'Birds Flying High, You Know How I Feel'
Nina
Simone sang about the end of slavery, but she spoke to anyone who's
ever felt the pleasure of the end of the cold, the dark, of hardship or
of sadness, and the joy of her song mirrors perfectly the feeling of
light lingering, days getting warmer and the world and the streets
coming back to life after a long, dark winter. It's a brilliant time to
get to the park, the pool or the river, lie out flat on your back in
the shade, open a book and practice feeling good. Life's too short for
anything less.
Happy reading!
Zero Break: an Illustrated Collection of Surf Writing by Matt Warshaw - $3
With contributions by Robert Crumb and Susan Orlean, and coverage of
some of the sport's most eccentric characters, Matt Warshaw has hit the
nail right on the head in Zero Break. If you used to surf with the kind
of regularity that's unnerving to those not indoctrinated into the
arcane rituals of the art (the 5 am rise and willingness to plunge into
arctic winter water), but have somehow lost the spark, then this book
will certainly get the smell of Mr Zogs Sex Wax back into your life;
and if you don't know what Mr Zogs is, then this is the book that will
make you long to paddle out into the glorious spring sunshine and tell
your boss (when you turn up late and without your report) that "I
caught my first tube today... Sir." A great gift and a lovely teaser
for the long hot summer we all know is coming.
*the immortal rejoinder of Johnny Utah (aka Keanu) to his furious superior in 1991's Point Break.
Australian Healthy Cooking Guide by Caron Milham - $3
Buying a copy of the Australian Healthy Cooking Guide is a lot like
having your own private dietician move into your kitchen, offer you
tips on eating well, and never charge you exorbitant hourly fees for
their expertise. Written by practicing dietician Caron Milham, the
Australian Healthy Cooking Guide is full of nutritious, practical
recipes and simple tips on how to shake your eating habits into shape,
which is a great thing to have on hand now that it's getting time to
get your kit off for summer.
About the only thing this book won't do for you is wash the dishes
after you've devoured another of the tasty and extremely healthy
recipes.
The Peacock Throne by Sujit Saraf - $5 (paperback)
The light, colour, sound, fury and endless contradictions of modern
India come alive in startling detail in this epic about the fates of
the inhabitants of Old Delhi's Chandni Chowk; a busy and culturally
rich market street. Hindu and Muslim communities and the impact of the
West on thousands of years of Indian culture set the scene as we follow
the twisting circumstances that surround a street 'chai' seller, a
prostitute, a nice, educated middle class girl and other 'actors' in
The Peacock Throne's drama.
The slower, more attentive reader will get the most from this book; but
the up-side of the demand for the reader to pay attention is the power
with which these urban landscapes are evoked. Utterly transporting
literature; the cheapest kind of 'sale flight' to India you'll ever
encounter.
Great Writers, Great Loves by Ann-Marie Priest - $5
You might think you know what romance is, but Ann-Marie Priest has done
her homework and she's here to tell you different. In Great Writers,
Great Loves she demonstrates that amore aint amore, or at least that
it's not as straight forward as we think it is; that in fact the
institution of romance- our expectations and behaviours when we seduce
and fall in love- are profoundly influenced by the contribution of
artists (as well as other more nefarious sources, like marketing, which
the author largely leaves for another to illuminate). With source
material like the letters of Sylvia Plath and DH Lawrence, this is no
dry, scholarly exercise, but rather a compelling and moving account of
how we feel and why we do; the perfect gift for the thoughtful romantic
in your life.
The Pornography of Power by Robert Scheer - $5
Robert Scheer's The Pornography of Power offers a compelling argument
that the orgy of military development and weapons spending (the highest
in history) that followed 911 was nothing but opportunism for the
defence industry and that quiet, boring, inexpensive police work would
have done the job of 'controlling' terrorist activity as thoroughly,
and considerable less lethally, than the (second) Bush government's war
on Iraq. Polemic, 'pugnacious' and fiercely knowledgeable, this is a
book that might raise some hackles, but it will certainly stimulate
useful argument.
The Echo Maker by Richard Powers - $8
Mark Schluter's truck overturns on an 'arrow straight' section of road
and 14 days later he wakes from a coma with a rare and peculiar form of
acquired brain injury. Add a mysterious note, a famous neuroscientist
whose career and life are falling to pieces, a sister that Mark has
begun to think is an imposter sent to spy on him and tantalising hints
of something being 'not quite right' and you have The Echo Maker; a
page-turning, genre-busting prize-winner.
Power's novel is a meditation on issues of identity and the 'self'
effortlessly combined with a plot that has the twists, turns and
compulsive readability of a top-ten thriller. Now that the weather is
heating up and there's more time in the evening to get to the pool, the
beach, the river, or just the back yard, this is the right kind of
novel to lie back with and let the hours drift past.
Digging to America by Anne Tyler - $10
Two couples meet at the airport as they wait to pick up the Korean
children they are both adopting and we follow the Yazdan's and the
Donaldson's over the years as their unlikely friendships develop and
Iranian, Korean and white-bread American tradition and characters
clash, merge and finally simmer into the kind of 'melting pot' we've
been hearing about since the 1960's shifted into gear. Tyler has penned
another immensely enjoyable read; a novel just foreign enough to be
fascinating and just familiar enough to strike a chord within the
reader. Although Tyler's books revolve around issues of cultural
identity it's easy to empathise with the challenges faced by her
characters, no matter the strangeness of their customs.
Longitude by Dava Sobel - $10
Before watchmaker John Harrison solved the riddle of how to determine
'the east-west- position' literally thousands of lives had been lost at
sea; a massive reward remained unclaimed and many of the great minds of
the eighteenth century had crashed against the bulwark of this
seemingly intractable problem. Dava Sobel's tale seems like an unlikely
candidate for bestseller status, but the story of the impact his
protagonist's contribution made is so engrossing that it's the rare
reader who will come to the end of Longitude anything other than
impressed, both by the tale and the craft of the teller.
The Book of Dead Philosophers by Simon Critchley -$10
You can pick up this book and read it in snippets, marvelling all the
while at the peculiarity and extremity of the circumstances these
famous names have gotten themselves into; or you can read from first
page to last and discover (as I did) that what Critchley has done is to
pen an extremely entertaining and accessible introduction to literally
hundreds of years of Western intellectual culture. Yes, this book is
funny, and yes, it is also moving but what it does best is let the
reader who has any interest at all in the development of the 'modern'
mindset in on some of the last couple of millennia's most influential
ideas. Read it backwards, read it in fits of enthusiasm, or just in
fits, but do read it; otherwise you'll never know what the theological
position of the early Christian father 'John the Dwarf' was.
Magnifico: The Brilliant Life and Violent Times of Lorenzo de Medici by Miles J Unger - $15
The world of Renaissance Florence is at once utterly alien and
immediately familiar; a small city where Michelangelo, Botticelli and
Machiavelli roamed the streets; priceless, ancient books were burned in
great bonfires and women's social presence was felt only as a murmur
from the interiors of homes and churches; the pope's illegitimate
children were on murderous political rampages across Europe or involved
in notorious debauches, and over all of this reined the brilliant
personalities of successive Medici heirs, with Lorenzo taking the
family name to the zenith of its splendour and notoriety. Unger has
written a true account that reads as though Puzo's The Godfather was in
a head on collision with the retinue of Marie Antoinette. Gloriously
extravagant and riddled with fascinating political and personal
machinations; the title of the book does the story justice; this really
is a magnificent tale, told with style.
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