Reddit, Fantasy Baseball and U.S Trip planning have combined to make this my worst year for reading books in a long time. But I’ve been really happy with the ones I’ve finished – this lot were done by March, and then a stressful work computer room move from Southbank to Docklands happened and before I knew it, May was over.
The Knausgaard book A Death in the Family was an easy, never-boring read, and thankfully I didn’t feel I needed to finish all 3600 pages of the 6 volume set to sense the mastery and confidence, and enjoy the density and detail. Like Proust, there’s every chance I’ll go back and finish it oneday. 4 stars.
The Diary of a Bookseller (Shaun Bythell) was a book Kim bought me, and having read a few of these over the years, I expected a slog, but he keeps it very fresh, making outrageous but amiable jokes about his part time staff, and some of the deadbeat customers he deals with in a small bookish town in Scotland. It was pretty funny and quite a success I thought. 4 stars.
A few years ago, I became enamoured with the idea we’d catch a freighter ship from Perth to London to get to Europe in the shortest time for a long non-flying holiday, but it never happened, however my subconscious may have kicked in at the 3MBS Book Fair, and I decided to read about it instead. And it was very revealing, in a sad Oh-boy-the-lives-people-are-forced-to-live kind of way. There are some wistful interviews with outgoing sea captains who bemoan the introduction of automated container loading (boats are now in port a number of hours, not days so workers get few breaks), and who feel the highly paid skilled folk are being forced out by computing and super cheap 3rd world labour, in an industry more opaque than any other. It was a terrific read, and I’m full of admiration for the writer Rose George (Deep Sea and Foreign Going), whose fastidious research shines through. Some of the Somalian pirate section was surprisingly tense. Highly recommended – 5 stars.
Finally, I thought I’d have a dig through Melbournian David Nicholls’ “Dig – Australian Rock and Pop Music 1960-1985” which had been sitting around awhile. Really well researched also, and although I didn’t read it cover to cover (mostly the second half), I thoroughly enjoyed it. He’s only a few years older than me, but has industry contacts and musical insights I could only dream of. One day I’d like to meet the Jacana man, whose Distant Violins fanzines I once bought and whose 3RRR radio shows introduced me to The Fall and lofi-pop. I even bought a copy of Dig for a mate. Onya David! 4 stars.