Well it was a fabulous night. We all read from our diaries. Because of the rule that we don't record on the night and try to create that safe, intimate space, I won't talk about what others read. I will say that all were funny, brilliant and thoughtful. There was some tragedy, delivered in mocking [...]
Category: Reading
The Bad Diaries Salon #TRIPS
We had the second salon last night to the theme of TRIPS. It was held at Abbotsford Convent, at Cam's Kiosk, which was a great venue for this type of event. We started mingling and chatting at 6.30pm. First reader started a little after 7, and we were finished by about 8.45pm. It was interesting [...]
Read #1: The God of Small Things
I finished my first Reading India book last night, Arundhati Roy's first - and only - published novel, The God of Small Things. It's a book I had tried once before to read, and not gotten through the first twenty or so pages. This time, because of my challenge, I persisted. And for a long [...]
Plans for 2016
As I said before, this is my Year of Reading India. The rules are I don't buy any new local or overseas fiction, with the following exceptions: my friend's book, coming out this year some time books that fit into my written by an Indian author/set in India/about India books that are necessary for my reading [...]
Signing off, festively yours
It's that time of year to go quiet, but before I do, here are my top 5 reads for 2015: A Little Life, Hanya Hanagihara The Wonder Lover, Malcolm Knox A Strangeness in My Mind, Orhan Pamuk H is for Hawk, Helen Macdonald All the Light We Cannot See, Anthony Doerr Yes, they are [...]
Reading plans for 2016 – the Year of Reading India
While I was in Ubud recently, I decided that next year will be my Year of Reading India. I plan for 2016 to be the beginning of a new type of reading approach for me. Why India? Because I have a bunch of books written by Indian authors already, including a few of Salman Rushdie's [...]
2, 2 and 2 at Amanda Curtin’s blog
The lovely Amanda Curtin (who I met at the recent Ubud Writers Festival) asked me if I'd participate in a series she runs on her blog, looking up looking down. The idea is you write about 2 things that inspired your book, 2 places connected with the book (geographical or metaphysical) and 2 favourite 'anythings' somehow connected [...]
5 influential books
Culture Street asked me to write about five books that influenced me, including one from childhood. This was a fantastic exercise as it made me really think hard about which books - among many many - had some sort of influence that I could trace. I had 100 words limit to spend on each, they [...]
Back from my fishing trip aka The Ubud Writers and Readers Festival 2015
It was really good and while the added six days were kind of not good, they were also good. Good. Here are some photos from my launch, which was held at the divine Sri Ratih Cottages in Ubud, which was also where I stayed. It was really fun doing a launch with a different format. First, [...]
Just me, Toni & Salman
So check out the link below. I'll wait here for you to come back. Radio National Books & Arts Daily I was very excited when I got a message from Kate Evans of Books+Arts and Books+ on Radio National to let me know my interview with her would be broadcast this morning. I listened 'live' and was [...]
The Fishermen, by Chigozie Obioma
Book 42: I finished this earlier today and did so with tears in my eyes. None rolled, but they were there. I found it moving, at the end, and also found that it seemed perfectly paced, the last quarter of the book. I felt doom, I felt apprehension and I felt admiration. It's a fine [...]
Chigozie Obioma and the case for ‘audacious prose’
This week, Chigozie Obioma's debut novel The Fishermen was short-listed for the Man Booker Prize. Obioma was already on my radar, first because I'd been hearing about the book, and then because I booked into a workshop he's running at the Ubud Writers and Readers Festival next month. I booked into it so fast, it was like [...]
Official publication day for The Secret Son
Even though my book has been in shops for a few days now, today is the official pub date. My dad flew in from Perth, where he's almost at the end of a drive-Australia trip with his wife. He's come for my launch. A friend has come from New Zealand to be here for my [...]
QUICKSAND Steve Toltz
Let me say first, I have A Fraction of a Whole, I've had it for years, but I haven't read it. Yet. I will, because now I know how Steve Toltz writes, I will be eating up all his words. Book number 35 for the year was Quicksand, ah what to say about it. It's [...]
Dancing in the Dark
I am a bit obsessed with Karl Ove Knausgaard, and am almost finished the fourth book in his My Struggle series. This volume covers him leaving home after school and going to teach in a small town in northern Norway. He hasn't done any training but it doesn't matter, apparently post-secondary school kids can teach. We [...]
Another book giveaway
Goodreads is hosting another Allen & Unwin book give-away of my novel, THE SECRET SON. Twenty more copies are now up for grabs, so head there if you'd like to be in it. Competition is open until 16 August (AUS and NZ only). But hey, good luck! Enter here.
Monday musings
Melbourne is very cold at the moment so I'm sitting propped in bed, 'working'. And as usual I have a bunch of pages open in my Mozilla browser. I'm always envious of anybody who has gotten to see The Museum of Innocence in Istanbul. I know I'll get there, and I've known about it since it opened. [...]
Book give-away | THE SECRET SON
The ace people at Allen & Unwin are giving away 5 advance reading copies of my book THE SECRET SON, on Goodreads. Click on THIS LINK to go to the page to enter. I can't give any better instructions than that. I've forgotten my Goodreads password, which isn't a good look. Competition is open until 19 July, and Australian and [...]
What I’ve been reading, what I stopped reading, what I want to be reading
But first, congratulations to Sofie Laguna for her Miles Franklin win, for THE EYE OF THE SHEEP. You can read more about that here at Allen & Unwin's website. I found out that Sofie had no idea she was going to win, in fact had been told not to expect a win, so what a triumph, and [...]
Wednesday wrap with lettuce
Today the most important thing I'll do is go here: Kate has been talking about this place for ages, on twitter, and while I have done three drive bys in an effort to get a gelato, it just hasn't worked out. I couldn't see the shop, there were no parks available, and so on. But today [...]
When you think a book is merde but it’s a best-seller
It's not often I abandon a book knowing I will never try it again. I often put books down, but I know I'll go back to them. I'm enjoying them, but it's like eating too much of the same thing , you want something different on the tongue. [beat] I know I should be kinder [...]
So there’s this
Allen & Unwin just tweeted this. How is the beauty? And I was so happy to see the bee. Just the week before I'd seen another book with bees on the cover and thought wistfully 'I wish I had a bee on my cover' and then forgot about it. And there it is. Meant to bee. [...]
Saturday links
Melbourne's evening skies at the moment are so gorgeous. I think that what are lot of us are doing with the internet, with twitter, blogs etc, is curating. We are collecting links to articles of interest, stories, pictures, as well as trying to collect people of like mind, making connections with people. It really is a [...]
The Secret Son update – the cover
Last night I saw the cover design for my book. I was standing on Princes Bridge, at about 5.30pm, with a photographer, doing a few extra shots. The sky was full-on moody and the wind was wildish. It looked liked this: I was taking a few snaps on my phone, in between Mark doing his, and [...]
FALLEN
Today's post is dedicated to the 22nd book I've read this year, Fallen, a memoir, by Rochelle Siemienowicz (HURRAH, that is the first time I've been able to spell Rochelle's surname, without looking. And funnily enough, my spell check has offered 'Microeconomics' instead.) I was always going to read this book, because: DISCLOSURE, I know Rochelle in [...]
Yaşar Kemal (1923-2015)
Yaşar Kemal was one of Turkey's leading authors, before anyone had heard of Orhan Pamuk. He was also the first Turkish author I read. It was Kemal's Wind from the Plain trilogy that I loved. I read the first book in 1999, during one of my times living in Istanbul. There was an English-language bookshop on Divan [...]
Not a review – UNDER THE SKIN by Michel Faber
Well, my first book is read for 2015. Started it yesterday, finished it today (but before that had read a couple of pages of the next Karl Ove (number 2) as well as continuing with a re-read of John Irving's The Water Method Man - must be the fourth time I've read that book). But I've [...]
Goodbye 2014, you’ve been pretty amazing
EDITED: to include Donna Tartt's THE GOLDFINCH. Below I mention the risk of not recording what I've read through the year. This year, Tartt's book divided readers, quite violently. Some people were in critic James Wood's camp - surly haters all - but there were others who loved it, including me. I read it twice. The first [...]
Not a review: books of strange, new things
For my final book post for the year, I have chosen recent local fiction (plus one non-local interloper) to present. These are all VERY exciting novels, especially for this reader who usually sticks to The Real. Annabel Smith's THE ARK Paddy O'Reilly's THE WONDERS Jane Rawson's A WRONG TURN AT THE OFFICE OF UNMADE LISTS [...]
Not a review, on How to Be Both by Ali Smith
This year I've tested out a couple of book clubs, run by local bookshops. I have a fairly non-existent history with book groups. I went along once to a friend's meeting. I hadn't finished the book, and felt incredibly inarticulate. I don't know whether finishing the book would have made any difference, to be honest. One [...]
I do not pretend that I have led a blameless life
Ned Kelly It's always interested me that Ned Kelly was executed on this day, just an hour before the official time of remembrance for all those who died or suffered in war. As Remembrance Day marks the end of World War I (which came 38 years after Kelly was hung) it could be coincidence; it probably is. We have come to [...]
What I’ve been reading
I've been reading a lot lately, probably because I'm not writing en ce moment (more about that later, or soon, I hope. There are a couple of reasons for it and one is that my daughter is up against her Year 12 exams, beginning Cup Day, so maman has been in attendance, on the couch [...]
Interview with author Annabel Smith about her new book THE ARK (and some other stuff)
Let me tell you a bit about writer Annabel Smith. I first 'met' her on twitter, and then I met her for real earlier this year when I went to Perth for the writers festival. I think I went galloping down to her in one of the tiered venues, after she was on a panel, [...]
Dave Eggers | Closing at MWF14
Look how gorgeous the sky is through the glass of whatever it is they are calling that space now. ¤ I know, I know, I'm late with this but better late than... you know. Eggers opened with reading a piece, something he's been playing with, that he's never read before, that he thinks might become [...]
Friday wrap, with lettuce
Ouf how time is pressing against me, with lots of things clamouring for my attention. Once I worked in a place where a (wonderful) graphic designer used to call out to the room "priority conflict!" when deadlines were ticking closer and she had heaps to do and now it's what I feel like shouting too, [...]
‘Hemingway Keeper’ Michael Katakis talks to Laura Jean McKay
The Wheeler Centre has a fabulous program of events throughout the year, including the occasional 'lunch time treat' such as yesterday's chat with writer and photographer Michael Katakis, and author Laura Jean McKay. The name of the event was 'Hemingway's Keeper' and it caught my eye, bien sur. I have a love for Hemingway that [...]
Helen Garner’s opening at the 2014 Melbourne Writers Festival
I went along to the Melbourne Town Hall to see Helen Garner talking to Romana Koval. it was a buzzy night, lots of people, and I'd booked my ticket using the 'select seat yourself' button, instead of the 'best available.' This meant I got a ticket in the first row and as I walked [...]
MWF14 catch-up post MORNING READ W/ THUY ON, & Philip Hensher
Thuy On with novelist Mark Henshaw I first met Thuy when The Big Issue published my story 'Dead Man's Cake' last year. I perched awkwardly at the team's table in the Optic bar after the launch. To be fair, they called me over, and I was introduced to everyone else. Thuy said she really liked [...]
Melbourne Writers Festival 2014, let’s call it an Early Friday wrap, with lettuce
Well it's upon us, and has been for a week now. But it really cranks up for me tomorrow. Thus far the highlights have been Meg Wolitzer (last Saturday), Joan London (last night) and Salman Rushdie (tonight). I'm not going to be able to do what I did last year, which was post long recounts [...]
A day in bed a week
Edith Sitwell said something like a woman needs a day in bed a week. I've been trying this out (when practicable) and yesterday I had a day. I read (Patti Smith's memoir about her and Robert Mapplethorpe's relationship, Just Kids) and looked at my phone, and read, and looked at my phone. Went to to [...]
Qaisra Shahraz @ Readings Hawthorn PEN event
My friend Athi and I went along to see my twitter friend Qaisra earlier this month, to hear her speak about her work. Qaisra has been very warm and friendly on twitter, and when I read last year that she was Australia-bound for the Byron Bay Writers Festival, I thought I might make the trip [...]
Helen Garner at Nunawading Library, 23 July
The Friends of the Nunawading Library (FONL) work to make funds available to community libraries in the area to invite guest speakers along to talk to readers. A few weeks ago it was Helen G, and I headed along with my dad to listen to her. Helen is my dad's second cousin but this time [...]
Ssssh, don’t tell anyone. Let’s keep it secret.
I'm serious. I was in two minds about blogging about the Mildura Writers Festival. (Some print material had the apostrophe, some didn't. I'm making a call and going without. Just because then I don't have to slow down to put it in.) Imagine I'm whispering all of the following to you. We're in a cafe, [...]
Annabel Smith’s Friday Faves
Author Annabel Smith asked me if I'd appear on her Friday Faves regular feature over at her blog. She invites bookish people to share one of their favourite books and explain a bit about the book and their connection to it. it's a terrific feature and I was really happy to be asked. I have [...]
Catch-up post: what I’ve been reading
I want to share my thoughts on three recent reads.These are selected because I very much liked the first two, am confused by the third, but all of them I read straight through without stopping and picking something else up. This is odd for me these days so there was something about all of these [...]
Monuments to Love, PWF session w/ Andrea Goldsmith & Aviva Tuffield
Novelist Andrea Goldsmith spoke with publisher and editor Aviva Tuffield (Affirm Press.) First up, Andrea gave a great explanation of her recent novel The Memory Trap. She introduced the characters and told the audience something about them. Andrea is a skilled presenter, no, really, she goes beyond skill into gift territory. She clearly enjoys it [...]
The Luminaries, by Eleanor Catton
Is it possible for a book of 800+ pages to make you wait more than 500 pages for some feeling of it 'kicking in'? Yes Is it possible for a book to be almost stupefyingly boring for more than half of it, for it only to start to spin faster and faster on some centrifuge [...]
Och aye
So next is Perth Writers Festival. I've booked into lots of sessions. This is some of what I'm excited about: Lionel Shriver on literature and religion Martin Amis in conversation Richard Flanagan on love stories An all-day publishing thing on the novel, with a series of sessions. Can't wait for that one, including watching people [...]
Tracing influences
TS Eliot said Mediocre writers borrow. Great writers steal. I have, on order, a book entitled Steal Like an Artist: 10 Things Nobody Told You About Being Creative by Austin Kleon. I'm interested in the idea of stories being recycled but also in the idea of plagiarism (am writing a new manuscript which has plagiarism [...]
Messages from 2004 – no one is taking a punt any more
I have several large ring binder folders that are stuffed with clipped newspaper articles, book reviews, my handwritten notes from courses and other printed material, mainly pieces on writing that I've found online. Sometimes when my mind is too buzzy to settle on fiction when I'm in bed at night, before sleeping, I pull out [...]
Anna Funder – The Dymphna Clark Lecture, University of Melbourne. Last night.
Last night I went to see Anna Funder talk and her topic was "Reading My Mind - and Yours. A celebration of the act of the human imagination that is writing, and the act of the human imagination that is reading." She was softly spoken and utterly gorgeous. As my thick curly-headed friend and I [...]
Obsessions
My mother loves Dickens's works, and loves to read about his life. This morning on twitter among a conversational back-and-forth on Dickens, there was a link to an article about Dickens and his children. From the London Review of Books How Does he Come to Be Mine? by Tim Parks, which is a review of [...]
BOOK REVIEW: Questions of Travel by Michelle de Kretser
I was in a pool in Bali earlier this month and had just read the opening pages of Questions of Travel. ‘I knew that in four or five pages that this is a work of genius,’ I said to my daughter, as I floated on some child’s pilfered foam noodle, filled with the expansion and [...]
A not-review of Jill Stark’s HIGH SOBRIETY
I was going to be very clever with this. I thought to use a 12-step framework to present the review. Geddit? I got to two steps and then stopped writing (but not reading, finished it like that [snaps fingers] and have been proselytising about it all over the city.) I've also decided this will not [...]
While I’m cogitating on the next ‘How-to’ book review post…
I wanted to quickly list the books that I have on my shelves that I have found (variously) helpful in improving my writing skills but thought I'd also write a bit about my beliefs for revising work. Editing Knowing and clearly understanding what the different types of revision are is a first step and this [...]
Learn with me: Book reviews ‘How to’ post #1
So, I feel I'm crap at writing the sort of book reviews I want to write. I know good ones when I see them, I enjoy lengthy and meaty reviews, ones where the focus can shift from the specific book at hand and include other works by the same author, and indeed relevant pieces by [...]
Game of Thrones – Friday video
While I'm getting my act together to put up some more stuff about book reviewing, please enjoy the interview below with George RR Martin, creator of the Fire and Ice series (Game of Thrones). Even if you are not a GoT watcher/reader, or 'fantasy person' (I'm not ordinarily but I will confess to loving this [...]
The art of reviewing
There's been a bit of talk around the traps lately about literary criticism, blog reviewers (or should I say bloggers who review) and readers who review. Also aspiring authors who review. I was recently asked if I would be interested in doing reviewing and my knee-jerk reaction was to say NO. There were various sentiments [...]
Yes please
I would like to spend a year in Hemingway's attic and write. * Also, I am reading Hilary Mantel's Beyond Black. What a book. Like many others I suspect I tried Wolf Hall. I am just not that into historical fiction. let me try that again: I am not into historical fiction. But this, oh [...]
A reading plan for 2013
I have read a few books so far this year but the most memorable so far has been The Bell Jar. I'll say it again: I just finished reading The Bell Jar. I'll have to do a separate post on it once I've processed and digested but I thought it was fucking amazing. But get [...]
Scattered
I remember a few years ago feeling I had reached the point where I was so stuffed with fiction I couldn't read it anymore, and turned to NF. I am wondering whether it's not happening again. I feel like my reading is flighty, agitated and skittish. I can't commit, I flit around, looking for something [...]
Catching up to the rest of the universe
Just finished reading Gone Girl, and I really mean just; about half an hour ago. This is NOT a review because I can't be bothered putting too much effort into writing about this. Not because it's not good, not because I don't have plenty to say, simply because after a bad night's sleep and a [...]
Helen Garner’s True Stories
I am re-reading True Stories, a collection of essays and other non-fiction snippets written by Helen Garner. It contains an essay titled A Scrapbook, An Album which I read first in another collection, called Sisters, edited by Drusilla Modjeska and published in 1993. I have my mother's inscription on the inside: To Dearest Jen, Much Love Mum, [...]
Tracing influence
I'm reading an interview with Michel Houellebecq in The Paris Review. These interviews are marvellous; along with First Tuesday Book Club catch ups on iView, these Paris interviews I think will take up much of my eyeball time over summer. I've never read any of Houellebecq's novels; I can barely spell his surname, there's a [...]
American Psycho, almost unreadable
[I have the cover on the left but the one on the right is super creepy and disturbing, don't you think?] I'm almost finished Bret Easton Ellis's American Psycho. It is as bad as they say. At times it is simply unreadable and I have physical reactions - gasping and putting hands over my eyes. [...]
Influences – I feel strongly about John Irving
It's time to own it, I suppose. I have to say, his early stuff was fantastic and then it did get very self-indulgent which is disappointing but I did just recently see a quotation from someone saying that a writer does their best work in the first twenty years. (Maybe? maybe not.) If you want [...]
True readerly confessions
It's not fashionable or cool or literary, but I cut my readerly/writerly teeth on the following authors as a young person (amongst other more 'socially-acceptable' classic ones). I still love them all and at a drunken dinner party, would defend their goodness to the bitter end where you'd want to stab me with the butter [...]
Notes on a Scandal, part 1
Jumping the gun here because I haven't finished reading this yet BUT I just had to mark my enjoyment of this book by a mini-post about the language used in this slender, satisfying novel. Am I the last person on earth to read this book? Published in 2003, the movie (I saw) came out in [...]
House of Sticks by Peggy Frew
I really enjoyed House of Sticks. It's about a mother who has put aside her music career to look after her three children. She has a husband, Pete, who is a fairly equal partner in the domestic running of things, and he is a solid and loving presence. It was refreshing to see a male [...]
Huffington Post article on Australian writers of the female variety
Elizabeth Lhuede's article is a good'un. Read here.
Lola Bensky by Lily Brett
I was going to write only a few of paragraphs on this because I want this wordpress space to be pithy but I simply can't harness myself with this one. As Lola Bensky's father Edek would say: Oy, cholera. Lola Bensky is a rock journalist for an Australian publication. No doubt elements of Lola [...]
The Lighthouse by Alison Moore
I read two books last week and this 2012 Man Booker short-listed novel was one of them. The main character, Futh, is a man who is contained and restrained, and Moore's writerly hand was so light it was as if she left him alone to wend his way through the narrative. I am still haunted [...]
SERAGLIO 