Category: Books

It was an inspired choice for The Monthly to pick Robert Forster (ex-Go Betweens) as their regular music columnist, and his piece each month is pretty much the first I read. This book is a collection of his recent album reviews, finishing with some touching vignettes about his recently deceased songwriting partner Grant Mclellan.

It’s an awesome collection of pieces, probably because he was allowed to write about any album or topic he liked; Delta Goodrem sitting alongside Cat Power and the Yeah Yeah Yeas. Clearly most excited by older artists like Leonard Cohen, The Monkees and Dylan, he finds plenty to like about recent stuff (Antony / Franz Ferdinand etc..) and talks with authority about the musician-stuff, like the mix on albums, and the choice of songs, the order, and the tempo.

If a man can make me read (and be fascinated by) a chapter about Delta’s recordings, he’s a rare talent, and this man has it. 5 stars.

Let me say right now that this was without doubt the best book I’ve read in the last twelve months. Possibly in years. It was like Steven Amsterdam predicted McCarthy’s “The Road” and then took it to a new level, producing short stories around the practicalities of building a new society after a climate-change induced collapse, and dealing with illness and despair.

It’s been a long time since I could say that I would stop after reading a story on the tram and not begin a new one unless I could finish it in one sitting. I found myself in a rare please-don’t-end state approaching the finish. It’s not for everyone, but the compromised characters and visions of a desperate foodless world are wonderfully realised, and make for a great (if short) collection. And he’s Australian – amazing! 5 stars.

The cover has captivated me for months and the reviews were good enough that I was compelled to buy “Look who’s Morphing” by Tom Cho last week. I read it almost immediately.

Before I do my customary bagging, let me say that it was very fresh, silly and whimsical (and contained an awful lot of morph), and I didn’t detect the smear of dull inner-suburban sameness that I often sense in Aussie books. The feeling that someone in the tram next to me with slightly more imagination and willpower had managed to grit it out and produce a collection of tales.

Now for the downside. How many short stories can you begin with the words “Auntie Wei was always doing crazy things” before it becomes tiresome. Only David Sedaris is funny enough to pull this off year after year, and by halfway I was sighing a little. The continual pop-culture references were a bit alienating to me, not having watched Dirty Dancing, Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtles or Transformers enough to find references to them cute or endearing.

Still, you’d have to be a real Myki-hating, cheerless misanthrope to not find something to like in these little stories about identity and transformation. And the absolutely awesome Cock Rock story was the perfect ending – I won’t spoil it for you, but it was extremely and unexpectedly erotic. 4 stars.

Two books have lain unreviewed on my desk for weeks now. They are both barely worthy of one – the first (Shop Class as Soulcraft by Matthew Crawford) is a seemingly a pyschology student’s PHD submission, or an earnest attempt at a remake of Zen and the Art of Motorcycle Maintenance with lots more rhetoric and general dullness.

The other (The Day I killed my Father by Mario Sabino) evoked what I felt after reading The White Tiger earlier this year – (is this the theme of 2008/9 or what?)  after presenting a destestable person whose sins you are expected to forgive and forget by the end of the book. Soooooo Tony Soprano and I’m over it! 2 stars for both.

In a fit of disgust I’ve gone back to agonizing Sudoku puzzle books and to a crime novel to freshen me up. I’m a bit worried that I haven’t given a good positive book review in months and that my Warcraft life is sucking the reading pleasure out of me. I’ve still got some good books in the pile so there remains hope for 2009.

For once, I found something worth reading at the Preston Library. Increasingly urked about “The Spare Room” by Helen Garner being only available in hardback – jeez it’s been over a year now, stop milking the bucks PLEASE, I succumbed to borrowing it. Plus, Oliver Sacks “Musicophilia” was lying around and I figured what the heck.

Musicophilia, which I am amazed to say I read through without any skipping, was mostly observations about people who’d turned up in Sacks’ Neurological Clinic, and the weird and wonderful ways they experienced music. It talked about people who were pitch perfect that had lost this ability after traumatic head injury, and about music’s ability to coax speech or even movement out of people who’d had strokes, brain surgery or Parkinsons Disease. There were so many odd annecdotes that expressed a lifetime of analysis in this field, that it risked becoming dull, but the writing was lively. The man has met a lot of oddballs in his work, and doubtless been inspired by many of them (enough to write a novel about them even) – see “The Man who Mistook his Wife for a Hat” for example. 3.5 stars.

I had read WAY too many reviews of the The Spare Room to ever give this novel a serious chance at a 5 star review. From the very beginning I felt I knew the plot, the martyrdom, and the stubborn zest for life that is Garner, and I ended up thinking that my mother would act exactly the same, but without the same old-hippy stylings. I just love how she’s completely unafraid to say that at times she despised caring for her old ailing friend. And even if Text Publishing are able to gushily announce it as “her first novel in 15 years”, I KNOW this in an autobiographical story, so you might as well just call it non-fiction. Hey, maybe they changed a few names and suburbs around. Short, unsentimental, brimming with judgement and anger, it’s still a great book. 4 stars.

In my late teens or early twenties I seemed to go through a minor Russian period in my reading, perhaps begun by Solzenhitzen and his war accounts. I have memories of discovering delightful parables of Russian peasant life but in recent years, every time I picked up a book by Checkov, I had my doubts. I remembered longer books too, and he’s really mostly famous for short plays. So when I picked up Fathers and Sons (1861) by Ivan Turgenev recently, it was with great hope that I’d found my missing author.

Turns out I was wrong, although it wasn’t an unpleasant discovery. The sort of book that a gifted English Lit teacher could have a field day with – explaining to pupils the significance of the older and newer generations and their unwillingness to compromise, talking about what a nihilist is, the country versus city ideals and maybe even something about the final days of the serfs. As per usual, I read it as a straight love story pretty much, which although frustrating for all the usual reasons of civility, restraint and miscommunication, was quite touching in the end, and was a steady joy to read. 4 stars.

p.s And no, I did not read the 60 page introduction beforehand. It would have spoiled things.

I’ve been describing this book as Bill Bryson without the humour, which is a huge disservice really. Whilst Don travels the U.S the poor way via Amtrak pre-Barrak, we get all sorts of glimpses of the American population with their contradictions, with particular emphasis on the religious, which seems to be an obsession of his.

The reviews I’d read of this book made note of his balanced, and even overly forgiving take on U.S policy and lifestyle, but I’d argue that he was more the smiling gentle assasin; some of his criticism being very sharp at times.

Even though I’ve tired myself out on American travelogues, this was particularly breezy and yet thought provoking, and I found myself always ready to read another chapter. No wonder he’s won a lot of awards for it. Read it! 4.5 stars.

Almost certainly I was drawn to the more titilating aspects of this 1978 work from Amis (Kingsley, not Martin) but after a ride through libido-sapped Jake Richardson’s group therapy, his use of a nocturnal mensurator, and non-genital sensate focussing sessions with helpful wife Brenda, I got just as tired as he was of it all. A book that really shows its age, with a grumpy unlikeable misogynist at the helm. I know it was supposed to be satirical, but that’s just a mask for a writer going through a bad patch. 2 stars.

Sorry, another short book review. Following hot on the heels of my last Murakami is this little autobiographical piece primarily about his marathon running, which was not quite as interesting as I’d hoped. Apart from marvelling at the guy’s sheer physical constitution (who else can run 15-30k a day without fail for years in their mid 50’s?) and some interesting insights into his general work ethic and routine, I found myself thinking he’d told me too much. And that was before his revelation that he always ran bare chested.

A pleasant book, but I was left a little unsatisfied. 3.5 stars.

I waited a year before finally finding a copy Mark E Smith’s Renegade in paperback for under 50 bucks, and it was well worth it. Surely the most unlikeable, autocratic band frontperson on the planet, Smith has produced a compulsive slapdown of ex band members, mixing political commentary with some cheap score-settling, general negativity and unexpected glimpses of home life. He’s a guy who hasn’t probably laughed in twenty years and whose current Fall lineup is always his favourite, until they walk out on him.

It was a complete blast. The explanation for the front cover of “Fall in a Hole” showing Marc Riley gleefully arriving in New Zealand at the beginning of the 1981 tour was hilarious. 4.5 stars, but you have to know The Fall to enjoy this one.