Week 11 Book 1- Read the signs and buy the tissues

No crazy ravings this time around- novels are harder to rant as completely about as memoir from people you admire.

The Book Thief is the story of the young teenage girl, Liesel Meminger, as narrated by Death. Set in Nazi era Germany, Liesel's father is a communist who is arrested by the Nazis. She and her brother are to be placed in foster care with Hans and Rosa Hubermann in Molching- her brother dies on the train and then her mother disappears. Hans Hubermann is a mild mannered house painter who spends some of his nights playing accordian in bars and Rosa Hubermann is a hard woman with a big heart who does laundry/ironing for a living and calls people by insults instead of names. Liesel cannot read but she starts "collecting" books. At night she wakes screaming after nightmares and Hans Hubermann teaches her to read during the night hours when she cannot sleep. She befriends Rudy Steiner- a local boy who wants to be a super star athlete and who keeps trying to get Liesel to kiss him. The Hubermanns collect another stray in the form for Jewish street fighter called Max Vandenburg whose father fought with Hans Hubermann in WW1. Max takes up residence in the Hubermanns' basement and he and Liesel develop a friendship.

I've owned a copy of The Book Thief pretty much since it was first realised but I've never been in the mood to read it even though my erstwhile book club read it a few years ago. As I did a great deal of Jewish history at uni, people tend to believe that I love me a book on Nazi Germany but truth be told like most people I have to be in the mood for something that depressing. More than some books on that era this book has some clear neon signs to where it might end up with the combo of Nazi Germany and children, and the fact that it is narrated by Death. I mentioned in my last post that I'm not a laughing out aloud person when it comes to books, crying in books is however a completely different kettle of fish. If children or animals who I've got to know in the book are harmed I will almost certainly cry and if it is adults in harm's way there is a chance that I will cry at that too. This book is very much hard going towards the end if you are prone to crying whilst reading and don't forget this book is technically for young adults. The horror and sadness aside this is profoundly good first novel from Markus Zusak. The characters are delightful- Liesel is brilliantly precocious; Rudy scrappy and adorable; Hans undeniably honourable; Rosa funny, tough and full of love for her family. The sections of the book devoted the drawings and stories that Max writes for Liesel are lovely- except one (it will be obvious to all which one this is). Liesel's growing love and understanding of the power of words in a country that was partially destroyed by the power of one man's words is a great plot. The book does have its flaws and in my mind the main issue is that it works too hard to fit in the traditional Nazi Germany cliques with its basement dwelling Jew and cruel Hitler Youth leaders. In many ways the Hubermanns' world is too good for the dark world around it. Hans and Rosa (even with her insults) have no grey, they are pretty much all white, and so are most of the main characters as the Nazi juggernaut or support for it is not a factor for any of them. The other main issue is Zusak's translation of the little German he uses. Zusak translate immediately following the German and as most of the German is pretty basic it was like reading the line twice- it would have been better left out or not translated in the main text of the novel. That said nice to see such a quality book from an Aussie author. Definitely worth the read and I think good for the young adult audience it is aimed at but don't forget the tissues.

There is a really cool cover with a girl dancing with Death but this is the cover of the edition I read which is still pretty good

I had to pull my bookshelf apart to find one but I needed a more cheerful book after The Book Thief so my next book is The Death of Bunny Munro by Nick Cave.....

Week 10- Please Marieke you are embarassing me on public transport

It only took two and a half very sleep derived days (I had stuff on both nights and still read until 1am) but I've finished Marieke Hardy's un-put-downable memoir.

You'll be Sorry When I'm Dead is a collection of short snippets of Hardy's life charting from her desire at age 11 to be a prostitute, to her love of alcohol, to stalking her idols, to her friend's battle with cancer and much more. Parts of some of the chapters have been previously published as part of Hardy's column/articles in The Age and Frankie. The chapters are largely unconnected and not in any kind of chronological order. Hardy also gives those she spends words on a chance to rebut or simply add to what she says of them.

I must confess that I have a bit of massive hero worship vibe when it comes to Marieke Hardy-I think that much as Hardy named her dog after Bob Ellis, if I owned a pet I might just be inclined to name it after her (if she keeps going on the trajectory she is currently charting)- and that said I'm at the same time mildly jealous of the fact that she has managed to be so awesome whilst being not that much older than me. I came a bit late to the Hardy appreciation party what with The Age being a Melbourne paper and with some of her time on triple j being part of a co-hosting gig with Robbie Buck and Lindsay "The Doctor" MacDougall- I've liked Robbie Buck's hosting skills since I was a teen but took years to warm to the Doctor beyond his being in Frenzal Rhomb and I initially found him mildly annoying as a radio host (put away your pitchforks, time has been a friend to my appreciation of his hosting and I quite like the Doctor nowadays- in fact I was listening to him this arvo). I gradually started to listen to Marieke Hardy on triple j a bit more and found her quite an interesting voice on the radio- partially because she seemed to find similar things amusing to me. Then I became mildly addicted to First Tuesday Book Club and though I didn't always agree with her, at least she wasn't trying to get people to read Atlas Shrugged, and I quite like her accessorising- I really wish I could pull off the massive flower in the hair look anywhere near as well as she does or in fact at all. And that is without mentioning the fact that she wrote Laid (one of my current favourite TV shows), that her twitter feed is one of the most entertaining out there and that she is a contributing editing for Frankie (one of only two magazines I ever buy- the other being Vanity Fair- and truly amazing at that). It was all I could do not to be anxiously lined up at a store waiting for the release of her memoirs but I realised that I'd just started a new job and that if I started it I may have not slept until I finished it, so I tried to hold off buying it for a while. I lasted two weeks before I caved and could no longer resist buying it.

I am one of those people who can find a film, TV show or, in particular, book hilarious without laughing out loud about it. People I know talk about how much they laughed reading a particular book and I respond with "yep that was funny". This book was not one of those. People say that they feel awkward sitting on buses or trains or anywhere public and reading about sex (personally I don't but I can understand why you might) , but on the embarrassment scale this palls in comparison to laughing your arse off in public whilst others go about their business calmly and sensibly. I'm going to make a giant claim and say funniest book I've ever read. I think this may be because Hardy's sense of humour from what I can ascertain is somewhat like mine- a bit bawdy, a bit left of centre and more than a bit unapologetically in your face. This definitely isn't the book for everyone. If you are right wing voting, stay away. If you are offended by humour involving cancer or alcohol, there are other books for you. Most of all, if you find people being open about their sex lives hard to deal with, back away fast- the book includes close encounters of the prostitute kind, swing happy fun, and that's just to name the acts that have a whole chapter devoted to them. You could always selectively just read the chapters on letter writing (this and the cancer chapter were the most hilarious in my opinion), stalking Young Talent Time stars, caravaning with her olds and love of her erstwhile football club (I still cannot believe that Hardy managed to get me not only to read but also to enjoy a chapter devoted to AFL, a sport which I consider second only to curling to be the one of the most ridiculous sports known to humanity). If you still find this appealing, even if you are not as Marieke Hardy enamoured as me, beyond funny it is profoundly well written and in some ways quite brave (a lot of exposure for those cave dwellers (and international guests) who are foolish enough not to know much of Hardy in past) and Hardy's idea of giving people the right of reply surprising works outstandingly.

Second bout of crazy almost stalker-isque gushing over. I'm enjoying The Book Thief very much but I'm going to desperately fight the urge to blubber incoherently about it as I have about Jonathan Franzen and Marieke Hardy's respective memoirs.

Week 9 (a bit late)- How to avoid drooling on the shoes of someone who admire

This is the post you were promised on Sunday but ultimately I was too busy and thought that it might be best to wait until after an event I was at earlier tonight. What event you may ask? Well back in the day (or at least when I was a child) the Opera House was the place for the things like opera, ballet and symphony concerts and little else. Nowadays as good as that all is (except the opera which barring La Boheme isn't my idea of fun) it is much better. In recent years it has played host to Bjork, Massive Attack and the Cure (I was at the 2nd of these but I'm forever kicking myself for missing the other two). It has a yearly festival devoted to graphic art and combo-ing it with music (last year I saw a live reading by Neil Gaiman which was accompanied by the brilliant Fourplay and Kevin Smith talking about his work as a director for literally five hours of geeky brilliance, and this year I saw an animated Gotye concert), another devoted to crazy ideas (I've missed this every year but will finally be going for the first time this year to see Jonathan Safran Foer) and random talks/in conversations from brilliant people. The brilliant people recruited by the Opera House in the last couple of years also happen to be people I somewhat worship- Stephen Fry and Joss Whedon (one of the biggest regrets I have in my life (how little I regret) is missing it) last year, and this year (last week in fact) the profoundly brilliant Alan Ball and finally getting to tonight, my current big time literary crush Jonathan Franzen. I even had the opportunity to getting him to sign my newly brought copy of Freedom but was so scared of a) forgetting my name, b) forgetting how to talk and c) possibly drooling on his shoes, that I ran away. Where is Clare going with this? To the book I read last week which was Franzen's memoir The Discomfort Zone.

Those who have read The Corrections and/or Freedom will likely think that Jonathan Franzen grew up in a crazy house with a odd family (discovered tonight he would call the families in his novels "interesting" not "dysfunctional" so I will honour his stance on this). The Discomfort Zone which was written in the almost ten years between these novels shows that this was not really the case. Franzen's memoir is short tales of segments of his life across many years. He opens with the death of his mother, then moves onto his development of a love of reading through the works of Charles Schulz and his early school years as the youngest by many years of the three sons in his family, then to his involvement with a very odd Christian youth group in his early teens, then to he and his school friends pulling school pranks in the later years of high school, then to studying German at college and desperately questing to get shagged, and finally to bird watching and divorce.

I know all one of you who regularly reads this blog is probably screaming ENOUGH already as I have already read and blogged about The Twenty-Seventh City during this Novel Challenge vibe and since I read it back in January I've made numerous illusions to The Corrections (I mentioned it in the last post even). Sadly for you, there cannot be enough in my opinion. The Discomfort Zone did have its weak points, to my mind particularly the final chapter, but like Franzen's fiction it is honest and funny and astounding. If I didn't already love his talent, I would have simply adored the fact that he loves Peanuts comics (I may read "serious" graphic novels for "adults" but Charlie Brown and co have always been my favourite comics), that he studied German at college (I kept challenging myself to read the quotes from German literature without cross referencing the footnoted translations but in all but one case my high school German failed on me) and that when pulling prank that involved relocating chairs in his final year of high school that he marked the tables with their original location. There is great combination of lightness and soul barring honesty in the way he looks back at his teen years and childhood through the lens of adult experience. I'm not a big memoir reader (though oddly am reading another one right now) as I often feel that they tend to be at least mildly bitter and/or maudlin but this is thankfully miles from being either. I'd recommend it more than The Twenty-Seventh City but less than The Corrections (as I continue on my quest to brow beat everyone I meet to read The Corrections- I cannot believe how few people have read it and if you are one for them seriously READ IT or I may have to beat you round the head with my copy of it when/if I see you and it ain't a small book). That is grading on a Franzen scale though. On a regular scale it is still better than pretty much everything.

With all that gushing praise, you can hardly be shocked that I thought there was too strong a chance of my making a fool of myself if I met him even for the brief moment it takes to sign a book. I have to add this isn't all as I watched him tonight contend with an interviewer who was a) verbose and b) clearly nervous/overawed (the interviewer was so nervous that he accidentally called Franzen, James at one point and this guy writes literary reviews for The Australian so probably meets great writers on occasion...seriously what chance did I have of avoiding foolishness had I shouted down my fears and lined up for a signature). He showed a great for language in the spoken form as well as on the page as he came out with statements like "Twitter is like cigarettes. (mocking Tweeters) I'm too anxious to read a novel so I'll tweet instead" and when he was asked a particularly complex question just as the period for audience questions was due to begin "the red light for audience questions is on so I feel the urge to leave that question unblemished by an answer". He also spoke in favour of ignored writers in particular female ones and against the canon (I know he has done this in the past but the neglect of female authors in recent years cannot be highlighted enough in my opinion and there are large sections of the canon I dread and so am more than happy for people to tear it to shreds). I cannot praise him enough and I'm happy to do so in slightly ambiguous internet land...but as people have said you should never meet your idols and though they were talking of being disappointed in my case it is more about feeling unworthy, talking like a crazy person and/or not being able to talk at all. I will leave my gushing praise with a likely to be broken promise to my blog reader out there that I will try and hold off on reading Freedom until the Novel Challenge is over so I don't feel inclined to blog on it but it is already starring me down so I don't know how long I'll hold out.

Next, I'm reading two books at once, both by Australians in fact, and I blame another idol of mine, Marieke Hardy, for the two books at once vibe as she just had to release her memoir the other week and I just couldn't wait any longer to get me a copy. So the next post will either be in The Book Thief or Marieke Hardy's You'll be Sorry When I'm Dead- likely the second one as even though I started The Book Thief several days ago and You'll be Sorry When I'm Dead today, I'm quite powering through it.

Belated Week 8 Book 2- Evolutionary Biology and Art

Busy week and so delayed couple of posts (one to come tomorrow). First book finished just under a week ago was Jostein Gaarder's Maya.


An English man called John Spooke (later revealed to be a author) opens the novel by introducing (and preempting the fact he will be bookending) a long email by Frank, a Norwegian evolutionary biologist, to his estranged wife, Spanish palaeoanthropologist, Vera. John doesn't explain how or why he has the email, or a postcard from Frank to Vera, he only reveals that he and Frank met on a small island in Fiji. Frank's email details what happened in Fiji. Frank had been travelling through New Zealand to research lizards and to escape the memory of his separation and the death of his small daughter (and deal with the fact he will soon see Vera at an upcoming conference), and he decides to spend a few days at a eco-tourist resort on the small Fijian island of Taveuni- the island lies directly on the international date line and supposedly is very beautiful. On the island he meets a weird collection of characters; John Spooke- an English novelist working on a documentary on the turn of millennium (the novel is set in 1998) and mourning the death of his wife, Bill- an overbearing American retired industrialist, Laura- an Australian hard core environmentalist addicted to her Lonely Planet guide, an Italian sailor, some American honeymooners, and, most importantly, Jose and Ana- a mysterious Spanish couple who are a journalist and flamingo dancer respectively. Frank uses his knowledge of Spanish to eavesdrop on Jose and Ana as they wonder the island sprouting odd sayings that only they can understand about religion, science and philosophy. He and John are both fascinated with the Spanish couple (though John cannot understand them) and both believe that Ana is oddly familiarly though neither can figure out from where- when Frank catches Ana and Jose nude bathing he even realises that her face may be familiar but her body oddly isn't. In the evening the whole cast of characters sit around the dinner tables and discuss the origins of life and their own religious views. Frank develops an attraction to Laura with her dual pigmented eyes and her stubborn beliefs- the novel's title comes from several things amongst them Laura's brahman belief system. Frank also spends his nights philosophising with a gecko who has invaded his hut - he names the gecko Gordon after the gin brand of a bottle the gecko wraps himself around. It is much talking of philosophy, evolution and religion. Trying to determine, why we are here, why we think humanity is so important and what is the meaning of life is.


Well Gaarder's meaning of life is much longer than Douglas Adams's answer but it is almost as inexplicable. Gaarder made a massive splash with Sophie's World and most people haven't read far beyond that. A few years ago I suggested The Christmas Mystery as an easy Christmas time read for my then book club and most people weren't huge fans- I have to say I think it is decidedly better than Twilight which they all made me read (I got my revenge at length for that one by speaking their ears off for about an hour about how much I detested it). Personally I like Gaarder but I will say a lot of his books took more than one start for me to get into- this is my second attempt at Maya, The Castle in the Pyrenees I have yet to come back to, and The Orange Girl took three attempts before I got through it and loved it. In my last blog, I said that I couldn't feel much for the principle characters in The Beautiful and Damned. Thankfully Frank is most more appealing mainly because I like characters who have stuff in common with me even if it is something minor- e.g. I loved the character of Clare in The Time Traveller's Wife because she spelt her name the same way as I do and I loved the wholly unlovable Chip in The Corrections because he was an academic who spoke in the kind of language I was taught to speak as an Arts graduate/ PhD student- Frank won out as an evolutionary biologist which but for the choice of the humanities over science might have been my career path. I found most of characters interesting and the philosophising thought provoking and still quite like Gaarder love of being more than a bit meta. I also loved that Frank named the gecko Gordon- I'm not sure if The Wall Street illusion was intended but it made me laugh. A few minor points, read The Solitaire Mystery (my favourite Gaarder novel) first as Gaarder has a few philosophical points and minor plot point that he returns to repeatedly in his novels and many of these were first found in The Solitaire Mystery. Following that I had a massive annoyance with the character of Laura, not her stubbornness or her views but the fact that Frank says she is Australian and then it is VERY quickly revealed that she is from the US and that she has only been in Australia for a few months- it would be very foolish for anyone to mistake an American for an Aussie!

In good news for people who aren't yet sick of me talking about books, the Novel Challenge has been extended by a month so you get one more month of book related blogs. Tomorrow all about Jonathan Franzen's The Discomfort Zone....

Week 8 Book 1....It's about time those jazz babies grew up

In what has been a very hectic week for me, I'll somehow manage to read two books, and likely start on a third. More on the second one later but first F. Scott Fitzgerald's The Beautiful and Damned.

The Beautiful and Damned is one of Fitzgerald's two vaguely autobiographic novels (the other being Tender is the Night). It is the story of Anthony Patch and Gloria Gilbert- somewhat modelled on F. Scott Fitzgerald and his wife Zelda...before she went somewhat off the rails. Anthony and Gloria are the perfect jazz era couple. Anthony was orphaned as a small child and raised partly by his prohibition loving wealthy grandfather and mainly by private schools in Europe and later Harvard. In his 20s, he spends his days lazying round his New York doing nothing and then at night he emerge to go out on the town with his friends, Dick Caramel (an aspiring novelist) and Maury Noble (Anthony's best friend and like Anthony, he does pretty much nothing all day). One day he meets Dick's cousin, Gloria, a Kansas girl who has gained a name around New York as a bit of party animal. Gloria is beautiful but cold and though she has dozens of men questing after her, she doesn't want to settle for any one man yet. Both Anthony and Gloria declare that they will never marry. Gradually this is forgotten as they fall for each other and ultimately marry. The problem is of course that these jazz darlings are under the surface pretty much just grumpy teens and their marriage quickly flounders as she wants to live beyond their means and he just starts to drink more and more.

I came to F. Scott Fitzgerald late. Many people land The Great Gatsby as a study novel in high school but alas it was on the lower level course the year I finished high school and so I studied works from prior to the 20th century and then just to add some "fun" Waiting for Godot (that play still fills me with a cold dread). I finally read The Great Gatsby last year and I thought it was masterful- I don't think it is the best novel ever written or the "Great American Novel" but it's up there. Whilst I was travelling last year, I read Tender is the Night and I thought it was better than Gatsby (disagree if you must but it's a greater novel in my books and is knocking on the door of being one of my favourites). I found The Beautiful and Damned somewhat of a let down after Tender is the Night. I think it is largely because I didn't warm (in a good or bad way) to either of the main characters until quite late in the piece when I developed a tiny slice of sympathy for Gloria. I found them both so profoundly childish and so completely in denial about the realities of life that I just wanted to scream "GROW UP ALREADY!"- especially by the end of the novel when she is approaching 30 and he has already passed it. The only minor thing that get my attention early on is the half hint that Gloria might have got an abortion which was only notable because she and Anthony hint at not wanting the baby they think she might be pregnant with and then said pregnancy disappears without further mention, and abortion was just SO beyond illegal even in the period in which the book is set- oddly fascinating methinks.

The writing style is good and it is easy to read but I'd be shocked if anyone had as much affection for this as Fitzgerald's other works. I did like the minor characters in particular Dick Caramel and Gloria's friend Muriel but they couldn't completely redeem it. I also will say that I wasn't a fan of the section of the novel where Fitzgerald decided to write it like a play instead of a novel. Good compared to some fiction, even some fiction that would be deemed "classics", but it has none of the pathos of either Gatsby or Tender is the Night, and the characters cannot hold you as Jay Gatsby, Daisy Buchanan and the Divers do.

It's the last month of the crazy novel fest I feel I should add. First book of the last month (I finished The Beautiful and Damned on Wednesday but didn't have time until now to blog) is Jostein Gaarder's Maya which I will probably finish tonight so you may get a new post tomorrow....who knows?