Hello St Marks

Amazon is a wonderful thing; as usual, I'm 4 years behind the zeitgeist. Reading Joan Didion's 'A Year of Magical Thinking' last month, I bookmarked a book she mentioned and ordered it on Amazon. Joan used 'Intensive Care, A Doctor's Journal' as her guidebook to navigating intensive care wards during her daughter's illnesses. Oddly, I assumed it must be interesting. John F Murray gives us his notes and reflections on every patient in his care for a month in San Francisco General Hospital's medical ICU. 60 patients, 15 died. We get their names, the barest bones of their story and the narrative of their passage out of the ICU. Ten or so patients into the book and the names and medical procedures are a blur. The medical detail is extraordinary, but because you never meet the patients (they're mute from intubation or medication, almost without exception), it's a very detached kind of voyeurism. Murray is measured, concerned and concise. If you...

I'm tidying up my reading pile. There are 15 or so books in a stack by the bed and they're mostly either books I think I should read or books I started reading and can't bring myself to finish. 'Final Impact World War 2.3' by John Birmingham is neither type; more a book I've been too embarassed to pick up. Yes, I have read 'Weapons of Choice World War 2.1' and 'Designated Targets World War 2.2', and aren't they titles to add texture to a reading blog? I read somewhere that John wrote the first of these alternate history megabooks to make a pot of money and prove he could, and so he did. I'd say this type of thing is not my bag, but as I've now completed all three of them (about 12cm worth) perhaps it is. It's 2021 and a top secret navy science experiment goes wrong and a cluster of high-tech naval vessels and a few thousand crewmembers are transported back to early WW2. The sudden delivery of nuclear warheads and super weapons te...

'Best book of the year' is a poor claim in January, so I'll declare Joan Didion's 'The Year of Magical Thinking' one of the best books I've ever read. This is a slim book about grief, which is a poor advertisement for this moving, intelligent, emotional and pragmatic memoir. Joan's husband dies suddenly while her adult daughter lies near-death in hospital. The minutes and months following John's death are described in a loose narrative but it was the brilliant clarity of her self-awareness, reflecting on her experience of grieving and loss and self-delusion that was so devestating and such a privilege to read. Joan being Joan Didion, she researches and investigates the science of grief, the psychology and literature of death, and reflects and disects with the grace and skill of a brilliant and well-trained mind. She goes mad when John dies, so she says. She writes, much later: "Grief turns out to be a place none of us know until we reach it.... ...

From brilliant new Australian fiction to blockbuster American girlie pulp: Judy Blume's 'Summer Sisters'. Mildly entertaining chick lit about a rich girl/pool girl friendship across a couple of decades. Judy Blume is a name from my early teenagerhood; I'm sure she wrote 'Are You There God, it's Me, Margaret', which I remember as a dangerous book for 12 year old girls. Moved on to finish John Marsden's 'The Journey'. I have a lot of respect for John Marsden, as a teacher, an advocate for literacy and young people; he wrote the 'Tomorrow' teen series and a stack of books about boys and powerful, thoughtful parenting. But 'The Journey' is wierd; it's a piece of fiction tracing the rite of passage to adulthood of a 15 year old boy who sets out from his home, alone, to travel the country, broaden his horizons and grow into a man. So he discovers his body, comes to respect nature, becomes independent and resiliant, works, meets oddi...

It's hard to write about 'The Slap', by Christos Tsiolkas, because it was gripping and devestating in one. I had read a short review about this book and knew it had a great set-up - a suburban BBQ in Melbourne, where a dad slaps another person's toddler - but I didn't know anything about Tsiolkas. I'm unresolved on this book. I couldn't leave it alone; it was an obsessive read, with the story - told by each of the key characters in sequence - completely absorbing. The moral issue is explored, a sequence of events revealed, all this is clever and credible, but as each voice is introduced and their actions are described and dialogue provided, under it all we hear their inner voice and it's bleak stuff. Racist, self-serving, self-centred, deluded, mediocre, mean-spirited suburban mums and dads and grandparents and teenagers who Tsiolkas submits as regular folk. I still feel affected by it, drained and exhausted by it. Before Tsiolkas I read 'The Best Am...

Forget John Marsden, I'm reading 'Deep Survival' by Laurence Gonzales. It's dazzling. I bought this book for $2 at a garage sale, which is an unprecedented sum given it had no slipcover. With no slipcover I had no cues to follow, no back blurb, no subtle dance of graphics and typeface to lure me in, so the few paragraphs I browsed in the garage were mighty persuasive. Gonzales writes about why some people live through great adversity, and some don't. There is a lot to say about this book, but here's a little bit that gave me pause: "Most people operate in an environment of such low risk that action, inaction, or the vicissitudes of brains have few consequences... Mistakes spend themselves harmlessly and dies out unnoticed instead of growing out of control." And isn't that the decription of a Sydney marketing manager's life mode? Gonzales says most people don't get any practice in pain or crisis, so we have no mental map for it, and conseque...

It may die in the ass, but I'm engaged with the idea of noting down everything I read this year. I restarted reading on 1 Nov, not a moment later, and began immediately with shiny Sunday supplements and nasty junk reading, of course. I have no restraint at all. It took weeks to catch up on all the glossies which had been waiting for me in their bags. It was delicious, and overwhelming. My first post-denial book-reading was Nick Harkaway's 'Gone Away World'. It was a brilliant premise, wildly imaginative. The first half was amazing, delicious, then it fell apart for about a third, then came together again to finish. I may not have done it justice, though; reading it when I was starving, I gulped it up and had no patience. I'll read his next book, when it comes. Nick is John le Carre's son, so it was a literary sensation, much-anticipated, etc, and worth the hoo haa. I finished Barabara Kingsolver next. She's great. She'll stay with me. Oddly, one of the m...

October is dead, long live November. It was much harder than I thought to go 31 days without reading, but it's done and I'm a better woman for it. For a little while, at least. I spent the weekend with friends in print: I read Maggie Alderson's whimsies, Adele Horin on school league tables and Stephanie Dowrick on reading, of all things. Stephanie was writing about reading as part of a communion of ideas; that writing and reading are fundamental social activities. She wrote: "We read books individually, but part of their wonder is how authentically they connect us to other people, regardless of where those people are." I exit one book-free month in compete agreement with Stephanie, and with some guidelines for future reading: Reading is food. Choose wisely, limit the junk, balance main meals and dessert. I'm talking about a little less fantasy, but I'm really putting the stopper on shiny Sunday supplement stories about trends, food and relationship case st...

30 minutes on public transport without a book is cruel and unusual punishment. I read the ads. I almost read Rebus over a shoulder. Eventually I chewed over my current preoccupation: brain food. Reading is a brain food delivery system. If junk food tastes good but has no enduring value, so too a narrow diet of fantasy fiction (or romance, or crime, or whatever your junk preference). Choose from the healthy options menu and you'll grow up big and strong. I need to balance my diet of Barbara Kingsolver (more please) and Robin Hobb (only for treats). This metaphor could go far. So if you don't read, are you starving your intellect? I'm stretching a metaphor but there may be a chicken nugget of truth in it.

One more week to go. Things I have done in the past 3 weeks which I wouldn't otherwise have done: Written a blog. I like it. Gone for a walk, just for the hell of it. I like this too. Painted a large abstract canvas with the boys in the garden. It's called 'Flower of Truth', named by G. I don't know what it means, either. Discovered several new TV shows on Foxtel: 'Breaking Bad', and something about a psychiatrist. Online shopping. A lot of washing. Stupid amounts of Work. Things I have not done in the past 3 weeks: My tax return. Read other blogs (where do they all live?). Gone to the dentist. In the past 3 weeks Work simply expanded to fill the space left vacant by reading, especially after the boys' bedtime. Every night the dilemma, what to do, what to do? Bedtime is horrible without a book, so I'll prop myself on the sofa with a movie and my laptop and get a whole lot of Work done. After 10.30 I'll watch any old bit of Lifestyle Channel tat, ...