Books like friends, should be few and well-chosen.

Waiting at the lights, Cnr Harrington and Macquarie Streets, Hobart. September 2012.

Three books this week, and a real mix to boot!

The Alchemist, by Paulo Coelho: This book has apparently sold more than 65 million copies (which puts in the top 15 in sales accoring the the lists I've seen). It has been translated into 169 languages, which makes it the most translated book by a living author. Millions of people have described it as wondrous, life-changing, and unique. I have a few words myself: trite, banal, self-important and mediocre. F.

Four Stories, by Alan Bennett: A collection of four of Alan Bennett's most famous, most admired [long] short stories. All very good, Bennett has a great ear for
dialogue and his capacity to shift from the filthy and hilarious to heartbreaking in a paragraph amazes me. B+.

Age of Iron by Nobel Prize winner J. M. Coetzee: Another fantastic novel that draws together themes of aging, confession, death, freedom, all framed within the wordview of a white liberal woman with cancer in Apartheid South Africa. A-.

Comments

Anonymous said…

Agree with you totally about The Alchemist - I've absolutely no idea what all the fuss is all about. The best thing I can say about it is that it isn't as bad as Coelho's "The Pilgrimage".

2 November 2012 at 20:29

Kris McCracken said…

I can only imagine how vapid that book must be!

3 November 2012 at 09:18

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...

Hold me now, oh hold me now, until this hour has gone around. And I'm gone on the rising tide, to face Van Dieman's Land

Theme Thursday again, and this one is rather easy. I am Tasmanian, you see, and aside from being all around general geniuses - as I have amply described previously - we are also very familiar with the concept of WATER. Tasmania is the ONLY island state of an ISLAND continent. That means, we're surrounded by WATER. That should help explain why I take so many photographs of water . Tasmania was for a long time the place where the British (an island race terrified of water) sent their poor people most vile and horrid criminals. The sort of folk who would face the stark choice of a death sentence , or transportation to the other end of the world. Their catalogue of crimes is horrifying : stealing bread assault stealing gentlemen's handkerchiefs drunken assault being poor affray ladies being overly friendly with gentlemen for money hitting people having a drink and a laugh public drunkenness being Irish Fenian terrorist activities being Catholic religious subversion. ...

This will hurt me...

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