I was told there'd be cake

Essays by Sloane Crosley. 2008. Riverhead Books

Another reading while turning pancakes book. Just right for my current short attention span. Sloane writes about her evil bully of a boss, her level of vegetarianism weakened by sashimi, origins of her name, being cornered into bridesmaid duties by a forgotten high school friend, a collection of toy ponies she wheedles out of her boyfriends then feels pathetic about, being a slack volunteer at the butterfly exhibit of the Museum. Her humour is dry and the range of references is very young-lady-in-New York.

The subplot of modern marriage assumes that a wedding is the crown jewel of any best friendship, a time when otherwise rational women are legally permitted to misplace their minds, and treat their friend like heel-skin-shaving employees. This is something we tolerate of our closest pals, but I had barely spoken to this woman in a decade....It's a wedding, not an episode of This Is Your Life. p146

It's not my fault they print them

Catherine Deveny. 2007. Black Inc

What do you read when you want to read but need to flip pancakes. I read collections of magazine style articles. An endless weekend paper. Catherine does a fine job of building up an argument or a joke to a good stew. And reading about TV is in my opinion so much finer than actually watching it. Righteous, funny, proud of her opinions on all the key topics: births, hitting children, marriages, changing names, and the Brownlow. And it's all such a relief.

Most kids don't give a rat's about the improvised music workshops, organic gardens and interpretive dance classes they do at school. But the parents, eyes blazing, face alight, will bore you senseless about them in an attempt to convince you of their coolness. All it actually does is convince us that they are Wannabe Creatives; insecure dags who had friends in bands but were never in bands themselves. Too much exposure to organised creativity immunises children against creativity. p62

30 Days in Sydney. A Wildly Distorted Account

Peter Carey. 2001. Bloomsbury

Poetic writing and cities, if that was a genre, it would be one of my favourites. Society seen in the structure and symbolism of the city.

And then, in my dream, I peered down from the top arch of the Sydney Harbour Bridge, and had the insight which would never leave me, not even in my waking hours. Asleep in my bed in Wollahra I saw the Central Business District as if for the first time. I saw how it held itself back fro the edge of the beloved harbour as if it understood how vile and crooked it had always been. In a society which values the view above all else, here was the heart of the city, a blind place with no vistas, a dense knot of development and politics and business and law. This was Macartur's monument. A physical expression of two centuries of Sydney's own brand of capitalism, the concrete symbol of an unhealthy anti-democratic alliance between business and those authorities which should have controlled it. p.92

Some of the slurry half-dream-half-drunk macho posturing got on my nerves; not enough to put me off the book.

Eating Between the Lines. Food and Equality in Australia.

Rebecca Huntley. 2008 Black Inc

Essays about the politics behind the way we eat. Like a series of magazine articles; many illustrated in interviews with representatives of the common person.

From a chapter called “Lebs make the best Lamb”:

…”my mother, born and bred here and having shed her Italian name through marriage, still feels some of the stigma. I tried to explain to her once that all things Italian were now cool. We were acceptable. We now live in a suburb awash with lattes and Pelegrino, where clothes proudly display their Italian origins and Italian food is popular with gourmands and the hoi polloi alike. It means little to her. ‘Sure they like our food now. Why wouldn’t they? It’s a lot better than what they were eating before we came. But it doesn’t mean they accept us.’ P 133

Hobart blue and yellow

Hobart

we grew stuff,

ate it

and are excited

Housekeeping Vs The Dirt

Nick Hornby, 2006, Believer Books

Finally read a book which ended a spell of being tongue tied. Nick Hornby writes a series of magazine columns about reading; what he bought; what he read; and what else happened in his life. A funny mix of mundane and reflections on reading. He likes to read and he also likes music, soccer, drinking and somehow in an amusing way works all those interests into columns. The charting of how one book liked or otherwise leads to the next seems familiar.

And on my reading list

There's been a mini festival of Alain de Botton. What's not to like? He's funny, likes Proust, and is intellectually interested in love.

Kiss and Tell is an early novel (Macmillan 1995). Alain, in first person, is writing the biography of his girlfriend. A very biased history, based on Isabel's memories and shifting revealing of the facts. The author studies her writing, past, friends, cooking, as if she is the subject of an in depth biography. That makes her sound peculiar, whereas this is a fairly standard love affair and two quite ordinary people.

So many questions about this book. Is it non fiction. There are photos documenting the life story of Isabel. Is she made up? Or is she real, and how did she ever agree?

p233 Alain's best guess for a personal ad for Isabel...

Young, beautiful but doesn't usually think so woman, not used to filling in such boxes and thinks people who do should make friends with their neighbours, eats carrots at bus stops, tired of having maso-chistic relationships, loves gardening, good driver, bad at programming videos, prefers margarine to butter, flirts with the idea of throwing in her job every Monday (dull job, doesn't wish to be judged on it, so won't mention it, avoids the subject at parties, and suspicious of those who don't), quite tidy apart from the kitchen. Hates gherkins, gangster films, Milton, the Rolling Stones, putting out the rubbish bins on Tuesday, too many bones in fish, getting to bed past midnight during the week. Sometimes loves her parents, swimming, gossip, picking something big out of her nose, Bob Dylan, orange juice, Vaclav Havel, reading in the bath.

A.B. Yehoshua Friendly Fire. A Duet. 2007 Harcourt Inc

Heard the author interviewed on the Book Show. Set in current day Israel touching on the war and societal tensions this is mainly a story about a husband and wife who have been married for 30 - 40 years. Written concurrently from both points of view, like a duet. The wife goes to mourn her sister with her brother in law, travelling alone to Africa. The husband stays at home and continues his life and work, but finds himself made busy by the requirements of the wider family. I really enjoyed the characters in this book, they seemed real and flawed. The gentle symbolism is very deftly handled.