Do you know I just got a shock as I wrote that and then matched up the date: February is almost over. I wasn’t paying attention.
Well, apart from the extra reading I’m now doing for work, I’ve also been borrowing a lot of books, dipping in and out of them at my leisure. The majority of these are below.
Richard Flanagan and David Foster Wallace are a funny coincidence, now I think of it: they’re both excellent, but I have an easier time reading their non-fiction work than their novels. I’m not sure why that is. Foster Wallace’s essay ‘Big Red Son’ on the American porn industry straddles the line between tragedy and comical farce in such a way a lesser writer would fluff it up. I spoke about And What Do You Do, Mr Gable? just the other day. I like Flanagan’s political writing – his profiles on Bob Brown, Mark Latham and John Howard were particularly interesting.
(Partly because I remember this best vandalised billboard of all time, from the elections in the early 00’s)
Cat’s Eye is slow going, but that’s only because I’m having trouble getting through novels at the moment.
Cate Kennedy’s collection of poems moved me to tears twice: during ‘Picasso’s portrait of a young woman’ and ‘8 x 10 colour enlargements $16.50’. The latter, especially. It reminded me of home, and the dusty community halls where such occasions as a competition or a gathering bring together the local pastoral population. The quiet, humility; no ego and the narrator says:
They left, and all this passed into silence:
unremarked and unacknowledged
that’s why I’m telling you now.
Lovely.
Humor me: an anthology of funny contemporary writing is new-ish (2010) and to be honest some of it is just okay, however David Sedaris’ ‘A Plague of Tics’ about his OCD is fascinating and Ian Frazier’s ‘Lamentations of the Father’ had me laughing out loud in the train. People looked at me strangely (yes, I suppose I’m one of those kinds of people who laughs to themselves in public). Any parent will get a chuckle. But why read it when you can watch it here?!
And the Nora Ephron I’m not started yet.
So, I think we’re up to date! Tell me what are you reading?
