Monthly Archives: June 2013

‘The Post Office Girl’ by Stefan Zweig

Posted by Kate W in Fiction and tagged with , , , , , ,

This is less of a review and more of a bossy list.

In regards to The Post Office Girl by Stefan Zweig –

DON’T read the jacket blurb (it gives too much away). Instead, all you need to know is this: The story is set in provincial Austria just after the World War I and is about a post-office worker, Christine. She looks after her ailing mother and leads a grim, poor life. Then comes an unexpected invitation – her rich aunt, who lives in America, writes requesting that Christine holiday with her and her husband at a Swiss Alpine resort. At the resort, Christine glimpses a life of luxury and privilege that astounds her. But Christine’s aunt drops her as abruptly as she picked her up, and soon the young woman is back at the post office, consumed with disappointment and bitterness.

DO read it, particularly if you’re taking part in a translation reading challenge or one that involves books set in different countries (it ticks the box for Switzerland and Austria). Continue reading →

Graeme Simsion and The Rosie Project

Posted by Kate W in Stuff and Nonsense and tagged with , , , , ,

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Last night I had the pleasure of popping along to the Fitzroy Town Hall to hear Graeme Simsion talk about his worldwide bestseller, The Rosie Project.

As I have mentioned, The Rosie Project is the only book I’ve read this year that I’d recommend to everybody – it’s very funny, it’s romantic (but certainly not in a schmaltzy way) and there’s a few twists to keep you reading right until the very last page.

Simsion’s path to publishing The Rosie Project was unusual. Although he had always harbored a secret desire to write a novel (and in fact read Hemingway and Miller in his twenties and thought, ‘Okay, I can do that!’, only to discover that it was not so simple), he embarked on a career in IT. And then he read a life-changing book – The Unkindest Cut by Joe Queenan. It’s a true account of trying to make a movie on a $7000 budget. Simsion, excited by the thought of doing the same, persuaded his wife (who is an author) to make one of her stories into a movie. Simsion set about writing the screenplay, filming it and eventually showing it in Melbourne’s Kino cinema. The exercise cost more than $7000… Continue reading →

This is depressing…

Posted by Kate W in Stuff and Nonsense and tagged with ,

so many books so little time

Recently, two different people, on two separate occasions, have made similar comments to me that have made me think about what books I’ll read in the future.

The first person, commenting on their travel plans said something along the lines of “I go overseas every two years. I figure I have about twenty years left where I’ll be fit enough to travel independently. So I’m down to choosing my last ten holidays.” Good grief, that’s depressing.

Then a few days ago, a friend commented that after ordering invitations for her 40th birthday party, she realised she was probably halfway through her life. Also bloody depressing.

But these two things made me think. I have passed the 40th milestone and don’t care about ‘getting older’ or aging however I do fear failing eyesight. On discussing aging with my husband, I said that my greatest fear would be not being able to read (thank goodness for my Kindle with its gigantic font setting, should it come to that).

Reassuringly, based on the fact that I could get through at least 70 books a year (more than 70 when I retire and spend my days reading) and I might bet on another 40 years, that’s 2,800 books I can still read. Phew.

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Top 10 Books I’ve Read So Far This Year

Posted by Kate W in Fiction and tagged with , , , , , , , , , , ,

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By this point last year, I’d read The Art of Fielding by Chad Harbach. Had I not read another good book for the remainder of the year, I would have been satisfied that 2012 had been a ‘good reading year’. In fact, 2012 got even better when I read Lisa Klaussman’s Tigers in Red Weather.

But 2013 is another story.

When I saw this week’s Top Ten Tuesday topic – best books read so far this year – the first thing I thought was ‘This year, I haven’t found ‘the one’.’ I’ve read some great books (as the list below demonstrates) but I haven’t found the one book that I press onto everyone I meet.Yet.

So this list of excellent books comes with qualifiers – I loved all of these novels but I’m not necessarily recommending them to ALL THE PEOPLE (although The Rosie Project comes darn close). Continue reading →

‘The Mussel Feast’ by Birgit Vanderbeke

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I’m fairly sure I haven’t read a novel that is, in its entirety, a monologue. For that reason alone, The Mussel Feast by Birgit Vanderbeke and translated from German by Jamie Bulloch was an interesting reading experience.

It’s billed as the “…German book that has shaped an entire generation” – I guess if you’re going to make a statement, make it a big one.

The Mussel Feast is the story of a mother and her two teenage children, who are sitting at the kitchen table waiting for their father to return from work. They have prepared a large pot of mussels for dinner – the mussels are a ‘special occasion’ dish for the family and they’re anticipating news of the father’s promotion. But at the usual hour, their father has not returned home and the mussels go cold.  What has happened to him? Continue reading →

‘The Red Book’ by Deborah Copaken Kogan

Posted by Kate W in Fiction and tagged with , , , ,

Am I alone in thinking that books about school/ university reunions are a bit lazy? The formula is pretty standard – throw together a few characters from wildly different socio-economic backgrounds for a night,  make sure they bring their ‘baggage’, add alcohol and sit back and watch the fireworks.

So if reunion stories are a dime-a-dozen, why do people keep reading (and for that matter writing) them? For the same reason people actually go to reunions – to see who got fat/ aged badly/ got their ‘just deserts’.  Of course, I say this with all the authority of someone who has only ever been to one reunion and who isn’t on Facebook. Am I wrong? If so, please tell me.

A reunion is the setting of Deborah Copaken Kogan’s The Red Book. In fact, it’s the 20th reunion of the Harvard class of ’89. At the centre of the story are room mates Addison, Clover, Jane, and Mia and their spouses and children. We can tick the boxes on stereotypes – Addison is a trust-fund child who lives large on mummy and daddy’s wealth and connections; Chloe grew up on a hippie commune and craves structure and security; Jane is driven and over-achieving, adopted as a young girl from Vietnam; and Mia is a former actress who put her dreams on hold to raise her family. Continue reading →

My TBR Stack – You Decide

Posted by Kate W in Fiction and tagged with , , , , , , , , , , , ,

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I wasn’t going to participate in Top Ten Tuesday (hosted by The Broke and the Bookish) this week simply because talking about what books are at the top of my TBR list is ludicrous given this…. The situation is made all the more ridiculous by the fact that I have 40-something unread ARCs in my NetGalley queue and let’s not even get started on the ‘virtual’ TBR stack on my Kindle.

But then I read Bookshelf Fantasies ace post on choosing vacation reading – there was a poll! I loved it! I voted! I stole Lisa’s idea! Here it is!

 

Please vote – it will decide the order of (some) of my TBR stack.

Note that it may not be the freshest, shiniest bunch of new releases but all of the books I’ve listed have been sitting on my shelf since last year and all qualify for my Off the Shelf reading challenge… And if I complete this challenge I’ll feel justified in spending up big on new books at the end of the year. Yay!

 

‘Big Brother’ by Lionel Shriver

Posted by Kate W in Fiction and tagged with , , , ,

Is Big Brother by Lionel Shriver a cautionary tale or a motivational story? I won’t reveal although regardless, the answer is open to interpretation.

Shriver draws on the ‘sliding doors’ element of The Post-Birthday World and combines it with sly social commentary, a la So Much For That and the result is Big Brother. It’s the story of Pandora, her husband, Fletcher and her brother, Edison. When Pandora discovers Edison is down on his luck, she invites him to visit her and her family in Iowa. But when Pandora goes to pick Edison up from the airport, she doesn’t recognise him. In the years since they’ve seen one another, the once slim, hip New York jazz pianist has gained hundreds of pounds.

“I lay on my back in bed while Fletcher folded his clothes… Finally I said, “I had no idea.” After slipping between the sheets, Fletcher, too, lay in a wide-eyed stupor. We seemed to be experiencing a domestic posttraumatic stress, as if recovering from an improvised explosive device planted at our dining table.” Continue reading →

‘Damage’ by Josephine Hart

Posted by Kate W in Fiction and tagged with , , , , ,

Do you believe in love at first sight? Or simply lust at first sight? You have to accept either as a possibility to become completely absorbed in Damage by Josephine Hart.

A quick read of the jacket blurb and a couple of choice quotes from the book and you know that this is car-crash reading – horrible, uncomfortable but you keep turning the pages nonetheless. For example, in the very first chapter –

“But I did not die in my fiftieth year. There are few who know me now who do not regard that as a tragedy.”

It’s the story of Stephen Fleming, a man who seemingly has everything – wealth, a beautiful wife (Ingrid), two children (Martyn and Sally), and a prestigious political career in Parliament.

“Marriage is not the gamble we sometimes say it is. Over its course we have some control. Our choice of spouse is mostly intelligent, as well as romantic…. No. Children are the great gamble. From the moment they are born, our helplessness increases. Instead of being ours to mould and shape after our best knowledge and endeavor, they are themselves. From their birth they are the centre of our lives, and the dangerous edge of existence.”

So with that quote in mind, you might be interested to know what happens next. Stephen shags his son’s fiancée, Anna Barton.  In fact, they begin an all-consuming affair. Continue reading →

Life’s a beach – top beach reads

Posted by Kate W in Fiction and tagged with , ,

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I’m taking this week’s Top Ten Tuesday topic (Beach Reads), hosted by The Broke and the Bookish, literally. I would like to say ‘literally’ in the sense that I’m posting this from the beach but no, it’s winter in Melbourne… So while my northern hemisphere friends are looking for light fiction that you can pick up and put down between swims, I’m bunking down with ‘wintery’ tomes. Nevertheless, the beach and swimming is never far from my mind so this week, I’ve picked ten five books that feature the beach. Continue reading →