Georgiezine

The long awaited 2nd novel from Marisha Pessl. Unfortunately I'm not enjoying it. I still recall her "Special Topics in Calamity Physics" which is gothic/southern/like a dark version of the Royal Tennenbaums family. Very quirky, with some memorable characters, including a overblown, secretly handsome guy that the protaganist has a crush on against her will. (Always the best). Kings Cross-Louis Nowra. I loved this. It made me realise that the inner city neighbourhood really represents modernism, high risk living, the other of Australian culture, like an imaginary Gotham equivalent. Ever since the high rise buildings went up in the early 20th Century, men and women were able to explore alternative ways of living, both good and bad. The Interestings- Meg Wolitzer . I've read one of her previous novels (The Positions) but enjoyed this even more. It was really strong, tapped into the envy and disillusionment that people experience as they age, and unfavourably compare ...

The coolest person in primary school was Jaimie, younger brother of Kab101, son of Grade 6 teacher, who came along on school camp to Ballarat. We'd been in the bus for half an hour, when it went around that girls were "in love" with him. I strained my head to find out what he looked like:  mullet, acid wash denim jacket, crazy print shirt, acid wash jeans and hi top sneakers. Sooooooo cool. Imagine my excitement years later, when he recognised me and told me all the things he'd got up to since then. (Skating, photography).  I could barely concentrate-a cool guy remembered me from a three-day school camp! What had I done to have that effect?  Had a long chat with Mozza tonight, trying to work out how to track down a book that is out of print and retails for up to $600 online. "What if it's shit? I don't want to buy it!" He taught me to look up books on the National Library website, a great idea, and we bitched about politicians that don't even...

Been given a range of early 80s Australian music which includes a song by Serious Young Insects titled "I want Cake", which cannot be played in front of the kid. "I want!" is our least favourite phrase and I'm gearing him up to hear "You want it but you don't need it". The kid is very cute at the moment and loves to clean (this photo is from childcare. I only get him to do the dishes at home...). He has been vocally workshopping some of his opinions about our childrearing tactics with his soft toys, Elmo and Rabbit, or more recently, my left shoe and right shoe. In a coincidence, Terence sent me the photo of Brixton markets, as I was halfway through "Colour of memories" by Geoff Dyer, in which 80s characters spend a lot of time frequenting the Brixton market. 

Hollier than Thou-Laura Buzo . This is YA fiction, and some characters don’t quite seem real, but I still enjoyed reading it and was even more pleased to read an interview with her, in which she describes her upbringing as part of a literary family, living and educated in inner city Sydney, and how much she liked “Tirra Lirra by the River” by Jessica Anderson.  The Push-Julia Lawrinson. Also YA, Julia Lawrinson is a WA writer published by Fremantle Press, but in this novel she has convincingly created a young Glebe late teenager, who socialises with The Push via her work friend Trish, and romantic interest Johnno. Side note-Radio National thought fit to interview Julia Lawrinson, with others, on the topic of “sex in young adult fiction”. As my friend Craig once mused, “teenagers-they’re getting it on!” Sarah Hopkins-Speak to Me. Have ruined this by skipping to the back and then trying to read the novel in reverse chronological order, which does it no credit, as she h...

Have been reading Geoff Dyer. He was on the panel for Adelaide Writers Week a few years back.  I read “Paris Trance”, which recalled the 90s to me. Lack of mobile phones and internet,  absence of 80s era greed. He writes of that time when you have shallow roots in new city, young and poor and a dead end job, friends to go out with but it’s only a passing phase. You don’t save anything, you go on road trips with friends and stay together in odd holiday digs where you invent odd ways to pass the time. Like Canberra at Jules Dad’s vineyard, the games of celebrity head, intense cooking sessions, walks on surveyor's hill, enthusing with Kinloch the hippie teen neighbour, reading Canberra Times cover to cover. The characters in Paris Trance talk a lot of tropes, such as man moves to small town where he knows no-one and starts dating a waitress in a diner (or single mum moves to small town where she knows no-one and meets a handsome local). The story where man moves to small town...

Yesterday I lived the dream. We fitted our new kids bike seat to the back of Andy's bike and as a family, we caught the train to the beach and cycled up and down the esplanade. Bec, Ned & Gus joined us and we kept cycling past Fort Glanville and the surf club before returning to Noonies for mediocre milkshakes.  But the outlook was great: beautiful ocean with the sheen of a sunny day and wave crests formed by the wind. Next time, we plan to get off the train even further north. I love the peninsula, it's quaint and slightly dated. Whilst Andy and the kid got their playground fix, I went and got our caffeine fix. After getting takeaway coffees, I visited the supermarket to get biscuits. Sitting outside were two "disaffected youths"-that being the term if I was an out of touch sub editor or the like. I've got "disaffected youths" on my mind, ever since reading "Girl" and it's sequel "Dream School" by Blake Nelson, who also au...

I finished reading "Where you'd go Bernadette" by Maria Semple. Her characters take a cruise ship to Antarctica and discover that they are starting to feel deeply happy, although all they do is sit there and stare at ice. It seems that staring at the horizon for an extended period produces endorphins. So that's it-those blissful days or weekends spent in places where all you did was sit in a chair and gaze at the view: an old property in the Southern Highlands in parched summer, looking out from the verandah at washing drying on the line. A weekend spent at Middleton overlooking the ocean. Sitting on the upstairs balcony at the Caledonian. The loungeroom view at Surveyors Hill. In quest of a horizon, I took Louis to Henley Square, and gazed at the various blue-greyness of the sky, sea and washed quays, whilst he dug and built sandcastles. Earlier I'd been lying on the lawn, finishing my book, recalled to the same September 21 years ago, when I dislocated my knee...

This evening, I was reading to the kid. Every book I read at night time (and many books I read in the day) are about going to sleep. The message is getting through. When I read out the catchphrase "Do you need to go to sleep?" he closed his eyes and made pretend snoring sounds. So much fun! He had a busy evening rearranging baking trays and lego displays and trying to build the tallest lego tower that wouldn't fall over and eventually I found art invites and lego in the oven. I also decided to empty my handbag. Open bills. Sort my life out. Try and get back on track. This is all prompted by asking a colleague for something from her handbag (I shudder to think what-hopefully money, hopefully not a tissue) and seeing her sort through clutter that included the voting slip from 2010 Federal Election. Anyway, I found a diary entry, scribbled on paper, which I may have written here in different form: "Different films I've liked that have been 'mood' number...

Have been reading A Visit from the Goon Squad by Jennifer Egan , which is great. So glad I picked it up from the South Seas book shop at Port Elliott.  I also picked up The Woman by TC Boyce which was on sale; this was last weekend whilst we all stayed together in a massive massive beach house at Middleton. Large and white, with bedrooms for everyone, the beach across the road with perfect surf, ideal blue weather that was sunny but not too hot. Louis played at the waters edge with his cousin and helped Ash and Liam dig holes. I read. Andrew slept. The boys played on their laptops. Everyone ate sooooooo much. The last chapter of Goon Squad introduced the term "pointers" which in the slightly near future is the new term used for babies/toddlers, transferred from their term as a target audience for digital handsets. Musicians and music producers are experiencing a second life by catering to the toddler market and their desire for digital downloads; overworked guilty parent...

Petra's partner is an avid reader. He thinks FUllers bookshop is somewhat overrated (snooty, not that great a collection) and buys a lot at Ellison Hawker. He has an excellent collection-many books that I've enjoyed reading and that are semi-known (ie one would have to be a committed reader and visitor to independent bookshops to know about) and he's suggested some new authors and titles. Richard Yates is as good as he recommened; and I've almost finished The Easter Parade by home. He has the memoirs of Jonathan Franzen, lots of books by Denis Johnson (who has plenty of life experience to draw on..), and many more. Am going to have to get pen and paper and make up a recommendation list.

So, I think my reading list-both my to do list and my current borrowing list-is worth recording, because it gives an idea of what I'm interested in culturally and socially. I borrowed A LIFE IN FROCKS by Kelly Doust , a Sydneysider that spent several years living in Hong Kong and London. What should be a frivolous piece is very enjoyable, partly because she's a well read lass who spent her teens and twenties being busy, gathering some experiences to reflect on. She was asked to leave Marist Sisters Woolwich and was briefly an apprentice hairdresser, which is when she developed her love of clubbing and clubbing attire. After returning to school, she did an arts degree in Melbourne and worked at the Continental Cafe, having developed her love of jazz culture, all turtlenecks and black on black. She loved the Continental, the charismatic culture of the staff and patrons, spending time there when she wasn't working... then overseas, meeting a husband with modestly understated g...

A 40degree day. Visiting a friend who hasn't left her flat all day, due to the weather. A taxi arrives downstairs and she implores me to check out her neighbour, but I'm too late. All I can spot is a dark haired man, wearing a tshirt that I assume to be by Mambo, driving off in the front seat. She tells me he has loud sex on an infrequent basis, seemingly with different females, all of whom leave in the middle of the night. She voices the new question: "Is he having sex with prostitutes?" (Or is he extremely successful at picking up women who want to sleep with him, but don't want to sleep in his bed all night?). She tells me he doesn't drive, keeps his blinds closed all the time and wonders if he's been banned from driving and is a drug addict. I tell her he's probably just addicted to the internet (porn, gambling) and doesn't want his screen view affected by the reflection.... Finished 2011 by reading VERONICA by Mary Gaitskill, who also wrote Se...

This post is for TC, who asked for some book recommendations. Being holidays, the Christmas season, a time to think of friends and family nearby and faraway, all means that the cultural juices are flowing. So books. I don't think I could go past Anna Funder's book "All that I am", which was repeatedly nominated in the Australian's A-Z Books of the Year . Brenda Walker summed it up best, "about anti-facism activisim in London in the 1930s, recollected by those who have temporarily survived, including playwright Ernst Toller. Terror, intelligent courage, betrayal and deovation are the subjects of this deeply moving novel". So true, had me on the internet, investigating further reading sources of this era, this terrifying time for Western European intelligentsia. In a match, Colm Toibin recommends Evelyn Juer's HOUSE OF EXILE, as explaining what happened to the German intellectuals including Heinrich Mann after 1933...(the expatriates? or those who beca...

Have been flipping through Hotel Chelsea, which I first read in January 2010. Oh my, how life has moved on since then. Became pregnant, got engaged, planned a wedding, got offered a new job, moved states, started work, got married, renovated my home, had a baby, husband changed jobs and return home too. At the time of reading the book, I lent it to a friend, enthusing about it, but also reflecting on the fact that I was having nightmares about being homeless, about living in the Hotel Chelsea but feeling vaguely scared and worried by the ennui, that claustrophobic dangerous feeling that David Lynch evokes so well in Lost Highway . My friend laughed, said it wasn’t hard to draw a link between my real life temporary homelessness and what my psyche yielded in my dreams. So 18 months along and I’m reading the book and found myself still moderately interested in the individual stories of the hotel residents, but completely put off by the author’s tone and narrative. It was sligh...

Am slowly reading my way through A Fortunate Age by Joanna Smith Rakoff. Am not even certain where I found the suggestion for this book, but I ordered it oline from ABE books, along with Maybe Next Year (a childhood favourite by Amy Hess), Bachelor Girl by Betsy Israel and Girl Walks Into a Bar by Strawberry Saroyan. (All fall into my New York obsession, where I must read fiction that is set in New York, examines the experience of living in New York or being culturally shaped by New York, which in itself is an examination of what it is like to grow up in a highly urbanised environment where you scrabble for space amongst skyscrapers). Anyway, I am enjoying the book and picked the resemblance to the structure of The Women, by Mary McCarthy before I read some online reviews, which examined it in greater detail. Perhaps that is why The Slap works so well-covering a period time/experience shared by a group ofpeople and visiting each of these individuals for a narrative overview. It's ...

Have abandoned my book club after almost a year. Found it all too hard after a day of work to come home, cook/prepare food, feed son, wait for husband to arrive home and drive to all parts of the city for an alcohol free discussion on a book someone else had told me to read. I came to laugh at Avril Rolfe's column on The Scriveners Fancy when she points out all the disadvantages of book club. Got some book suggestions here ; bought a book today that was about living in new york city (that was kind of the title too), and really enjoying reading The Monthly, which I borrowed out from the library. Great pieces by Helen Garner, Louis Nowra, Mandy Sayer and someone whose name I forget, on the methadone introduction and effect on long term heroin addicts.

I've probably mentioned this already, but in 2011 I've noticed a new phenonomen: people writing in books that they've borrowed. Not nice life affirming little notes, or literary criticism adding to thematic analysis, but critical corrections. First it was the Judith Lucy memoirs, where one irate Burnside Council resident kept correcting minor typos and in response to her acknowledgement to her editor, suggested she should keep her thanks to herself. Then it was a baby advice book, actually lent to me by a friend, in which advice about feeding solids was crossed out with a black texta and corrected with "better" information. Then I borrowed another book, in which a previous reader had gone through and everytime the author used the term "honing" they'd changed it to ""homing". Can't actually be certain which is the correct term now! Once upon a time I did care about this sort of thing, and if I had a chance to correct the mispelling ...

I think this might be my first reference to other social media. In a Marieke Hardy twitter interview I read today, she described how she's been reading Helen Garner's essays to try and develop (improve) her writing style. I like both Helen and Marieke as cultural writers, they weave observation and social commentary as well as humour into their writing. Both would be on my dinner party list-in fact, I decided just last night that I would like to have an all female fantasy dinner party list (which would probably neatly sidestep the fighting over who scored the hot guy at the dinner party*) that was made up of Marieke Hardy, Helen Garner, Noni Hazelhurst, Sally Seltmann, Leigh Sales and Margaret Whitlam (I'd have Hazel Hawke if she didn't have dementia). (One of my cousins has socialised with Margaret and would share naughty gossip about how wonderful but overbearing she is; if I could pick an era of hers, I'd like to invite her when she was a Cabramatta housewife/so...

Based on a digressive search, here is my reading wishlist (currently scribbled on the back of an unused wedding invite): Jonathan Lethem-the book about the girl in a band that works on a phoneline; Motherless Brooklyn & Fortress of Solitude (this should satisfy my desire to read a genre swapping writer, like Michael Chabon; my desire to read New York/Brooklyn fiction and my budding interest in crime fiction; as well as interest in fiction satirising the rock/grunge era like my next choice... Gary Benchley Rock Star! by Paul Ford. I think I wrote a blog entry about this but didn't tag it; anyway my favourite line in it was when a older female character dating the young college graduate and budding musician said she wanted to go home so she could write her blog... and in a way, I notice how being a "rock musician" seems to be a desirable pastime for men who like reading and leisure time and performance and maybe a drug habit... Susanna Clarke-recommended as a genr...

Am re-reading The Children's Bach by Helen Garner and just finished The Romantic by Kate Holden. In the latter she writes of having coffee with a new acquaintance in Rome, a fellow expatriate, how she looks at the waiter's face in the cafe as they leave, to see if he will betray whether her date makes a regular habit of picking up female tourists. Reminded me of having coffee at Valhalla with a male friend, who worried that the female waitress wouldn't make eye contact with him. He was a frequent enough visitor to know her name-she had straight dark hair and dressed like a young student (which she probably was) and could have been his type if he was single (but he wasn't), and I teased him about her rejection, suggested that she probably didn't respect him. In The Children's Bach, even though the novella is prefaced with the statement that all characters are fictional, you can recognise elements of people in her life: the bookworm and sensible pre-teen only ...