readingwithdrawal

November09_3

2009-11-30T22:36:00.004+11:00

I think I may have reached the end of this blog, a bit over a year after I started. The goal was to track a year of reading, but I underestimated the burden of it. The writing, not the reading. I've missed a few books - not many, I think, but enough to take the shine off the comprehensiveness of the record. And who knew it would supplant my hardcopy diary so completely? A lifetime habit of putting pen to paper has stopped dead, with barely 10 pages since this time last year, and not a sensible word written. My book reading is documented, more or less, but a year of my kids' lives has passed unrecorded. So, to wrap it up, several posts:

Recently read: 'Allotted Time' by Robin Shelton. A lovely memoir about two blokes in England taking on a local allotment. Robin's bipolar, a dad, an unemployed once-teacher, in a darkish place. Lightly told with very little detail, it's an oddly shy memoir (that seems odd, written down, but feels perfect for this modest book). Robin grows stronger with the garden; the gardening metaphors are expressed without embarassment as the simple truth of Robin's experience on the allotment, digging himself out of a black hole. So to speak. A lovely book.

November09_2

2009-11-08T21:16:00.003+11:00

Nancy Pearl interviewed Michael Perry for Book Lust. It was delightful, very Nancy - her catholic taste, her enquenchable enthusiasm, this poet farmer - so I surfed to Amazon to track down Michael Perry. 11 days later, 'Population: 485' turned up (used, as-new condition US$3.95 plus $19.95 postage). Michael Perry writes personal memoir - 4 or more books to date, with this the first. In this book Michael returns to the town in Wisconsin he grew up in, where his family lives and works, and joins the volunteer fire brigade and emergency response team. His long, slow reunion with his much-loved home town is interleaved with stories from his EMT experiences - some funny, some tragic, all local and intimate. It's all very personal, and reflective, and pragmatic.

Michael is smart and thoughtful and has found a place for himself - an educated man, a poet, soft-handed - in this tough, hardscrabble community. He works the fire brigade with his brothers and his mum: "Disagreements with my brothers can shake me up for days, because they are a reminder of how disagreeing profoundly with someone you love in equal profundity is an intractable dilemma because you don't have the option of dismissing them out of contempt." He writes practically about death, having seen so much of it up close: "Over the years, I have developed a visceral reaction to families and victims expressing surprise at tragedy... I hear people on scene saying, 'Why? Why?' and the answer is, there is no why. Ambulance work will exacerbate your inner existentialist."

So this was a great book. I'll seek out 'Coop' next, as I am also a chicken wrangler, with two Isa Browns recently settled into a coop in the backyard. Truly.

November09_1

2009-11-08T13:18:00.007+11:00

Assorted reading oddments all completed, some proven substantial, others not. "Northanger Abbey" was lovely. The plot is so slight, the humour bubbles at the surface. I do like Catherine very much but I love the wretched General Tilney most, and this made me laugh out loud: "Never had the general loved his daughter so well in all the hours of companionship, utility and patient endurance as when he first hailed her "Your Ladyship!".

My second iPhone reading experience is also completed, leaving me bereft: "Infection" by Scott Sigler (is that his porn star name?). I was so keen to extend my drive time listening each day, I started wearing my earphones in the lift and, twice, to the bathroom. Daft, juvenile novel about alien invasion but it had me hooked from chapter 2, so hats off to Scott. I almost donated some money to him, as prompted by the post-story sales pitch. Iain Banks' publishers are releasing his latest novel, "Transition" as a free podcast, as a 21C publishing experiment, so I tried to segue from Sigler to Banks but it didn't stick. Banks' book is too tricky, multi-voiced and clever to follow while driving (I reflect only on my own limitations, smart people may well manage it fine), so I've given up and gone back to "This American Life" podcasts for my driving pleasure.

October09_1

2009-10-19T21:37:00.005+11:00

Nothing to report, zip. I'm reading like a 21st century citizen of the digital world, with nothing to show for it. On the go right now: Michael Perry's "Population 485", a memoir about small town Wisconsin and volunteer firefighting. I ordered Perry from Amazon after listening to Nancy Pearl's podcast interview with him. I'm reading "Northanger Abbey" on my iPhone at lunchtimes; saves carting a book around. When I'm in the car I'm listening to "Infection" by Scott Stigler, audiobook edition, on my iPhone. Also reading, in old fashioned hardcopy, a fantasy novel I can't recall in any detail. Plus the usual shiny weekend supplements. I started Donna Tarrt's second novel then took a firm grip on myself and put it back on the beside table, back to finish Perry before I move on.

September09_1

2009-10-05T21:57:00.006+11:00

This is nearly impossible. The simple task was to record everything I read for a year or so, but here it is October and not a word written about September and lord only knows what I read.

Most recently I've been sucked into the reading zeitgeist that is Stieg Larsson's 'Girl with a Dragon Tattoo' series - first two books. My neighbour, my book guru (Wayne) and finally Alison all recommended these books, so what could I do? Perfect airport bookshop purchase. A few forests have been written about this series so what can I add: I loved book 1, was pissed off by book 2 but will wrench book 3 from Wayne's hands at the first possible moment. They're gripping thrillers, populated with a very odd heroine - Lisbeth Salander - and a supporting cast of pragmatic Swedes. I especially enjoyed the Swedishness of the books, like an unfamiliar flavour of tea.

August09_5

2009-09-04T21:23:00.008+10:00

And finally, 'Incurable' by John Marsden, continuing the story of Ellie from the 'Tomorrow' series. I loved the first few 'Tomorrow' books; taut, smart writing for teens. A bunch of teens go camping deep in the bush on the weekend Australia is invaded by unnamed, overwhelming forces. The kids have to work out what happened, find their families (dead or captured), look after themselves and, sooner than seems possible, form an ad hoc but very bloody resistance. Ellie is the chronicler and thinker, bright, capable and handy with a gun - approachably heroic. Marsden is very, very good at writing cleanly about teenagers (truthfully, I think, but it's been a while) without preaching. But after 9 books - 'Incurable' is from 'The Ellie Chronicles' which follows the group after the truce - I'm over it.

August09_4

2009-09-04T21:04:00.006+10:00

Oh dear, this is not a post to be proud of. Nothing but fantasy and sci fi on the pile of recently reads and I did vow to diversify my reading body, didn't I? Nothing to do but list 'em and move on.
Most recently: Sherri S Tepper's 'The Margarets'. Now this book isn't anything to sniff at. Great, writing, complex structure and concepts, impossible to summarise.
Larry Niven's 'Destiny's Road'. Seamless writing by a master of the craft, in blurb-talk. Planet-based sci-fi; a well-paced adventure quest, nicely grounded in the everyday.
'Dragonflight' by Anne McCaffrey. This is still a tender subject. I had to re-read this one for the first time in a decade because I had blithely recommended it to my 10 year-old neighbour. She had just finished 'Twilight' so clearly has open-minded parents and a capacity for teen fiction, but soon after I passed it across the kitchen table I realised I had been thinking of 'Dragonsong', a lighter, starter novel, and I started to worry. 'Dragonflight' is solidly settled in the adult world, the story is politics and time travel and a difficult love match (between dragon-riders, but still)... really not appropriate. So do I raise the issue with the parents? Talk to the junior reader? Let sleeping dragons lie?
'Wonders of a Godless World' by Andrew McGahan, a bit of a teaser book given out free at Dymocks to jag some readers. I can see why they did this - the book is unclassifiable. Might be horror, might be fantasty, might be magical realism. In the blurb words: "It's like nothing you've ever read before..." which is a stretch. I wonder how many extra books they have to sell to get their money back?

August09_3

2009-08-20T21:22:00.002+10:00

It took an age for me to finish Guy Gavriel Kay's 'Tigana'; 2 months on and off my reading pile. I'd read something which called this a perfect fantasy novel - just one volume, engaging characters, richly drawn, ripping yarn etc, so I was ready to sink right into it. It's possible my notoriously wretched memory sabotaged me - as I started 'Tigana' I was deflated by a niggling familiarity (have I read this before?). Still don't know, but it came together for me in the end. Great female characters, great everything characters, actually - old, young, men and women, wizardy and not.

I recollect where I heard about Guy - on Nancy Pearl's 'Book Lust' podcast - so it must have been Nancy who called it 'perfect'. Nancy has never found a book she didn't like but she's a famous library reviewer goddess, so it's still high praise.

August09_2

2009-08-20T21:14:00.002+10:00

Book 9 of Sookie Stackhouse's vampire saga is now under my belt, and it appears that there are more to come. I had a notion that this was the last book in the series, which added some frisson to the read, but the story ended with Sookie out of one pot of trouble and looking sideways at another, so it's not over yet. With book 9 I proved how fun and forgettable these lovely books are: with two thirds read I left it at M's house, where it was lost under a pile of kids's books.. for 5 weeks. When I recovered it I started right back at the beginning and enjoyed it just as much on the second read as the first, since I'd forgotten almost all of it. Perfect.

August09_1

2009-08-12T21:23:00.007+10:00

Second best book of the year: 'We Need to Talk About Kevin' by Lionel Shriver. Apparently this is a popular book - I picked it off the A&R Top 100 shelf and now find it on reading group lists. I have to say this does not endear me to a book, it takes the gloss of discovering something wonderful, but so be it.

This book was a beautiful, distressing journey, a perfectly crafted reveal. I was completely in Shriver's power and just gave myself over to it - which was delicious given the sloppy casual way I've been reading lately. 'Kevin' is written as a collection of letters from the mother of a schoolyard mass murderer. I know another reader would have loathed this mother, but I was on her side. She didn't fall in love with her son as she was sure she should, then couldn't like him. Did he go bad because she couldnt find it in herself to love him, or was guilty detachment a reasonable response to this damaged, sociopathic kid? The mother's voice is so honest, the emotions are beautifully expressed and she is so tough on herself and so her reflections on marriage and parenting are so true, but the tension of the reading is that we know - and she declares - that it's partisan.

July09_4

2009-07-31T22:12:00.005+10:00

Another book written for the movies. There's a flavour to these last two books: very visual, of course, fast-moving, multiple story threads interwoven. 'The Repossession Mambo' is by far the better book, sardonic and cool, but Guillermo del Toro's 'The Strain' is still a cracking read.

It's a vampire virus story, wonderfully topical. Written by the creator of 'Pan's Labyrinth', this is a sexy book, bound to get a fair bit of press. It is the first of a trilogy (even that sounds so considered, so marketed), so this book has a great set-up, accelerates to a final confrontation, and ends with a cliff hanger. I don't think it justifies the cover line, "Haunts as much as it terrifies", at all. The first third of the book was teriffic: a jumbo lands at NY airport and immediately shuts down. Every passenger dead, no signs of struggle, very Twilight Zone. Once we meet the vamps it's not as fresh, but still carried me right to the end.

July09_3

2009-07-31T21:25:00.004+10:00

This is a great set-up: when artificial organs become available, people live a very long time. But most people can't afford the organs they need, so they get a mortgage. It's not hard to get a loan when the goods are readily recoverable, which is where the Bio-Repo Man comes in. Defaulting on an artiforg loan has very bloody consequences. Eric Garcia's 'Repossession Mambo' has a gun Repo Man on the run after defaulting on his own body debt.

Best part of this very good book: the essay at the end, in which Garcia describes how the book came about. He's written a few books which became movies, and wrote the screenplays. In this case he wrote 'Reposession Mambo' as a longish novella then set it aside, sending it out to a few friends. The friends thought it would be a good movie, so it was optioned, and Garcia wrote the screenplay - 36 or so drafts later, it has been made into a movie coming out later this year. Towards the end of writing the movie, Garcia returned to finishing the book. It's a wonderfully pragmatic 'creation myth'.

July09_2

2009-07-20T21:52:00.002+10:00

I read my literary vampire horror novel: 'Let the Right One In' by John Ajvide Lindqvist. It was a cracker. I haven't seen the movie but I can taste it from the novel. Creepy, horrifying writing with not a single sympathetic character to cling to. It was quite wonderful to read a beautifully crafted novel, vampires notwithstanding, and an embarassing contrast to the Sookie Stackhouse series. I'm reading the ninth Sookie right now. Ninth. There's something to be said for the allure of vampire soap opera.

July09_1

2009-07-20T20:53:00.004+10:00

Iain Banks is one of my favourites. I love that he writes in two voices: brilliant sci fi and left-field literature. His sci fi is literary, his literature is often fantastic, but when you choose an Iain Banks you choose one or the other. I had read 'The Business', from the liyterary camp, twice actually, and loved it's wry wit and cynicism. But this one, 'The Bridge', didn't work for me at all. The protagonist is in a coma following an accident. He travels his unconscious to The Bridge, a swarming quasi-Victorian world built on and within a seemingly endless and architecturally eccentric bridge. He's the amnesiac patient of a ambitious Doctor, then falls from his position of privilege and heads off on a journey which maps his return to consciousness. In this clever clever structure I have no clear recollection of the main character, Orr (clever clever name) and Banks doesn't offer any opportunity to connect with the secondary characters of the novel at all. It's beautifully written, of course. Maybe in my current mode it simply failed for lack of vampires?

June09_4

2009-06-29T21:52:00.009+10:00

Boldly invested a share of a book voucher on a punt: the first 'Firebirds' anthology. 'Firebirds' is a fantasy collection, which promised to be interesting and was, in parts. Anthologies are taste tests, samplers of writing styles and story flavours. The problem was that if I liked a story it was over too soon. If I didn't like it, I'd skip it and feel a bit cheated. Overall, a reminder that most fantasy isn't for me. To predictable, too girly. One find: Nancy Farmer. One old favourite: Garth Nix.

Queued in my reading list is 'Let the Right One In' by John Ajvide Lindqvist (literary vampire horror, really), Bill Bryson's 'A Short History os Nearly Everything', Iain Banks' 'The Bridge' and one from W: 'The Reposession Mambo' by Eric Garcia.

June09_3

2009-06-29T21:34:00.010+10:00

A fantasy, perfectly forgettable, perfectly good. 'The Spell of Rosette' by Kim Falconer, first in a trilogy I have no urge to pursue.

The premise is good: Earth in the near future is decimated by climate catastrophe sped along by human technical 'fixes' applied beyond reason by a power-hungry elite keen to retain a grip on the few remaining resources when the Earth goes to hell. The novel follows two threads: Earth, where a magical resistance bides its time through generations, and Gaela, a classic fantasy pre-tech world of warriors and witches. A sentient super-computer with the power to return Earth to rights is embodied in human form in Gaela, teaming up with the usual suspects to... the usual. To Kim's credit, the book stands alone and is neatly finished. I have just about enough patience for Sookie Stackhouse but can't be bothered with classic fantasy; brain the size of a gnat at the moment.

June09_2

2009-06-29T21:30:00.003+10:00

Only reading junk at the moment. More Sookie Stackhouse: books 5 and 6 now done and dusted and I'm craving more. K has a milder case, sufficient for us to organise a postal service swap of books (my number 5 for her library copy of number 6) and back again. I baulked today at spending $32.99 on book 7, so I've not entirely lost my senses. But how long will I hold out?

June09_1

2009-06-08T15:42:00.004+10:00

This is what has occupied me for the past 2 weeks, to the detriment of all interruptions (work, mothering, vacuuming): Charlaine Harris' "Sookie Stackhouse Vampire Mysteries". It's a humiliating admission, but began innocently enough with K bringing the first 2 books home from the US. P and I have been watching the HBO series "True Blood" on Foxtel, and loving the dirty white trash deep South vibe and nutty vampire plot. Book 1 of this series (9 books strong and still coming) is the plot of the entire first season of True Blood, and it's doubly engaging working out what the TV people decided to change (introducing a sassy black girlfriend and a fabulously camp black chef/drug dealer - recognise a theme, here?).

Sookie is a telepathic waitress in a deep South bar, who falls for a vampire for the blessed relief of not being able to hear his thoughts, and his dead-cool sexual magnetism. It's 2 years since vampires came out of the closet (coffin?) and entered mainstream society as citizens, but the South is just getting used to the notion. Sookie is super-cute and sassy, and her mind-reading skills make her handy to the vamps, so after book 1 it's a straightforward mystery genre series: Sookie gets caught up in some supernatural snarl and saves the day, with lots of sex and blood. Lots of sex.

I'm banning myself from reading more until I input some quality into my reading diet, and engage my kids in conversation.

May09_1

2009-06-08T15:14:00.010+10:00

It's odd that a blog read by no-one is still a burdensome responsibility.

Here's an odd book read in May: 'The Astonishing Life of Octavian Nothing, Traitor to the Nation', futher subtitled 'Volume I: The Pox Party', by M T Anderson. What a title. The back blurb is enthusiastic but uncommunicative: "A tremendous read" - Nicholas Tucker, TES (what's TES?). I read the first page or so in Kinokuniya and came away with the impression that it was a fantasy borrowing its aesthetics and idiom from the 1800s.

It's not. This is a book about slavery in Boston just before the Revolutionary War, human scientific experimentation, about racism and child abuse. A boy and his mother are raised and educated in a bizarre Scientific Society in an extended experiment to resolve the truth or otherwise of Negro intelligence. It was an odd read because for most of the book I was reading it as wonky fantasy with a Gothic tone, not political parable (parable? more a tirade, a violent, angry rant against slavery and human evil). This book caught me by surprise, and by the time I'd caught up with it it shifted gears, the main character grew up and became mute, the narrative voice shifted to a stranger, and the story served only to advance the argument. I was infuriated by the shift, unsettled by the whole damn book. Volume II has just been released; I may not have the fortitude for it.

I've lost track of another book read in May so this account has already failed by the simple measure of comprehensiveness.

April09_6

2009-05-02T08:17:00.039+10:00

Here's the joy of second hand bookstores, well proven. I would never have bought Dan Simmon's 'The Terror' in a bookstore - it's a block of a thing, 935 pages, horror title, gory splat of blood on the cover, and I've never heard of him. But in the low-risk world of a second-hand bookstore, I was seduced by two things: it's about the Franklin expedition to find the North-West Passage in the mid 1800s, and Stephen King declares on the cover: "I am in awe of Dan Simmons", which, perhaps oddly, I find persuasive.

This is a teriffic book. I was thoroughly engrossed and felt bereft when it was finished.

The Franklin expedition was a well-equipped pair of boats, 130 British naval men and marines, the height of seafaring technology of its time. The expedition was lost. Rescue expeditions eventually found traces of the Franklin effort, and it is generally thought that the crew was icebound for 3 winters, savaged by starvation, scurvy, lead poisoning and botulism from the 9000 tins of food they carried with them. Cannibalism is quietly suspected.

Dan Simmons takes the historic evidence - and there's a lot: letters, supply and crew lists, personal histories - and adds a supernatural layer drawn from Eskimo culture. Sounds naff, but it's dense and beautifully drawn, each character is distinct and the simple business of survival is described in appalling detail. The book starts somewhere in the middle of the story, doubles back and skips forward. Each chapter is from the perspective of a single character; when they die, as they often do, it's startling. The shift from sailing to icebound, from winter to winter, the struggle to survive, the complex dynamics of naval authority and the decision to leave the crushed boats and attempt an impossible journey across the ice, and what happens next - there's a lot of story here, plus a murderous ice-monster.

April09_5

2009-05-02T07:56:00.006+10:00

Just filling in time with this one, a perfectly amiable and engaging fantasy about a newly trained wizard caught up in royal shenanigans, 'The Accidental Sorcerer' by K E Mills. The conceit is that wizarding is a straightforward profession aquired via correspondence course. Gerald Dunwoody (Wizard, Third Class) is unhappily employed as a probationary compliance offer, Department of Thaumaturgy, with wizarding yet to meet his expectations. He stumbles on a nasty incident in a Staff factory, sorts it out, blows everything up and so discovers greater powers within himself that anyone suspected, etc. The blurb calls it "Harry Potter for grown ups", which is about right. NEXUS declared it "unputdownable", which was very kind.

April09_4

2009-04-30T21:14:00.004+10:00

Bill Bryson's books line up in two rows. The romping travel yarns (I've read all of those) and the smart, tricky books (I've read none). I see a pattern appearing. 'Shakespeare', offered to me by a chap at work, was a lovely surprise. Did you know Shakespeare introduced the words critical, horrid, lonely, eventful and zany into the English language, and about 2030 others? Insultment, bepray and exsufflicate failed to take hold, but it was a very good effort in any case. One fell swoop, the milk of human kindness, cold comfort, foregone conclusion... all Shakespeare. Or Shakspeare, or Shakspere - the one spelling WS never used himself is the one we now assume is correct. Bill Bryson seems to have a real fondness for the dedicated and often madly obsessed scholars who daily add to the vast weight of reflection about WS, but the theme of Bill's slim volume is how little there is truly known in the details of WS's life. I keep going back to one line: "On only a handful of days in his life can we say with absolute certainty where he was." When I die it would be a simple matter to fix me in time and place with a mass of digital detail, but for a life of so little enduring merit.

April09_3

2009-04-21T22:50:00.013+10:00

Three books of fluff, inhaled at speed this month:

'Visible Panty Line' by Gretel Killeen. Thumbs up to Gretel, she wrote a whole book from beginning to end and some of it is very funny.

'Endymion Spring' by Matthew Skelton. Conventional YA fantasy set in 21st and 15th century Oxford; books infused with timeless power, accessible only to children pure of heart, etc. The Oxford setting suggests Philip Pulman but it's nowhere near as dense, beautiful and black. The book-theme is very like Cornelia Funke's 'Inkheart' but the adult characters are flimsy. It's typical of the many fat fantasies populating the bookshelves of childrens's bookstores; perfectly good and entirely predictable, but then, I'm not 12.

Stephanie Meyer's 'The Host' was a surprise. I'd read 'Twilight' and set it behind me with some embarassment not intending to read more, then I heard Nancy Pearl's podcast interview with Stephanie Meyer and I was seduced back. Stephanie is a nice Morman mother, youngish, always wrote but never thought it would come to anything. A scene from 'Twilight' came to her complete in a dream, and so she wrote the book. She said it was easy; she loves the writing and is bemused by her success.

'The Host' was engaging (benevolent aliens have taken over almost all human life) and an easy, fun read. Stephanie says she didn't know if she was writing young adult or grown-up novels and doesn't care, but the romance which drives the plot is definitely YA - frequent overwhelming urges and miscommunications - which is wearisome. Perfect holiday reading.

April09_2

2009-04-20T21:36:00.013+10:00

Amanda Lohrey taught writing at UTS; she might even have taught me. The careful construction and extended metaphors I remember from university writing courses are there in 'The Philosophers Doll', beautifully rendered, of course, but even so. I rushed the first quarter of this novel to see if it would relax, and it did. The book is about an unplanned pregnancy, in a marriage between a social worker and a philosopher. There's a painful, slow progression of misunderstandings and foolish decisions and stupid silences with my mental commentary running: 'just tell him now', 'just explain it properly for heaven's sake'. Then there's a structural flipflop, the narrative voice changes, the time frame shifts, and the last third of the book is teriffic.

April09_1

2009-04-20T21:11:00.006+10:00

It's bloody hard to keep up with this.

'Orbital Resonance' (John Barnes) is a neatly shaped, engaging, tidy sci fi: post Collapse, a generation of spaceborn kids grows super-fast to maturity, socially engineered for coherance and high achievement. It's a closed society, manufactured but rational, calm and appealing. The input of a Earth-born teenager dirties up the social pool, plots are uncovered and untidily resolved. It's a great read, and modestly scaled (scoring high on my current number 1 measure).

John Barnes wrote 'Mother of Storms', a personal fave from a decade or so ago, about extreme weather and global catastrophe, which has moved from whimsical to topical in the recent decade.

March09_4

2009-04-11T14:36:00.010+10:00

Lynne Reid Banks has the aura of high school library to me and I loosely link her with the politically correct, earnest novels I didn't want to read when I was at high school. (The power of Google: she wrote 'One More River', which I did read in school, about a friendship across the religious divide in Israel.) 'The L Shaped Room' is slim, modest and beautifully shaped adult novel, but with the economy of scale and ambition which you used to see in young adult novels (but not anymore; today's YA novels are morbidly obese, but that's another story).

'The L Shaped Room' is about a pregnancy out of wedlock when that mattered a great deal; Jane is thrown out of home, finds a bedsit in a hovel and tries to carry on, filled with desperate selfloathing and denial. She reluctantly allows herself to be befriended by her neighbours, carries on working, builds a nest and grows up. It's beautiful to read because there's no high drama to the story, Jane is no more foolish or insightful than the next person and she isn't rescued. The resolution is domestic, her transformation profound but quiet.

Did I say how much I enjoyed the brevity of this novel? I say again: so neat, so effective.

I've just read (Google, thank you) that this was Lynne's first novel (1960) and is part of a trilogy, so I'll report further on Jane in coming posts, presuming Jane is still in print.

March09_3

2009-03-28T20:14:00.009+11:00

K J Parker wrote 'The Fencer Trilogy' containing, at the end of the second volume, one of the most startlingly unexpected and horribly upsetting plot developments I've read (I won't tell), so it's hard to explain why I read the third volume, let alone this new book. K J writes fantasy, sort of, but with no magic, no elves and dwarves and talking trees, no quests or golden orbs, and almost no women.

I picked up The Company' because it said on the blurb that it was 'a stand-alone book' and I can't bring myself to embark on another bulky series. I've just given up on Kevin Anderson's mega series (Saga of the Gods/War of the Endless Saga, something like that) at half way through book 5 because I happened to see book 7 arrive in the bookstore. Book 7, each with the heft of a housebrick, and it's not done yet. Barely forgivable if it was worth it, but Anderson doesn't appear to have an editor and these wretched books are pockmarked with repetition, retelling and unsubtle reminders of who the characters are, presumably so we can follow the idiotic story. Enough.

K J Parker has pitch-perfect insight, and s/he writes whole, human characters - hard men, warriors, fools and bloody-minded bastards - so beautifully. 'The Company' is about a group of war heroes after the war, who follow their General to an island to build a utopia, and are damned by their tangled history. It doesn't end well. At 436 pages it was hardly concise, but every word essential.

March09_2

2009-03-19T21:59:00.023+11:00

I've been caught in a bog with this book, stuck fast and exhausted by it. 'The Daughters of Moab' by Kim Westwood, has excellent credentials: Australian science fiction, post-apocalyptic near-future, set in the outback, female protagonists... you'd think it had been written for me.

Starts well. Nine years after Tribulation with the climate in turmoil, toxins rising from fissures in the earth and a murderous sun, the nutty Followers of Nathaniel have imprisoned the suspiciously healthy Daughers of Moab to drain them of their remarkable blood. They're not mad, just daft and isolated to distraction in an island of desert. The Daughters are all genetically modified transfects, part human, part dingo, eel, kangaroo, at the beginning of a bizarre evolution. A bold Daughter escapes, a rogue Nathaniel with farmer's blood aids her, and from there on in the story was all but incomprehensible.

The language was beautiful, fluid and obscure: "Oliver, endowed with roach-strength imperviousness - along with a certain affinity for flotsam - has remained immune to the Lethe-like torrents of forget in his domain." This is about an ex-Nathanial who snacked on cockroaches, became one, and created an undercity in the water table beneath the desert.

Beautiful, bizarre. I couldn't tell what in hell was going on most of the time.

Oddly, I can tell this book will stay with me, and I'll read it again to see if it takes the second time around.

March09_1

2009-03-05T21:38:00.024+11:00

Kate Jennings is an Australian living in New York, making a living by writing. I read her second novel, 'Moral Hazard', back in 2003 and loved it. It's about business writing and slow grief, transparently fictionalised from her experience of losing her husband to Alzheimers and sinking into the moral vacuum of business writing for a big NY bank to fund his medical care. It was a slim book, and reminded me of Helen Garner, which is high praise.

So this new book, 'Stanley and Sophie', was an unexpected treat, a memoir about recovery and dogs. Kate finds herself the owner of a border terrier, which is a very particular kind of dog, and she falls in love with this sparky pup and sinks into dogworld. Life in NY post 9/11 is filtered through her love for Stanley and the domestic details of a writer's life, with dog. Her story of Stanley is adorable and I loved reading it; then she gets another terrier, Sophie, and life gets doggier and complicated. Kate's life disappointed me at this point because (spoiler alert) she gives away the dogs and goes to Bali for a bit, and I just didn't enjoy Kate without the dogs. Sorry, Kate.

February09_2

2009-02-28T23:38:00.007+11:00

Amazon is a wonderful thing; as usual, I'm 4 years behind the zeitgeist. Reading Joan Didion's 'A Year of Magical Thinking' last month, I bookmarked a book she mentioned and ordered it on Amazon. Joan used 'Intensive Care, A Doctor's Journal' as her guidebook to navigating intensive care wards during her daughter's illnesses. Oddly, I assumed it must be interesting.

John F Murray gives us his notes and reflections on every patient in his care for a month in San Francisco General Hospital's medical ICU. 60 patients, 15 died. We get their names, the barest bones of their story and the narrative of their passage out of the ICU. Ten or so patients into the book and the names and medical procedures are a blur. The medical detail is extraordinary, but because you never meet the patients (they're mute from intubation or medication, almost without exception), it's a very detached kind of voyeurism.

Murray is measured, concerned and concise. If you've read Jane Austen and found yourself coming over all Jane in conversation thereafter, you'll recognise the infectious effect of Murray's prose. I have been mentally diarising my working life in Murray-speak this week, elevating the minutiae of marketing to the life and death drama of ICU.

February09_1

2009-02-16T21:21:00.006+11:00

I'm tidying up my reading pile. There are 15 or so books in a stack by the bed and they're mostly either books I think I should read or books I started reading and can't bring myself to finish. 'Final Impact World War 2.3' by John Birmingham is neither type; more a book I've been too embarassed to pick up. Yes, I have read 'Weapons of Choice World War 2.1' and 'Designated Targets World War 2.2', and aren't they titles to add texture to a reading blog? I read somewhere that John wrote the first of these alternate history megabooks to make a pot of money and prove he could, and so he did. I'd say this type of thing is not my bag, but as I've now completed all three of them (about 12cm worth) perhaps it is.

It's 2021 and a top secret navy science experiment goes wrong and a cluster of high-tech naval vessels and a few thousand crewmembers are transported back to early WW2. The sudden delivery of nuclear warheads and super weapons tech and the fore-knowledge of history plays out across a cast of dozens. How does Hitler respond to knowing the failure of his grand plan, his suicide; how does Elvis feel about being idolised as a child for music he will make as an adult, or perhaps never now make. I don't know enough real history to appreciate the details of these novels, unfortunately. Some actual history should go on the reading pile.

January09_4

2009-02-05T21:22:00.012+11:00

'Best book of the year' is a poor claim in January, so I'll declare Joan Didion's 'The Year of Magical Thinking' one of the best books I've ever read. This is a slim book about grief, which is a poor advertisement for this moving, intelligent, emotional and pragmatic memoir. Joan's husband dies suddenly while her adult daughter lies near-death in hospital. The minutes and months following John's death are described in a loose narrative but it was the brilliant clarity of her self-awareness, reflecting on her experience of grieving and loss and self-delusion that was so devestating and such a privilege to read. Joan being Joan Didion, she researches and investigates the science of grief, the psychology and literature of death, and reflects and disects with the grace and skill of a brilliant and well-trained mind. She goes mad when John dies, so she says. She writes, much later: "Grief turns out to be a place none of us know until we reach it.... We might expect that we will be prostrate, insonsolable, crazy with loss. We do not expect to be literally crazy, cool customers who believe their husband is about to return and need his shoes." I don't know anything about grief; thank goodness I don't, but now I have a perspective on it, and I walked in the world with a greater sensitivity to the fragility of things for a time.

Two sci fi books filled the gap to the end of January. I've read Robert Reed before and remember the flavour of his novels: dense, serious, conceptual, clever, moral. 'Down the Bright Way' is a grand concept: a portal between all imaginable alternate Earths is the pathway for a million-year journey by the Founders, looking for the Makers (sci fi always sounds like complete dross in summary). Big concepts, brilliantly wierd imagined Earths, all of it reduced by Robert's inability to write characters I gave a stuff about. So it was mildly enjoyable, and forgettable.

I was embarassed to read 'Blind Lake' in public - one of those classic sci fi paperback covers with goggle-eyed aliens in an eerie landscape, no less. Turns out the cover doesn't do the book justice, and this was a better read than Reed's book. Never heard of Robert Charles Wilson, but he's been a finalist in the Hugo (according to the cover) and can write an engaging yarn. In the very near future we discover a barely-understood technology which gives us a window to spy on a distant alien world. The scenario of the story is surprisingly domestic: scientists working at the research site - a small town at this stage - are put into unannounced quarantine and people behave like people do under stress. Just a terrible cover.

I need a non-sci fi option now, so I'm grazing.

January09_3

2009-01-17T21:13:00.008+11:00

From brilliant new Australian fiction to blockbuster American girlie pulp: Judy Blume's 'Summer Sisters'. Mildly entertaining chick lit about a rich girl/pool girl friendship across a couple of decades. Judy Blume is a name from my early teenagerhood; I'm sure she wrote 'Are You There God, it's Me, Margaret', which I remember as a dangerous book for 12 year old girls.

Moved on to finish John Marsden's 'The Journey'. I have a lot of respect for John Marsden, as a teacher, an advocate for literacy and young people; he wrote the 'Tomorrow' teen series and a stack of books about boys and powerful, thoughtful parenting. But 'The Journey' is wierd; it's a piece of fiction tracing the rite of passage to adulthood of a 15 year old boy who sets out from his home, alone, to travel the country, broaden his horizons and grow into a man. So he discovers his body, comes to respect nature, becomes independent and resiliant, works, meets oddities and finds understanding of the diversity of humankind, has sex, falls in love, faces danger... the story seems to be a structure shaped around a checklist of life lessons. There is a lot of exposition of ethical concepts packed into dialogue or thoughtful reflections. It's nothing like contemporary teen fiction; it seems absolutely without irony, thoughtful and earnest rather than knowing. I can't imagine G reading it - when he's 13? 15? - but it's a primer for all the stuff that's hard to talk about, so I'll keep it on the shelf with all the other books I hope he'll read when he's older.

January09_2

2009-01-12T20:58:00.009+11:00

It's hard to write about 'The Slap', by Christos Tsiolkas, because it was gripping and devestating in one. I had read a short review about this book and knew it had a great set-up - a suburban BBQ in Melbourne, where a dad slaps another person's toddler - but I didn't know anything about Tsiolkas. I'm unresolved on this book. I couldn't leave it alone; it was an obsessive read, with the story - told by each of the key characters in sequence - completely absorbing. The moral issue is explored, a sequence of events revealed, all this is clever and credible, but as each voice is introduced and their actions are described and dialogue provided, under it all we hear their inner voice and it's bleak stuff. Racist, self-serving, self-centred, deluded, mediocre, mean-spirited suburban mums and dads and grandparents and teenagers who Tsiolkas submits as regular folk. I still feel affected by it, drained and exhausted by it.

Before Tsiolkas I read 'The Best American Crime Writing 2005' and I could be addicted. This edition (part of the fabulous 'Best American' series (Essays, Travel Writing, Sports Writing etc)) was edited by Jameds Ellroy, and I expected to just dip into it on recommendation from W. But I dipped in at the back (an article about a wildly successful doctor who fell into drug addition and crime) and kept reading until I reached the front, skipping a few but enjoying most.

January09_1

2009-01-06T23:26:00.013+11:00

Forget John Marsden, I'm reading 'Deep Survival' by Laurence Gonzales. It's dazzling.
I bought this book for $2 at a garage sale, which is an unprecedented sum given it had no slipcover. With no slipcover I had no cues to follow, no back blurb, no subtle dance of graphics and typeface to lure me in, so the few paragraphs I browsed in the garage were mighty persuasive.
Gonzales writes about why some people live through great adversity, and some don't. There is a lot to say about this book, but here's a little bit that gave me pause:
"Most people operate in an environment of such low risk that action, inaction, or the vicissitudes of brains have few consequences... Mistakes spend themselves harmlessly and dies out unnoticed instead of growing out of control." And isn't that the decription of a Sydney marketing manager's life mode?
Gonzales says most people don't get any practice in pain or crisis, so we have no mental map for it, and consequently most of us deny, freeze of panic when faced with catastrophe. He offers up story after story of horrible deaths, freak accidents and astonishing survival stories and all the while I'm reading this thinking 'I'd be dead right now. When the tree falls on my leg, I'm lying down to die right there'; it's depressingly revealing.

Playing catch-up

2009-01-03T21:25:00.030+11:00

It may die in the ass, but I'm engaged with the idea of noting down everything I read this year. I restarted reading on 1 Nov, not a moment later, and began immediately with shiny Sunday supplements and nasty junk reading, of course. I have no restraint at all. It took weeks to catch up on all the glossies which had been waiting for me in their bags. It was delicious, and overwhelming.

My first post-denial book-reading was Nick Harkaway's 'Gone Away World'. It was a brilliant premise, wildly imaginative. The first half was amazing, delicious, then it fell apart for about a third, then came together again to finish. I may not have done it justice, though; reading it when I was starving, I gulped it up and had no patience. I'll read his next book, when it comes. Nick is John le Carre's son, so it was a literary sensation, much-anticipated, etc, and worth the hoo haa.

I finished Barabara Kingsolver next. She's great. She'll stay with me. Oddly, one of the most startling moments in the book was unrelated to her local food story; in passing she mentions that she didn't let her kids play with weapons or anything that acted as a weapon or to play killing in any way and I was struck by how much killing/play my kids do. It stopped me in my tracks.

I'll have to check the shelves to note the other books. A couple of fantasies, of course:
- Fourth book in the Price of Tides series. It was necessary to finish the series but felt like work.
- Two books about mobile cities chewing each other up in a witty post-apocalypse adventure-scape.
- I've just finished something I can't believe I didn't read when I was 16: Julian May series about the Pliocene - 'The Many Coloured Land' and 'The Golden Torc'. There are more in the series, but I'll be able to resist.

I've browsed 'Once I was a Princess' (the second book: Once Again I was a Princess? When I was a Princess?) I'm repelled by Princess Yasmin's constant name-dropping and media-attentiveness, mildly interested in the abduction drama (she gets the kids back) and impressed by her good works. Autobiography has a moral authority on the bookshelf, but this sample is just a different brand of candy.

I'm now reading John Marsden, 'The Journey' - a young adult book with such insistent recommendations on the back I was obliged to buy it. It's shaping up as a teen new-age coming of age story about a 15 year old boy from the Country who sets out on a Journey of Discovery. Generally this is not my thing at all, but on day 3 he discovers masturbation, and I've never read anything so odd: practical, emotional and new-agey. So of course I need to keep reading.

It's done

2008-11-03T21:52:00.035+11:00

October is dead, long live November. It was much harder than I thought to go 31 days without reading, but it's done and I'm a better woman for it. For a little while, at least.

I spent the weekend with friends in print: I read Maggie Alderson's whimsies, Adele Horin on school league tables and Stephanie Dowrick on reading, of all things. Stephanie was writing about reading as part of a communion of ideas; that writing and reading are fundamental social activities. She wrote: "We read books individually, but part of their wonder is how authentically they connect us to other people, regardless of where those people are."

I exit one book-free month in compete agreement with Stephanie, and with some guidelines for future reading:

Reading is food. Choose wisely, limit the junk, balance main meals and dessert. I'm talking about a little less fantasy, but I'm really putting the stopper on shiny Sunday supplement stories about trends, food and relationship case studies. Life is too short for weekly 'magazines' with 'Life' on the masthead.
No reading at breakfast, except weekends if I've been good.
Consider where the other fresh inputs are coming from; reading definately, but travel, new experiences, new people have to be on the agenda. (Life suddenly looks exhausting.)
Reading at night is a great and good thing.

Brain food

2008-10-27T22:08:00.029+11:00

30 minutes on public transport without a book is cruel and unusual punishment. I read the ads. I almost read Rebus over a shoulder. Eventually I chewed over my current preoccupation: brain food.

Reading is a brain food delivery system. If junk food tastes good but has no enduring value, so too a narrow diet of fantasy fiction (or romance, or crime, or whatever your junk preference). Choose from the healthy options menu and you'll grow up big and strong. I need to balance my diet of Barbara Kingsolver (more please) and Robin Hobb (only for treats). This metaphor could go far.

So if you don't read, are you starving your intellect? I'm stretching a metaphor but there may be a chicken nugget of truth in it.

3 week summary

2008-10-25T20:19:00.084+11:00

One more week to go.

Things I have done in the past 3 weeks which I wouldn't otherwise have done:

Written a blog. I like it.
Gone for a walk, just for the hell of it. I like this too.
Painted a large abstract canvas with the boys in the garden. It's called 'Flower of Truth', named by G. I don't know what it means, either.
Discovered several new TV shows on Foxtel: 'Breaking Bad', and something about a psychiatrist.
Online shopping.
A lot of washing.
Stupid amounts of Work.

Things I have not done in the past 3 weeks:

My tax return.
Read other blogs (where do they all live?).
Gone to the dentist.

In the past 3 weeks Work simply expanded to fill the space left vacant by reading, especially after the boys' bedtime. Every night the dilemma, what to do, what to do? Bedtime is horrible without a book, so I'll prop myself on the sofa with a movie and my laptop and get a whole lot of Work done. After 10.30 I'll watch any old bit of Lifestyle Channel tat, sending e-mails to bemused co-workers at midnight. All this TV and Work just to avoid going to bed empty handed. You'd think I could find something better to do.

Becoming less interesting

2008-10-18T22:02:00.019+11:00

I am becoming less interesting, this is certain. My internal dialogue is boring even me. Coming out of my mouth is chat about kids, work, property, schools, gardening, family news and gossip plus old views, established opinions and well-rehearsed positions. In the absence of new inputs I'm stalling. I think if this went on too long I'd stop altogether. How does the brain stay fluid if you don't read?

Library lady

2008-10-17T22:56:00.013+11:00

I was the library lady today, stacking books at G's school. I like to do it when I can, and J seems to enjoy it, or enjoy the box of dinosaurs under the counter. I drifted over to the FAN shelves - did you know that primary school libraries devote an entire wall to Fantasy? Is this a Harry Potter-inspired recent phenomenon? At G's school the fiction department has Wonderland (picture books), Middle (chapter books) and Fantasy, each of about equal heft. I think that's remarkable.

Anyway, I made sure to sort the FAN books so I could browse the shelves and borrow a couple of books for myself, thinking the last couple of Sonya Hartnett books looked good... old habits die hard. I note for the record that I have received 4 lovely magazines in the mail this past fortnight, which remain in their shiny plastic bags, quietly tormenting me.

The living room pile

2008-10-12T13:46:00.063+11:00

Another highly productive weekend. I'm exhausted.

There are two big piles of books in my house; one in the living room (books in transit) and one by the bed. To occupy the empty (book-free) hours while the boys sleep, I'm sorting out the living room pile today. It's illuminating.

Waiting to be read:
Barabara Kingsolver, 'Animal, Vegetable, Miracle' (I didn't finish it before the new world order commenced; I've been describing it to everyone I know based on the half I have read, probably wildly innacurately.)
Celia Lashlie, 'He'll be OK' (About raising boys into good men; barely skimmed the first chapter so far and I'm a bit scared of it. Parenting books are usually exhausting and demoralising.)
Philip Reeve, 'Mortal Engines' and 'Predator's Gold' (Young adult fantasy about vast mechanised cities which float above the ground and prey on each other for raw materials; a really great idea I think.)
Sherri S Tepper, 'Shadow's End' (Now this is typical; great sci fi, but have probably already read it and just can't recall.)
Edith Wharton, 'The Buccaneers' (A garage sale buy, again I've almost certainly read it but can't recall plot, character or flavour.)
Julian May, 'The Many Coloured Land' (Classic fantasy which I think I missed when I was in my teens but I know it's superb. I feel exhausted just looking at this fat onmibus edition, though, so this one may stay unread for a few months yet.)
Carlos Ruiz Zafon, 'The Shadow of the Wind' (One of those A&R 'Top 100' books I was marketed into buying. I have started it but couldn't get into it, so this one may remain unread.)

Recently read and going back to their owners/garage sale/bookshelf; heaps of fantasy, you can see I was drowning it it:
Patrick Rothfuss, 'The Name of the Wind' (I was furious when I got to the end and realised it is part one of more. Wonderful, strong, engrossing book.)
Jennifer Fallon, The Demon Child trilogy, The Tide Lords trilogy (Loved the Tide Lords, indifferent to the Demon Child.)
D M Cornish, 'Monster Blood Tattoo' Book 2. (Long-awaited sequel to a ripper of a first book. It's being marketed as young adult fantasy but it's Harry Potter-esque, with a keen adult market, dense and witty.)
Matthew Derby, 'Super Flat Times' (Recommended by Z. Awful, mean-spirited, dark and dour sci fi about a bleak future. Tasted nasty, I couldn't finish it.)
Elizabeth Moon, 'The Serrano Legacy' (Another omnibus, vastly fat. I adored every bit of it and didn't talk to my family for 2 weeks. This is the third omnibus, just imagine the inches lined up on the bookshelf.)

I am obliged to note that the 'recently read' list is a good deal less diverse (and less worthy) that the 'intending to read' pile. Perhaps my new reading regime (post-31 October) needs a rationing system for fantasy?

The point of reading

2008-10-09T22:23:00.029+11:00

Watching Showtime this evening (I don't read anymore, you know), seeing Bob Carr talking about the TV mini series 'John Adams', about the US president and the war for independence. Bob's erudition and comprehensive knowledge, seemless and passionately expressed - that's the product of great reading, surely? Reading that absorbs the reader, then wedges in the brain as a ready resource.

I'm reminded of why I've given up reading this month: because I mostly read junk that pours through me like water through a sieve, leaving nothing behind. Mostly just the flavour of the book remains; I can't recall the author, the character's names, the ending. This is especially true of all the fantasy I've been reading the past year or so - delicious, absorbing, but leaving nothing behind.

I've been thinking this week about the point of reading. If I read and love the reading but retain almost nothing, then was it valuable? Or is it just giving time away?

Breakfasts are hard

2008-10-06T20:16:00.017+11:00

I have somehow survived an entire long weekend without reading. Not surprisingly, it has been an extraordinarily productive 3 days.

The hardest times are breakfast and bedtime. Breakfast is such a civilised time to read; it's a slow wake-up, a long pause between sleep and the day kicking off. Perfect for the weekend supplements, for fluffy articles on social trends and voyeuristic case studies, book reviews and movies; Good Weekend, Sydney's Child, Organic Gardener, the Monthly, InsideOut. Breakfast is strictly for glossy stock. On Saturday I like to read Spectrum and rip out reviews and ads for things I'd like to think we'll do. Every now and them I'll clip an article and stick it into a giant blank book I've had for a decade or more; when I go back to it now the articles track a predictable life story like surfing a beige middle-class zeitgeist; travel, pregnancy, parenting, property, more parenting.

Where the time comes from

2008-10-04T20:56:00.039+10:00

A while ago I was talking to Russ who said he hadn't read a book for 6 months because his wife banned him from reading. She said he was completely useless when he had his head in a book. This is a busy man, looking after a couple of kids and painting houses around parenting, so book reading was time invested for no return. He seemed comfortably resigned to the ban.
One of the blokes I work with read his first book this year last month, on holidays. He says he'd like to read more, but doesn't have time so reading is a strictly holiday-time experience.
P made a vow to read one book a month this year, and has clocked 3 books so far, so the average isn't looking good.
I've chatted to a half dozen people recently about reading, and there's a common theme: most people can't imagine where the time comes from to read, and I can't imagine how you can brush your teeth without a book in one hand.

Powerful forces

2008-10-02T21:18:00.010+10:00

I didn't realise what powerful forces of habit and desire were at work when I opted to give up reading for the month. Today I've stopped short in the act of picking up a book, browsing the pile of magazines heaped on the kitchen table, sliding my favourite SMH supplement out of the office paper pile... at every turn I'm reaching for some words. The house is a minefield due for a sweep. There are piles of books in the lounge room (current reading, books just arrived, and books waiting to go back to various lenders), and a stack of magazines and newspapers on the kitchen table, all shiny and alluring. A dozen or so books beside the bed (current, just read, waiting), more magazines beside the sofa (recently read, can't bear to throw away). I keep drifting toward these lovely piles of words.
Tomorrow they're all off to the studio to rest out of sight for the month. Like a chocoholic on Weight Watchers, I know it's best to put distraction out of reach.

Withdrawal

2008-10-02T21:11:00.003+10:00

I woke up with a stomachache on this first day of abstinence. J woke at 5.30am, still a bit jetlagged, so I settled him on the sofa and reached for a... oh dear. No book, empty hands, what to do? Cue stomach pains. I think my body knows this is a bad idea, missing a critical input already.

It's mad, but I feel bereft.

Over breakfast I decided that catalogues are not banned, and read Big W. To be clear about the rules: Books (ficton or non-fiction), magazines, newspapers and the shiny wekend supplements are all banned. Catalogues, mail and documents I have to read for work are allowed. The stack of magazines I should read for work, but usually don't look at, are safely ignorable for another month.

All this denial is supposed to open the door to all the other things I talk about doing but don't. Blogging (so far so good). Working out how to edit video. Paying bills. Sorting out my super. Toilet training (J, not me, I'm fine).

The big idea

2008-10-02T21:06:00.004+10:00

I read a lot. The usual ways: in bed, over breakfast, on the sofa in front of the TV, Saturday mornings with a cup of tea. The unusual ways: in traffic, brushing my teeth, while cooking, a book propped up on the sil as I do the dishes. On the toilet, of course. And the rest, which I'm not proud of: while driving, while ignoring my kids.

I've found taking holidays usually sprouts one or two bold ideas, and this past holiday - with the kids to New Zealand - was as usual. I was reading - of course I was reading - Barbara Kingsolver's 'Animal, Vegetable, Miracle', about her family's year of seasonal eating. Clever concept, topical, passionately expressed. The notion of denial was immediately appealing. I've been feeling bloated with Western excess, full up and sick with it. And I was reading Barbara as the kids played Lego or fell about each other in a sequence of family motels; reading Barbara rather than romping with my boys in New Zealand.

Reading has a moral authority, sure it does. If you read, you gain automatic credit points for brains, for engagement. How could it be wrong? I read, I have fresh conversation at the ready, I'm surely right to read so much, so much... but just now it feels cowardly. I read instead of something, I read rather than something. Surely with 2 little boys all the ignored alternatives are more deserving of my time?

I think Barbara put forward the idea of denial and holidays always make me receptive to change, so here I am: not reading for a month. Of course, following Barbara's lead, I first thought of giving up for a year. Very neat, very grand and expansive. I felt nauseous just considering it, and settled on a modest month. October 2008. We'll see how it goes.