books books books

Right now I want to eat cake, a common feeling, but unfortunately have not motivation to bake a cake, also a common feeling. Maybe I'll eat some cheese instead and quince paste will appear in the fridge. 

I've been reading lots of books, and the best insight came from Helen Hayward via the cook Ottolenghi (sure I've spelt that wrong), who told a rapt audience all you really need is 12 recipes. Take that!

I can cook omelets, lasagna, bolognese pasta, cheesy pasta with broccoli, tacos, a lentil dish with or without rice, spanakopita, sausage rolls with grated carrots, spaghetti with peas and lemon, noodles and squid rings with stir fried vegies and option curry/coconut milk, schnitzels (bought/homemade), roast vegetables, and zucchini noodles. That's enough. I can also make chocolate pudding, apple crumble, banana ice-cream and fruit salad, so I feel that my repertoire of cooking is fine, all I need to do is refine my technique. Voila, home catering sorted. No need to master new skills. 

The Helen Hayward book, Home Work, contrasted nicely with Heather Rose memoir, both Tassie residents, Heather is born and bred, Helen is genteel Adelaide via London. You can predict Helen's husband is going to leave her, just as you can tell Heather is far too cool to remain with either of her baby daddies. I like how Heather ends up with a bloke she met at a music festival, he fell in love straight away but refused to pursue even platonic friendship, as he was married. Five years, and three music festivals later, when all their friends could see it, they became a couple. Heather believes in the spirit, communication that comes from the body and intuition, but she's firmly grounded in nature, daily swimming and self-care practices to cope with chronic arthritis. Inspiring to read. My friend J has borrowed out Cosy by Isabel Gilles, who went through early menopause, and describes amusingly, how under prepared she was, whereas Claudia Karvan, who embraces the age she is as joyfully as Heather, describes her mother having extensively narrated her own journey. They have things to do and people to be with and relationships to nurture, and joy to hold onto and I feel the same. 

Books often come in thematic pairs. Honey by Imani Thompson and Night Swimming by Sharon Kernot were shelved adjacent at the St Peters Library. Honey is about a young black English sociology post graduate student who accidentally murders an annoying college professor and then becomes drawn into it. It's different but similar to how Mary Harron interpreted American Psycho. I liked the references to Cambridge where I lived for a late spring and early summer, at the time not loving the institutional and antiquated cultural rituals, but able to enjoy better in hindsight, though not as much as I liked Brighton, instantly, or Bristol. There are many characters and all believable, without being over written, and loose ends of mystery, not everything needs to be resolved. Night Swimming is a prose novel, which I didn't think I'd enjoy reading, but it was fine; about an Adelaide woman who re-encounters the older man that she and her teenage friend knew, back when they were risk taking teenagers. The power and vulnerability of youth, the tolerance and patience of middle age, particularly with work. 

Now I'm reading Audition by Katie Kitamura (still) and My Year in Paris with Gertrude Stein by Deborah Levy, both address the sexual/erotic power of a woman in her fifties, if it's a need and therefore a vulnerability, or a power she can exercise, the age of her sexual conquest matters. Should it ever have mattered? What are the things we let matter, without challenging, some others know not to wait for critics to discover them. Gertrude Stein published her defining modernist novel, age 58, a year younger than Virginia Woolf was when she died. She was fortunate to have a wife and a private income, but she did what she found interesting, not for men. Go feminism for all that do this, find a way to be a home maker or a creative and define themselves on their own terms, without violence or servitude. 

I've also borrowed out a bunch of other books, maybe I'll read them before I finish my scoping review, but I suspect I've got to produce a final draft before I can start new intellectual threads with my brain, and prioritise my essay which is about the role of parents and caregivers in recognising and supporting children who have low interoception awareness. I begged the hot librarian to help me, my age but looks younger despite prematurely grey haired, bit like the human rights retired soccer player, "Craig" (gee, these names out them as seventies kids), and after he'd 'walked' me through what I needed to know, he admired my Pavement t-shirt (we were on zoom and I had a fake background and a low chair so he was curious as to whether he'd read the letters correctly, yup!). He'd been at the same gig a few years back, also likes going to gigs, also has kids, also hopes they absorb the music and take up instruments, I probably should have explained the important role of lessons.