WARRIORS OF BATAK
Campagna, Dan (Task Force Games, 1982)
Somewhere in the last century, the boilerplate book cover for fantasy roleplaying products became a picture of two magical warrior women in cleavage-armour confronting each other from the backs of dragons[1]. Continue reading
MAKE ART MAKE MONEY
Elizabeth Hyde Stevens 2013 ISBN 9781477817384
My attention was first drawn to this book when Mary Robinette Kowal mentioned on Writing Excuses that she had recently recorded the audiobook version. The idea sounded fascinating – an examination of how Jim Henson balanced the art side of his work against the business side of his work, and yet somehow managed to do the miraculous, and wildly succeed at both. Continue reading
IN A DARK WOOD WANDERING
Hella S. Haasse (trans. Lewis C. Kaplan and Anita Miller, Arrow Books, 1989, ISBN 0 09 9744708)
In a Dark Wood Wandering appears to be a compulsory part of any good second-hand bookshop collection. Though compared at its release to The Name of the Rose and similar works of medieval-based fiction, it seems to have been largely forgotten. Impelled by its glorious cover, despite my mother’s warnings not to judge a book that way, I have attempted several times to start this book. As a medievalist and historical literature fan this novel seemed theoretically ideal. Sadly, the effort required in getting into the novel was not well repaid. Continue reading
An occasional viewer of ABC’s First Tuesday Bookclub, I tuned in the other month to see the “classic” up for review was Anne Tyler’s Dinner at the Homesick Restaurant. Having nursed a fierce loathing for that novel since studying it for English in year 10, I watched, somewhat in the hope of having my opinion confirmed. Obviously I knew by then that teachers don’t intentionally assign books students will hate, but I was still surprised when a majority of the panel loved it. “To reject this book,” one panelist gushed (to paraphrase), “is to reject the nourishment of life.”
Well then.
To clarify, I wasn’t one of those students who refused to read assigned texts. I didn’t, either, automatically hate assigned texts. I actively enjoyed reading and analysing most of the set books*. On learning a friend in the literature class* had to write an essay on 1984, I became very excited and volunteered to write it for her*. Nonetheless, Dinner at the Homesick Restaurant is one of the three assigned books I hated with a passion. They were as follows:
THE HOLE THE FOX DID MAKE
Emily Carroll
The Hole the fox did make is an elegant, beautiful and restrained ghostly tale presented as a drawn story. Saying too much will give away too much, and in any instance, Hole the fox did make is short enough that you can and should just go ahead and read it right away.
If you like that, the author, Emily Carroll has several other charming, scary, radiant stories at her site. The art style is strongly modern with what might almost be a pop art / literary vibe to it. In terms of art, I’m reminded of something partway between You’re All Just Jealous of my Jetpack and Hark, a Vagrant, but with a clear strong storyteller’s voice rather than one-off humorous jibes.
HALF OF A YELLOW SUN
Chimamanda Ngozi Adichie Fourth Estate, 2006, ISBN: 9780007200283
Chimamanda Ngozi Adichie’s Half of a Yellow Sun was, from memory, a very fashionable book to have read some years ago. It achieved great success worldwide, receiving the Orange Prize for Fiction in 2007 and many positive reviews. Set before and during the Nigerian Civil War, the novel examines colonial and post-colonial Nigerian politics, white attitudes towards black Africa, international reactions to the Civil War, nationalism and varying forms of hypocrisy, amongst other themes. Despite the sharpness of Adichie’s criticisms, though, the novel is easy to read and very accessible to those who, like me, have little background knowledge about Nigeria or the Igbo people. Continue reading
BEAUTIFUL DARKNESS
Fabien Vehlmann and Kerascoët ISBN: 9781770461291
A cast of cute little characters show us the horrors of humanity via the childish conceits of pettiness, jealousy, greed and two-facedness. Sound familiar? If yes, you’ve obviously watched shows like The Apprentice or, y’know, just met… people. And all this is set throughout the turning of four seasons in a forest next to, around and on the corpse of a little girl. Continue reading
THE FIREBIRD MYSTERY
Darrell Pitt ISBN: 9781922147752
I must first declare an interest. I too am a steampunk writer, living in Brunswick and also published by Text (we also have the same shirt size).
The Firebird Mystery is a fast paced romp through an alternative steampunk England, set between the wars – think The 39Steps with teenagers and robots. We met orphaned circus acrobat, Jack Mason, and try to keep up with him as he and his companions, Scarlet and Mr Doyle, pursue a dastardly criminal conspiracy through chapters of ever increasing stakes. I could almost hear the orchestra playing the ‘chase’ score from the Saturday morning adventure series as I read. Continue reading
THE THIRD HORSEMAN: CLIMATE CHANGE AND THE GREAT FAMINE OF THE 14th CENTURY
William Rosen ISBN: 0670025895
Before I begin, let’s get one thing straight. I love me a bit of Black Death. Plague? Bring it on*. I also love meteorology and all that Earth Science business. Needless to say, when the author of Justinian’s Flea comes up with another evocatively titled tome hinting at that crazy little climate anomaly a few decades prior to the Black Death, my heart does a little hop, skip and jump… then promptly falls into a vat of lukewarm melted chocolate. Continue reading
IMAGINARIUM OF DOCTOR PARNASSUS
Dir. Terry Gilliam. Prod. William Vince. Perf. Charles McKeown, Christopher Plummer, Heath Ledger, Jude Law, Verne Troyer, Colin Farrell, Johnny Depp, and Tom Waits. E1 Entertainment, 2009. Film.
Watching the Imaginarium of Doctor Parnassus feels like hearing somebody recount their dream. Both bore you for the same reason: because anything can happen at any moment, there exists no suspense. We feel no anxiety when thugs chase the hero, since at any moment the sky may spit asunder and disgorge platoons of patchwork pharaohs or motorcycle-riding crayfish to rescue him. The ground beneath the pursuers’ feet may turn to treacle. The wind may blow in an opaline mist of bumblebees in frockcoats that halts everybody in their tracks. Even as they herd him to the edge of a precipice, we know that a flying teacup may appear to whisk him out of their reach. Continue reading
THE TASTE OF RIVER WATER
Cate Kennedy
ISBN: 9781921844003
I must confess that the description ‘always accessible’ on the front inside jacket of Cate Kennedy’s new and selected poems The Taste of River Water got my hackles up.
It made me think of compromise, of poetic vision marked with footnotes, and mystery sacrificed through dogged meaning. It’s not that I thought poetry should be hard to understand, it’s just that it should be wild and free and grown from a fickle chip of the heart, and not inviting any old somebody in for a cup of tea and a bickie. Continue reading
BIRDSONG
Sebastian Faulks (Vintage, 1994, ISBN 0099387913)
It might seem a strange choice for a 14-year-old girl, but Sebastian Faulks’ WWI period piece Birdsong was one of my favourite books through high school. Possibly the first properly ‘adult’ literary novel I ever read, it provoked a deep emotional response and stoked a brief obsession with the distant horrors of the 20th century. I am also quite certain it rekindled my childhood terror of birds, a fear I share with the novel’s chief character, Stephen Wraysford. I recently reread the book and was pleased to discover that most of my initial impressions of it remain true: the book is not a light read, but it is a marvellously fluid one. It is evocative and heartbreaking. Most importantly, like any good historical novel*, it works to reveal new aspects of a well-studied time period and of the people who endured the First World War. It does not glorify the war or its soldiers, both official and unofficial. As we near the hundredth anniversary of the war’s commencement, Birdsong still holds an important message about the nature of the First World War in the historical imagination. Continue reading