Secrets

Everyone has secrets. Everyone has shameful secrets that they only reveal after a few gin and tonics and they are sure that everyone loves them enough to forgive them. I’m talking about the secret DVD that is shoved to the back of the cupboard that gets pulled out only when one is alone and sure of no interruptions – no not THAT video – the one that you think everyone will tease you about for years to come. OK – I’ll confess that I have one – While You Were Sleeping with Sandra Bullock. I have watched it once a year or so since it came out in 1995. It is my feel-good movie and it is silly and soppy but the little lonely girl wins in the end and it makes me feel better when I am feeling sorry for myself. Now you know the kind of secret I am talking about.

I’m pretty sure that everyone has a literary secret too. One friend who is an academic reads romance novels – I’m talking cheap, hunky-guy-half-dressed-on-the-cover romance books. I have another friend who reads Proust and Joyce, and reads Harry Potter every year or so. I have another friend, one with whom I have discussed serious literature who finally confessed (apparently this had been weighing on her for quite a while) that she loves the Twilight series. I suspect there are quite a few of you out there. BTW I’m not one of you. I read the first one and thought that child needed counselling and some anti-depressants. Who in their right mind would let a little girl die for a boy even if he did shimmer in the sun and drink blood to stay alive. This is bad popular teenage fiction. Sorry! (I seem to say sorry every post but I guess I just have some strong opinions)

My fiction secret is a little series of mystery who-dun-its by a Seattle based author Mary Daheim. Almost 20 years ago when I was a single mother living on a pension in a small town with a little wee public library, I went to said library and looked up Seattle in the catalogue. I lived the first 24 years of my life in and around Seattle and I must have been feeling a little homesick. Up popped The Alpine Advocate by Mary Daheim. It was a little murder mystery with good enough writing to keep me reading and not too complicated that a very tired me didn’t have to think too hard. The story was set in the evergreen mountains of the Cascades near Seattle in a little fictional town called Alpine. Emma Lord, the main character, was a single mother and new editor of a small town newspaper. She was tough and soft and could solve crimes.

The next year The Alpine Betrayal came out and my circumstances hadn’t changed enough to make me want anything any harder to read so I borrowed that one too. I told my mother about them and she started buying them and sending them off to me after she read them. Through those years I did settle down to some more serious (and occasionally more silly) literature to read. I fell in love with some Australian authors and discovered English literature (all except Dickens, but don’t worry; I have now and love him as much as everyone else does). Over the past 20 years I have joined book groups, studied literature at university, tackled the classics and been a voracious reader. Still, whenever I see a new Alpine book – and they are easy to spy because Daheim has kindly written them in alphabetical order titles – The Alpine Christmas, The Alpine Decoy, The Alpine Escape, etc. I put it reserve at the library and, once in hand, settle in for couple of evenings with Emma and Vida and Sheriff Milo and the Pacific Northwest. I just got The Alpine Vengeance and it is more of the same. Lovely!

I’m not advising anyone to read these books. They are silly and simple. But I know these people now and I have a fondness for them. I like them. I’m sure that everyone has one of these types of books hiding somewhere that they are afraid to tell their serious friends about for fear of those looks and a lesser estimation in their eyes. I know that I am guilty of giving that look. The friend who confessed she loved Stephanie Meyer – I keep trying to introduce her to better vampire books but she stands firm. I half admire her for it, half scoff. But I will try to do better in the future, especially now that you know my secret!

A Visit from the Goon Squad by Jennifer Egan

I have loved all the Pulitzer Prize winners in Fiction for years (all except March by Geraldine Brooks – bleh! – sorry) and have happily taken each book, as a given, to read. Last year’s Tinkers was a heartfelt account of a death, Olive Kitteridge was a seriously good read and has a lot in common, well, style-wise to Jennifer Egan’s book, but more on that later. And The Brief Wondrous Life of Oscar Wao is one of my all time favourites. In fact, just look up the winners and pick one to read – you won’t be disappointed.

A Visit from the Goon Squad (if you click on this link please read/listen to the 12 Great Rock and Roll Pauses even if you don't read the book) deserves its place among these greats of modern literature. The themes of time, technology, music and the small chances or fates that interact with our lives and alter everything are just as essential to the plots of these stories as the people in them.

The stories in the book are all linked together by the people we meet as we go along in this non-linear narrative. This style was also used in Olive Kitteridge (see, I said we would get to this) although in that book the stories were all based around Olive as the central planet. Egan leads us on a jaunt through time and to places which I, for one, was really happy to go. Each chapter was a stand-alone story as well as a cleverly layered tier in the overall larger story.

“Time is a Goon” one of Egan’s character says when he realises that he has run out of it and time hasn’t taken him where he thought he should have gone. Goons are thugs - or very silly, funny people for whom nothing is sacred. All the the people who populate this book have issues with time from Bennie the San Francisco punk rocker kid to Bennie the ageing New York record executive and Sasha the young girl in love with the wrong guy to Sasha the grown up kleptomaniac (but never from a shop!). They are all fascinating. And I wanted more.

One of my favourite bits of this novel is that one of the characters sprinkles gold flakes in his coffee. He also sprays his own armpits with pesticide as a deodorant for very reasons he sees as quite sane. One of the chapters is written in PowerPoint and it doesn’t feel out of place, in fact it works.

Read this book. Get this book from your library or borrow it from a friend. Find it in a second hand shop or ask your sister to buy it for your birthday present. But read this book. I can’t think of anyone that I don’t think would enjoy it on some level be it pure entertainment or serious moral lessons – everyone will get something out of it.

Pig in Mud

I'm not the smartest person I know. And I don't want to think I am smart either. Some of the stupidest things I have ever heard uttered came from the mouths of people who think they are smart. Really stupid things, and hurtful things. Come to think of it, some of the most profound statements I have heard have come from little children and uneducated people (or if I'm telling the truth - people that I thought weren't very smart - sorry!).

The problem is I have this brain that needs to be stimulated intellectually almost constantly. Its a pain in the bum. Information for my brain is like oxygen - no oxygen and I go to sleep, no information and I go to sleep. I need to be learning something, listening to something, watching something, talking to someone or reading something. I'm no good at doing nothing. Well, no good at learning nothing. Some people call reading doing nothing. "what are you doing?" "nothing, just reading" Isn't that something? Something really good?

I've tried to turn my brain off. I've meditated. I meditated for 20 years off and on. The problem now is I get rudely interupted from my meditation when I snore or when my head falls forward. No stimulation = sleep. Chill out means sleep to me. I'd rather stick pins in my eyes than go for a walk without company or my ipod. Take a cup of tea out to the back yard and enjoy the sun and listen to the birds? Not without my magazine or crossword puzzle. Soak in the bath? Yes, as long as I have a audio book in the cd player.

I sometimes wish I was one of those people that can sit and do a boring job all day and just be happy-ish. I know them. I'm not one of them. I have done my fair share of boring in my life but now my brain shouts it won't take it anymore! Stimulate me!

So I go to university classes and study the most interesting subjects I can find. I listen to Ted.com or Yale University lectures at work - don't tell my boss - or books on tape if I'm doing the stuff that doesn't take any brain power. At home I have the radio or the TV on most of the time. Well, not the TV so much and mostly I listen to the ABC or NPR on the radio - I clean or cook or do other chores. I watch Masterchef - this is my knitting time.

I write a little, which I am beginning to really love and I look forward to finding out if I am any good at it but I don't really care, I'll write anyway - it is really good therapy.

And I read.

My heart breaks when I can't find a book that thrills me (like a few days ago). Today I feel like the proverbial pig in mud. I've got four new books to read and I have a really good feeling about all of them. I think they will stimulate different parts of my brain and that makes me a happy girl. Its like having an itch on your back and your toe at the same time. You have two hands - why do you have to chose one itch to scratch first? I'm going to start them all right now.

I just got Jennifer Egan's A Visit From the Goon Squad and I'm settling down after Masterchef with a cup of herbal tea, a hot water bottle and it. I love Winter!

I was recommended a book by my god daughter call Anastasia by Vladimir Megre. She said it made her feel like everything will be OK. What a nice endorsement for a book. I am looking forward to that feeling too.

I love Anthony Bourdain. I don't know why because he is not my type at all. He's too skinny and he drinks too much. But I love his honesty and I love his fearlessness. And I love No Reservations. I am going to see him at the Sydney Writers Festival on Thursday and I am really looking forward to it. Anyway, he did a show in Boston recently and said that The Friends of Eddie Coyle by George V. Higgins was a pivotal book in his life. So off to the local library this evening to pick up that one, too.

And while I was there I picked up Lacuna by Barbara Kingsolver on cd to listen to.

My brain feels well looked after. Oink Oink. Squish, Squish.

Drowning not reading.

I have books all over my house. I have fiction, nonfiction, self help, and craft books up the wazoo. I have magazines and cook books and I have an eBook reader that has over 100 books on it. I can’t find anything to read!! I don’t know what is going on. I can’t settle to a book. I started reading Of Human Bondage by W. Somerset Maugham. It’s great and I just don’t feel like reading it anymore. I don’t know why? I started reading Jasper Jones by Craig Silvey. It has gotten such good reviews. I read the first chapter and now I am over it already. What the? I have a self help book or two on the go – Health at Every Size by Linda Bacon (what a name for someone trying to help you not eat!) and The Lost Art of Real Cooking by Ken Albala. Bah! I am into the second book of The Once and Future King by T H White – I love it and I can’t pick it up! I have ordered Game of Thrones by G. Martin and I bet I won’t be able to read that either. I’m frustrated and a little scared. I’m not sure if I’ve lost the art of reading or I am just in a screwy place at the moment. I can’t remember ever feeling like this before. I feel a little panicky to tell the truth.

What do you do when you can’t read? Or rather, when no book captures your fancy, when no story sparks that place where you know you are going to go on a fabulous adventure and to hell with the dishes and dirty clothes (my dishes and dirty clothes are all clean, btw)? Do you have an old standby to get the literary juices flowing again or do you always look for something new? I’m at a loss and I would really like to find my way home again.

The Dragons : Camelot by Colin Thompson

The Dragons is a series of novels that will finally tell the Whole World the TRUTH about the legendary King Arthur and the legendary Castle of Camelot and some legendary dragons and the legendary wizard Merlin and all that ancient stuff that happened long, long ago in the legendary land they called Avalon. Actually the inhabitants of Avalon did not call it Avalon. They called it 'Here'. (from Colin Thompson’s web site)

This book is funny. The humour is aimed at teen and preteen readers but I found myself chuckling quite a bit. As I’ve said before, writing for kids of any age is tricky. You can’t patronise them – they will see right through you and never pick up another of your books. You can’t pull your punches because they will call you out. You can’t ‘write for kids’ really, you need to write what is in your own head and if that appeals to people under 16 then you are one of the lucky ones. Kids are loyal. Kids will buy your next book. They will stand in line to buy your next book. They will talk their friends into buying your books. They will write you letters telling you how much they loved (or hated) your books. They are an amazing audience and you would do well to put your faith in them, even if you are an adult, and are looking for something to read. Pick up something from your kid’s bookshelf (or your niece’s, nephew’s, someone else’s kid’s), and if it happens to be Colin Thompson you are in for a little light reading treat. It is silly and funny, and believe me – you will get the jokes even if you are all grown up. I’m giving this to a friend who needs a laugh!

“But Camelot was so exquisitely beautiful that, by comparison, even the Blue Bird of Paradise looked as ugly as a bald eighty-seven-year-old hippopotamus with cracked skin and one ear.”

“In Camelot’s moat, the olms grow big enough to swallow a horse, which they often do. The largest and oldest olm, Krakatoa, had lived in the moat since the ancient days, which ended about half an hour before time began. Olms do not eat knights. They just suck off their armour and cover them with slime that is slimier than any slime you have ever seen and smells dreadful. Knights this has happened to are sent to the Downwind Islands at the far end of the moat until the smell wears off , which can take years.”

Last words from Colin Thompson:
"I have always believed in the magic of childhood and think that if you get your life right that magic should never end. I feel that if a children's book cannot be enjoyed properly by adults there is something wrong with either the book or the adult reading it. This of course, is just a smart way of saying I don't want to grow up.

My favourite fruit is cherries and my favourite music is Rock and Roll and old Blues records and I am now an Australian citizen. I am left-handed and colour-blind."

My favourite fruit is raspberries and my favourite music is Tom Waits and I am an Australia and American citizen. I am right handed and can knit. And I will be reading more of Colin Thompson when the oportunity arises.