Here's a reverse chronological list going back a few years...
cheerio, dave.
The bone clocks - David Mitchell
The Adventures of Augie March - Saul Bellow
The narrow road to the deep north - Richard Flanagan
The Whereabouts of Eneas McNulty - Sebastian Barry
Amnesia - Peter Carey
Swimming home - Deborah Levy
The 39-storey treehouse - Andy Griffiths
Eyrie - Tim Winton
I knew you, said Kai one night. I knew you before you had a face.
I don't understand, he murmured. What do you mean?
But the boy was silent, perhaps asleep already, and Keely was left to turn it over in his mind, the thought that Kai had been waiting for him, lying alone in the flat night after night while Gemma worked, waiting for someone to keep him safe. The idea was intoxicating. It made him feel enormous and substantial. That he might be necessary.
-p236
"They gave him thirty bucks for the iPod and ninety for the laptop. He suspected that without the shiner he might have gotten more, but he was content enough afterwards, trolling op-shops with cash in his pocket, looking for something to please the boy. He started at Save the Children, moved on to Oxfam, then the Vinnies. But they had nothing he was after. Then at the last stop, closest to home, he scored. He walked out of the Good Sammies with a perfectly serviceable game of Scrabble and change from a fiver."
-p229
Getting old? Is that the question?
Keely's back was stiff. He wondered how long the kid had been awake.
It's just, I don't know what it's like, said the boy.
Mate, I don't know what to tell you.
But you're old.
Well. Older than you. And yeah, right now I feel pretty old, that's the truth.
Can you say?
What it's like, you mean? What it feels like? Keely scratched his stubble, kneaded his cheeks a moment. The thing is, he said. Thing is, you hardly notice. It happens so slowly. You look different in the mirror, but inside you feel pretty much the same. You're just a kid with an old man's body, that's how it feels. Same for everyone, I guess.
-p251
The Lighthouse - Alison Moore
Charlie and the Chocolate Factory - Roald Dahl
The BFG - Roald Dahl
“The witching hour, somebody had once whispered to her, was a special moment in the middle of the night when every child and every grown-up was in a deep deep sleep, and all the dark things came out from hiding and had the world all to themselves.”
“Don't gobblefunk around with words.”
'That is what the little piggy-wig is saying every day,' the BFG answered. 'He is saying, "I has never done any harm to the human bean so why should he be eating me?'"
'Oh dear,' Sophie said.
'The human beans is making rules to suit themselves,' the BFG went on. 'But the rules they is making do not suit the little piggy-wiggies. Am I right or left?'
'Right,' Sophie said.
'Giants is also making rules. Their rules is not suiting the human beans. Everybody is making his own rules to suit himself.”
A Tale of Two Cities - Charles Dickens
Last Orders - Graham Swift
"...It evens out, because in one direction there's what's ahead and in another there's the memory, and maybe there's nothing more or less to it than that..." pgs. 62-63
Players - Tony Wilson
The Luminaries - Eleanor Catton
p6 “The truth was that not six hours
ago, aboard the barque that had conveyed him from Port Chalmers to the wild
shard of the Coast, Moody has witnessed an event so extraordinary and affecting
that it called all other realities into doubt.”
p76 “Disdain, for all its censorious pretension,
is an emotion that can afford a certain clarity. Thomas Balfour watched his
friend drain his glass and snap his fingers for another round, and was scornful
– and then his scorn gave way to mistrust, and his mistrust to perspicacity.
p142 “For although a man is judged by
his actions, by what he has said and done, a man judges himself by what he is
willing to do, by what he might have said, or might have done – a judgement
that is necessarily hampered, not only by the scope and limits of his
imagination, but by the ever-changing measure of his doubt and self-esteem.”
p232 “All this was running through Gascoigne’s mind
as he stood in the Gridiron Hotel with Anna Wetherell clasped against his
chest, tracing the eyelets of her corset, up her back. He had held Agathe in
this way – exactly in this way, exactly so, with one hand splayed beneath her
shoulder blade, the other cupping the ball of her shoulder, Agathe with her
forearms against his chest, always – having raised her arms to shield herself at
the moment of enclosure. How strange that he recalled her, now. One could know
a thousand women, Gascoigne thought; one could take a different girl every
night for years and years – but sooner or later, the new lovers would do little
more than call to mind the old, and one would be forced to wander, lost, in
that reflective maze of endless comparison, forever disappointed, forever
turning back.”
p260 “He felt that he did not know how
to feel.”
p281 “Moody paused a moment, thinking.
“In a court of law,” he said at last, “a witness takes his oath to speak the
truth: his own truth, that is. He agrees to two parameters. His testimony must
be the whole truth, and his testimony
must be nothing but the truth. Only
the second of these parameters is a true limit. The first, of course, is
largely a matter of discretion..."
The Testament of Mary - Colm Tóibín
“Dreams belong to each of us alone, just as pain does.”
"What is hard to understand is that our dreams matter”
Midnight's Children - Salman Rushdie
p37: "I believe that I am falling apart.
I am not speaking metaphorically; nor is this the opening gambit of some melodramatic, riddling, grubby appeal for pity. I mean quite simply that I have begun to crack all over like an old jug - that my poor body, singular, unlovely, buffeted by too much history, subjected to drainage above and drainage below, mutilated by doors, brained by spittoons, has started coming apart at the seams. In short, I am literally disintegrating, slowly for the moment, although there are signs of acceleration. I ask you only to accept (as I have accepted) that I shall eventually crumble into (approximately) six hundred and thirty million particles of anonymous, and necessarily oblivious dust. This is why I have resolved to confide in paper, before I forget.
Two Pints - Roddy Doyle
The following - Roger McDonald, 2013 book. Really three stories in one. I preferred the last of them.
"What you loved, you scorned; what you hated, you were. It was the definition of Australia and being Australian, as far as Kyle was concerned, but it made him wonder if he would be better being someone else from somewhere else, stepping right out of who he was and living in another country altogether, or even another planet."
"Australia - it fitted the definition of being loved more than it loved back. Put your arms around the place and it withered. Turn your back and it called out with shy surprises."
"A wide expanse of bay drained at low tide, leaving visiting boats stranded, craft tilted on mud while families scoured the flats with plastic buckets collecting pipes. Crater Bay visitors rarely came any farther ashore than the Sapper Boden MC Memorial Toilet Block and Bush Track leading up to the public road at the top of the ridge. Tiger could feel the splashing kids' mournfulness under their shrieks and yells. Next week they'd be roasting in February classrooms. The boy who mooched to the side and jabbed a stick in the sand with repetitive meaninglessness was the one Tiger always noticed."
The Good Life - Hugh Mackay
Illywhacker - Peter Carey. 1988 book. Top End book swap. Immense story across generations, tied together by the illywhacker Herbert Badgery, 139 years old.
Kafka on the Shore - Haruki Murakami; 2002 book. Sent down from Darwin by Dene. "Kafka on the Shore follows the fortunes of two remarkable characters. Kafka Tamura runs away from home at fifteen, under the shadow of his father's dark prophecy. The ageing Nakata, tracker of lost cats, who never recovered from a bizarre childhood affliction, finds his simple life suddenly turned upside down. Their parallel odysseys are enriched throughout by vivid accomplices and mesmerising dramas. Cats converse with people; fish tumble from the sky; a forest harbours soldiers apparently un-aged since WWII. There is a savage killing, but the identity of both victim and killer is a riddle.
- "It's all a question of imagination. Our responsibility begins and ends with the power to imagine. It's just as Yeats said: In dreams begin responsibility. Turn this on its head and you could say that where there's no power to imagine, no responsibility can arise."
- Oshima reaches out and lays a hand on my knee in a totally natural gesture. "Kakfa, in everybody's life there's a point of no return. And in a very few cases, a point where you can't go forward any more. And when we reach that point, all we can do is quietly accept the fact. That's how we survive."
- "Ive experienced all kinds of discrimination," Oshima says. "Only people who've been discriminated against can really know how much it hurts. Each person feels the pain in his own way, each has his own scars. So I think I'm as concerned about fairness and justice as anybody. But what disgusts me even more are people who have no imagination. The kind T. S. Eliot calls 'hollow men'. People who fill up that lack of imagination with heartless bits of straw, not even aware of what they're doing. Callous people who throw a lot of empty words at you, trying to force you to do what you don't want to do…"
- "the pain Hoshino felt at that instant was awful, irrationally so. A huge flash of light went off in his brain and everything went white. He stopped breathing. It felt as if he'd been thrown from the top of a tall tower into the depths of hell. He couldn't even manage a scream, so hideous was the pain. All thoughts burned up and shot away. It was like his body had been shattered into pieces. Even death could' the this awful, he felt."
- "You still don't get it, do you? We're talking about a revelation here," Colonel Sanders said, clicking his tongue. "A revelation leaps over the borders of the everyday. A life without revelation is no life at all. What you need to do is move from reason that observes to reason that acts. That's what's critical. Do you have any idea what I'm talking about, you gold-plated whale of a dunce?"
- "Listen, every object's in flux. The earth, time, concepts, love, life, faith, justice, evil - they're all fluid and in transition. They don't stay in one form or in one place for ever. The whole universe is like some big FedEx box."
- "What Chekhov was getting at is this: necessity is an independent concept. It has a different structure from logic, morals or meaning. Its function lies entirely in the role it plays. What doesn't play a role shouldn't exist. What necessity requires does need to exist. That's what you call dramaturgy. Logic, morals or meaning don't have anything to do with it. It's all a question of relationality. Chekhov understood dramaturgy very well."
- Beethoven Archduke Trio - Million dollar trio - Rubinstein, Heifetz and Feuermann
[above here read in 2014]
The Lighthouse - Alison Moore; 2012 book shortlisted for the Booker. Catherine's Christmas present from mum & dad.
"On the outer deck of a North Sea ferry stands Futh, a middle-aged and newly separated man, on his way to Germany for a restorative walking holiday.
After an inexplicably hostile encounter with a hotel landlord, Futh sets out alone the Rhine. As he contemplates an earlier trip to Germany and the things he has done in his life, he does not foresee the potentially devastating consequences of things not done.
The Lighthouse is Alison Moore's debut novel and tells the tense, gripping story of a man trying to find himself, and becoming lost.
The Wind-Up Bird Chronicle - Haruki Murakami; sent down from Darwin by Dene.
A Visit from the Goon Squad - Jennifer Egan; 2010 winner Pulitzer prize for fiction. Catherine's book.
Most of the stories in A Visit from the Goon Squad concern Bennie Salazar, an aging rock music executive; his onetime assistant, Sasha; and their various friends and associates. The book follows a large cast of mostly self-destructive characters as they grow older and life sends them in directions they did not intend to go in. The stories shift back and forth in time, moving from the late sixties to the present and into the near future. Many of the stories take place in or around New York City, though some are set in California, Italy and Africa.
The Unlikely pilgrimage of Harold Fry - Rachel Joyce; 2012 book. Catherine's book. Harold Fry is convinced that he must deliver a letter to an old love in order to save her, meeting various characters along the way and reminiscing about the events of his past and people he has known, as he tries to find peace and acceptance.
Recently retired, sweet, emotionally numb Harold Fry is jolted out of his passivity by a letter from Queenie Hennessy, an old friend, who he hasn't heard from in twenty years. She has written to say she is in hospice and wanted to say goodbye. Leaving his tense, bitter wife Maureen to her chores, Harold intends a quick walk to the corner mailbox to post his reply but instead, inspired by a chance encounter, he becomes convinced he must deliver his message in person to Queenie--who is 600 miles away--because as long as he keeps walking, Harold believes that Queenie will not die.
On Warne - Gideon Haigh; 2012 book. Non-fiction again. Cricket again. Gideon Haigh has long been a favourite writer. He writes here in a flourishing way of some aspects of Shane Warne (e.g. the Art of Warne, the Men of Warne, etc...) I recognise his acknowledged attempt to record some of this before it is lost from the senses. Remember that buzz of excitement as Warnie was thrown the ball?
Beyond a boundary - CLR James; 1960s book. Non-fiction this time. Hailed as the finest book dealing with the topic of cricket. Part philosophy, part look back at a West Indian childhood, part character piece. Very thoughtful and thought-provoking book that has had me questioning morals and decisions that we all make.
[above here read in 2013]
The Sisters Brothers - Patrick DeWitt; 2011 book. American. Set in the 1850s around the gold rush & San Francisco. Eli and Charlie Sisters are some whiskey drinking killers and Eli narrates a funny story. e.g. "I awoke at dawn with a nagging pain in my head, not so much brandy sickness as general fatigue, though the drinking had not helped the situation. I dunked my face in the water basin and brushed my teeth, standing beside an open window to feel the breeze against my skull. It was cool out but the air was enveloped in warmth; here was the first taste of spring, which brought me a satisfaction, a sense of rightness and organization. I crossed the room to check on Charlie's progress against the day, which I found to be poorer than my own."
The Wilderness - Samantha Harvey; from 2009. Her first novel. Set on the English moors amid the peat. Story jumps around in time, telling the unfolding story of Jake's decline due to Alzheimer's in a very powerful way.
All that I am - Anna Funder; Miles Franklin winner 2012. Very enjoyable, sad. Alternating narrators, sharing a common story. One telling from New York in the 1940s. The other in the 2000s from Sydney. The common story is of the rise of Nazis and the struggle and extermination of those resisting.
"When Hitler comes to power in 1933, a tight-knit group of friends and lovers become hunted outlaws overnight. United in their resistance to the madness and tyranny of Nazism, they flee the country. Dora, passionate and fearless; her lover, the great playwright Ernst Toller; her younger cousin Ruth and Ruth's husband Hans find refuge in London. Here they take awe-inspiring risks in order to continue their work in secret. But England is not the safe-haven they think it is, and a single, chilling act of betrayal will tear them apart.
Some seventy years later, Ruth is living out her days in Sydney, making an uneasy peace with the ghosts of the past, and a part of history that has been all but forgotten."
The Other Hand - Chris Cleave; interesting story, though a bit too predictable, I reckon. Good idea for alternating voices in alternating chapters telling the story of Nigerian girl and English woman. Western worries pale alongside African village worries. But then... A worry is a worry, isn't it?
Hard Times - Charles Dickens; bleak setting. Wonderful story surprisingly relevant to life in 2012.
Canada - Richard Ford; published this year 2012, this will, I suppose, be long thought of as a great story. Story narrated by a young boy. Coming across lots of life/ philosophical gems. In difficult circumstances. Richard Ford writes in a way I very much like. This is the opening paragraph: "First I'll tell about the robbery our parents committed. Then about the murders, which happened later. The robbery is the most important part, since it served to set my and my sister's lives on the courses they eventually followed. Nothing would make complete sense without being told that first."
The sense of an ending - julian Barnes. Booker prize winner 2011 i think. A ripper. Has had me thinking for days afterwards. A conversation with CJ recently (she also read it) opened up a whole new line of thought for me. Intriguing.
Love and Summer - William Trevor; listed for the Booker recently. Irish story, set in rural Ireland. Young foundling (orphin) married off to a farmer who carries a deep mental scar. Free-wheelin' outsider causes a stir when he appears in town. Love story but also not. Very enjoyable.
The Road Home - Rose Tremain; Empathically written story of Lev, the Russian who's life is spinning out of control & who heads to England looking for work and some money to send back home.
Cold Night - Frank Moorhouse; 3rd in the Edith trilogy sees Edith and Ambrose move to Canberra. That Edith is an interesting character, but not that interesting.
The Snapper - Roddy Doyle (again); expecting to see Roddy Doyle in person, I re-read this beauty. Had me laughing out loud again and again. I'll need to find time to re-read The Van after this experience.
Twelfth Night - William Shakespeare; funny story of mistaken identity leads to all sorts of mishaps.
Lovesong - Alex Miller; slow-moving introspective account of love and relationships and the lives that mean well but struggle.
The Testament of Jessie Lamb - Jane Rogers; reads like a teenage story. The premise is catching - a new disease threatens the future survival of the human race. The disease infects pregnant women, who die at childbirth.
Room - Emma Donoghue; emotionally draining account of a child, from the perspective of that child, who spends his first 5 years or so living in a single room.
[above here read in 2012]
On Canaan's Side - Sebastian Barry
Jamrach's Menagerie - Carol Birch
Journey to the Stone Country - Alex Miller
Skippy Dies - Paul Murray
Jasper Jones - Craig Silvey
Bleak House - Charles Dickens
Brooklyn - Colm Toibin
The Great Gatsby - F Scott Fitzgerald
Aunt Julia and the Scriptwriter - Mario Vargas Llosa
Oh, play that thing - Roddy Doyle
Out of our minds: learning to be creative - Ken Robinson
Everything I know about writing - John Marsden
The Quickening Maze - Adam Foulds
That Deadman Dance - Kim Scott
So much to tell you - John Marsden
A Long, Long Way - Sebastian Barry
Eclipse - John Banville
Wildlife - Richard Ford
Oliver Twist - Charles Dickins
Annie Dunne - Sebastian Barry
Jane Eyre - Charlotte Bronte
A fraction of the whole - Steve Toltz
The Element - Ken Robinson
The Untouchable - John Banville
The Van - Roddy Doyle
Requiem for a Species - Clive Hamilton
The Secret Scripture - Sebastian Barry
A Star Called Henry - Roddy Doyle
The Lay of the Land - Richard Ford
So much to tell you - John Marsden
Cloudstreet - Tim Winton
Our Sunshine - Robert Drewe
The Snapper - Roddy Doyle
Animal Farm - George Orwell
The Sea - John Banville
The Heather Blazing - Colm Toibin
The Woman Who Walked Into Doors - Roddy Doyle
Predictably Irrational - Dan Ariely
Independence Day - Richard Ford
Stiff - Shane Maloney
One Hundred Years of Solitude - Gabriel Garcia Marquez
High Fidelity - Nick Hornby
The Road - Cormac McCarthy
The White Tiger - Aravind Adiga
Life of Pi - Yann Martel
The Trout Opera - Matthew Condon
Dubliners - James Joyce
The Inheritance of Loss - Kiran Desai
The Broken Shore - Peter Temple
Vernon God Little - DBC Pierre
True History of the Kelly Gang - Peter Carey
A Fine Balance - Rohinton Mistry
Cities of the Plain - Cormac McCarthy
Jack Maggs - Peter Carey
Paddy Clarke Ha Ha Ha - Roddy Doyle
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