What we're reading

Each week we bring you a sample of the books we’re reading, the films we’re watching, the television shows we’re hooked on or the music we’re loving.


Belle is reading N by John A. Scott

I recently finished quite a long novel – the very brilliant, very significant N by Australian author John A. Scott. (You can read my review here.) Yesterday, the New Yorker published a story called “Life is short, Proust is long”, where the writer lamented that:

‘Of all the forms of entertainment, reading is the most laborious. Doing the voices of fictional characters in your head is hard. Remembering their names is also hard. Prolonged sitting, we are told, is as bad for us as smoking.’

Reading N was in no way a chore, but remembering the character’s names, and how they fit in the narrative, was a little hard; the book demanded my full attention.

Finishing a long book, even one I liked immensely, I often turn to essays for a bit of a rest. As such, I have been cherry picking from Ann Patchett’s collection, This is the Story of a Happy Marriage. It’s a great confluence of memoir and literature, and Patchett is wryly funny, intellectual but very warm – her essays are a pleasure to read, and she writes just as sharply about her adored dog as she does her broken first marriage. After a few essays, you really wish to be friends with her.

I’ve also just bought Frank Sinatra has a Cold, which is a selection of essays from Gay Talese. He is tagged as the father of New Journalism, and in this collection his subjects include a glum Frank Sinatra and fading baseball star Joe DiMaggio. You can read an essay from Adam Curley on Talese here.


Bronte is reading Jam by Margaret Mahy and illustrated by Helen Craig

On the weekend I flew home to meet my new niece and reread one of our favourite children books with my sister - Jam. I absolutely loved this book when I was younger, and can now also say, I still do. It’s such a funny, delightful story about an extremely enthusiastic househusband whose mission to use each and every ripe plum (filling all the containers in the house with jam - including the teapot) has some undesirable side-effects… Highly, highly recommended!

(You can find a treasury of Mahy’s stories - in book and audio format - here.)


Chris is reading Veronica Roth’s Divergent series

Recently, my 13-year old son and I read all three books in the Divergent series. We’d previously read Suzanne Collins’s The Hunger Games, Patrick Ness’s Chaos Walking and, of course, J.K. Rowling’s Harry Potter series, so we can see definitely see where young Veronica Roth was inspired (she’s just 24-years old!), but is it any good compared with these books?

“Yes,” says my little bloke, “because each writer is bringing something new in contrast to each other. Yes, of course this book is about growing up, and of course it is set in a dystopian world and yes there is a love interest, but the framework is different.” “Yes, it is,” I agreed. The twists and turns are more dramatic in this series than in the others. The the third book changes writing style which is a little annoying but everything is worth it for that finale!

The movie comes out next week and we’re seeing it on Thursday. I hope it is as good as the The Hunger Games film adaptation…