Fed Square and its books
I have been looking forward to going to the Fed Square book market on a Saturday ever since I found out about it, a couple of months ago. I was imaging heaps of different booksellers, at least some selling things cut-price… I was a bit disappointed. There were less than ten booksellers. Admittedly a number did have cheap books, but they were mostly second-hand (which is still fine). I did buy four books, but three of those were from the stall set up by Andrew’s Books, which I go to in Lygon St all the time anyway. Sigh.
I got: Unnatural Fire, by Fidelis Morgan (cool name), which I started reading on the tram although I haven’t even finished Genghis Khan yet (thanks to also reading Lantia on the tram home after I bought it); it seems like a Restoration version of I, Claudia, which is just fine with me – female protagonist/detective, etc.
Limbo, by Andy Secombe; not sure whether this will turn out to be a waste of time or not.
The Stone of Heaven (Unearthing the Secret History of Imperial Green Jade), by Adrian Levy and Cathy Scott-Clark, which looks really cool.
On Histories and Stories, by AS Byatt, because I think I should get into more lit crit and I’ve heard of Byatt and she seems cool.
The Lost Kingdom of Lantia
Picked this up for $5; I knew it was going to be a kids’ book, but that’s partly why I got it – I’m realising I should teen fiction so that I can genuinely recommend books – current ones – to my students. Anyway; it’s by Maggie Hamilton, and I actually thought it was set in Melbourne, until at the end I read she’s based in Sydney so I guess it’s actually set there, although there was no mention of a bridge or Opera House which I thought was odd in a book about kids on holidays.
Overall I guess it was OK; as I read it I thought using the name Lantia was a bit dumb since it was quite obviously about Atlantis (magical kingdom destroyed by volcano) – at the end she does indeed say the book was inspired by her fascination by Atlantis, so I’m relieved the name wasn’t just a really poor way of covering it up. The writing was all right; I found it a bit basic, but I am well out of the target audience. The one thing I found incredibly annoying was her use of rhetorical questions all the time, and in italics. Why did she feel the need to do this? (Ha ha). It really, really got on my nerves.
I think I would recommend it to a kid; one who wasn’t a totally avid reader, but was looking for something fairly engaging and possibly a bit challenging, for younger teens.
Tim Severin is my hero
I’m reading his Genghis Khan at the moment, and it’s as fantastic as the others. Different, though: he’s not in charge of this one (it got hijacked by other people). Still fascinating… so much to know about Mongolia, and so little people seem to care.
The first I read was Marco Polo, which was good since that’s the first he did. I’ve also read his Jason and the Argonauts – it would be awesome to find the doco of that to show Yr7 students as we did mythology; Sinbad, which might be my favourite so far; and Moby Dick – both following Herman around, and finding out about Great White Other Animals and their myths. What a legend he is.
I’ve got Mum reading him too. She’s got about 10 at her uni library, of which I am fairly envious. She’s reading the one where he follows the Crusades right now, which is immediately before his Genghis trip.
Science Fiction
Currently reading a critique of SF as a genre, from the New Cultural Idiom series. It’s quite interesting; the first chapter is an attempt at a definition of SF, and a survey of others’ definitions. I’m in the chapter on the history of the genre at the moment, and looking forward to the chapters on race, gender, and technology. It reminds me again that as a female I am quite an unusual reader of SF. It also talks about a lot of SF I’ve never heard of, let alone read, which is exciting if a little daunting – there’s quite a bit here I would like to try and find. I really appreciate a book like this that takes SF – perhaps the epitome, in some minds, of popular or pulp fiction – and treats it as a serious subject, worthy of analysis, and not just in terms of what it ‘lacks’. I got sick of this during a subject at uni called Popular Fiction, which often felt like a comparison between ‘literature’, which has ‘blah’, and ‘popular fiction’, which has not. It is always salutory to remember that Shakespeare was written for mass consumption, and the theatre was looked upon as a rather vulgar form of entertainment.
Anyway. Enough rant. SF is a valid form of fiction and says some fascinating things about the society that produces it. And it’s fun to read.
Guitar Highway Rose
GHR is the book I’m doing with my Yr9 class at the moment. I’d not read it before, but I was surprised and impressed when I read it – I like it a lot. Don’t know that much of the class does, at the moment, but that may be more of a factor that it’s a class text + they’re in Yr9 than a reflection on the book itself.
It’s Australian, which is nice – by a woman named Brigid Lowry – largely set in Perth. It’s written in a really interesting way, which I think is largely its appeal: you get the perspective of lots of different characters throughout the book; there are no chapters as such, just different sections with revealing titles. Asher, the main boy, writes his parts as a flow of consciousness; no punctuation, etc (much like an email, really…). The characters all go through interesting changes, and there are some rather interesting insights into teenage Aussie culture, I think (it was written almost a decade ago, so I wonder if it has lost/is losing some relevance?). Anyway – at the moment I’m trying to think of how to encourage the kids to engage with the themes etc, and I’m finding that particularly difficult
Historical romances
For a number of years, My Dear Friend Kate tried to convince me that historical romances were a good thing to read. For that same length of time, I tried to put on a distant smile and refuse to be drawn in. This was partly prejudice – I have never wanted to be seen as a reader of romance – and partly because she was so keen that I try them. Last year, however, Kate cottoned on to a means of basically forcing me to read them: she sent me four as a birthday present. I will now admit that I have read three of those (I am still holding out and not reading the one called The Bridal Bed), and a couple of others she has since given me. Some have had surprisingly good plot structures and interesting characters. The basic theme is always the same, of course – boy and girl meet and eventually end up together; girl is often described with words such as ‘wilful’ and ‘head-strong’, therefore making her a more interesting character and allowing for interesting adventures and devious wooing. Some of them have been fairly pedestrian. I think my favourite is Wings of the Storm, because it’s about a female historian ‘accidentally’ sent back to 12-century England. The love story was fairly humourous, but I also found it very interesting how the author got her character to deal with the change in time and scene (partly, she made her an avid member of an Historical Anachronism society).
Much to Kate’s disappointment and disgust, I am still not entirely hooked on this genre – I don’t think I’ll ever go out and actively look for them. I can concede that they are not all as bad as I had thought, though, which I think is a fairly big step.
The Templars
Another book I’ve been looking forward to reading for a long time. By Piers Paul Read, it looks good – a history of the Order, trying to sort fact from fantasy and hysterical accusations; not an easy task. I’ve only read 25 pages, but something in those pages has made me very happy: finally, a scholar who is sensible enough to quote from a contemporary Bible, rather than the King James! It’s a bit sad when people seem to think that you can only read the Bible with thee and thou and -est in it. Read is using the Jerusalem Bible, published in 1966; it is indeed a refreshing change. So, too, is the fact that Read does not make – or not yet, anyway – judgments about Christians and their beliefs. I’m not actually sure whether he’s a Christian being scrupulous about not making that too obvious, or whether he’s not Christian and tolerant enough to allow the Christian voice to be heard without condemnation. Either way, he’s presented a view of Christ and the early Church that’s one of the most straigh-forward and accepting I’ve ever read. Accepting in terms of ‘people believe this and who am I to nay-say’, I mean.
What this has to do with the Templars may be a good question, and it’s another thing for which I respect Read. He’s talking about this – the origin of Christianity, relations with Jews, early persecution – to give context to the formation of the Templars, and explain the background for some of the later events. As he says, some writers expect knowledge that some/many readers just won’t have, so to reach a wider audience you need to cater for them all. Even knowing half the early stuff, it’s good to be reminded, and also to read it in this context so it’s present in the mind while you read the later happenings.
Basque History
Not an Op Shop book, but one I’ve been looking forward to reading for a long time. Mark Kurlansky’s Basque History of the World is very well written and researched. I’ve been vaguely interested in this group of people for a while – I think I may even have done an assignment about them in early high school – and it certainly fits into my love of fairly obscure history. No Basque would thank me for saying that, I guess, but what I mean is that it is obscure in terms of the generally understood history of the world. The Basques as a nation do not seem to have had a huge impact on the world (although after reading this, I will passionately argue anyone who says that): to most people, they wouldn’t even seem to be a nation, since you can’t look up Basqueland on an average map and find defined borders. But, Kurlansky points out, they have had a huge impact – particularly on France and Spain (he concentrated mostly on the latter), and also on the rest of Europe and, consequently, the world. Who set up the Jesuits? That would be St Ignatius – or Ignatius de Loyola, a Basque, just to name one. Many of the other Basques who have had an impact are not acknowledged by name anywhere much, but their impact is certainly felt.
I love that Kurlansky included recipes in this book: although I don’t think I’ll ever use one (not knowing where I might find baby eels, and not being sure that I’d like to eat them anyway), it adds powerfully to the fact that this is a history of a people, who are still alive and very much kicking, rather than just being an academic look at some isolated, irrelevant people.
I really liked Kurlansky’s Salt, and I must get around to finding me his Cod.
Vietnam: A History
Being about to teach a class of Year 11s some Vietnamese history, I thought I should know a bit about it. Thankfully, we went to visit my family, and they may well have one of the world’s largest personal collections of books on Vietnam (Dad was a Vietnam veteran, and had a great interest in it). Well, that’s what it feels like, anyway. So I got Stanley Karnow’s Vietnam: A History, since what I really wanted was an overview of everything leading up to US involvement – I’m going to be teaching the French war, basically, up to the Geneva Conference in 1954. I’m not sure where to start; I’d like to do at least one lesson on China’s 1000-year occupation of Vietnam, as very relevant background…
Anyway, the book: it’s very good. I learnt an enormous amount just reading the first 4-5 chapters. I reallised I knew basically nothing about this area, and what it had gone through. For starters, I always just assumed that Ho Chi Minh was this scary Communist guy – and maybe later on he got really nasty, I’m not sure, I haven’t read that far – but from what I have read, I have the impression that he was far more of a nationalist than a Communist: no matter that he really did believe in the Communist ideas he was far more interested in getting Vietnam free of French rule, and avoiding American overlordship as well. He did, in fact, approach the US for help, but they didn’t want to get involved in Indochina – and they wanted to keep the French happy. Plus I guess they were already worried about the ‘domino effect’ of Communism…
As an historian I am fully aware of the impossibility of writing objective history, but Karnow seems to have had a good stab at it. He’s certainly not out to lionise the US, but neither does he paint a portrait of the poor suffering Vietnamese who only want to be left in peace. He seems quite fair to both sides, and seems to have gone to great lengths to be so – being a journo helped, of course, since as a reporter he got access to important people and has included many of their comments on various aspects of the history he’s writing.
This is a very good book, as an overview of Vietnam’s colonisation history. I think I might be able to use bits of it when I teach – maybe not this time, because I’m not sure what my supervisor will think about me not using the textbook – but when I’m out by myself (ack).
Ice Station Zebra
Another MacLean Op Shop purchase. I saw the movie years ago – I’m not even sure I saw all of it – so when I saw the novel I knew I wouldn’t be disappointed, partly also because it is MacLean. And it was good: another one where I was indeed mildly surprised at the resolution. I like it when that happens.
I have to say that being in a submarine under the polar ice-cap is not my idea of fun, and I’m just as happy never to get closer to it than through this book. Hmm, interesting – two books with ties to the Arctic, this and The First Horseman. As close as I’d like to get, thanks.
Randomly Yours, Alex 