind.
Gas! Gas! Quick, boys! – An ecstasy of fumbling,
Fitting the clumsy helmets just in time;
But someone still was yelling out and stumbling,
And flound'ring like a man in fire or lime...
Dim, through the misty panes and thick green light,
As under a green sea, I saw him drowning.
In all my dreams, before my helpless sight,
He plunges at me, guttering, choking, drowning.
If in some smothering dreams you too could pace
Behind the wagon that we flung him in,
And watch the white eyes writhing in his face,
His hanging face, like a devil's sick of sin;
If you could hear, at every jolt, the blood
Come gargling from the froth-corrupted lungs,
Obscene as cancer, bitter as the cud
Of vile, incurable sores on innocent tongues,
My friend, you would not tell with such high zest
To children ardent for some desperate glory,
The old Lie; Dulce et Decorum est
Pro patria mori.
  Wilfred Owen

*I also saw The Avengers. It was amazing. 

Genre? Not really.

So mad about this article about The Hunger Games.

The following is one of the three things the author identifies as a theme that may not appeal to adults when reading The Hunger Games.

Clunky Pacing and Writing -- this is not quite a "theme" but I've seen this flaw in some YA books. (The first book was beautifully paced, but the other two books -- not as much.) YA authors don't aspire to be David Foster Wallace, but Hunger Games' prose can be a bit choppy at times.

I don't come in defense of HG, specifically, because I only read the first one and don't remember the quality of the writing. It was a fun read and I really enjoyed it. I'm just so mad about the whole YA authors don't aspire to be... comment. It's probably true that many or most don't aspire to be DFW. And that is probably a good thing. He met a pretty horrible end. But rawr! All the YA authors I know work damn hard to write beautifully, and produce absolutely wonderful works of literature.


The problem here is that most people just don't seem to realise that there are genres within YA. It's not a genre all by itself, even though it is usually shelved all together. Whatever the case, there's going to be a difference in writing styles if you compare a fantasy YA with a literary YA, or a chick-lit YA with dystopian-sci-fi YA. Just the same in the adult book world.

The author saying she's read a lot of clunky writing in YA is like saying she's read a lot of clunky writing in all books. Probably true. There's a lot of crap out there, as well as all the gems. I was going to forgive her, but then clicked through and read on her author profile that she is writing YA.

Quoi le fuck?

And perhaps another day I shall address the fact that this is a totally stupid question to ask in the first place - can an adult enjoy a YA book? The answer* is DERRRRRRRR! Read whatever you enjoy.

*(my friend, that's blowin' in the wind)

a novel experience

One Day, David Nicholls (Hodder)

This review is twofold.

First, the story itself. "The international bestseller" One Day by David Nicholls. I did not care for this novel. But I read it through to its end and below there will be spoilers.

Second, I read this book as a Flipback. Tiny book and an amusing, novel experience...an amusing novel experience? Oh for the love of a comma!


Now for the second, first. Printed on 'bible paper' it's pretty much necessary to employ the lick-your-thumb-to-turn-page method and, until your eyes adjust, sometimes being able to see the print on the other side so clearly is distracting.


Flipbacks are so delightfully tiny they fit in most small bags and are perfect for the tram. I think the idea is to just use one hand to hold the book, like an e-reader, but I persisted mostly with the two-handed approach.


Somehow I felt betrayed by this book. I feel like it was marketed as literary fiction, though to be honest and fair I don't believe it was. Somehow I had that perception though. Then all the "celebrities" were reading it in my trashy magazines. I thought - wonderful! Literary fiction to the masses! Then they made a film and I thought I had better read it before seeing the movie. It's definitely well written*, engaging and a good novel. I just think that if it'd had Maeve Binchy's name on the cover I might have gone into it with the appropriate expectations.**

Emma Morley and Dexter Mayhew (get used to hearing their full names, Nicholls refers to them thus all the time) meet at college. She's young and idealistic, he's charismatic and arrogantly entitled. They've just graduated from Edinburgh university and drunkenly hook up one night, though they don't sleep together, and eventually decide to be best mates. The book then checks in with each of them on the same date each year, spanning the next twenty years. It's a great concept.

Emma is smart and enigmatic, but she sneers at Dexter's wish to travel the world and then she's relegated to failing regional theatre and a dead end job in a shitty London Mexican restaurant.*** Meanwhile Dexter travels, is charming, and then gets work in television. This apparently entitles him to be condescending to Emma whenever they meet because Emma is a dowdy, writing girl who "wonders why sex, even when so enjoyable, leaves her so ill-tempered."**** The reader's sympathy is nearly always with Dexter as he struggles with the rise of fame, the loss of fame, relationships, family and aging.

The characters are self-centred and on the clichéd (ok, ok "everyman") side. Their problems are annoying. Is this kind of novel designed to make me get myself out of a rut? Am I supposed to identify with the characters and their haplessness? Maybe this is why I enjoy young adult literature so much. Even when the characters wallow it isn't the same; there's the future to look forward to - there tends to be some kind of hope.

And what about the ending of One Day, I hear you ask. SPOILERS: So Dexter the cad finally gets the girl (fortunately Emma has become less dowdy in the intervening years) and, because of Emma's love and all, he gets back on track: becomes a better boyfriend, a better son, a better father, a better human being. So, her job done, David Nicholls kills the girl.



I know.



Let's not talk about it anymore.




At least I could imagine this as I read:

Go and watch him sing I've Just Seen A Face.

*Though, occasionally boring. On page 343 "Emma felt the hot tears of humiliation prick her eyes".
**This is not mean to sound disparaging. Yes, I am a MB fan. You knew that already.
***Don't get me started. This didn't make sense!
****Seriously, I don't want get started. Emma was "so very British" while Dexter was allowed to enjoy love and sex and it made me SO MAD.

caution : bookseller on the warpath

Nick Sherry has given bookshops just five years before they are obsolete.

You probably saw this article, or at least heard about it.

I was enraged, along with my coworkers and the wider bookselling public. While his intention was probably not to be so blunt, and probably didn't quite mean what it sounded like he meant, he should definitely have thought a little more about it before he spoke such dismal words.

Actually, I also think our feelings are hurt. Here's the Minister for Small Businesses practically throwing in the towel for us...and all the while we're also apparently still staring down the barrel of impending ebook doom. Nick Sherry's website says: "Small business is the backbone of the Australian economy. The Australian Government provides assistance ranging from expert advice to grants to help our small businesses succeed." This is not the way to talk to your backbone!

I'm not all that confident in this minister. Not only am I suspicious he hasn't been into a bookshop lately, I also wonder about his ability to lead and advise in a changing economy and a forward-thinking world. In an interview on ABC News 24 Sherry spoke about technology and the way its development is impacting on the way small businesses are run: "It's not something that necessarily I understand in the sense that I use it a great deal, because I don't." Maybe have a look into that one, Nick.

The way we read is changing, and the way some people buy books is changing. But I don't believe real bookshops will disappear. Real bookshops with real books in them, and real people to help customers choose a new read. People like coming into a bookshop - the amount of comments I get daily...oh what a lovely shop and it's so nice to come in and get advice and you are so lucky to work in a bookshop, it's my dream... And that's the other thing: everyone wants to be Bernard Black! And though modern bookselling requires a lot more dedication and sobriety (sadly) than Bernard's version, working in a bookshop is hella fun. I don't want to not be able to do it anymore.

So maybe, dear general public, just go and have a little visit of your local bookshop this weekend. Don't let Nick Sherry's negativity put you off. Meet the staff, have a chat, poke your nose into the Design section (the frankie Spaces book is awesome), or into History (Parisians, by Graham Robb, is in paperback now), or Classics (a Nancy Mitford book would warm your winter blues) or maybe even Young Adult (this list would go on).

Go visit a bookshop today. Otherwise, we booksellers will be sad:


In associated news: The Book Depository is really fortunate because it's subsidised by the British postal service and is able to offer free postage. Lucky bastards.

reading matters = raging success!

congratulations to all the folk at cyl for a great conference. i wanted to thank them for letting me volunteer - it was nothing but top fun.*

markus zusak is clearly uber-human. the man has not aged since i first met him around the time the messenger came out nine years ago! he is also quite wonderful. it was rawther special to hear him read from the still-in-production bridge of clay and i can only imagine what it must feel like to have the world waiting, champing at the bit. plus, have you seen which book has been on the new york times bestsellers list for 193 weeks?! like everyone else at the conference, i was really moved by markus saying that he doesn't want for his book to be the best, or the worst - or better or worse than his last - but that he wants to write so like himself that it is the book that only he could have written.

it was a real joy to meet ursula dubosarsky. her presentation about the golden day was an illuminating look at the inspirations and influences behind a story. rebecca stead (in conversation with pam mcintyre) made me laugh, cry a little bit and yearn for a new york childhood - as well as reminding me to back up my computer frequently. finally getting to meet richard newsome, whose books i adore, was a highlight and his panel with thai-riffic! author oliver phommavanh was an absolute riot, irreverent and ace.

in other news: according to recent search stats bean there, read that has become a pirate blog. pirates obviously like coffee and books too: BEAN THERE READ THAR arrrrr. (i added the "arrrrr").

i finished my internship this week and made these to take on my last day (because i know the way to a publisher's heart):



i am reading meg rosoff's there is no dog. last night i watched hannah gadsby's show artscape and it. was. brilliant. (the first part last week was hilarity incarnate too).

*except when i had to be onstage. that bit was SCARY.

révolution, je t'aime

Today is forty-three years since the Nuit des Barricades – the Night of the Barricades – when the student-turned-general protests in France, May 1968 came to a violent climax. The protesters dug up cobblestones in the Latin Quarter, threw Molotov Cocktails, set fire to cars and barricades themselves on the street. They were sick of a dated university curriculum, sick of not having a voice and ready (like youth all around the world) for a new government, a new outlook for their evolving post-war world.

The poetic rhetoric of the May ’68 movement captured the idealistic fervour of the protesting youth and has remained one of its greatest strengths. Influenced by the Situationists (in turn influenced by Dadaism and Surrealism) they pasted posters and graffiti all around Paris, writing memorable slogans that have been reused and pastiched in French protest ever since.

The evolution of the slogans is clear as the movement progressed from mere discontent on campus to a wider attack on society as a whole. At the suburban university campus of Nanterre (where the problems escalated around the time Daniel Cohn-Bendit compared the French government to Hitler Youth) the students cried ‘Professors, you are old!’ Also evident in the slogans is an awareness of language and the strength of language as a tool of dissent. The posters and newspapers provide a visual representation of the rhetoric and language of the 1968 uprisings.

Other images also use the creative distortion of French linguistic formations. This slogan is making fun of the verb conjugation exercises that would have been learnt at school, but adds a very cynical edge. Translated, it means: I participate, you (singular) participate, he participates, we participate, you (plural) participate, they profit.

Another favourite is: L’anarchie, c’est je (‘Anarchy is I’). The use of incorrect grammar symbolises the disregard for the conventions of even the most basic element of French culture.

The students, rebelling against the old – the conservative education and the old man who ran their country – were also rebelling against the old ideas of literature and poetry. Rather than in the old books in the library, la poésie est dans la rue – poetry is in the street! The slogans scrawled as graffiti around Paris “were full of popular wit, but also…had a surrealist tone, symbolised in the assertion that ‘imagination has seized power.’”*

Using words and phrases to fight against the old social order, the students created an atmosphere of possibility: Rêve + évolution = révolution (‘Dream + evolution = revolution’).

Given that it's also Australian Federal Budget Day today, it's the perfect time to get some enthusiastic idealism into you!

To write this post I just smooshed together notes I made while writing my honours thesis. Apologies for the undergraduate hyperbole.

*from Daniel Singer's excellent book Prelude to Revolution.

If you want to read about 1968 in general (because it was a very exciting year all around this globe), look no further than Mark Kurlansky's excellent book entitled 1968: The Year that Rocked the World.

review : the hate list

The Hate List, Jennifer Brown

Val wrote a list of people she hated, people she said she wanted dead.

Her boyfriend Nick brought a gun to school one day, and opened fire.

Told in the first person, with Valerie the narrator, the book starts with her on the first day she goes back to school after the shooting and over the course of the novel flashes back to events leading up to, on, and immediately following that day. It's certainly an emotional read, and one a reader quickly becomes engrossed in; pacy and well-plotted. Val loved Nick, thought she knew him, and is having to live with what he did (which includes killing students and a favourite teacher, and shooting Val - who ran at him to get him to stop - before killing himself) and try to reintegrate herself into school and her family, while living with the guilt and hurt.

I know morbid and taboo topics are popular and that one of the awesome things about young adult novels is the way a teenager can experience something without actually having to experience it. For that end, this is an interesting book.

For the most part the writing is good. Limited interiority sometimes weakens the story, even in spite of it being from Val's point of view. For example, when Val goes to see Dr Hieler for the first time and he suggests her mother leaves the room for the session, he asks: 'Are you comfortable with that?' The next line is 'I didn't respond.' But I want to know why didn't you respond? What were you thinking?

Characterisation and development was pretty good. Although, the characters were, rawther unsubtly, given names that are designed to manipulate the reader's perception of them: Nick, the killer, has the surname Levil; the bully, named Christy Bruter; and the stupid and unsympathetic principal called Mr Angerson. Some reviews have noted how Nick is given a more sympathetic rap than the father, but for me, I could see exactly why the father acted like he did (even though it was both cruel and weak) but Nick was more of an enigma - which made sense.

The end? Leetle bit disappointing and cliched, although it did explore forgiveness and hate enough to give readers closure. I read this book and wanted to hate it for being one of those books, an issues/torture porn type read. I thought I did hate it while I was reading, but...I guess I didn't.*

Visit Jennifer Brown's website.

*Though it makes me feel like a bad person, I couldn't help but giggle when I read this interview with the author and learned that a Nickelback song inspired the novel. Ye gads. Even worse, I can't get The Smiths out of my head, thinking about how people's words can get twisted if you take them seriously:

Sweetness, sweetness I was only joking
When I said I'd like to smash every tooth in your head
Oh ... sweetness, sweetness, I was only joking
When I said by rights you should be bludgeoned in your bed
Bigmouth, Bigmouth,
Bigmouth strikes again
I've got no right to take my place in the human race

the importance of proofreading

having a little look-see through the DK Children's Illustrated Encyclopedia while at work today.

ooh!
internet linked!
king tut!
a space-y satellite fiendish thingy!
fish!
obama!
a giant eye!

wowsers. there must be lots to learn about in this book.
things like this:


what the fuck?

but...surely not...

but oh yes. read it again, people:



this is an appalling and offensive mistake.

the book is an encylopedia. a-z. starting with aboriginal australians and ending with zoos. wikipedia says that "from aboriginal australians to zoos" is this blue peter prize-winning book's motto.

i think even with the "from" it's still a bit iffy.

searching for this book on the penguin/DK site leads us here, to a message that says this page cannot be found. the book is out of stock on title page (big internetty book searchy thing we use at work), leading me to believe that perhaps someone has already noticed this mistake. but how about recalling the book?

punter's club reunion show

check it out!

before it was called bimbos and served cheap pizzas to the drunken masses (hey, before brunswick street was gentrified and filled with colour-by-numbers hipsters and tourists) the building that sits on the corner of brunswick and rose streets was an excellent live music venue called the punters club. when it closed, people were sad. but now there's a couple of nights for nostalgia and tribute and hopefully much drunkenness and music.

and so, in tribute, (as always) THE LUCKSMITHS:

Requiem for the Punter's Club

Have you been drinking?
'Cause it's not too late to start
There's still a week
Before they come and pull the place apart
And I was thinking
I have sorrows to be drowned
Too complete to contemplate
Without a friend around

On Brunswick Street the bits of broken glass
Sparkle brighter than the six or seven stars

And I'm reminded
Of a Sunday afternoon
How the sunlight caught the cigarette smoke
Curling through the room
And you behind it
Your hair in rubber bands
One more for the footpath
And we walked home holding hands

Like the weekenders and window-shoppers do
We were happier than either of us knew

So act surprised
It's been a while since I came calling
I know it's late
But old times' sake and all that junk
I'll be alright
We'll make tonight tomorrow morning

Sometimes you want to go
Where everybody knows you're drunk

this bothers me a lot

(and really, it's not at all important in the scheme of things)

when australian books talk about kids being in "the fourth grade" "the first grade" etc.

when did it stop being "grade 4" and "grade 1"? and why?

(this is a question for editors, i suppose, more than authors)

remembering henrietta dugdale

with the election looming and a somewhat sombre and yet anxious feeling mumbling and grumbling around me everywhere i go, it makes me frightened and sad just how many youths i know who are so apathetic and generally unwilling to put effort in to care at all. but on the other hand there are many who are so passionate and i feel so sorry they can't vote - when they know more than me and are actually out there working for their cause already. i can only imagine the frustration.

but it's made me muse about all those people who have fought for my right to vote and how we must not take it for granted.

i was involved in a project at uni in 2007 where we were to write essays on an aspect, or a figure, of the fight for female suffrage in victoria (which was achieved in 1908) and we published our essays in a rather neat book entitled they are but women: the road to female suffrage in victoria and it was launched by former vic premier joan kirner.

i wrote about this fantastically eccentric woman named henrietta dugdale, who lived from 1826-1918 and campaigned vocally for the cause. she was saucy and clever. she wore trousers that she fashioned herself, was skilled in carpentry and grew her own food. journalists and critics called her unwomanly and a he-woman - the former in an entertaining article in the punch magazine in 1884. she spoke out about women's rights in legislation and was the president of the victorian women's suffrage society.

henrietta also wrote a novel, which you can read at the state library of victoria, called a few hours in a far-off age (it was published in 1883). the novel is narrated by a woman who has time travelled from the (1883) present day to a year far in the future. the woman, whom one would assume was based on henrietta herself, spends a number of hours observing a family examine a museum exhibit specialising in the nineteenth century ‘christian era’, which is otherwise known in the future as ‘the age of blood and malevolence.’ the mother, an extremely wise and self-possessed woman, encourages her teenage son and daughter to question and understand this horrific era in human development but to remember not to judge their ancestors by the standards of modern life. they look at the clothing (so restrictive!) their politics and even their inferior intelligence. i'd really recommend anyone to go and read it.

the other essays in the book cover other quirky female figures such as brettena smythe, who championed birth control and was also part of the suffrage society, bessie harrison lee, who was the more conservative (but no less passionate) leader of the temperance society, a wonderful piece about the everyday women of davis street who signed the 'monster' petition for women's suffrage of 1891. there are essays on the commemorative fountains you see around melbourne and even one on the maligned sir thomas bent, premier of victoria and who reluctantly, but finally, had the women's suffrage bill passed into law in 1908.

an ode to capitalism

denver, david mckee (andersen press)

excuse me while i saliva VOMIT on this book.

denver is the story of a philanthropic and generous billionaire (called denver) who lives in the manor house and employs all the townspeople to do things for him, like clean and cook and drive his car and scratch his bum. but he's not a money-grubbing miser at all! denver loves to paint: he's an artiste! denver himself is a colourful chappie with a snappy suit and a hat. the townspeople have naive, wide-open eyes as though drugged or hypnotised. denver pays his slaves-aka-employees well and treats them nicely and everyone in town loves him and loves each other and everything is hunky dory.

until one day some scheming, trenchcoat-wearing, man-in-shadow, evil communist comes along and slyly, quietly, poisons the minds of the townspeople - why should denver have so much, while you have so little? so they revolt and denver is so unhappy that they've turned against him that he divides his wealth equally between everyone and leaves town.

denver finds another town and paints all day and his paintings are so popular that it isn't long before denver is filthy rich again. BUT! the greedy townspeople back at his old town have squandered their new-found wealth. the town is falling down around them; they're alcoholics, insane, turned to prostitution and gambling.* they need denver back to restore order and make their lives good again, through reaganomics and the trickle-down effect.

so denver thus returns, takes his rightful place at the top of the pyramid and his minions fall back into place in their orderly and obsequious proletariat bottom of the heap, where they should be.

THE END.

david mckee is the author of many, many books - including that lovable patchwork elephant elmer. you can read the blurb from the book here.

*poetic license; interpreted through illustrations, not text.

UPDATE: reading another review of this book, i felt i must share this line from denver that i had forgotten between vomiting all over the bookshop floor in disgust and getting home to relay it to you (canNOT believe i forgot this one, it was the worst bit of the whole sorry story). this comes at the very end of the book: ‘As for the stranger, he’s still wandering around breeding discontent. If he comes your way, don’t listen to him’. yikes.

review: the emerald casket

the emerald casket: the billionaire's curse book II, richard newsome (text)

by jolly what fun! i loved the billionaire's curse numero uno and number two is just as spiffing.

gerald, ruby and sam are enjoying their summer after the horrible events with sir mason green and the creepy thin man (who smells of bleach) and the golden rod and the crypt with the rats...hoo boy was it an exciting tale. now they've been invited to india to stay with alisha and mr gupta. india is loud and busy and exciting. mr gupta's house is extravagant and plush with lots of croissants and sweet lime juice (completely innappropriately i kept thinking about the darjeeling limited and jason schwartzman and the sweet lime girl...no, not appropriate at all). then it appears that the second of the three caskets (which belonged to gerald's family many, many, many years ago) is hidden somewhere in india and our gang of four must find it before the evil sir mason green does. of course trouble is afoot and soon gerald, the wisecracking twins ruby and sam, and alicia are dodging ninjas and creepy fortune tellers and bandits - and they're not exactly sure who to trust. then there's the question of this mysterious fraternity.

i love gerald and the billionaire's curse for a number of reasons:

1. it is a lot of fun and doesn't take itself too seriously.
2. from the first chapter - nay, the first PAGE - it sets a cracking pace and the story is totally gripping.
3. it doesn't rest itself irrevocably in reality - give me billionaire 13 year olds and private jets where you can ride on plastic trays for plane sledding during take off (and then turn the plane around just so you can do it again!), give me twists of fate, and lucky breaks.
4. the hint of james bond accompanied by lashings of enid blyton.
5. in the emerald casket, newsome mentions the tsunami and manages to include it in the story, plus he acknowledges (but doesn't make a massive point of it) england's colonisation of india - hopefully aussie kids will find this interesting and ask some questions.

richard is blogging at inside a dog this month and the other day he discussed amateur internet reviewers. i guess i'm not an amateur because i am paid to review children's books when i'm not on the internet, but on my blog i am more likely to offer my personal reaction as well as a more considered, objective review. so i'm not a kittykat with a book and a feather, nor am i hannibal lecter.

i think i'm definitely more like this:

(and it's not because of my neck-beard or penchant for planet-sized earrings).

let me tell you a little tale...

i love short stories.

i haven't always, but i do at the moment. every week i receive one or more photocopied short stories by some writer or other from some time throughout history and then i spend four hours with some lovely people talking about it, and then also sharing our own work with one another. so far we've read guy de maupassant, jd salinger (oh em gee i am in love with for esme, with love and squalor - it shall have its own blog post soon), raymond carver, isabel allende, colette, janette turner hospital, anglea carter, marguerite duras, the indomitable agatha christie (we read POIROT, yes, poirot, he talks about poirot in the third person, aha), anton chekov and edgar allan poe. to name a few.

i love short stories for their brevity and sparseness (though not always sparse, but certainly brief by nature) and how complete they feel within only ten pages or so. fewer, sometimes.

i love kelly link's the wrong grave (especially for 'magic for beginners' and also the titular story) and i am traumatised and completely seduced by margo lanagan's heartbreaking story 'singing my sister down' from the collection black juice. these are scary, magical, beautiful stories.


another great collection, which is just out this week, is wordlines: contemporary australian writing (five mile press) compiled and edited by the brilliant hilary mcphee - author, editor, publisher. (and i helped). there is a slew of top-knotch australian writers represented here but if i had to pick out two to mention they would be abigail ulman for her story 'chagall's wife' which was an electric tale about a young girl and her relationship with an older teacher. it made me feel like they were moving through treacle, slow and kind of sexy. (but also awkward and funny) the other would be the extract from sophie cunningham's not-yet-finished novel about virginia woolf and her husband - the extract here entitled 'pearl' which celebrates the grit of love in a rotting relationship affected by sickness.

we all die in the end

an excerpt from darren hanlon's song folk insomnia from his new album i will love you at all.

"...and then one day i start to worry
that i am gonna be a goner
before i read all the books i wanna
and if i plant a tree now it'll be fully grown
long after i'm just dust and bone..."

because what's a thursday without pondering our mortality?

darren lives here. he is also the second most notable person to come from gympie, queensland see wikipedia.

food for silverfish

my dear friend silverfish has decided to throw caution to the wind and tell things exactly how she sees them. fuck it, she says. anyone got a problem wi' that? take it up with her.

this week she has reviewed angelica sprocket's pockets by quentin blake. WATCH OUT PEOPLE, SHE'S OUT OF CONTROL!

and the spud goes to...

why have they made a different cover for the third spud book (aka spud: learning to fly, by john van de ruit)? my mild, self-diagnosed OCD is not happy.

i love the spud books. LOVE them. i mean even just on the surface they are hysterical: it's basically adrian mole, but set in a almost archaic south african boarding school with the most hilarious caricatures for teachers, an insane group of dormmates (quickly christened the "crazy eight")...and vern. cannot go past 'im. the best 100% bonkers character to come out of a book since...mrs rochester??? but more entertaining.

i love how authentic it is: spud learns a new word, or is introduced to a book by the guv and spells it phonetically until he realises how it's really spelled, what it really means. fab.

but the the new, weird, cover? less fab.

but i'm sure in the inside bit it's awesome.

i'll know soon - this book is already in my possession and aching to be read.

spudspudspud...

(also can't wait to see what dad and the wombat are up to now)

i can't get no...

rich and mad, william nicholson

This one sort of felt like it had perhaps been written in the 70s and then hurriedly updated for a modern audience...definitely echoes of Judy Blume here. Sure, it’s to-the-point, engaging and the characters feel pretty real. It’s also kind of odd in its approach. It is about love (the all-encompassing crazy kind) but there are also some pretty horrible friendships and one cringe worthy cautionary tale that made me want to punch the book in the neck.

Richard (that’s the “rich” bit of the title) is a kind of geeky young man who wants to know about love. Maddy (she’s the “mad” bit) is a sweet young lady who also wants to fall in love (crazy love). Unfortunately he is mooning over Maddy’s particularly unlikable friend Grace (ok she is a total bitch) and Maddy has decided to crush hard on Joe Finnigan (who has a girlfriend already). There's also doormat (but funny) Cath.

It was the sex scene that got to me though. After all the brouhaha earlier this year about NO SEX IN BOOKS! and JUDY BLUME'S FOREVER, FOREVER! here's an awkward, step-by-step sex scene, explicit, not sexy and highly uncomfortable. And it's the last scene in the book.

you know what made me gag most?

this:

"[him:]'I'll get better. I'll make it wonderful for you.'

'[her:]It is wonderful for me.' ... Part of it was the pleasure she got from seeing [him] so overwhelmed, and knowing that it was her doing, her body, her gift."

Bullshit. Come on writers. If you're going to show sex in such instructional ways, at least don't make it such a bad lesson for girls. god, even Bella tried to get more out of her sex life with Edward. (though of course he wouldn't let her).

Let girls get theirs, ok?

You know who got hers? Read chapter fourteen of The Dead of the Night by John Marsden. One of the better sex scenes...