If there is a book that you want to read, but it hasn't been written yet, you must be the one to write it.

Corners of buildings. Collins Street, as seen from Wellington Plaze, Hobart. April 2012.

Two great reads this week from two exceptional authors. First up is a sequel that I never knew existed, Sweet Thursday by John Steinbeck. Following on from Cannery Row, it is set in the years following World War II. We reunite with those characters who made it through the war. There is a little more plot and less vignette in this one, and ultimately it amounts to a love story of sorts.

Love, duty, happiness and loneliness are the central themes here and the story progresses at great speed to a satisfying conclusion. Although I enjoyed the book very much, and would strongly recommend reading it in companion to Cannery Row, I can't help but feel that it was somewhat slighter in tone. But maybe that was just the more upbeat ending!

Highly recommended.

Second up is Julian Barnes' prize-winning The Sense of an Ending. A tightly focused novel that relies heavily on a single narrative voice, it both demands and compels a very close reading. It is an incredibly effective book that really requires the reader return to the beginning upon completion in order to understand just how (and if) all the pieces fit into place.

We do get some warning. On the very first page our narrator states that “what you end up remembering isn’t always the same as what you have witnessed”, a sentiment that the reader must keep firmly in mind as we join him in his reflections on past events. Thus, there is a fair bit of work in store and we attempt to fill in the gaps of the story. Much of the narrative relies on what is not said. Indeed, the (conceded) gaps in both the narrator’s memories and his perception are crucial to the story.

This is a book of memory. The central premise of the book tracks the origin of one particular memory through a long and apparently dull life and brilliantly explores the tricks and diversions of our memories through an explanation of one man's story that beautifully leaves traces of unease that remind us of our own inconstancies of thought.

Just about every paragraph in this book has multiple interpretations. Questions are (partly) answered, but still the reader is left in the same state as our narrator about the essential 'unknowableness' of life’s essential mysteries, no matter how hard we try.

I really (REALLY) enjoyed this book. I think that it is close to perfect as it could be. It is perhaps the stand-out I've read this year, and I have read a few five star efforts. Very highly recommended!

Ah, Joe, you never knew the whole of it...

I still have the robot on the job. Here you can see the Tasmanian Museum and Art Gallery . And here is a poem: Soliloquy for One Dead Bruce Dawe Ah, no, Joe, you never knew the whole of it, the whistling which is only the wind in the chimney's smoking belly, the footsteps on the muddy path that are always somebody else's. I think of your limbs down there, softly becoming mineral, the life of grasses, and the old love of you thrusts the tears up into my eyes, with the family aware and looking everywhere else. Sometimes when summer is over the land, when the heat quickens the deaf timbers, and birds are thick in the plumbs again, my heart sickens, Joe, calling for the water of your voice and the gone agony of your nearness. I try hard to forget, saying: If God wills, it must be so, because of His goodness, because- but the grasshopper memory leaps in the long thicket, knowing no ease. Ah, Joe, you never knew the whole of it... I like Bruce Dawe. He just my be my favourite Austral...

There was nothing left. No reason, no conscience, no understanding; even the most rudimentary sense of life or death, good or evil, right or wrong.

Here is a self portrait. I’m calling it Portrait of a lady in a dirty window . Shocking, isn’t it? However, it is apt! Samhain , Nos Galan Gaeaf , Hop-tu-Naa , All Saints , All Hallows , Hallowmas , Hallowe'en or HALLOWEEN . It’s Theme Thursday and we’re talking about the festivals traditionally held at the end of the harvest season. Huh? No wonder Australians have trouble with the concept of HALLOWEEN. For the record, in my thirty-two L O N G years on the planet, I can’t say I’ve ever seen ghosts ‘n goblins, trick ‘n treaters or Michael Myers stalking Tasmania’s streets at the end of October. [That said, I did once see a woman as pale as a ghost turning tricks that looked like Michael Myers in late November one time.] Despite the best efforts of Hollywood, sitcoms, and innumerable companies; it seems Australians are impervious to the [ahem] charms of a corporatized variant of a celebration of the end of the "lighter half" of the year and beginning of the "darke...

In dreams begin responsibilities.

A life at sea, that's for me, only I just don't have the BREAD. That's right, Theme Thursday yet again and I post a photo of a yacht dicking about in Bass Strait just off Wynyard. The problem is, I am yet again stuck at work, slogging away, because I knead need the dough . My understanding is that it is the dough that makes the BREAD. And it is the BREAD that buys the yacht. On my salary though, I will be lucky to have enough dough or BREAD for a half dozen dinner rolls. Happy Theme Thursday people, sorry for the rush.

This will hurt me...

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