Brisbane Last Friday Book Club

2011-10-30T23:54:00.000-07:00

This is Peter Garret's comments about 'Cloudscape' on the First Tuesday bookshow. Look, it stacks up fantastically, Jennifer, and when you asked me which book I wanted to recommend, I recommended this one because when I first read it, I loved it. I thought I'd read a great Australian novel. And I like Tim Winton's writing a lot. But coming back to it the second time has been an extraordinary journey. It's better than I imagined and there's much more in it than I imagined. I think it's a true classic. And to be honest, it's great literature which is very readable, and it touches chords deep inside all of us, I suspect, and difficult to find the words, really. It was a wonderful, wonderful experience sitting around in a week or two in January and getting into it again.

The publisher of 'Billy Bathgate' wrote this. 'In 1930's New York, Billy Bathgate, a fifteen-year-old high-school dropout, has captured the attention of infamous gangster Dutch Schultz, who lures the boy into his world of racketeering. The product of an East Bronx upbringing by his half-crazy Irish Catholic mother, after his Jewish father left them long ago, Billy is captivated by the world of money, sex, and high society the charismatic Schultz has to offer. But it is also a world of extortion, brutality, and murder, where Billy finds himself involved in a dangerous affair with Schultz's girlfriend. Relive this story through the title character's driving narrative, a child's thoughts and feelings filtered through the sensibilities of an adult, and the result is E.L. Doctorow's most convincing and appealing portrayal of a young boy's life. Converging mythology and history, one of America's most admired authors has captured the romance of gangsters and criminal enterprise that continues to fascinate the American psyche today.'

One reviewer said "[M]esmerizing reading that soars from the shocking first scene...through episodes of horror, hilarity and sudden, deepening insights." Publishers Weekly

2011-10-10T23:33:00.000-07:00

According to one reviewer 'Wild Swans' is
'Bursting with drama, heartbreak and horror, this extraordinary family portrait mirrors China's century of turbulence. Chang's grandmother, Yu-fang, had her feet bound at age two and in 1924 was sold as a concubine to Beijing's police chief. Yu-fang escaped slavery in a brothel by fleeing her "husband" with her infant daughter, Bao Qin, Chang's mother-to-be. Growing up during Japan's brutal occupation, free-spirited Bao Qin chose the man she would marry, a Communist Party official slavishly devoted to the revolution. In 1949, while he drove 1000 miles in a jeep to the southwestern province where they would do Mao's spadework, Bao Qin walked alongside the vehicle, sick and pregnant (she lost the child). Chang, born in 1952, saw her mother put into a detention camp in the Cultural Revolution and later "rehabilitated." Her father was denounced and publicly humiliated; his mind snapped, and he died a broken man in 1975. Working as a "barefoot doctor" with no training, Chang saw the oppressive, inhuman side of communism. She left China in 1978 and is now director of Chinese studies at London University. Her meticulous, transparent prose radiates an inner strength.'

This is one reviewer's take on 'life of Pi'.
What is there to say about a novel in which a young boy shares a lifeboat with a fully grown Bengal tiger named Richard Parker? If the book is Yann Martel’s Life of Pi, there’s quite a lot to be said. This is definitely one of the most unusual novels of the year (if not the most), yet the story it tells is so profound and moving that the more enlightened readers will get behind its many oddities to the message at its core.

Life of Pi is a simply extraordinary book that actually has something to say about life, yet it’s not preachy or overbearing. It’s just a strange, fascinating and remarkable tale that may even, as its prologue predicts, make you believe in God.

2011-08-27T17:45:00.000-07:00

Two good books to get your teeth into this month!

Great Expectations really needs no introduction. However, an extract from this unknown reviewer in 1861 gives some idea of its immediate reception. 'In Great Expectations, on the contrary, Dickens seems to have attained the mastery of powers which formerly more or less mastered him. He has fairly discovered that he cannot, like Thackeray, narrate a story as if he were a mere looker-on, a mere knowing observer of what he describes and represents; and he has therefore taken observation simply as the basis of his plot and his characterization. As we read Vanity Fair and The Newcomes, we are impressed with the actuality of the persons and incidents. There is an absence of both directing ideas and disturbing idealizations. Everything drifts to its end, as in real life. In Great Expectations there is shown a power of external observation finer and deeper even than Thackeray's; and yet, owing to the presence of other qualities, the general impression is not one of objective reality. The author palpably uses his observations as materials for his creative faculties to work upon; he does not record, but invents; and he produces something which is natural only under conditions prescribed by his own mind. He shapes, disposes, penetrates, colors, and contrives everything, and the whole action is a series of events which could have occurred only in his own brain, and which it is difficult to conceive of as actually happening. And yet in none of his other works does he evince a shrewder insight into real life, and a clearer perception and knowledge of what is called the world. The book is, indeed, an artistic creation, and not a mere succession of humorous and pathetic scenes, and demonstrates that Dickens is now in the prime, and not in the decline of his great powers.'

Bernard Schlink's "The Weekend' takes us into some dark territory. This is a review by "The Guardian'.
How do we like our terrorists now? Can a man with four murders to his credit, pardoned by the German state and released from prison after 24 years, ever be integrated back into society? Is there some fundamental shift in thinking since the events of 9/11 that has forever placed all ideologies of physical force beyond sympathy, beyond understanding?
These are the questions that draw us into The Weekend, a novel in which a gathering of family and friends come together to receive a member of the Red Army Faction terrorist group back into the everyday world of food and talk at a country house in Brandenburg. They also await an explanation. It's a day of judgment, looking back over the violent, revolutionary past in which they were once caught up in conflict with the capitalist state.

2011-07-31T20:50:00.000-07:00

Three stories to cheer you up this month! 'Room' by Emma Donoghue and both the classic 'Trial' and 'Metamorphosis' by Franz Kafka

One reviewer says 'In some sense, Room is not so different to Donoghue’s earlier historical novels, because it is inspired by real events, turned around and retold from a different perspective. Room is based on real women and their children, confined under horrible circumstances. But the perspective of this story makes it unique – it is not the sensationalistic story of a man holding a female victim hostage, but the story of a child and his mother in an incredibly difficult situation. Donoghue’s sensitivity and humour make this story not only readable, but beautiful and compelling.

This would be a very different novel if it were told by Jack’s mother. The five-year-old acts as a buffer between the horrifying reality of her existence and the reader. We know what’s going on, but often Jack doesn’t grasp the meaning of the events he describes. This isn’t a fictionalised ‘survivor story’, but a story of the love between mother and child. Through Jack’s voice, we understand what he can’t – that his Ma would do anything for her son to get out of the room.'

According to another reviewer 'The Trial opens with this first sentence: "Someone must have slandered Josef K., for one morning, without having done anything wrong, he was arrested."

It goes downhill from there.

Throughout the novel, Josef K never learns the charges against him, his lawyer is a preening incompetent who has built a mini-industry defending similarly "slandered" innocent (or maybe not so innocent -- we don't ever learn what's legal and what's illegal) men, and the reaction of the other characters in the novel ranges from mild shock to resignation to an irony that's half-comedic and half-tragic.

In the end, men he doesn't know confront him with one of the greatest of human horrors for reasons he doesn't understand and with a timing he doesn't suspect: "Was there still help? Were there objections that had been forgotten? Of course there were. Logic is no doubt unshakable, but it can't withstand a person who wants to live. Where was the judge he'd never seen? Where was the high court he'd never reached?"

Kafkaesque is a word that has become deeply rooted both in the English language and the psyche of the "free world." Having The Trial in your personal library is essential for the appearance of cultural literacy ("appearance" being a notion that fits perfectly with much of the middle of the book); but to read it is to understand how an obscure (at his death) author's last name has given birth to a powerful and enduring adjective known around the world.'

Enjoy!

2011-07-02T01:17:00.000-07:00

Two cautionary tales this month: one set in the past and the other in a possible future.

The Observer wrote about Gunter Grass's classic 'The Tin Drum'
' "Granted: I'm an inmate in a mental institution…" So begins Oskar Matzerath, narrator of Günter Grass's 1959 debut. With the help of one of his titular drums, Oskar recounts – not always reliably – the extraordinary events of his first 30 years: arresting his own physical development on his third birthday by throwing himself downs the stairs; "singshattering" glass with his otherworldly voice; impregnating his father's second wife; his key role in the deaths of his parents; finding independence as a stonemason, then later an artist's model and recording artist in the German postwar economic miracle.
Set primarily in Grass's native Danzig, the shadow of Nazism hangs heavy over the first two-thirds of the book, with Kristallnacht, the fall of Poland and ultimately the Soviet capture of the city all refracted through Oskar's eyes, as is the plight of German refugees struggling westwards ahead of the Red Army.
But it's Grass's dazzling use of language that sets The Tin Drum apart, as he spins a dense verbal web alive with wordplay and innovation. It's no coincidence that Oskar enjoys a stint with a jazz band, as there is an uninhibited, free-flowing musicality to the telling of his life story.'

The publisher had this to say about Margaret attwood's 'The Handmaid's Tale'.
'Offered is a Handmaid in the Republic of Gilead. She may leave the home of the Commander and his wife once a day to walk to food markets where signs are now in pictures instead of words because women are no longer allowed to read. She must lie on her back once a month and pray that the Commander makes her pregnant because, in an age of declining births, Offered and other Handmaids are only valued if their ovaries are viable. Offered can remember the years before, when she lived and made love with her husband, Luke; when she played with and protected her daughter; when she had a job, money of her own, and access to knowledge. But all of that is gone now....
Funny, unexpected, horrifying, and altogether convincing, The Handmaid's Tale is at once scathing satire, dire warning, and tour de force.'

Happy reading!

2011-05-31T02:12:00.000-07:00

Two interesting and much praised books this month.

According to one reviewer 'the novel is extremely short. It would be possible to polish it off in an afternoon, but reading it that quickly one would fail to take in the complex beauty of Coetzee’s prose.

Within a paragraph Coetzee evokes the emotion and imagery that could easily fill pages by a less succinct writer, but again, the flow is still flawless and it never feels like you’re being forced into appreciating the story.

It takes place on a border hamlet of a vast militaristic and nameless Empire. The

main character is a figure of authority in that little town. The chief fear of the Empire is that the natives who are referred to by all the imperial citizens as “barbarians” are trying to push the Empire out of their lands leading the Empire to launch a preemptive strike, and from that initial fear stem all of the conflicts and relationships found within the novel.

I encourage you to read the novel and analyze it for yourself. 'Waiting for the Barbarians ' is one of the finest pieces of literature I have ever read. I recommend it to anyone.'

According to the blurb on the back of the book, Peter Carey's 'Parrot and Olivier in America' is a 'dazzlingly inventive and endlessly entertaining novel about freedom, art, friendship and the birth of modern America.

Olivier is a French aristocrat, the traumatised child of survivors of the revolution. Parrot, the son of an itinerant English printer, wanted to be an artist but has ended up as a servant.

When the young Olivier sets sail for the New World - ostensibly to study its prisons, but in reality to avoid yet another revolution - Parrot is sent with him, as spy, protector, foe and foil.

According to Jennifer Byrne, 'once this novel grabs you, it holds you. Heart as well as brain.'

Happy reading!

2011-05-10T02:52:00.000-07:00

An Australian and American classic this month.

The Sun Also Rises is a 1926 novel written by Ernest Hemingway on the experiences of the generation that came of age during World War I, later known as the Lost Generation.
The basis for the novel was Hemingway's 1925 trip to Spain. The story centers around a group of American and British expatriates who travel from Paris to the Festival of Fermín in Pamplona to watch the running of the bulls and the bullfights. The setting was unique and memorable, presenting the seedy café life of Paris, and the Pamplona festival, with a middle section devoted to fishing in the Pyrenees.
The main theme is the notion that the lost generation, decadent and dissolute, was irretrievably damaged by the war. Additionally, Hemingway investigates the themes of love, death, renewal in nature, and the nature of masculinity.

'Born in 1894, Facey lived the rough frontier life of a sheep farmer, survived the gore of Gallipoli, raised a family through the Depression and spent sixty years with his beloved wife, Evelyn. Despite enduring hardships we can barely imagine today, Facey always saw his life as a 'fortunate' one.
A true classic of Australian literature, his simply written autobiography is an inspiration. It is the story of a life lived to the full - the extraordinary journey of an ordinary man.'

Happy reading!

2011-04-01T17:10:00.000-07:00

Two modern classics this month.

'The Name of the Rose, by Umberto Eco, which sold 50 million copies worldwide, is an experimental medieval whodunit set in a monastic library. In 1327, Brother William of Baskerville arrives to investigate heresy among the monks in an Italian abbey; a series of bizarre murders overshadows the mission. Within the mystery is a tale of books, librarians, patrons, censorship, and the search for truth in a period of tension between the Papacy and the Holy Roman Empire.'

'Equal parts comedy and autobiography, Portnoy's Complaint endeavors to explore Roth's own cultural identity and stemming anxiety as a Jewish-American. Considered to be his most popular novel, Portnoy's Complaint is a masterful work of American fiction that remains the acme of one of the world's greatest living novelists.

When Portnoy's Complaint was first published in 1969 it was a work of boldness that addressed the sexual revolution and challenged the mores of the previous generation. The work is obliquely lascivious (even by today's standards) and remains absurd and hilarious to this day. Roth's comedic prose has been likened to the tangential comedy stylings of Jewish comedian Lenny Bruce. Philip Roth's work also expresses an anxiety that seems part of an uniquely American perspective during the years in the heart of the Vietnam War.'

Happy reading!

2011-02-27T22:12:00.000-08:00

Two 'classic' books this month. One moderate in length and the other HUGE! Better get reading now!

'Vikram Seth's novel is, at its core, a love story: Lata and her mother, Mrs. Rupa Mehra, are both trying to find -- through love or through exacting maternal appraisal -- a suitable boy for Lata to marry. Set in the early 1950s, in an India newly independent and struggling through a time of crisis, A Suitable Boy takes us into the richly imagined world of four large extended families and spins a compulsively readable tale of their lives and loves. A sweeping panoramic portrait of a complex, multiethnic society in flux, A Suitable Boy remains the story of ordinary people caught up in a web of love and ambition, humor and sadness, prejudice and reconciliation, the most delicate social etiquette and the most appalling violence.'

"It's Los Angeles in the 1930s. Someone has been blackmailing ailing oil

magnate General Sternwood, so he calls in 33-year-old private investigator Philip Marlowe

to find out who it is and how serious a matter it might be. In short order, Marlowe meets the General's daughters -- wild teenager Carmen, and inveterate gambler Mrs. Regan, whose husband has gone missing for several weeks -- both beautiful

and both trouble. Soon, the Sternwood's young chauffeur turns up fatally shot, and the trail leads through a bookstore that deals in fancy, locally-produced pornography and the nightclub of smooth tough guy Eddie Mars. "

"This is one of the key works of noir crime detective fiction. Set in LA in the 30's, it approaches perfection in its detailed presentation of the seedy underlife of the rich and famous."

Happy reading!

February 2011

2011-01-31T22:34:00.000-08:00

Plenty or reading to keep us busy this month!

Howard Jacobson's 'The Finkler Question' was the winner of last year's Booker prize. According to one reviewer 'This charming novel follows many paths of enquiry, not least the present state of Jewish identity in Britain and how it integrates with the Gentile population. Equally important is its exploration of how men share friendship. All of which is played out with Jacobson's exceptionally funny riffs and happy-sad refrains....Jacobson cunningly crafts sublime pathos from comedy and vice versa. As such, he is the literary equivalent of Tony Hancock, illuminating the conflict, anger, love and dependence created by friendship while wincing at the ignominy and absurdity of the characters' predicament.'

Another prize winner is Orhan Pamuk. 'The Museum of Innocence' features 'Kemal, a wealthy Istanbulli playboy, (who) spends a decade besieging his beautiful young cousin and then, after certain tragic events, devotes the rest of his life to creating a museum in her memory, stocking it with panties, nutcrackers, china dogs, 4,213 cigarette stubs and sundry other trifles recovered from their moments together' One reviewer enthuses 'Before anything else, it is simply an enthralling, immensely enjoyable piece of storytelling.'

Kingsley Amis’ novel Lucky Jim is a modern British classic. Written and set in the early fifties, the title character Jim Dixon is a history lecturer at one of the modern provincial universities, who is frustrated by the academic banality of his job, and trapped in a suffocating pseudo-relationship with a woman he is completely uninterested in.

Defiantly in favour of jazz, beer and pulling faces, the hero of "Lucky Jim" struggles through 1950s Britain in a rage at the pretension around him.

Happy reading!

January Meeting

2010-12-22T01:47:00.000-08:00

A 19th Century and 21st Century 'classic' this month!

Jonathan Franzen's 'The Corrections' is a terrific read.
According to one reviewer, 'Franzen has crafted the sort of introspective, character-driven, literary work that Wolfe and other boosters of so-called social realism love to loathe. In this case, it's a domestic drama about the disintegrating Lambert family -- father Alfred, who's slowly melting into a Parkinson's haze; his long-suffering wife, Enid; their successful but miserable son Gary; their less successful, also miserable son Chip; and their sexually befuddled daughter, Denise -- whose emotional lives Franzen fastidiously dissects over the course of 500-plus pages.
It's a big, ambitious, unwieldy hybrid of a book -- a literary novel and a social document, an intimate family portrait and a sprawling cultural landscape, a floor wax and a dessert topping -- but Franzen somehow manages to glue it all together with surprising warmth and wit.'

'Originally designed as a story for boys, Stevenson's novel is narrated by the teenage Jim Hawkins, who outwits a gang of murderous pirates led by that unforgettable avatar of amorality, Long John Silver. But Treasure Island has also had great appeal for adult readers and was admired by Mark Twain, Rudyard Kipling, and (reluctantly) Henry James. The story has a dreamlike quality of a fairy tale and has worked its way into the collective imagination of more than five generations of readers, gaining the power of myth.'

Happy reading!

2010-10-30T19:53:00.000-07:00

In 'Aunt Julia and the Scriptwriter' (according to Amazon),'Vargas Llosa uses counterpoint, paradox, and satire to explore the creative process of writing and its relation to the daily lives of writers. One half of the story is an autobiographical account of an aspiring writer named Marito Varguitas, who falls in love with Julia, the divorced sister-in-law of his Uncle Lucho. Marito's success at writing and romance contrasts with the fortunes of Pedro Camacho, the protagonist of the other half of the story, who is a devoted but declining author of radio soap operas.'

'Reality merges with fantasy in this hilarious comic novel about the world of radio soap operas and the pitfalls of forbidden passion by the bestselling author of The Storyteller. Sexy, sophisticated, older Aunt Julia, now divorced, seeks a new mate who can support her in high style. She finds instead her libidinous nephew, and their affair shocks both famiy and community.'

'Captain Corelli's Mandolin' by Louis de Bernieres' is set in the early days of the Second World War, before Benito Mussolini invaded Greece, Dr. Iannis practices medicine on the island of Cephalonia, accompanied by his daughter, Pelagia, to whom he imparts much of his healing art. Even when the Italians do invade, life isn't so bad--at first anyway. The officer in command of the Italian garrison is the cultured Captain Antonio Corelli, who responds to a Nazi greeting of "Heil Hitler" with his own "Heil Puccini," and whose most precious possession is his mandolin. It isn't long before Corelli and Pelagia are involved in a heated affair--despite her engagement to a young fisherman, Mandras, who has gone off to join Greek partisans. Love is complicated enough in wartime, even when the lovers are on the same side. And for Corelli and Pelagia, it becomes increasingly difficult to negotiate the minefield of allegiances, both personal and political, as all around them atrocities mount, former friends become enemies, and the ugliness of war infects everyone it touches.

One reviewer wrote 'De Bernières seems interested in dissecting the nature of history as he tells his ever-darkening tale from many different perspectives. Corelli's Mandolin works on many levels, as a love story, a war story, and a deconstruction of just what determines the facts that make it into the history books.'

Happy reading

2010-09-25T21:33:00.000-07:00

A modern travel story by the master, Bill Bryson and the classic spy story by another master, John Le Carre.

Says one reviewer, 'Back in America after twenty years in Britain, Bill Bryson decided to reacquaint himself with his native country by walking the 2,100-mile Appalachian Trail, which stretches from Georgia to Maine. The AT offers an astonishing landscape of silent forests and sparkling lakes--and to a writer with the comic genius of Bill Bryson, it also provides endless opportunities to witness the majestic silliness of his fellow human beings.'

According to one reviewer 'In this classic, John le Carré's third novel and the first to earn him international acclaim, he created a world unlike any previously experienced in suspense fiction. With unsurpassed knowledge culled from his years in British Intelligence, le Carré brings to light the shadowy dealings of international espionage in the tale of a British agent who longs to end his career but undertakes one final, bone-chilling assignment.

When the last agent under his command is killed and Alec Leamas is called back to London, he hopes to come in from the cold for good. His spymaster, Control, however, has other plans. Determined to bring down the head of East German Intelligence and topple his organization, Control once more sends Leamas into the fray -- this time to play the part of the dishonored spy and lure the enemy to his ultimate defeat.'

Happy reading!

August 2010

2010-08-11T20:55:00.000-07:00

A book about two comic book creators and the 'bible' for atheism all in the same month!

In Prague, Josef Kavalier is a young apprentice to an aging escape artist. As Nazi occupation intensifies, Josef, with the help of his mentor, smuggles himself out of Nazi territory. He eventually makes it to New York City, home of the newborn comics industry. He comes to live with his Aunt Ethel, where he hooks up with his visionary and ambitious cousin, Sam Klayman. The boy geniuses decide to pour their synergistic talents into comic books.

One reviewer enthuses 'The Amazing Adventures of Kavalier & Clay is that elusive holy grail, The Great American Novel. Here, the dreams of that mythical yet all too real land are related, with unerring confidence and great depths of emotion, through the history of its most maligned art form, the comic book, and its even more maligned creators.'

One newspaper review stated 'The God Delusion is carefully crafted, elegantly constructed and skilfully argued. And although the author may be rather rude about God and some of his followers, he is still at pains to point out that atheism is no more than a realistic aspiration, not a moral imperative. In fact, disbelief is in our genes, adds Dawkins. 'I have found an amusing strategy,' he claims, 'when asked whether I am an atheist to point out that the questioner is also an atheist when considering Zeus, Apollo, Amon-Ra, Mithras, Baal, Thor, Wotan, the Golden Calf and the Flying Spaghetti Monster. I just go one god further.''

Happy reading!

Sept 2010

2010-08-11T20:29:00.000-07:00

As always, plenty of variety this month!

According to one reviewer 'Love in the Time of Cholera' is a novel of patience, devotion, promiscuity, love and death -- not necessarily in that order. The flowery and melodious images of dreaming yield to a surprisingly rewarding ending. But this is not a book for those who cherish an actively developed plot. It is meant to be savored.

The publisher of the hardback edition of 'Unaccustomed Earth' said that the 'Pulitzer Prizewinning author' (gives us) 'eight dazzling stories that take us from Cambridge and Seattle to India and Thailand as they explore the secrets at the heart of family life.
Unaccustomed Earth is rich with the author's signature gifts: exquisite prose, emotional wisdom and subtle renderings of the most intricate workings of the heart and mind. It is the work of a writer at the peak of her powers.'

July 2010

2010-06-26T18:17:00.000-07:00

A modern blockbuster and a classic are on the menu this month!

If you haven't heard of 'The Girl with the Dragon Tattoo' then you've probably been in a coma for the last year! Stieg Larsson's novel is the story of disgraced journalist Mikael Blomqvist is hired by Henrik Vanger to investigate the disappearance of Vanger’s great-niece Harriet. Henrik suspects that someone in his family, the powerful Vanger clan, murdered Harriet over forty years ago.

Starting his investigation, Mikael realizes that Harriet’s disappearance is not a single event, but rather linked to series of gruesome murders in the past. He now crosses paths with Lisbeth Salander, a young computer hacker, an asocial punk and most importantly, a young woman driven by her vindictiveness.

I've dug up an 1848 review of Charlotte Bronte's 'Jane Eyre' which should have you rushing to buy the book!

'Jane Eyre is, indeed, one of the coarsest books which we ever perused. It is not that the professed sentiments of the writer are absolutely wrong or forbidding, or that the odd sort of religious notions which she puts forth are much worse than is usual in popular tales. It is rather that there is a tendency to relapse into that class of ideas, expressions, and circumstances, which is most connected with the grosser and more animal portion of our nature; and that the detestable morality of the most prominent character in the story is accompanied with every sort of palliation short of unblushing justification (1848)'

Happy reading!

2010-05-31T01:10:00.000-07:00

It will be interesting to compare the styles of these two very different books!

'Kafka on the Shore' makes pendulum swings between the story of how Kafka runs away from home, and how good-hearted old Nakata, the cat whisperer, embarks on a peculiar quest. Kafka and Nakata are not acquainted, but their lives overlap in piquant, spooky ways.

According to one reviewer, 'Murakami's style is rarely less than seductive and I read Kafka on the Shore in one non-stop feeding frenzy. For sheer love of a thumping narrative, the novel delivers gloriously. The author's trademark kookinesses, particularly his talking cats, maybe-phantoms of army deserters and the appropriation of Colonel Saunders, Kentucky Fried Chicken King, add smartness and colour.'

In 'The Catcher in the Rye' by JD Salinger Holden Caulfield, about to be kicked out of yet another boarding school for flunking most of his

courses decides not to wait

until the end of term, and takes off for his hometown, Manhattan, a few days early. He figures he'll hole up in a cheap hotel, look up a few friends, then arrive home on time. But Holden is deeply troubled, by the death of his beloved younger brother from leukemia, as well as the suicide of a classmate. And alone in an uncaring city his already fragile psyche begins to unravel.

One reviewer said:

“The Catcher in the Rye” is a book that every lover of literature should read. Anybody who wants to write, read it twice. You will seldom come across a more exceptional example of the first person point of view.

Happy reading!

2010-05-02T19:20:00.000-07:00

Both books this month have a serious purpose with a funny side? Or do they?

'The World According to Garp' by John Irving chronicles, according to one reviewer 'the life and times of T. S. Garp, the bastard son of Jenny Fields — a feminist leader ahead of her times. This is the life and death of a famous mother and her almost-famous son; theirs is a world of sexual extremes — even of sexual assassinations. It is a novel rich with "lunacy and sorrow"; yet the dark, violent events of the story do not undermine a comedy both ribald and robust.'

The Other Hand by Chris Cleave is the story of Sara - an upper-middle class magazine editor living in a London suburb with her husband and young son - and a 16 year-old Nigerian refugee who calls herself Little Bee. The two meet on a Nigerian beach, and the tragic events that transpire link the women's lives together unalterably. As the story opens, Little Bee has spent two years in a detainment center in Great Britain, when she is suddenly released, without explanation, paperwork, or any form of aid. With nowhere to turn, Little Bee calls Sara and her husband, forcing all three to confront the consequences of the chance encounter that changed each of their lives.

Happy reading!

2010-03-30T23:09:00.000-07:00

A tale of two cities! One book a dissection of New York life and the other from that other famous city ... Brisbane!

Sherman McCoy, the central figure of Tom Wolfe's first novel, is a young investment banker with a fourteen-room apartment in Manhattan. When he is involved in a freak accident in the Bronx, prosecutors, politicians, the press, the police, the clergy, and assorted hustlers high and low close in on him, licking their chops and giving us a gargantuan helping of the human comedy of New York in the last years of the twentieth century, a city boiling over with racial and ethnic hostilities and burning with the itch to Grab It Now. Wolfe's gallery ranges from Wall Street, where people in their thirties feel like small-fry if they're not yet making a million per, to the real streets, where the aim is lower but the itch is just as virulent.

The True Story of the Butterfish is Nick Earls' highly anticipated first novel for adults in five years. With his chart-topping band, Butterfish, Curtis Holland lived the clichéd rock dream. Residing in hotels and recording studios, traveling in custom-built buses, he got married after a soundcheck in a wedding chapel in Nevada and barely noticed when is wife left him in Lousiville. But what do you do when the cheering from your fans fades?

Curtis has moved back to Brisbane to try a build a new life and is not used to living in the suburbs and having neighbours. So when he receives an invitation to dinner from Kate, next door, he is surprised to find himself becoming a reluctant role model to her two teenagers, Annaliese and Mark. Then, just as Curtis starts to have grow up feelings for Kate, Annaliese begins to show an interest in him that is less than filial.

Filled with acute observations, humour and tenderness, The True Story of Butterfish is Nick Earls at his very best.

march 1010

2010-02-26T19:14:00.000-08:00

Both books should inspire plenty of discussion this month!

According to one reviewer "Middlesex' by Jeffrey Eugenides' is 'a dazzling triumph from 'the bestselling author of The Virgin Suicides. It is the astonishing tale of a gene that passes down through three generations of a Greek American family and flowers in the body of Calliope Stephanides.

"I was born twice: first, as a baby girl, on a remarkably smogless Detroit day in January of 1960; and then again, as a teenage boy, in an emergency room near Petoskey, Michigan, in August of 1974."

So begins Jeffrey Eugenides' second novel, Middlesex, the story of Calliope Stephanides, who discovers at the age of fourteen that she is really a he. Cal traces the story of his transformation and the genetic condition that caused it back to his paternal grandparents, who happen also to be brother and sister, and the Greek village of Bithynios in Asia Minor.

In 1922, Desdemona Stephanides and her brother, Lefty, whose parents were killed in the recent war with the Turks, are living alone in their nearly abandoned village. Pulled together by isolation, sympathy, and, perhaps, fate, Lefty and Desdemona become husband and wife, and a recessive genetic condition begins its journey toward eventual expression in their grandchild Calliope.

Middlesex is a story about what it means to occupy the complex and unnamed middle ground between male and female, Greek and American, past and present. For Cal, caught between these identities, the journey to adulthood is particularly fraught. Jeffrey Eugenides' epic portrayal of Cal's struggle is classical in its structure and scope and contemporary in its content; a tender and honest examination of a battle that is increasingly relevant to us all.

According to one reviewer, the original Consolation of Philosophy (in the singular), written by Boethius in 524 A.D., offers solace to the author by a series of arguments in which Philosophy, personified by a woman, argues the paradoxical point that misfortune is better than good fortune in that the former teaches us a good lesson while the latter perpetually deceives us as to the transitory and illusory nature of all earthly happiness. Let me note in passing that it was in this book that the idea that love makes the world go round got its first forceful formulation.

Alain de Botton's Consolations of Philosophy (in the plural) is more than a worthy successor to the "original." And it doesn't read like a typical philosophical text either. Rather, it reads the way we expect wisdom to read, with charm and whimsy and surprisingly illuminating insights that also tend to turn our thinking about things around (if not upside down). De Botton, the author of On Love: A Novel (1993), The Romantic Movement: Sex, Shopping, and the Novel (1994), Kiss & Tell: A Novel(1995), and How Proust Can Change Your Life (1997), has repeatedly shown his readers how great thinkers can teach us wonderful lessons about ourselves. His novels read more like essays and extended meditations than stories, while his essays intertwine profound thinking with familiar moments in everyday life, thus making the former easily accessible to even the non-philosophically inclined reader.

The book is available in the cheap Penguins for $9.95.

Happy reading!

2010-01-29T18:49:00.000-08:00

There's plenty of reading to get your teeth into this month. 'Birdsong' by Sebastian Faulks a novel set before and during the Great War and 'Mao's Last Dancer', a true story of young boy who is plucked out of his village school in China to be taught to dance.

According to one reviewer 'An epic novel of love and war that radically defies conventional

expectations, Birdsong moves back and forth between the second decade of our violent century and the near-present to explore how the absurd carnage of World War I devastated a generation throughout western Europe and left a heritage of confusion and loss.

It is 'A profoundly humane novel that tells a riveting story spanning four generations, Birdsong addresses grand themes of the human experience while also making us care deeply about several individuals yearning to find healing love and a rationale for survival in the midst of unprecedented destruction.'

One reviewer wrote the following about "Mao's Last Dancer'.

In 1961, three years of Mao's Great Leap Forward--along with three years of poor harvests--had left rural China suffering terribly from disease and deprivation. Li Cunxin, his parents' sixth son, lived in a small house with twenty of his relatives and, along with the rest of his family, subsisted for years on the verge of starvation. But when he was eleven years old, Madame Mao decided to revive the Peking Dance Academy, and sent her men into the countryside searching for children to attend.

Chosen on the basis of his physique alone, Li Cunxin was taken from his family and sent to the city for rigorous training. What follows is the story of how a small, terrified, lonely boy became one of the greatest ballet dancers in the world. One part Falling Leaves, one part Billy Eliot, Mao's Last Danceris an unforgettable memoir of hope and courage.

Happy reading!

2009-12-04T16:39:00.000-08:00

Two very different books this month. A very creative novel in Neil Gaiman's 'American Gods' and a highly moving and thought provoking autobiography in Ayaan Hirsi Ali's 'Infidel'.

'American God's' follows the story of Shadow whose wife dies days in a mysterious car crash before his

release from prison. On his way home he meets the enigmatic Mr Wednesday, who claims to be a refugee from a distant war, a former god and the king of America.

Together they embark on a profoundly strange journey across the heart of the USA, whilst all around them a storm of prenatural and epic proportions threatens to break.

According to one reviewer this book is 'Dark, fun

and nourishing to the soul'.

See what you think!

Ali was the Somali-born member of the Dutch parliament who faced death threats after collab

orating on a film about domestic violence against Muslim women with controversial director Theo van Gogh (who was himself assassinated). Even before then, her attacks on Islamic culture as "brutal, bigoted, [and] fixated on controlling women" had generated much controversy. In this suspenseful account of her life and her internal struggle with her Muslim faith, she discusses how these views were shaped by her experiences amid the political chaos of Somalia and other African nations, where she was subjected to genital mutilation and later forced into an unwanted marriage. While in transit to her husband in Canada, she decided to seek asylum in the Netherlands, where she marveled at the polite policemen and government bureaucrats. Ali is up-front about having lied about her background in order to obtain her citizenship, which led to further controversy in early 2006, when an immigration official sought to deport her and triggered the collapse of the Dutch coalition government. Apart from feelings of guilt over van Gogh's death, her voice is forceful and unbowed—like Irshad Manji, she delivers a powerful feminist critique of Islam informed by a genuine understanding of the religion.

Happy reading!

2009-11-06T15:09:00.000-08:00

Two female writers this month, a couple of generations apart and with very different styles. This should give us plenty to discuss.

'White Teeth' by Zadie Smith is, according to the blurb on the back cover, ' .. is a funny, generous, big-hearted novel, adored by critics and readers alike. Dealing - among other things, with friendship, love, war, three cultures and three families over three generations, one brown mouse, and the tricky way the past has of coming back and biting you on the ankle, it is a life-affirming, riotous must-r

ead of a book.'

According to The Age '.. it takes literary tradition and moves it one notch along. It's a wise witty, wonderful book. Lie back and surrender to it.'

'Wide Sargasso Sea' by Jean Rhys. Here is one review:

Great novels should subvert certain traditions and conventions and Wide Sargasso Sea certainly does that. It provides the voice of 'the other', the unknowable mad wife, Bertha in Jane Eyre. Rhys' response to Jane Eyre is to provide us with a haunting, unnerving account of Antoinette, Bertha's real name. It has no chapter division and moves from one narrative voice to another without warning. This supports the overall theme of displacement and dreams. The issues of race and gender are accurately portrayed as more complex than black and white, male and female. Slavery and freedom are highlighted not just in the emancipation act but also in asking us who are now the real slaves, the former slave owners. Much of the character description is given through Antoinette's stream of consciousness and dialogue which must have been a shock to its English audience in the sixties when people were not that well-travelled. Overall, from its opening page providing hints of a dark past and a possibly thwarted future to its Thelma and Louise like ending this book holds us in suspense and makes us rethink assumptions held by many to this day.

Happy reading!

October

2009-09-27T20:08:00.000-07:00

The over 900 pages of 'Shantaram' proved too daunting for most last month although those that read it found it fascinating. 'Amsterdam' provoked plenty of discussion, especially from those who had a "Molly' of their own in the past!

This month the books should prove more manageable. "Gould's Book of Fish' by Richard Flanagan and 'Disgrace' by J. M. Coetzee.

'Gould's Book of Fish' is a highly original novel. According to the blurb on the cover -

'Once upon a time that was called 1828, before all fishes in the sea and all living things were destroyed, there was a man called William Buelow Gould, a white convict who fell in love with a black woman and discovered too late that love is not safe. Silly Billy Gould, invader of Australia, liar, murderer & forger, condemned to the most feared penal colony in the British Empire and there ordered to paint a book of fish.'

According to the Observer the book is 'Ferocious in its anger, grotesque, sexy, funny, violent, startlingly beautiful and above all, heartbreakingly sad'.

'Disgrace' is the story of a South African professor of English descent who loses everything: his reputation, his job, his peace of mind, his good looks, his dreams of artistic success, and finally even his ability to protect his cherished daughter.

According to the London Review of Books "Disgrace is the best novel Coetzee has written. It is a chilling, spare book, the work of a mature writer who has refined his textual obsessions to produce an exact, effective prose and condensed his thematic concern with authority into a deceptively simple story of family life. Half campus novel, half anti-pastoral, it begins quietly enough in Cape Town. (....) As so often in Coetzee's fiction, the characters in Disgrace have a metonymic or symbolic function."

Happy reading!

2009-09-01T15:30:00.000-07:00

Thanks to all those attending last month's meeting. 'The Slap' provoked some lively discussion; I'm sure we've not heard the last of it!

This month strap on your seatbelt as we're traveling around a bit! To Amsterdam for the ultimate standoff between friends and India for an amazing journey into the criminal underworld.

Ian McEwan's Amsterdam starts on a chilly February day, two old friends meet in the throng outside a crematorium to pay their last respects to Molly Lane. Both Clive Linley and Vernon Halliday had been Molly's lovers in the days before they reached their current eminence. Clive is Britain's most successful modern composer; Vernon is editor of the quality broadsheet The Judge. Gorgeous, feisty Molly had had other lovers, too, notably Julian Garmony, foreign secretary, a notorious right-winger tipped to be the next prime minister.

In the days that follow Molly's funeral, Clive and Vernon will make a pact with consequences neither has foreseen. Each will make a disastrous moral decision, their friendship will be tested to its limits, and Julian Garmony will be fighting for his political life.

In Amsterdam, a contemporary morality tale that is as profound as it is witty, we have Ian McEwan at his wisest and most wickedly disarming. And why Amsterdam? What happens there to Clive and Vernon is the most delicious climax of a novel brimming with surprises.

In the fictional story, Roberts' main character arrives in Bombay carrying a fake passport in the name of Lindsay Ford. Bombay was only a stopover on a journey that was to take Lin from New Zealand to Germany, but he decides to stay in the city. Lin soon meets a local man named Prabaker, who he hires as a guide but soon becomes his best friend and renames him Linbaba. Both men visit Prabaker's native village, Sunder, where Prabaker's mother christens Lin with the nameShantaram, meaning Man of God's Peace. On their way back to Bombay and after a night out, Lin and Prabaker are robbed. With all his possessions gone, Lin is forced to live in the slums, giving him shelter from the authorities and free rent in Bombay. After a massive fire on the day of his arrival in the slum, he sets up a free health clinic as a way to contribute to the community. He learns about the local culture and customs in this crammed environment, gets to know and love the people he encounters, and even becomes fluent in Marathi, the local language. He also witnesses and battles outbreaks of cholera and firestorms, becomes involved in trading with the lepers, and experiences how ethnic and marital conflicts are resolved in this densely crowded and diverse community.

This is a lengthy book so start reading NOW!

August's Book Selection

2009-07-31T17:40:00.000-07:00

Two very contrasting books this month with plenty to get your teeth into!

When a man slaps someone else’s child at a friend’s barbecue, the small universe in the backyard begins to unravel. Not only are friends and family divided by the event, but it brings to the surface all the murk from below. The Slap is that rare and mesmerising combination of master storytelling and brilliant characterisation.

Spanning three generations, the eight characters we follow though the novel cover a vast range of emotions, opinions and experience, weaving together to create a maze of complex relationships. We see children coming of age, marriages teetering on the brink, and midlife crises erupting against a backdrop of lust, jealousy, deception and inadequacy.

Despite these raw themes, it is an incredibly sensitive read. The Slapcondemns Melbourne’s middle class; its acute mediocrity is vastly outweighed by the depths of its anger and frustrations. Yet Tsiolkas finds empathy for even the most despicable characters and shows us how to understand them, whether we want to or not. The eloquence, pathos and ruthless honesty of this new novel make it an unsettling, but thoroughly enjoyable and rewarding, read.

The Guernsey Literary and Potato Peel Society must win some type of award for the most unlikely title for a book!

January 1946: London is emerging from the shadow of the Second World War, and writer Juliet Ashton is looking for her next book subject. Who could imagine that she would find it in a letter from a man she’s never met, a native of the island of Guernsey, who has come across her name written inside a book by Charles Lamb…. As Juliet and her new correspondent exchange letters, Juliet is drawn into the world of this man and his friends—and what a wonderfully eccentric world it is. The Guernsey Literary and Potato Peel Pie Society—born as a spur-of-the-moment alibi when its members were discovered breaking curfew by the Germans occupying their island—boasts a charming, funny, deeply human cast of characters, from pig farmers to phrenologists, literature lovers all. Juliet begins a remarkable correspondence with the society’s members, learning about their island, their taste in books, and the impact the recent German occupation has had on their lives. Captivated by their stories, she sets sail for Guernsey, and what she finds will change her forever. Written with warmth and humor as a series of letters, this novel is a celebration of the written word in all its guises, and of finding connection in the most surprising ways.

Happy reading!

July's Book Selection

2009-07-02T23:59:00.000-07:00

We are getting a wide variety of books to read over the months. This month a 'classic' set in the 1920's and a very popular novel set in Botswana.

F. Scott Fitzgerald's The Great Gatsby follows Jay Gatsby, a man who orders his life around one desire: to be reunited withDaisyBuchannan, the love he lost

five years earlier. Gatsby's quest leads him from poverty to wealth, into the arms of his beloved, and eventually to death. Published in 1925, The Great Gatsby is a classic piece of American fiction. It is a novel of triumph and tragedy, noted for the remarkable way Fitzgerald captured a cross-section of American society.

This first novel in Alexander McCall Smith's widely acclaimed The No. 1 Ladies Detective Agency series tells the story of the delightfully cunning and enormously engaging Precious Ramotswe, who is drawn to her profession to "help people with problems in their lives." Immediately upon setting up shop in a small storefront in Gaborone, she is hired to track down a missing husband, uncover a con man, and follow a wayward daughter. But the case that tugs at her heart, and lands her in danger, is a missing eleven-year-old boy, who may have been snatched by witchdoctors.

The No. 1 Ladies' Detective Agency received two Booker Judges' Special Recommendations and was voted one of the International Books of the Year and the Millennium by theTimes Literary Supplement.

Happy reading!

June 09

2009-05-29T22:25:00.000-07:00

Two contrasting novels this month, both set in the 1940's but their subject matter couldn't be more different!

The Boy in Striped Pajamas is a 2006 novel by Irish novelist John Boyne. The story is of an eight year old boy who moves with his family to near a Nazi concentration camp where he befriends Shmuel, a Jewish boy.

One reviewer wrote '... It is elegant story-telling with emotional impact and an ending that in true fairytale style is grotesquely clever.' Others have criticised it's historical inaccuracies. Read it and make up your own mind.

Breakfast at Tiffany's is a brilliant glimmer of the excitment of 40's New York starring the brashly beautiful Holly Golightly who entrances everyman she meets. Norman Mailer wrote

"Truman Capote ...is the most perfect writer of my generation, he writes the best sentences word for word, rhythm upon rhythm. I would not have changed two words in Breakfast at Tiffany's which will become a small classic"

Happy reading!

2009-04-24T15:24:00.000-07:00

As usual, two great books to enjoy this month. One classic novel written over 140 years ago and one fresh from the printing press!

Crime and Punishment by Fyodor Dostoevsky is often considered to be the first 'modern' novel. It is a story of the brutal double murder and its aftermath. An impoverished ex-student, Raskolnikov, kills an old pawnbroker and her sister, apparently for financial gain. But as he encounters friends and family, strangers and adversaries, Raskolnikov is compelled to face the true forces that have led him to murder. Anyway, I don't want to give away the whole story; read it for yourself!

Breath by Tim Winton is the story of Bruce Pike, a paramedic, who arrives too late to save a boy found hanged in his bedroom. He knows the difference between suicide and misadventure. Pike understands only too well the forces that can propel a kid toward oblivion. Not just because he is an ambulance-man but because of the life he's lived, the boy he once was, addicted to extremes, flirting with death, pushing every boundary in the struggle to be extraordinary, barely knowing how to stop.

A compelling novel and a great read.

Next meeting Friday 29th May 2009

April

2009-03-27T16:40:00.000-07:00

This month a metaphorical novel and a heartbreaking story of caring for a friend with cancer.

The Alchemist by Paul Coelho is an allegorical novel which has been hailed as a modern classic. It follows Santiago, a young Spanish shepherd, on a journey to fulfill his Personal Legend. It has been described as 'a brilliant, simple narrative' and a 'wonderful tale, a metaphor for life'. It has sold more than 65 million copies so it will be interesting to see what we make of it!

The Spare Room by Helen Garner is , according to Peter Carey, 'A perfect novel, imbued with all Garner's usual clear eyed grace ... How is it that she can enter this heart-breaking territory - the dying friend who comes to stay - and make it not only bearable, but glorious, and funny?

Read it and find out!

Next meeting Friday 24th April.

March 09

2009-02-27T18:57:00.000-08:00

One very funny book and one on a more serious subject this month!

'Naked' by David Sedaris and 'The Tale of Two Cities' by Charles Dickens.

'Naked' is, according to the blurb on the back, 'A riotous collection of memoirs that explores the absurd hilarity of modern life and creates a wickedly incisive portrait of an all-too-familiar world. It takes Sedaris from his humiliating bout with obsessive behaviour in 'A Plague of Tics' to the title story, where he is finally forced to face his naked self in the company of lunatics.'

'A Tale of Two Cities' is set in London and Paris before and during the French Revolution and starts with the famous line 'It was the best of times, it was the worst of times ...'

Next meeting Friday 27th March.

feb 09

2009-02-04T16:35:00.000-08:00

Two very contrasting books for this month!

'The White Tiger' by Aravind Adiga. A first novel and winner of the Man Booker Prize 2008

The story is about Balram Halwai who, over the course of seven nights, tells us the terrible and transfixing story of how he came to be a success in life. According to one critic 'At first, this novel seems like a straightforward pulled-up-by-your-bootstraps tale, albeit given a dazzling twist by the narrator's sharp and satirical eye for the realities of life for India's poor ... But the narrative draws the reader further in, and darkens, it becomes clear that Adiga is playing a bigger game ...'

'Twighlight' by Stephanie Myer. 'The sexiest vampire tale for years ... about teenage Bella's chaste romance with a beautiful vampire boy'.

Happy Reading!

See you on Friday 27th February. Please e-mail me to let me know you are coming.

Chris

chris@impactproductions.com.au