Readings.com.au: News

Free recipe for Chocolate Self-Saucing Pudding from The Real Food Companion

2010-03-18T00:00:00Z

Thanks to Murdoch Books here's the recipe for Chocolate Self-Saucing Pudding as found within the new Matthew Evans cookbook The Real Food Companion.

As you can see below, it looks completely scrumptious. Enjoy!

The 2010 Orange Prize for Fiction longlist announced

2010-03-17T00:00:00Z

The 2010 Orange Prize for Fiction longlist has just been announced. The Orange Prize recognises the writing of female authors as it 'is awarded to the woman who, in the opinion of the judges, has written the best, eligible full-length novel in English'. Here is the 2010 longlist:

The Very Thought of You by Rosie Alison (out in Australia next month)
The Rehearsal by Eleanor Catton
Savage Lands by Clare Clark (out in Australia in May)
Hearts and Minds by Amanda Craig
The Way Things Look to Me by Roopa Farooki
The Twisted Heart by Rebecca Gowers
This is How by M.J. Hyland
Small Wars by Sadie Jones
The Lacuna by Barbara Kingsolver
Secret Son by Laila Lalami
The Long Song by Andrea Levy
Black Water Rising by Attica Locke
Wolf Hall by Hilary Mantel
The Wilding by Maria McCann (out in Australia next month)
Black Mamba Boy by Nadifa Mohamed (out in Australia next month)
A Gate at the Stairs by Lorrie Moore
The White Woman on the Green Bicycle by Monique Roffey
The Still Point by Amy Sackville (out in Australia next month)
The Help by Kathryn Stockett
The Little Stranger by Sarah Waters

The shortlist will be announced on April 20, with the eventual winner to be revealed on June 9 2010.

2010 Miles Franklin longlist announced

2010-03-17T00:00:00Z

The longlist of books in contention for this year's Miles Franklin Literary Award has just been announced. The Miles Franklin is Australia's most prestigious literary award and 'is awarded for the novel of the year which is of the highest literary merit and presents Australian life in any of its phases'.

Lovesong by Alex Miller (Allen & Unwin)
Read our interview with Alex Miller about Lovesong.
The Bath Fugues by Brian Castro (Giramondo Publishing)
Read our interview with Brian Castro about The Bath Fugues.
Jasper Jones by Craig Silvey (Allen & Unwin)
Read our interview with Craig Silvey about Jasper Jones.
Sons of the Rumour by David Foster (Picador)
The Book of Emmett by Deborah Forster (Vintage)
Read our interview with Deborah Forster about The Book of Emmett.
Siddon Rock by Glenda Guest (Vintage)
Boy on a Wire by Jon Doust (Fremantle Press)
Figurehead by Patrick Allington (Black Inc.)
Read our interview with Patrick Allington about Figurehead.
Parrot and Olivier in America by Peter Carey (Hamish Hamilton)
Truth by Peter Temple (Text Publishing)
Butterfly by Sonya Hartnett (Penguin)
Read our interview with Sonya Hartnett about Butterfly.
The People's Train by Thomas Keneally (Knopf)

Congratulations to all the longlisted authors, and the editors and publishers involved with each book. The shortlist will be announced next month, with the winner being announced on 22 June 2010.

Bulb, Shrub, Shale, Love and Alchemy

2010-03-17T00:00:00Z

My favourite words of the moment are:

Bulb.

Shrub.

Shale.

Love.

and

Alchemy.

Words that sound the most whole, feel the most rounded and give flight to the most expectant of expectations as they come out of our mouths. Words that are onomatopoeic in their creation. They feel, mean and sound as full of their truth, their measure, as full of themselves, as they are so terribly, so beautifully, ordinary in our day-to-day conversations.

So, a book called Bulb will be promising and beautiful, with soft, rounded, tulip-y delights on every page. A book simply titled The Rose, written by THE rose-man, David Austin, has to be absolutely all about roses, and beautiful, so beautiful I'm sure there is a 'scratch and sniff' element in the binding. The Life and Love of Trees similarly, is quite absolutely definitive of our intimate connectedness to trees - even if we don't realise, understand or can't imagine it. From the boreal forest at the edge of the Arctic to rainforests girdling the planet; from giant, unseen, underground life forms to the possibility of life-saving unknown treasures in the high canopies - our life, our need, our love, of trees.

Sissinghurst sounds a little too sharp and sibilant for it's subject matter, one of the oldest estate gardens in England re-designed by the fanciful Vita Sackville-West and now written up as a fascinating history by her grandson, Adam Nicolson, but the story is a joy, a laugh, and an inspiration for the gardening dreamers amongst us. And similarly, Garden of a Lifetime: Dame Elisabeth Murdoch at Cruden Farm is a wonderfully produced history of her garden, with sections originally mapped out by Edna Walling, and followed through over 80 years, by the Dame herself.

But why the words 'shale', 'shrub', 'love' and 'alchemy'? Because of a number of things, but also because of the exquisite and heartbreaking book by Derek Jarman, Derek Jarman's Garden which was the last book he ever published. In it he documents his shingle and shale, lost-and-found garden created in Dungeness on the coast of Kent in England, overlooked by a nuclear power station. His little wooden shack and garden drawn with driftwood were (are) desolate, yes, but this artist, this extraordinary visionary, could find beauty, belonging, purpose and love in places we wouldn't even notice. To hold this book, to think about a life, a rose, a tree, a shrub and love. That is magic, there. True magic.

The Woman in Black: Madeleine St John

2010-03-16T00:00:00Z

Toni Jordan tells why Madeleine St John's delicious novels of manners are Australian classics.

Madeleine St John was, until recently, one of those Australian writers more recognised overseas than in her home country. (She was shortlisted for the Booker in 1997, yet few Australians knew her name before last year.) Text Publishing is in the process of resurrecting this remarkably fine, utterly seductive writer, re-releasing her novels in handsome new editions, with endorsements from everyone from Helen Garner to Michelle De Kretser. The Women in Black came first, followed by The Essence of the Thing – and now, this month, A Stairway to Paradise. Toni Jordan looks back over St John’s inviting oeuvre and tries to locate just what it is that makes her books bona fide Australian classics.

I would like to invite Madeleine St John to tea. Or better yet, cocktails. After reading the three of her novels reissued by Text over the past year – The Women in Black, The Essence of the Thing, and A Stairway to Paradise – I feel I know her.

We would meet in a dimly lit bar filled with worn leather couches. She would know the bartender by name. I can see her wearing a simple black shift, something by Gucci or Chanel. She would smoke, possibly balancing a thin ivory cigarette holder between her manicured fingers. She would drink martinis without ever becoming tipsy. She might wear gloves. She would be like the voice of her books: witty and cutting, insightful but ultimately compassionate.

‘Melbourne,’ she might say, tossing her head, ‘is a sad town, not, by the way, a city as they choose to pretend, not that they can know the difference. Sydney at any rate is undoubtedly a city, whereas Melbourne – well, there are of course some serious paintings in the Gallery, but nothing whatsoever more that pertains to a city; except of course for the cake.’

You see the difficulty? With St John, it is tempting to make the classic reader’s mistake: confusing the author with the characters in a book. Of course, she never said this line about Melbourne and especially never said it to me. I never met her and I don’t know if she’d ever been here. I have stolen this from a character in her first book, the glorious The Women in Black. But it sounds like something she might have said.

One of St John’s great literary gifts is dialogue, and every line in each of her books sounds like something that a real person might have said. Authenticity, though, is not the same as entertainment, and St John’s characters are as enthralling as they are true. The Women in Black is set in Sydney in 1960, in the ‘Ladies’ Cocktail Frock’ department of a thinly-disguised David Jones.

Australia is on the cusp of many revolutions: multicultural and sexual, as well as the breakdown of class structures. For some of her characters, the 1950s are hard to leave behind. Miss Baines, speaking about her supervisor: ‘It’s that Miss Cartright who’s a pain in the neck, excuse my French.’

And when Lisa, the teenage temp who’s just finished ‘the Leaving’, asks her mother if she can go to university, she asks her father.

‘No daughter of mine is going anywhere near that cesspit,’ said he, ‘and that’s final.’

I had forgotten that people spoke that way, but they really did.

For European immigrants Magda and Stefan, the world is a bigger place than Sydney, and ‘French’ doesn’t mean ‘pain in the neck’. Stefan is in bed, ‘reading a page of Nietzsche, as was his wont last thing at night’, while Magda was straightening the living room.

‘There is no law in this country,’ said Magda, ‘against men helping their wives to clear up the mess, is there?’
‘As a matter of fact,’ said Stefan, ‘I think there is.’

St John’s next two books are set in London, her home from the late 1960s. The Essence of the Thing, her masterpiece of manners that was shortlisted for the 1997 Booker Prize, is particularly rich in these genuine conversations that mix humour with sadness and the familiarity of people who know each other well. When Nicola’s long-time boyfriend, Jonathon, dumps her with no warning, she feels she has ‘died and gone to hell’. It takes her friends some time to realise that Nicola’s perfect relationship has come to an end. Geoffrey says:

‘Not her. That chic little Notting Hill set-up with the deluxe plumbing and the stuffed shirt laying down old claret. No way.’

At first Nicola is struck dumb with grief and shock, but eventually her spirit rises up: when Jonathon says he has no explanation for his decision, she says, ‘If you truly haven’t then I’m well rid of you, because in that case, it looks as if you’ve had a brain transplant, and I hope it didn’t cost much because if it did then you’ve been ripped off. I should see the Trading Standards Officer if I were you.’

Just like in real life, after this spurt of courage Nicola’s resolve falters and she backslides. After Jonathon asks her to leave the flat they own together she moves in with a friend, but she can’t stop thinking about him.

‘I hadn’t done a proper shop for ages,’ Nicola says. ‘There can’t be a scrap of food in the house.’

Her friend Susannah says, ‘You should worry.’ But, just like a real person, Nicola does. And she keeps ironing his shirts. Her friends despair of her.

‘You’re incorrigible,’ said Lizzie. ‘A hopeless case. Wherever did you come from? A nineteeth-century orphanage?’

Nicola’s father has his own advice to give about the straight-laced love rat, Jonathon.

‘He was well camouflaged,’ said Michael. ‘One has a ridiculous prejudice in favour of people wearing traditional costume. Better try one of these chaps with spiky hair and black boots next time around, he might take proper care of you.’
Nicola began to laugh and then to cry again.

A Stairway to Paradise, the latest St John book re-released, is again rich in her trademark dialogue, at once subtle and revealing. Barbara, an aimless young woman working as a nanny, has moved in to Claire and Alex Maclise’s house to care for their two children while Claire is away on a business trip. A lesser novelist would spend pages waxing lyrical about Barbara’s growing attraction to Alex, with whom she is destined to have an affair. St John does it in four lines of dialogue: Barbara talking to the housekeeper.

‘If you could find the time to iron Mr Rochester’s shirts,’ she said to Mrs Brick, ‘it would be such a help.’
‘Mr Rochester?’ said Mrs Brick.
‘Oh, God,’ said Barbara. ‘I must be dreaming. Sorry. I mean Mr Maclise of course. Goodness!’
‘It’s those kiddies addling your brain,’ said Mrs Brick. ‘Kiddies do that to you. You wait until you have your own. Mr Rochester’s the least of it.’

The ‘kiddies’ in this book are wonderfully drawn, funny little people. I can almost feel St John laughing as she wrote them: ‘Nothing so thin, so pale, so stick-like as a little boy. He seemed to be made of wire, his cranium full of tiny wheels and rods all turning, endlessly turning, producing their endless stream of speculations and conclusions, notes and queries’. Fergus, the ‘fiend in human form’ who distracts Barbara from her troubles, is delightful and energetic.

‘What would I do without you, Fergus?’ said Barbara.
‘You’d be in really bad trouble,’ said he.

There’s also a sense of playfulness in the linkages between the books. I loved discovering that Mrs Brick is the housekeeper in both of the London novels. In The Essence of the Thing, Jonathon faces a long drive from his parents’ house, so he listens to a ‘bootlegged talking book ... some footling tale about some shop assistants in an antipodean department store, fretting about their wombs and their wardrobes and other empty spaces – ye gods!’ There are others, but I won’t spoil them for you.

Perhaps St John’s pitch-perfect ear was tuned at Sydney University where she studied English and graduated in 1963, part of that astonishing year that produced Germaine Greer, Clive James, Les Murray, Robert Hughes, John Bell and Bruce Beresford. Her dialogue seems perfect for the screen and Beresford, her literary executor, has announced he will soon direct the film version of The Women in Black, to be called Get it at Goode’s, starring Guy Pearce, Monica Bellucci and Miranda Otto.

If she were alive today St John would be 69. All we have to remember her by are these wonderful lines. Does she really think that ‘the average man I suppose would rather be caught with his prick in his hand than a novel’? Or that ‘the thing that’s wrong with women is that they go on and on, and the thing that’s wrong with men is that they don’t’?

She died of emphysema in 2006, undoubtedly caused by all those cigarettes in her imaginary ivory holder. Text Publishing will be releasing the fourth and final Madeleine St John novel, A Pure Clear Light, later this year.

Second Life

2010-03-16T00:00:00Z

This story belongs to a friend of a friend of a friend, one of those other people who you pass every day without recognizing.

She was on a motorbike. She was crossing an intersection. And then she was caught under a truck somehow, being dragged across the asphalt with the bike sparking beside her. Two paramedic students, who happened to be passing at the time, attended to her body. The news crew arrived and filed the report of her death. The truck and carnage was in the background of the shot no doubt, just out of focus. The reporter would have been standing beside the road looking ruffled, kindly, saddened, urgent.

Except that she wasn’t dead.

The ambulance arrived eventually and she lived, against all odds. Some weeks after that, while she was recovering, she received a package. I don’t know how it arrived, perhaps through a friend of a friend of a friend. It was a DVD. She watches it at every opportunity now. And yet no one else shares the intensity of her fascination. They find it too difficult, too eerie. It’s the news report that never went to air, the story of her death.

In 2002, while the Hungarian writer Imre Kertesz was preparing his Nobel Prize Lecture, he received a large brown envelope in the mail. The letter had been sent to him by the director of the Buchenwald Memorial Centre, the concentration camp where Kertesz arrived, in 1945 at the age of sixteen. Contained within the envelope was a copy of the original camp report from that day, February 18th. In one of the columns, Kertesz was able to read about the death of prisoner #64,921 – factory worker, born 1927. Kertesz had made himself two years older, so that he wouldn’t be classified as a child, and had given his occupation as “worker” rather than student in order to “appear more useful to them.” The war ended before he was able to fulfill the Nazi prophecy.

It would be too easy, as Kertesz himself realizes, to draw from these stories, some belief in an otherworldly order, in some sort of providence, or “metaphysical justice.” To do so, would be to sever “the deep and tortuous ties with the millions who perished and who never knew mercy. But if we are destined to be exceptions”, Kertesz continues, “we must make our peace with the absurd order of chance, which reigns over our lives with the whim of a death squad, exposing us to inhuman powers, monstrous tyrannies.”

Thinking of these stories, I think also, though aslant, almost inappropriately I know, of Tom Ford’s recent, somewhat overrated film, A Single Man, and how, in the face of his immanent suicide, the main character’s world acquires again the colour and smell of miracle. For less than a day, he lives like an angel, drenched in the last beauty of things, in the toxic Californian luminosity. In one particular scene, he stops a woman on the street, so that he can smell the ears of her small dog, a smell that reminds him of buttered toast.

I can understand that desire to watch and re-watch the scene of my own death. I can imagine it becoming an obsession, the desire to feel the drug of its liberation as often as possible – that uncanny trick of time, and the taste of coffee perhaps, since I would watch it over breakfast, and drink coffee that I shouldn’t be able to taste, in the wash of morning sun that I shouldn’t be able to feel washed by.

The privilege which Kertesz shares with this motorbike survivor, is the tangible evidence of his own miraculousness. While the rest of us, survivors in our own less cataclysmic manner, and without the adamancy of such proof, must find our own ways to die, our own ways, every morning, to get reborn.

Bestselling books: March 8-14 2010

2010-03-15T00:00:00Z

The rise and rise of Melina Marchetta continues as her new book The Piper's Son - helped by events with Melina at the State Library and Readings Hawthorn over the weekend - sold more than any other title at Readings last week. See what our St Kilda kids' book specialist Callie Martin thought of The Piper's Son in her review.

Here are our best selling fiction and non-fiction titles from last week, excluding book sales from the Atheist Convention over the weekend.

BESTSELLING FICTION

The Piper's Son — Melina Marchetta
The Girl Who Kicked The Hornets' Nest — Stieg Larsson
Alone In Berlin — Hans Fallada
Cloudstreet — Tim Winton
A Stairway To Paradise — Madeleine St John
We Are All Made Of Glue — Marina Lewycka
Mr Rosenblum's List — Natasha Solomons
The Pregnant Widow — Martin Amis
Wolf Hall — Hilary Mantel
Lovesong — Alex Miller

BESTSELLING NON-FICTION

The Good Soldiers — David Finkel
The Age Cheap Eats 2010
Requiem For A Species: Why We Resist The Truth About Climate Change — Clive Hamilton
The Greatest Show On Earth: The Evidence For Evolution — Richard Dawkins
The Guide To Ethical Supermarket Shopping 2010 — Ethical Consumer Group
Malcolm Fraser: The Political Memoirs — Malcolm Fraser and Margaret Simons
Abla's Lebanese Kitchen — Abla Amad
On Passion: Little Books On Big Themes — Dorothy Porter
Animal, Vegetable, Miracle: Our Year Of Seasonal Eating — Barbara Kingsolver
Excess: Anti-Consumerism in the West — Kim Humphery

Bestselling books from the 2010 Global Atheist Convention

2010-03-15T00:00:00Z

The Rise of Atheism - the first Global Atheist Convention in Melbourne - took place at the Melbourne Convention Centre over the weekend. The event was an extraordinary success, one of the busiest events that Readings has ever been an official bookselller for.

Thousands attended and lined up after each session to meet and talk to authors including A.C. Grayling and Richard Dawkins (above) - who sat for more than two hours signing copies of his books - The Greatest Show on Earth and the 2006 bestseller The God Delusion.

Read Stephen Bullivant and Lois Lee's article about the Atheist Convention as published in today's Age.

Here are the top ten bestselling books as sold by Readings at the convention over the weekend.

ATHEIST CONVENTION BESTSELLING BOOKS

The Greatest Show On Earth: The Evidence For Evolution — Richard Dawkins
50 Voices of Disbelief: Why We Are Atheists — Russell Blackford and Udo Schuklenk
When God Speaks For Himself — Mark Tier
Thinking Of Answers — A.C. Grayling
The God Delusion — Richard Dawkins
The Life You Can Save: Acting Now To End World Poverty — Peter Singer
God is NOT Great: How Religion Poisons Everything — Christopher Hitchens
Ideas That Matter: Key Concepts For The 21st Century — A.C. Grayling
The Book Of Atheist Spirituality — Andre Comte-Sponville
Free To A Good Home — Catherine Deveny

Ian McEwan's Solar in the news

2010-03-15T00:00:00Z

One of the big literary releases of the year, Ian McEwan's Solar, is out this Thursday (and on March 30 in the US) and as expected it's starting to be covered by many a media outlet.

Nicholas Wroe interviewed Ian McEwan in The Age on Saturday.
Jason Cowley has reviewed Solar in the Guardian.
Lorna Bradbury has reviewed Solar in the Telegraph.
James Urquhart has reviewed Solar for the Independent.
Joel Yanofsky has reviwed Solar for the Montreal Gazette.
Andrew Marr has interviewed Ian McEwan for BBC News.
And Channel 4 News spoke to McEwan too. Watch the interview below.

Readings has Ian McEwan's Solar available at the special pre-order price of $32.95$23.95 up until the book's release this Thursday.

Oslo Davis on Ian McEwan

2010-03-10T00:00:00Z

Bestselling Teen Books: February 2010

2010-03-10T00:00:00Z

The final book in Gath Nix's Keys To the Kingdom series - Lord Sunday - was the bestselling teen book last month, beating out the ever-popular Robert Muchamore and Rebecca Stead's Newbery-winning book When You Reach Me.

Lord Sunday: Keys To The Kingdom Book Seven — Garth Nix
Secret Army: Henderson's Boys Book Three — Robert Muchamore
When You Reach Me — Rebecca Stead
Skulduggery Pleasant: Dark Days — Derek Landy 5. Hourglass — Claudia Gray
February: Conspiracy 365 Book Two — Gabrielle Lord
Breaking Dawn — Stephenie Meyer
Crocodile Tears: Alex Rider Book Eight — Anthony Horowitz
Brigands M.C. Cherub Book Eleven — Robert Muchamore
The Hunger Games — Suzanne Collins

The Next Couch Obsession

2010-03-10T00:00:00Z

And so with the first hints of autumn stealing into my days I have been idly wondering what telelvision show will be the next compulsive, obbsessive time-waster that will keep me cosy on the couch throughout winter. And then, lo and behold, there it is, glistening seductively on the shelf - an oldie but the one that began my fascination with 'arthouse' television. Yes, the weird and wonderful world of David Lynch as experienced through Twin Peaks is back on the shelves and on special this month. Blueberry pie, 'wrapped in plastic', and the delights of that small odd town 'Twin Peaks. Who could ask for more?

Oh, you could?

Well, how about the sublime family story of life, love and death - Six Feet Under? I could watch that again from start to finish and still remain weeping and devastated on the couch as I did when I first watched the whole series to its bittersweet, heartfelt end.

And then, if that isn't enough to have you glued to the plasma, sit through the first series of Californication and tell me that you haven't been able to crack a smile, laugh out loud and gasp with a 'they didn't just do that, did they?' Sure, the joy is unusual but smart and never dull.

Similarly, with Weeds, another well-rounded and well-written family story, it reels you in and makes you pay attention - and makes you laugh and cry. Mary-Lousie Parker is simply fabulous as the marijuana selling (and then growing) suburban mother just trying to make a living.

If you are looking for delightfully superficial and evilly funny viewing time, you really can't go past Nip/Tuck. Plastic surgeons with their own agendas and quite ridiculously complicated personal lives. 'Now, tell us what you don't like about yourself'...always raises a smile.

Of course, for the more high-brow and cultured of us, Deadwood is HBO Shakespeare. This gritty, re-telling of the settling of the American frontier, has everything from gunfights to girls, from bawdy whisky-fuelled acts of bravery to corrupt Mayors and miners. It is a true re-imagining and a real delight. And, considering the linguistic joy that Swearengen brings, the series might just work for the whole of winter.

Bestselling Books March 1-7 2010

2010-03-09T00:00:00Z

Our bestselling titles very much reflect what was happening in the world last week. Malcolm Fraser, Richard Dawkins and Xinran were all in town doing events and Dave Eggers's Zeitoun and Tim Winton's Cloudstreet were both featured quite positively on ABC TV's First Tuesday Book Club.

TOP 10 FICTION

The Girl Who Kicked The Hornets' Nest — Stieg Larsson
Cloudstreet — Tim Winton
The Girl with the Dragon Tattoo — Stieg Larsson
Wolf Hall — Hilary Mantel
The Pregnant Widow — Martin Amis
Lovesong — Alex Miller
The Outsiders — S.E. Hinton
Gravel — Peter Goldsworthy
The Girl Who Played With Fire — Stieg Larsson
Ransom — David Malouf

TOP 10 NON-FICTION

The Age Cheap Eats 2010
Malcolm Fraser: The Political Memoirs — Malcolm Fraser and Margaret Simons
Requiem For A Species: Why We Resist The Truth About Climate Change — Clive Hamilton
On Passion: Little Books On Big Themes — Dorothy Porter
The Greatest Show On Earth: The Evidence For Evolution — Richard Dawkins
The Good Soldiers — David Finkel
Message From An Unknown Chinese Mother — Xinran
Committed: A Sceptic Makes Peace With Marriage — Elizabeth Gilbert
Zeitoun — Dave Eggers
Abla's Lebanese Kitchen — Abla Amad

The Fashion of Film

2010-03-05T00:00:00Z

There is something breathtaking or bedazzling about watching fabric, clothes, beauty and the catwalk all come to life on the screen. We have had a plethora of films that specifically look at the fashion world and Valentino: The Last Emperor is one of the best. Can I say it's heartwarming? Yes, and fun and gaudy and glamourous and exquisite.

The other new DVD release is The September Issue, R.J. Cutler's documentary focused on the September issue of American Vogue, staring the Editor, Anna Wintour, (commonly referred to as 'Nuclear Wintour') but in which she is all but completely overshadowed by the one and only Grace Coddington, Vogue's Creative Director. It is a great documentary and reveals the art, the imagination and the business that go to make up the fashion world.

There are two DVDs out on Coco Chanel right now. One Coco Avant Chanel is the film that was in cinemas last year staring Audrey Tatou as Coco Chanel but the other is much more interesting. Shirley MacLaine is Coco in Coco Chanel, a television mini series that aired in the States in 2008. She received rave reviews and many nominations for this performance (which hasn't been shown in Australia) and deservedly so. 'She conquered with style' is the tag line and while the clothes are still in the foreground, they are hung on the story of an amazing life wrapped up in suits, pearls and cigarette holders. (Although any collaboration with the Nazis isn't mentioned.)

Then there is Young Victoria and Victor Victoria. Two films so completely different in story and scope but both with clothes and panache front and centre. Emily Blunt stars as the young Queen Victoria and looks resplendently regal in gowns and jewels and hair of the period as she cuts swathes down hallways and across well-kept gardens.

But Julie Andrews steals the show in Victor Victoria, a great singing and dancing film with quite a bit of cross dressing, allowing Andrews to dress up in tails and top hats as she taps away in Paris, earning her money as Victor. Directed by Blake Edwards, it is such a great film and it is lovely to see it back on the shelves. And I just realised that four of the six films I have mentioned all take place in Paris...the beating heart of fashion, folly and faux pas.

Dench Bakers to Open New Cafe at Readings Hawthorn

2010-03-03T00:00:00Z

The much-loved Dench Bakers of North Fitzroy are spreading their artisan soughdough and certified-organic-flour wings to open a new cafe, Bread and Jam for Frances (named after the classic children's book), at the Readings Hawthorn Cafe in late March.

Dench Bakers in Fitzroy North

They will be serving excellent coffee and organic juices and freshly baked croissants, pastries, bombolone, pies, cakes, tarts and biscuits, sandwiches and baguettes and their exceptionally good hot cross buns in time for Easter.

Dench Bakers have been baking artisan style bread since 2005, supplying the hospitality industry and public from our small shop located in North Fitzroy. During that time they have provided a number of successful and well-known cafes and restaurants with quality hand-made sourdough and specialty breads. Tony Dench, Judy Newman and John Dench, who each take on an active role in the business, own the bakery and café. For those of you who frequent our Carlton shop may also recognise Andrew Cornish, formerly Carlton store manager, who is now Operations Manager at Dench. We look forward to this wonderful new culinary addition to Readings Hawthorn.

For more information visit www.denchbakers.com.au.

Extract from Meanjin Vol 69 Number 1: Sophie Cunningham talks to Steven Amsterdam

2010-03-03T00:00:00Z

The following is an extract from New Territories: Sophie Cunningham talks to Steven Amsterdam by Sophie Cunningham which appears in the new edition of Meanjin - Volume 69 Number 1.

Steven Amsterdam’s Things We Didn’t See Coming was the recipient of 2009’s Age Book of the Year Award, and has recently been added to the 2011 VCE reading list.

Sophie Cunningham: I read Things We Didn’t See Coming as a novel but it’s also been called a short-story collection.

Steven Amsterdam: Even on the book itself it’s not that consistent. On the flap copy it says it’s stories and some other place I think it says ‘novel’. But Sleepers has pitched it as a novel. In the States it’s going out as a collection, in the UK as a novel. Marketing departments make some of these decisions and I’m fairly happy with either mode, though I think a reader would be poorly served by reading the last story or chapter first.

Sophie: While there were leaps that meant that we were a bit surprised by where the main—unnamed—character was, I read him as the one character the entire way through. Have the words ‘discontinuous narrative’ been used?

Steven: Only with people who work at university presses. It’s just not one of those phrases that brings in the crowds. I’ve been a little sensitive to it because I’ve seen certain reviews where people seem confused, and to me it’s pretty straightforward that the grandparents reappear, Margo is Margo in three different stories. Time passes and life alters people. To me, that was part of the reward of writing the book. How would they have changed since we saw them last?

Sophie: You’ve spoken about the human tendency to catastrophise and be pessimistic when in fact people tend to rally, no matter what’s thrown at them. Was each chapter intended to work through the implications of a different catastrophe, or were you making a point about the way the personality can change and shift quite dramatically over time? I know I’ve felt like a very different person in different phases of my life.

Steven: Yes, same. I was very conscious of the fact that I could not have imagined my current self five years ago, and letting that growth in character occur offstage seemed like an interesting way to go. In a sense, each of the stories/chapters leaves the narrator on the verge of another 180-degree turn. Not everybody experiences that much change in their life. Maybe this is actually the answer: the readers who have a hard time with that have been in the same place for thirty years, and the people who related better have had more experience with dodging through life. Finding yourself in a new territory and finding yourself surviving things you didn’t think you’d survive, that’s interesting to me. If I set out to make a point, that was probably the point.

Sophie: I wanted to know if you could literally connect these catastrophes or whether you played with different catastrophes and hoped that they created some sense of relationship. Did you try and map out the disasters?

Steven: I hate sounding a little haphazard, but someone in my writing workshop at one point said, ‘You have to give a timeline of what’s happened in all these stories because I’m not understanding it.’

Sophie: You do that with the character’s age.

Steven: That’s about the only thing. When editing it into its final form I was conscious of things that had happened in the past, so was able to call on the post-viral stuff after the plague chapter, for example. But I didn’t have a consistent history for exactly everything that would have happened. I did indulge a lot of these ideas at the same time because I think (and this is maybe a bit of Y2K thinking) it was all supposed to happen at once anyway. It wasn’t like I threw a whole lot of different dystopias at the wall and said let’s try them all. I did come to something of a timeline: the government split and then it rained a lot and then everybody got the plague and then everybody was living in communes and so on …

Sophie: And in the end everyone was getting cancers. Were they post-viral or …

Steven: … exposure to things. And some were post-viral. After that chapter with the senator I started focusing on what could be good, not just the disasters of the future, but what sort of advances might come to help us. It can’t all be bad news. And I kept thinking about medication.

Sophie: How much was your interest in writing about a survivor? I’m thinking here of Polanski’s The Pianist, and how the main character in that survived by not being brave. There’s a kind of bravery about just doing whatever it takes, I know, but sometimes what it took was to be a coward.

Steven: To weasel out of things. Yes, I don’t think there’s a lot of proud, brave moments in this book. My character’s quite shifty in what he has to do to get by. He does a lot of second guessing other people and uses skills other than sheer brute force that get him though. That personality is, for better or worse, something I relate to a little. Those are skills I am better able to draw on than picking up my shield and running into battle.

Sophie: How interested were you in wrestling with the science fiction genre?

Steven: I didn’t hear the words ‘science fiction’ until very late in the game. I’m more comfortable with the word ‘speculative’. I was on a panel at the Melbourne Writers Festival with China Miéville and felt uncomfortable being genre labelled. But the American publisher has just sent me the flap copy and it reads like a little more sci-fi than I imagined the book. But I’m sure you’ve had this experience, that the book doesn’t exactly come out as you …

Sophie: It has other lives.

Steven: Yes, and so at some point I just thought, okay, that’s what the experts think.

Sophie: Have you read The Road by Cormac McCarthy?

Steven: When Sleepers first brought me in with this they asked, ‘Have you read The Road?’ I said no. They said, ‘Good. Don’t read it, because then you don’t have to answer questions about it and the similarities … people are going to bring them up.’

Sophie: Well, certainly there’s the father–son thing. The emotional shape of the narrative is very much dictated by the relationship with the father.

Steven: That arc only really came up at the very end when I wrote the first chapter.

Sophie: So you wrote the first chapter last?

Steven: Yes. The grandparents [chapter two, ‘The Theft that Got me Here’] was the one I wrote first. The Y2K really came to me somewhere in the writing process. It was the result of something I was worrying about. Remember the West Nile virus? It probably didn’t make a splash here, it was this encephalitis that hit in New York. A mosquito-borne virus that, because of climate change, has become comfortable in the northern United States. Anyway, there was a summer when it just seemed we were all going to die. Not long after that, to ‘celebrate’ Y2K, my ex and I packed the car and rented a house in the country. He was calm, I was the nervous one, making sure the place had a generator and all that.

Sophie: So there is some autobiography in Things We Didn’t See Coming then?

Steven: Well, it has been pointed out to me that perhaps I worry a little more than necessary at times. I thought that the Y2K thing was a compassionate place to start the reader because it located them in the past. (Actually, Toni Jordan told me it was.)

Sophie: I thought it was fantastic because it blew the book open. That is, you get to the end of the first chapter, and you think, Y2K, wasn’t that a crock of shit! and then you get to the next chapter and you think, Oh! It allowed me to go with you and not question anything you did.

Steven: So this is an argument I’m having with the flap copy in the States … do you think the book suggested that Y2K did lead to the breakdown of things and the things happened after or …?

Sophie: … did I read it as a parallel universe?

Steven: Yes. A kind of variation on a theme.

Sophie: I thought you were saying, ‘Okay, what if in fact it did happen?’ While I didn’t follow all the reasons why the social breakdown might have occurred as a result of Y2K, that didn’t worry me.

Steven: In my mind the Y2K thing was still a fizzle in the book, but something else happened. Something that led to the next chapter. The political stuff in the grandparents’ chapter was based on the awful election we had in 2004 in the States, when it just seemed like the country folk and the city folk were just going to declare a war on each other. I saw the religious fundamentalism as a symptom of that. So between midnight on the turn of the millennium and the next chapter, something broke.

Sophie: Are you working on another book at the moment? Do you now see yourself as a writer?

Steven: Nobody used to ask me about what I was working on next, but I am. And yes, almost a writer. I still put down ‘nurse’ when I have to fill out most forms. It’s simpler. About ten years ago I decided I’m not going to call myself a writer if I’m just going to be beating myself up for not writing, so I’ll write when I can write and see how it works. But now that I’ve been legitimised by being paid for it, I’ve gone down to four shifts a week [as a psychiatric nurse at the Alfred Hospital] and am trying to dedicate that other day and parts around the other days to plotting up the next thing.

This extract is from Meanjin Vol. 69 No. 1 2010. Visit Meanjin online at www.meanjin.com.au and check out Steven Amsterdam's great website too - www.stevenamsterdam.com.

Top 10 Fiction and Non-Fiction Books: Feb 22-28 2010

2010-03-01T00:00:00Z

TOP 10 FICTION BOOKS

Under Stones — Bob Franklin
The Pregnant Widow — Martin Amis
The Girl with the Dragon Tattoo — Stieg Larsson
Skulduggery Pleasant: Dark Days — Derek Landy
Secret Army: Henderson's Boys Book Three — Robert Muchamore
Wolf Hall — Hilary Mantel
Brooklyn — Colm Toibin
Precious — Sapphire
The Group — Mary McCarthy
The Other Family — Joanna Trollope

TOP 10 NON-FICTION BOOKS

The Age Cheap Eats 2010
Peter Kennedy: The Man Who Threatened Rome — Martin Flanagan
On Passion: Little Books On Big Themes — Dorothy Porter
Malcolm Fraser: The Political Memoirs — Malcolm Fraser and Margaret Simons
Stripping Bare The Body: Politics, Violence, War — Mark Danner
Requiem For A Species: Why We Resist The Truth About Climate Change — Clive Hamilton
Overcoming Multiple Sclerosis: An Evidence-Based Guide To Recovery — George Jelinek
Eat Pray Love: One Womans Search For Everything — Elizabeth Gilbert
So Greek: Confessions Of A Conservative Leftie — Niki Savva
Committed: A Sceptic Makes Peace With Marriage — Elizabeth Gilbert

And So It Ends

2010-03-01T00:00:00Z

Yes, the Winter Olympics are over and I barely (except for the justified community outcry over McGuire and Molloy's homophobia) even noticed it was happening. That's not to say I wasn't interested - I just never watched any apart from the occasional news bulletin. But, for those of you who are feeling bereft, at a loose end, unsure of what game to watch next, have a peruse of the sport section (right next to the humour section which I think is funny) in the shop.

Andre Agassi's autobiography Open is a fabulous insight in what it takes to become a tennis champion and what it takes to stay at the top. He tells all there is to tell - the bad and the good - about growing up with a great ability to return those balls over the net.

Cadel Evans is one of my favourite athletes. I have no idea why. Except perhaps for the French Alps. Maybe that's what it is - his ability to train, pursue and stay throughout that whole Tour De France and still be charming at the end. His biography, written with Rob Arnold, is called Close To Flying, and while it is somewhat uneven, for insight into what it takes to ride the Tour de France, it is fascinating.

I can never tell if the cricket season is starting or finishing but Gideon Haigh, that master of so many subjects with so much eloquence, insight and passion, does. He is a cricket historian (and nut) but his latest cricket book Vincibles: A Suburban Cricket Season is something quite different. He isn't looking at the history, the legacy of captains, the best grounds, the scores, the ducks - he is looking at himself and his own suburban cricket team, The Yarras. Funny and heartwarming it may just make you want to start up a game in the street.

Of course, while you are out in the street, skateboarding may be your preferred sport. Is it a sport I wonder - or a pastime? Is it ever going to be in the Olympics? If tobogganing is why not skateboarding? Particularly, if the IOOC really are considering pole dancing... For your complete starter kit, try Corbin Harris' Ultimate Guide to Skateboarding and for fans, the book includes some incredible photos.

And just so you know, I have taken up jogging. My style though is more like a 'jalk' or even a 'wog', if you know what I mean. But, armed with 50 Marathons 50 Days: The Secret to Super Endurance I am going to build my stamina, my lungs and my legs. Can't wait. And to keep me motivated, I always think of this:

Jack: What are your legs?

Archy Hamilton: Springs. Steel springs.

Jack: What are they going to do?

Archy Hamilton: Hurl me down the track.

Jack: How fast can you run?

Archy Hamilton: As fast as a leopard.

Jack: How fast are you going to run?

Archy Hamilton: As fast as a leopard.

Jack: Then lets see you do it.

Remember that? And then Jean Michel Jarre's track Oxygène starts playing in my head. Yes, the quote is from Gallipoli. And now I am not in sport but war. Are they intricately linked?

European Fairytales

2010-02-27T00:00:00Z

Two of the most enchanting books I read over the last few months are Herta Muller's The Passport and Dimitri Verhulst's Madame Verona Comes Down the Hill. They are very different stories, the first a political metaphor, the second a study of human nature and love. But they seem to come from a European tradition that incorporates a kind of fairytale element with the everyday: the fabulist tradition that reaches back to Aesop, and forward to the likes of Saramago and Calvino.

Australian fiction, on the other hand, seems mostly to be grounded strictly in the realist tradition. This passage from Kenneth Cook's Wake in Fright exemplifies a style of writing tethered to the real that can be found in writiing from Patrick White to Tim Winton.

'...he could see the plains stretching west, broken only by rare clumps of the hardy saltbush that managed to draw sustenance even here where the earth had been innocent of any trace of moisture for months...somewhere not far out in the shimmering haze was the state border, marked by a broken fence, and that further out in the heat was the silent centre of Australia, the Dead Heart.'

There are, of course, exceptions to the rule: David Malouf's An Imaginary Life is steeped in mythology, but is also steeped in the European landscape and tradition. Some of Peter Carey's novels come close to this blending of the real and magical, but the two Australian novels that stick most clearly in my mind are by Aboriginal writer's: Kim Scott's Benang and Alexis Wright's Carpentaria. Perhaps indigenous culture more readily embraces a blurring of boundaries between the real and the imagined. Perhaps the Australian writers of European descent find the bright light of the Australia sun discourages the fabulist imagination to bloom; unlike the deep, dark forests that feed the European imagination.

The other element I find in these European stories, and I'm not sure if they are not part of the same thing, is the use of the everyman character to explore the universal; like the traditional morality tale, the characters are central, but not particularly distinguishable. Unlike the way the individual is so distinct and discrete in our stories: down to the colour of their eyes and the personal tics and quirks that define them as unique.

I'm not quite sure where I'm going with this - and I'm sure there are thorough and fascinating academic studies about the differences between 'old' and 'new' world literatures, that would make sense of these differences I am only just hinting at - but, it has set me thinking about styles of writing and the pleasures of reading, and, I for one, find a deep, dark pleasure in leaving the strictly fathomable behind.

And if you are interested in European literature, there is a great anthology edited by Aleksander Hemon that should hit the shelves this month: Best European Fiction 2010 that aims to promote emerging writers and those who have been so far neglected by English-language publishers.

Alice's Adaptations in Wonderland

2010-02-24T00:00:00Z

It seems there's no end to movie adaptations of kids books at the moment. Next up is Tim Burton's Alice in Wonderland, which is by no means a faithful adaptation of Lewis Carroll's text. Burton uses Alice's Adventures in Wonderland and Through the Looking Glass as a springboard for his own fantastical creation, which sees a 19-year-old Alice (below) reuniting with familiar friends from her earlier, and largely-forgotten, childhood adventures.

There have been countless movie versions of Alice's Adventures in Wonderland, my favourite being the excellently creepy Alice by Czech filmmaker Jan Svankmajer, which uses a combination of live action and stop-motion animation.

Thankfully there are an equally vast range of print editions of this classic, some with Tenniel's original illustrations, and others featuring some of the world's best illustrators: Robert Ingpen, Helen Oxenbury and Michael Foreman.

I must admit to squealing in delight when I saw Camille Rose Garcia's brand-new version of Alice arrive in store. This edition will have traditionalists tut-tutting and shaking their heads, but I love it.

Camille Rose Garcia works in a style of contemporary American art (although I'm sure the artists would hate to be categorised or pigeonholed) commonly referred to as 'lowbrow' or 'pop surrealism'. This style has strong links with underground comic, punk, tattoo and hot-rod subcultures. I think Garcia's psychedelic work that manages to be both beautiful and grotesque is the perfect match for Alice.

By far my favourite illustrated edition is that by Bulgarian artist Iassen Ghiuselev (above), which is unfortunately now out of print. I am such a fan of Ghiuselev's surly, Eastern European take on Alice that I had one of his illustrations tattoed on my left arm.When I emailed Ghiuselev to tell him I had permanently etched one of his drawings on my skin, he wrote back to say that it was 'really a curious thing' that I had done. I don't think Alice could have said it better herself!