Reading? I recommend....

Just before I left Auckland a fellow book clubber recommended I read some William Boyd. 'William who?' was my reply. Now I know. Thank you very much Ange.

William Boyd is my new favourite author and I don't quite know how I missed him. I remember seeing many copies of his best seller Armadillo being read on the tube back at the turn of the century (1999).

Better than any best seller list was seeing what the London commuters were reading - when I first moved there it was The Beach, a few years later Harry Potter, now they're probably reading their iThings. Boo.

Anyway back to Boyd. He writes brilliantly, his characters are intriguing and (unusually for good writers) likeable.  Each of his books is also quite different so I easily read five back to back.

My favourite? Any Human Heart. Followed closely by Restless...

The best of the rest... Ordinary Thunderstorms, Brazzaville Beach, A Good Man in Africa. Oddly enough it was Armadillo I liked the least. But it was pretty good too.

Go forth and read.
Run, don't walk - as the hip young things say.

Australian classics...

 

I am the sort of person who waits until a day or two after daylight saving shifts to change all the clocks. I need a day or two to adjust to the idea, even though it happens twice a year.

Same with a new year.

Now that it is well and truly 2012 I have updated my reading list. 2011 is still there with a few comments on the books I did get around to reading. Some good, some great, some so so. Some I couldn't finish.

Here's something to look forward to in your reading year. Text Publishing is producing 32 Australian classics in paperback form, cheap at $12.95 (cheap for an Australian book - don't get me started on book prices here).

In this thought-provoking opinion piece Michael Heyward, the head of Text Publishing, bemoans the fact that many of Australia's best literary works are now out of print - and even the entire works of some of our best authors.

He has an excellent point. I studied English Lit at school - not at university unfortunately -  and would consider myself pretty well read but many of the books and authors he mentions I haven't read or (cough) recognise.  2012 should change that.

The full list has not been released but will include Careful, He Might Hear You,  David Ireland's The Glass Canoe,  and Henry Handel Richardson's The Fortunes of Richard Mahoney.  

The scheduled release date is May. You can read more about it here on the publisher's website in the coming months.

Book thoughts...

Have I mentioned yet that I love Melbourne? It has an indefinable something that just makes me feel quite happy to be living here. It's not stunning like Sydney or filled with beautiful buildings and oozing history and charm like many European cities, it's not even easy like other smaller cities. There are too many cars, rather average beaches and it's pretty darn flat but it has a really great feel, really great food and really great shops. 

God that's shallow... See? Undefinable.  I'll work on that and come up with a better reason or perhaps a list one day.  

One place I do love is our local Readings Bookshop. This is the sort of place that make you want to forget that Book Depository exists. The walls are lined with an amazing array of books, their kids selection is good, the staff know their stuff and it's alive with shoppers and browsers. It doesn't feel like a bookshop that's dying a slow retail death.

I popped in today and spotted these. Handbag queen Orla Kiely is now doing kid's books for uber cool mid century styled up bambinos. 

Pop into your local bookshop and have a flick through the beautifully muted pages.

While you're there stay awhile, buy something, we need them to stay open. This week we learnt that an entire swathe of Melbourne's South East (population 140,000) has no access to a local bookshop after the demise of the big book chains, Borders and Angus and Robertson.  I don't like the idea of a suburb without a book store. I also don't like to pay too much for a paperback so perhaps I'll order online and buy some locally too and enjoy the experience.

It did occur to me that if you cut these Kiely books up they would make the most fabulous nursery wall art. I know, a thought like that could get me banned from bookshops.

Shopping, cooking and a little light reading...

Shopping, cooking and a little light reading? I wish.

Instead we're prepping for a move, polishing up the house for a sale and researching where we might settle in the next city. Not much time for more pleasant things.  

There is, of course, always time to get distracted. 

These lovely books were released last month in the UK. Penguin's Great Food Series -  in their words twenty volumes with excerpts from the finest food writing in the past 400 years.  Sounds promising. Here's a little more about them from a Penguin publicist who's been cooking her way through the books and blogging about it. 

Paid to cook and blog? Just add sleep and it's my ideal job.

The series has been released in Australia and hopefully that means New Zealand too. I want to go and flick through the books and decide which I want. At first glance Elizabeth David, Mrs Beeton and perhaps Alexandre Dumas?

The stunning covers (by Penguin's chief designer Coralie Bickford-Smith) are reason enough to want them all but you know what they say about books and covers. If you do buy all twenty they look like this on your bookshelf. 

I'm really rather against colour coding books (akin to ironing underwear) but a rainbow would work. Just this once.

Too much water - here AND there...

We have just spent a wonderful weekend away in another beautiful part of New Zealand  but it was wet, so wet that the usually clear aqua water turned an ugly silty brown.

When we returned to Auckland last night we found that a king tide and a sea swollen with rain had caused  flooding in parts of the city. Nothing of course like Australia's issues... but it did make me think once again of the massive clean-up in Queensland and the continuing crisis in Victoria.

Books have been on my mind too - thanks for all your suggestions for my 2011 Reading List. I spent some time on Sunday grilling my Kiwi friends about must read NZ books so they'll be there too. It's beginning to look like my Reading List for Life!

Then today I found mention on Twitter (I lurk there but don't tweet) of Writers on Rafts.

A whole bunch of Australian writers (130 so far) have got together to raise money for the Premier's Disaster Relief Appeal. There are wonderful prizes on offer - the raffle tickets are $5 each and you can win book packs, help with your own writing, author visits to your school, local library or book club and tickets to writers festivals or even the chance to have a character named after you in a book... that rather appealed to me (as if starring in my own blog isn't enough!).

So if you're in Australia and you're a book lover - head on over and get buying. Every little bit helps and 100% goes to the Appeal.  Actually if you're anywhere in the world you can enter (I checked) but you won't qualify for a book visit - book packs and online writing support could be yours though and a warm fuzzy feeling for helping!

I also have a small thank you of my own too (all business here today). If you look up to the top of the screen at my site address you will see a lovely little house now adorns http://myvillalife.blogspot.com/  

I didn't know but it's called a favicon - short for favourites icon.  Cool isn't it? I won it in a lovely and very unexpected giveaway over at Striking Keys.  It's a giveaway you don't even have to enter... My very favourite way to win! Thanks again Angela for the gift and the blog tutorial!

Reading in 2011... the list goes live

I've been promising you a reading list for 2011. It's done and you can find it here.

You can also get to the page anytime on the top right hand side of the blog... just click '2011 Reading List'. 

I want to give my reading some direction this year and a list will also make it easy for me to order ahead from the library or buy on Amazon or Book Depository. 

There are some books listed that I  should have read years ago (and I'm almost embarrassed to admit I haven't) and others I may struggle to finish. Many have won or been shortlisted for awards but that is not the only reason they're there.  In fact some are there despite that. Like movies I tend to go off a book if I hear too much about it.

I would love to know if you think there's a book I should add. Or one I should take off the list!

I don't do self-help books - blogging my New Year's resolutions is about as 'self-help' as I get and I haven't even done that yet this year.  I'm really trying not to fall back into reading too many crime yarns (Sayers is new to me so that's ok) and I am banning aiport-lite chick lit (mostly!).

One book I definitely won't EVER be reading is Little Vampire Women.   I came across it on my book search and couldn't quite believe that a) someone has written it  b) someone else published it and c) people are buying it. Surely they're not reading it too?! 

By the way, you can buy the pictured book jackets here.  I thought they'd make great wrapping paper for a book gift but I certainly will not be covering the books on my shelf. That would be a little odd... 

Summer reading...

This is where my mind has been for the last few days... well and truly on holiday. 

After a very socially exhausting Christmas celebration (ate too much, drank too much, stayed up too late, ate some more, drank some more, the usual...) we have done almost nothing. A lot of sleeping, reading, pottering and playing with the boys... the most time we have ever spent at home on holiday. 

Luckily I have the ability that only the truly slothful and slovenly have of letting the house slide into a total shambles and not really worry about it.  I finally cooked a meal last night after we started looking a little like Captain Cook's scurvy-ridden crew.

I've been pondering my New Year's Resolutions and expect to publish them in full as usual in April. I may have to repeat a couple of last year's but not the reading better project. 

That gets a big fat tick.  Like this... TICK.

This is my bedside reading... 

It's doubled in height since I took this pic a week ago... a smattering of classics, some comfort reads from this list and a couple of great girly page turners recommended by Jane at My Pear Tree House. I'm still about three years behind and have just started THE book of book clubs in 2008... The Elegance of the Hedgehog.

Most of my current books are from the Auckland library... their online order service is fabulous particularly if you have a want-to-read list at hand. So that is my summer task... compiling my own list from all the wonderful lists that journalists just love to fill their blogs and columns with at this time of year.

The Australian TV journo Leigh Sales styles herself (when blogging) as the well readhead and she is both auburn haired and well read. Her list is here.

Also from the ABC in Australia is this list of Christmas gift recommendations compiled with the help of a couple of Sydney's best known book sellers.

The contributors to The Big Apple's finest, the New Yorker's are here - quite a mixed bag as you'd expect.

I also quite liked this list from Stephen Romei in The Australian - he looks back at 2010 and forward to 2011 with a nice little blurb about each book.

And if you like a Top 50 list then the Booktopia blog is publishing the 50 must-read Australian novels... I am never sure about these lists - mostly they just start arguments.

So Happy New Year to you... thank you for all your comments, emails and conversations in 2010. I have loved it. My New Year's gift to you (and myself) will be a reading list for 2011... it'll be on the blog, um soon... sometime early in 2011. Just have to drag my mind off that hammock.

Reading in 2011

It's less than five weeks to Christmas, and however many days until 2011... time to start planning next year's reading list.

I've found a very nice place to start - with my blog crush India Knight and her ultimate comfort reads. Her lovely list is here.

How could I not love a list that starts with Nancy Mitford and includes Agatha, Daphne Du Maurier, PG Wodehouse and Austen?  I'm not sure Jilly Cooper fits with my resolution to read better. I may leave her off in 2011.

I loved Dodie Smith's I Capture the Castle and as a girl despite being THE worst dancer at Mrs Todd's Ballet School, anything by Noel Streatfield.

Jane at My Pear Tree House gave me food for thought last week (as she so often does when it comes to books and food) with her post about grand castles in literature. I'm adding Kate Morton to my list - she's not English but Australian but Jane assures me she does English very well.

So many of the authors I love are English, terribly English. So many of the books I love are set in a particular period in English life and in a particular class too it must be said... perhaps in a past life I lived somewhere like Chatsworth House.

Maybe I spent my teen years in that other life mooning about in a grand country home in a scratchy tweed skirt, gazing out over green rolling hills while dreaming about silk dresses and pining for love.

One day in my much talked about dream house in this life (with a laundry, dressing room and library) there will be a room crammed with comfort reads - a no boy zone.

In my past life it may have looked like the drawing room at the Duchess of Devonshire's new Vicarage.

As the Mitford sister who married very well,  Debo (now 90) has downsized from the beautiful Chatsworth House. There's a lovely interview with her here and another lively Mitford book to look forward to.

Ah well, this Villa Life might be a little drab in comparison but my family is at least sane and pretty happy. They are rarely sane or happy in the books I've loved.

I'll settle for a book corner like this perhaps. And a silk dress.

(Image 1 and 4 from here, 2 and 3 from here)

Why I am Australian...

I read this book in two hours... with a two week break in between. When I first picked it up I had tears welling up by page four. I had to put it down at page 80. It was as though she'd taken something sharp and cut a little hole somewhere in me and I couldn't quite handle the flood of emotion.

Nikki Gemmell is an Australian writer  - the name behind the The Bride Stripped Bare. We are terribly similar. (ah yes apart from the award winning author bit)

She moved to London 12 years ago when I did, also looking for a life outside the ordinary and stayed. I lasted seven years, she's still there. Her husband is Australian too. They even did the same sort of work I did. She has two boys a little older than mine and a little girl.  Now she wants them to know Australia. This book is written for them.

It nearly broke me but I loved it. I finished it last night and read it all in such a rush I felt as though I hadn't quite taken a breath for an hour.

Nikki (we're on first name terms, now of course) who lives in Notting Hill writes so vividly about London that I can almost smell it and taste it again.  Those were the first tears.

Then I welled up a little more at her rich descriptions of Australia, its openness, it's roughness, its sunshine. She's sunshine obsessed and I remember that feeling after the suffocating, grim, grey, endless English winter. She wants her children to know Australia and to be Australian. She feels as though she's raising little English boys, pale and polite.

I laughed at her memories of her own childhood and her joy in coming home each year... the way I also used to revel in coming back and eating buckets of mint slices, the joy I had when we left London for Australia and saw our toddler in turn revel in the wide open spaces and warm weather, knowing we'd made the right choice.

I come from a family of migrants. My great grandparents were all migrants to South Africa - one set gave up and went back to Scotland. Snakes or snow I suppose. In turn, my parents are migrants to Australia.

I feel embarrassed by this reaction, this flood of emotion. I am not a migrant who's moved cultures, left Russia or China and come to a totally foreign culture. I haven't fled a despot or war or persecution. 

I don't see myself as a migrant but I know what it is to not quite know one's place in the world.

I have spent just long enough in another country to start to feel as though it's more home than the old home. I felt such a wrench leaving London that I felt I was making a huge mistake leaving. It took a year to like Australia again and get used to it.  I now live in a place that is so close to Australia that people often think it should be. They're wrong, New Zealand is  different. Similar but not the same.

Now I guess I'm raising little Kiwis. My five year old cried in frustration when I mimicked his changing accent the other day. I remember my parents doing the same to me. I'll try not to do it anymore.

I know I am Australian. Not born but bred. As my new mate Nikki agrees, it's not perfect (just watch breakfast television and you'll want to leave again).

We'll get back one day and before we lose our children to the land of earthquakes and All Blacks... for my husband I don't know which is more dangerous.

Book love...

My husband and I (why does that phrase always make me think of the Queen's speech on Christmas Day?)

Anyway, my husband and I took some time out over the weekend for a nice lunch and a stroll in a couple of local book shops. Heaven. So much nicer to book a babysitter during the day... by nine thirty at night my sparkling wit has put itself to bed.

As part of the whole 2010 Read Better Project I have started exploring our local second hand bookshops and look what I found...

        

A bunch of old penguin paperbacks published between 1948 and 1950. 

Now for some reason the titles on the spine are upside-down even though the books are the right way up. Here this might help....

Mr Fortune's Maggot might have caught your eye. A maggot by the way is a 'perverse or whimsical fancy" so this is not a book about rotting meat.

Our house is littered with the new penguin classics and I really love the concept and the new titles they're releasing but I was so drawn to these.  Don't judge a book by its cover, they say. Well I did, sorry.

My aversion to iPhones is softening but I can safely rule out the Kindle. Call me old-fashioned or a plain old luddite but I like the feel of paper and I also like the irrational part of me that bought these because they look so, um, bookish...?

Look out for them in my reading update in the right hand column if they make it there... my other half reckons they'll fall apart before I get to the final page. I'm a bit worried about my dust allergy... I sneezed when I opened the first one!

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By the way, a thank you to those who have given me encouragement to persevere with the slow cooker... I am off to the butcher to buy some beef to get back on the bike. I will try all your recipes and let you know how I go... and I am trying to ignore the uncomfortable truth that I may have just bought an appliance that does exactly what my rather expensive Le Creuset pot does anyway.

Books for new babies...

Our friends are having babies... lots of them, pink ones and blue ones. Most are on to their second or third child and I think their houses are already full to the brim with cute baby stuff.. clothes they grow out of in a month, a gazillion soft toys or those infernal bits of battery powered plastic that still litter my place.

I now mostly buy books as gifts and I don't necessarily buy those designed for babies to chew the edges.  It's lovely to have a shelf of books for a child to grow into.

This is a favourite.

Written by Ursula Dubosarsky, The Terrible Plop is about a rabbit who discovers that not everything is as frightening as you first think... it all starts with an apple.

It's wittily told and beautifully illustrated in a rather retro way by Andrew Joyner.  He has very kindly  given this little tutorial on his blog on how to draw your own bear. I am going to try it but I won't share the result. Too scarred by school art classes.

Another favourite? This...

It's a simple little story about friendship.

An Australian author, Aaron Blabey's has written other books about other kids, the charming Sunday Chutney and his latest, Stanley Paste. Here he introduces you to Stanley.

If he looks familiar to Australians (Aaron, not Stanley) it's because he's been on the telly a fair bit in his other life as an actor and won an AFI. (Australian Film Award to the non-Australians...)

According to his publishers, Aaron likes 'old armchairs, lovely sharp pencils, the way trees look when their leaves fall off, mayonnaise, his unfashionable record collection and looking scruffy'.  No wonder I like his books...

(Both books published by Penguin. Images from here and here.)

Reading in 2010

You may have noticed that over the past few months I have been listing my reading material. The idea was to keep myself on track with the New Year's resolutions I made in April to read more selectively.


I had fallen out of love with reading and books. Too sad for a girl who has always read obsessively, voraciously, hungrily, passionately... and rather likes big words.

Why? Well, number one was the usual excuse of the mid-thirties mother. I needed sleep more. I always read before bed. During the day I can't be home alone without background noise, at night before bed, no TV or music.  I want peace and quiet and a book.  Unfortunately thanks to my lack of sleep, most nights I couldn't even manage three pages.

Second, I was a little bit time poor and a little bit lazy. Reading just crime novels because I like PD James and Ian Rankin and I could whip into the library with the rampaging toddler grab a book and whip out again.

Third, the sheer cost of buying books in Australia and New Zealand.  I don't earn much these days and I really think twice about spending thirty dollars (and the rest) on a paperback.  We used to buy three new books a week in the UK - they are so much cheaper there. We've decided buying in bulk overseas online is a better idea and I also need to invest more time in second handbook stores. No great chore you'd agree...

So how's the resolution going? I used to know what was on the best seller list, what was shortlisted for which prize and I had an opinion on whether it should have been... I still don't know any of that - I'm playing catch-up remember.

But I'm back. I read during the day last weekend - desperate to finish my Barbara Vine. I stayed up on Friday night at our bach in front of the fire alone and finished Seabiscuit.   Ah, that feeling when you simply can't sleep without knowing what comes next. It's back and I'm loving it.

By the way the image is from Remodalista... thanks Claude, it's becoming a favourite...

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AND I  need to add to this... I had half written this post last week and Kerry from A Tranquil Townhouse messaged to say she'd like to start her own reading list - a little like mine.  Well she has and she very kindly blogged about it today and said some very nice things.  Now I get to check out what she's read and liked and make my book shopping list... you should read her lovely blog too, she's a doer not just a talker like me!

Stepping back...

I have spent the last few days in the 1920s and 30s.

I found this book in a junk shop at the weekend - The Home of To-day, published in Britain in 1930 by Daily Express publications, full of useful tips for the newly married.

I read Agatha Christie mysteries at the age of ten and have devoured everything written by or about the Mitford girls so I'm in heaven. I am sneezing constantly (the dust I suppose) but can't seem to put it down.

Want to know how to host a garden party, a simple little recipe for Liver a la Francaise or how to manage your maid? It's all here.

Descriptions of the very latest in modern kitchens. Gas or electric ovens? My dear, how smart. 

Quite a few pages on the sometimes vexing relationship between maid and mistress.

"Any normal maid will appreciate a pretty, well equipped room and since pretty things do not cost any more than dull ones, and are just as useful, there is no reason why a girl should not have the pleasure of a nice room, the possession of which will go far towards making her happy and contented." 

Bachelor men are not forgotten. "Unless he is really forlorn and lonesome, he will have some sort of a housekeeper or landlady to look after his everyday needs, brush his carpets, make his bed and perhaps, mend his socks."

Doses of cod liver oil, poultice and hot mustard baths seem to cure a lot of ills and  there's  the rather alarming advice to take precaution against the sun by protecting skin with a layer of olive oil.

There are three pages on the intricacies of calling cards - three pages and I am still not sure of the rules! And of course there's how to sit, converse and dress.

"Women in higher grades of life wear plain, tailored garments while shopping in the forenoon, and smart frocks at afternoon functions. Evening dress has its own rules. Jewels may then be worn to an extent only limited to good taste."

"Becomingness is the first consideration to a wise woman when selecting a dress... but anything very daring or conspicuous should be avoided."

I'm afraid I could become quite the crashing bore reading bits of this aloud to anyone who will listen.

First image from here

Now here's a map obsession...

I may have a thing for maps but nothing like the woman behind the iconic A-Z London Maps. Iconic is a word is abused and overused by journalists but in this case I feel justified using it.

Phyllis Pearsall was pretty amazing. An artist, she decided in 1935 that the Ordnance Survey map she was using to find her way around London was totally inadequate so she'd make one herself. Working long, long days she catalogued the city's 23,000 streets - on foot, mind you - and then devised the alphabetical index to go with her guide.

The woman was unstoppable. When no one would publish her new atlas she started her own company, the Geographers' Map Company which she ran until she died.

I've read this book twice (once would have done but I quite often read books again. There are Agatha Christie mysteries I've read half a dozen times and still can't remember 'who done it.' What will I be like when I'm eighty?!)

The story of Phyllis Pearsall's work is amazing enough but her childhood and family shenanigans also makes for an incredible life. Of course the author has taken a liberal dose of creative licence but that makes for a much better read - I'm not one for a stack of dry facts as bedtime reading. If you prefer the bare facts, her own book might be good too.

Thank you Miss Pearsall for providing me with the bible for all those lovely jaunts on foot, bus and tube across London.

Thank you too for all those times we got lost together - my dog-eared A-Z sliding off the passenger seat and gout of reach as I drove around a corner distracted and lost in a new London suburb. Good times indeed - who needs a GPS?

Kiwi books for kids...

Last night our five year old got a new book to add to his kiwi collection... apparently a best seller here. Perky is an orphaned pukeko taken in and cared for by a farmer who looks very Wal Footrot - remember Footrot Flats?

A Pukeko is a purple swamp hen. Pukeko is a much, much nicer name. Perky the Purple Swamp Hen doesn't shout "read me".

If course we've long been fans of Hairy Maclary from Donaldson's Dairy -  My brother used to read them (he's ten years younger than me so I remember quite a lot about his childhood) and I liked them way back then. 

Oh to write like Lynley Dodd.

With tails in the air 

they trotted on down

past the shops and the park 

to the far end of town.

They sniffed at the smells

and snooped at each door,

And the characters - Bottomley Pots all covered in spots, Bitzer Maloney all skinny and bony... it's fabulous!

It did take me a while to realise Hairy hailed from these parts... and now I know that the Dairy you see the corner of as he leaves for his walk is not a farm with loads of cows but a corner store or milk bar. AND  it's pronounced "deery" - rather than dare-ee as we Australians would say. Very confusing for our five year old when we arrived and his first friend kept talking about going to the dairy for a treat. "Mum," he said to me, "what's a deery?" 

Of course nine months on he says deery too.