I am pleased to say that in 2012 I have passed my reading total of last year, which wasn’t very hard at all. I am trying to not just buy books on a whim and slowly work down my modest pile of 20 or so, but it is as if I can no longer relate to purchases from 4 years ago. Might as well throw them in the recycle bin I reckon.
This month I finished books by lauded Australian authors Murray Bail and Gerald Murnane. Both write in a deceptively simple style, and were hugely compelling (especially the Bail one) but in both I felt I regularly missed the point. They have a lot going on under the surface.
The Pages by Bail is an original and voyeuristic story which just whizzed by. I felt disappointed that the dead philosopher at the heart of the book didn’t really have anything of genius to say, and yet somehow the mild revelations about his uneducated farmhand brother weren’t much of a triumph either. I suspect I have been watching too much simplistic crime TV lately and seem to want clean endings somehow. Bail also probably deserves a more attendant reader really. 3.5 stars.
A History of Books by Murnane was his usual circular, confessional, fiction but not really fiction stuff. I found myself getting irritated by the continual use of the word “image-” as a prefix to anything imagined and the self referential writing was sometimes disappointing to me. The 3 smaller pieces towards the end of the collection were just wonderful though, and saved the day. I still think he is a national treasure, but I would never recommend him to anyone. 3 stars.