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)

some music in your book, madame?

king dork, frank portman

We had been working pretty hard to get the band ready for the Festival of Lights. We weren't sounding too bad. It was still pretty rough, but, in our better moment, we sounded kind of like Buddy Holly meets Thin Lizzy with a punk rock sensibility and a slight psychedelic edge, like UFO playing Velvet Underground songs or something.

about a girl & mahalia, joanne horniman

When she'd played four songs straight she paused. She had kicked off her black rubber thongs and was sitting on a chair in the spotlight barefoot, bare-shouldered, dark-haired, with her white guitar cradled in her arms like a lover. She drummed her feet lightly on the floor, staring into space as though considering what to play next.

It was a simple, dignified song, sung with strength and purpose. Eliza improvised, and sang on, oblivious of Matt standing in the shadows, listening. She played with the notes, bent them and warbled them, whispered them, and cried them out, her whole body, her mouth and lungs and chest an instrument for the sound.

after january, nick earls

This is just another item on the growing list of things I am unlikely to tell the people I went to school with when I see them next. So what did you do at the coast? Well, one day I sat on a stool in the hinterland and a hippy family played pop songs for me.
That was great, Cliff says. What did you think Alex?
Yeah, really good.
So, do you sing?
Me? No.
I think you might, F says. I think you might be about to.

if you like a bit of music in yr books, there are many others i'd recommend:

if i stay, gayle foreman, just listen, sarah dessen, nick and norah's infinite playlist, rachel cohn & david levithan, queen of the night, leanne hall (wolfboy is in band), amy and roger's epic detour, morgan matson, rpm, noel mengel, the true story of butterfish, nick earls
(not a complete list)

(badges by Carrie the Excellent via the sticky institute, lyrics by mr darren hanlon and messieurs donald, monnone and white aka the lucksmiths)

"a thin bat's squeak of sexuality"

Brideshead Revisited by Evelyn Waugh (1945).

This book is hilarious, romantic and also, disappointingly, a little bit rubbish. I loved the social satire (fits on my shelf with Nancy Mitford), I loved the critique and the sadness of the crumbling classes, and the homoerotic relationships ... and the language! It is divine! I dog-eared all the pages and underlined all the lines.

The story opens to Charles Ryder as a middle-aged army captain, who happens to be stationed at a big country house during WWII - called Brideshead. But! It is not Charles' first time here, and we are then swept back into his memories of being a young man and in the company of the enigmatic and ever-so-slightly troubled Sebastian Flyte.

Just the place to bury a crock of gold,' said Sebastian. 'I should like to bury something precious in every place where I've been happy and then, when I was old and ugly and miserable, I could come back and dig it up and remember.'

...I must write to you as I am mourning for my lost innocence. It never looked like living. The doctors despaired of it from the start.

Sebastian is much devoted to Aloysius, his teddy bear. How this made me laugh! A teddy bear driving a car?! What ho! Sebastian writes in a letter to Charles:

I have a good mind not to take Aloysius to Venice. I don't want him to meet a lot of horrid Italian bears and pick up bad habits.

All the interactions between Sebastian and Charles are charged with sexual energy, lots of references to lips and faces. But Charles is drawn to Sebastian's sister Lady Julia, too. When he first meets her (rushing to the sickbed of Sebastian, who has actually only sprained an ankle) she asks him to light her a cigarette:

It was the first time in my life that anyone had asked this of me, and as I took the cigarette from my lips and put it in hers, I caught a thin bat's squeak of sexuality, inaudible to any but me.

But he feels peace when not with Julia. Is it because their love overwhelms him? Charles is a bit of a softy. Also, it is obvious he is in love with Sebastian.

But years later, a now alcoholic and mostly useless Sebastian having floated off to North Africa, Charles is returning to England via a fancy cruise ship from a painting trip he took in South America. Here, he and Julia succumb to their mutual love over the course of a couple of days, while the ship is buffeted by very rough seas and poor Charles' wife is seasick and in bed. These scenes on the ship are wonderful. Surreal, almost, and romantic.

Ten hours of talking: what had we to say? Plain fact mostly, the record of our two lives, so long widely separate, now being knit to one.

And they are a little hilarious. When Charles' (cheating) wife is seasick he unsympathetically describes her suite as a maternity ward and she is so wan and pathetic when she receives a bouquet of flowers:

as though the game were a private misfortune of her own for which the world in its love was condoling with her ... my wife seemed to make a sacred, female rite even of seasickness.

Then, especially towards the end of the novel, religion becomes (well, it was a theme throughout but really dug itself in here for the long haul) a big part of it - and ruins the story for me. According to the notes at the front of the book, Evelyn Waugh became a devoted Catholic and this book is kind of a hodgepodge that he wrote in a very short amount of time, which represents his conversion. But it made the story so unsatisfying for me: so C and J can't be together because she is too much of a sinner? And poor, poor Sebastian who thinks he is mad, or has indeed gone mad, and has gone to live with monks/priests? No one seemed to be happy, they had happiness but they threw it away because of Catholicism. So strike me down and call me sacrilegious but I could have done without this part, Evelyn.

I enjoyed A Handful of Dust more. But that is for another day. Tell me, what did you think of this one? What am I missing? Am I just a sucker for a happy ending?

the golden age of aviation

Cath Crowley recently posted a playlist for Graffiti Moon, which included Sunlight in a Jar by The Lucksmiths.

Overblown libretto and a sumptuous score
Could never contain the contradictions I adore
We can just be chaos and then something aligns
It's so hard to contain, maintain it or define it

So, inspired, I thought what's better on a ever-so-slightly grey Sunday than a little Luckmiths singalong?

From the album Staring at the Sky, The Golden Age of Aviation is one of my all-time favourite Luckies songs*.



The Golden Age of Aviation

For argument’s sake let’s pretend we could stop arguing
Over which of us is wrong and why it isn’t you
We’re barely awake before your head’s up in the clouds again
There’s nothing you like more than having nothing much to do

Stood akimbo
Staring out the window at the sky

All afternoon you’ve been buried in a biography
Of an aviatrix lost at sea, never to be found
Holed up in your room, holding out for an apology
But gravity will get to you eventually

You’ll come down from upstairs again
With all those model aeroplanes

And the novelty wore off
When the pilots still wore goggles
But your eyes look skywards
And your mind still boggles

I’m going grey but you look younger than a year ago
When you put your hair in pigtails and you put your hand in mine
We’ll be OK - I’m happy when you’re here
But oh, your smile can seem as far away as once upon a time

You can’t help it
Hopelessly nostalgic

A passing interest in the past
But I think it’s going to last a little longer
I’ll hold on to your hand as tightly as I can
But modelling glue is stronger

The novelty wore off
When the pilots still wore goggles
But your eyes look skywards
And your mind still boggles
Through frequent flyers’ disappointments and disasters
The golden age of aviation never lost its lustre

*I love planes, am the first to look skyward at the sound of one.
Here's the 'Little Ripper', my grandfather's Piper Arrow.
If you ever want to get me a present, I would like to go up in a biplane.

ch-ch-ch-changes

Five years ago I started working at The Sun Bookshop in Yarraville. My heart was grieving for the little town I had just left in France's south west, but the fabulous women (and, later, man) of the Sun took me in and helped me make Melbourne my home once more.



They supported me through the HELLISH HELL that was my Honours year and let me take off ten weeks to go gadding about the world when I felt the urge in 2008 (well, there was a wedding I just HAD to go to, people to travel with and terrible coffee to drink) and then moved things around for me when I decided to go back to study once more. During my years there we opened the Younger Sun and I was allowed to make it my baby - a children's bookshop to play in! What more could a girl ask for?! Well, there were good times and bad.

But they were nearly always the best of times.

With plenty to read, and Saturday dancing.

And people who let me sell them my absolute favourites.

But then late last year I had the enormous good fortune to interview for and then, amazingly, get a job in children's publishing. And it was way too good a chance to pass up. So I packed my little bag, bought the team a new stapler and some teacups, wrote a list of very strict instructions on how to treat my baby (which I hope they just gaily threw out and started doing things their own way) and made my way to Richmond* where I now spend my days with a new amazing bunch of women (and one man) who are 'totes awesome' and awfully good at their jobs. I love it already.

But change isn't easy. I miss my bookshop job. I have to change the way I blog around here. Richmond isn't quite as nice as Yarraville, or at least not as ville-esque. And I still miss that village in France, so I guess it doesn't go away. But I know it's all going to be something like an adventure**!

*technically still Northside. Though its Southside mentality is unnerving.
**apparently I am an eternal optimist. What?? I might not find the next Harry Potter in the slush pile? Phooey!***
***ok, KH. i probably won't...

what does the future hold?

The Future of Us, Jay Asher and Carolyn Mackler

A mostly entertaining story about what some teenagers might do with the information given to them by a bizarre portal to the future through a strange website called Facebook. It has a familar, funny Back to the Hot Tub Time Machine Future take on the future, borrowing cheap jokes from Almost Famous (which were cringeworthy then), Mick Jagger still rocking as an old man, etc.

FB pops up on Emma's new computer when she first loads up the Internet and she's horrified to discover the picture of an older version of herself alongside a bunch of short inane comments about her life. How vapid it can be? This is what I personally hate about social media. Contemplating highlights, attention-seeking behaviour making pathetic comments about her husband - blurg. But the character of young Emma as she is presented, I was hardly surprised that she would grow up to be that kind of FB user.

Emma isn't nice, but perhaps that's what the book is about, it holds a fifteen-years-later mirror to her face and she has to rethink the way she acts. The message and the outcome are a bit confused though. She was manipulative to the end, selfish and shallow and there was little chemistry between the two leads. I just kept wanting to shout at Josh run! get out of there!

The book's story is a love story, but I would have liked some more about the world as a whole - what has changed since 1996? Death of Princess Diana, September 11, George W, Obama, another war in the Middle East, tsunamis and floods and earthquakes. But not even just political: reality TV, Tom Cruise and Nicole Kidman splitting, Madonna's weird arms and hands ... it could have been really fascinating to see the world through a FB feed, links to news articles and photographs of significant events.

I wanted to love this book. A quick read, funny in parts - possibly will entertain the yooths with the outdated technology. I pretty much agree with this NYTimes review.

But speaking of disappointing and vapid ... I saw Young Adult.

I forgave Diablo Cody for Juno because Ellen Page was so damn endearing and because Allison Janney is my queen. And Young Adult had such a brilliant poster, Charlize Theron is pretty amazing and I love a good return-to-your-hometown story. Unfortunately I don't think the film was funny, nor insightful, enough to be successful. Mavis was so sad, so alone, and she needed help. She was narcissistic and mean and desperate. But nobody learned anything, nobody changed at all. So what was the point?

Not only this, but it was generally accepted that Mavis wrote YA (even though I don't know that her Sweet Valley High-type books are really YA) because she had been unable to leave her teen years behind.

Now that's a depressing thought. And so, so wrong. It is such a special gift that YA writers have of being able to remember the wonder and the joy and the angst of being a teenager or young adult. I would never want to tell any of my favourite YA authors to grow up! For it isn't about living in the past, but being able to tap into it and tell a great story. That's what Young Adult lacked. A story.

and then it just grabbed me by my tearducts...

And is it because cancer is such a horrific beast? Because of Esther Earl? Because John is amazing and that his book contains this phrase: "As he read, I fell in love the way you fall asleep: slowly, and then all at once." ? The Fault in our Stars is thoughtful, funny, poignant...all of those rawther empty blurbish words. And then some.

Hazel was the most wonderful narrator - dragging my weeping form through the pages with her sucky lungs and introducing me to Augustus and Isaac and all their spectacular and particular parents. And they were all so eloquent, and so wise. So eloquent and wise and honest.

I finished the book within the last hour and therefore am evangelical and red-eyed about it, with no distance or perspective - but isn't it fantastic when a book actually, literally moves you so much?* I shall celebrate it! I raise my stars to you!

*And I don't mean literally displaced me (har! in joke!), just literally moved my eyeballs to water. Melina Marchetta's On the Jellicoe Road is another, and JD Salinger's story For Esmé - With Love and Squalor.