What I'm reading, and what I'm reading next

Hey, it's Friday, and the family is all here. I went and sat with my husband and his two kids in the kitchen for about four minutes to discuss the day's activities. We have a ritual on Good Friday that includes: walking the dog off-lead at the park, having a feast-brunch, playing a board game as a family and, in the evening, watching Life of Brian. We're not having brunch, because we're doing it on Sunday instead, with my family including bro who is down from Canberra. The weather looks pretty shitty, so not sure about dog walk as we just washed her the other day. Board game: well, I don't think the 18 year old will do it, she's been not into it for a few years. But the 17 and 15 year olds will. And Life of Brian? It might just be me and my daughter and Clokes.

But sitting with 3/5 of my immediate family for four minutes was hard. They have these silly in-jokes that are exclusive and, well, silly. It's something I've noticed creeping up. It does make me feel excluded and annoyed in an adolescent way. I should be happy they are bonded and having fun, and I am. I'm also happy that I don't have to be with them, they can get on by themselves. But it's still annoying. And strange. We are a strange situation. Two families in one house. I have fantasies of leaving; going away under the guise of writing retreats and workshops in other countries, and just not fucking coming home.

But all my books are here.

*

What I'm reading. I'm back on the first book of the Game of Thrones series. I've decided I just want to read ahead. It'll take me a while to get past where the series is, and my daughter tells me that the series is not in the same order as the books. I'm also reading Story Engineering by Larry Brooks. And I started The Night Guest by Fiona McFarlane. It's on the Stella shortlist I think. Lined up I have Pnin by Nabokov, as well as his memoir Memory, Speak. Both of these have been highly recommended by people whose opinions I rate. And I'm going to re-read Love in The time of Cholera because  Gabriel Garcia Marquez has just died and I've chosen it as one of my favourite books for a short piece I was invited to write.

*

There is no publishing news, but there is some movement. I spoke with my agent on the phone earlier this week, then gave the novel to someone else to read. There's a huge story behind that, but I can't say much about it here, other than things lined up quite extraordinarily, and I am seeing this person - a published novelist, quite high-profile, established and establishment - tomorrow to discuss it. Which means she's read and has something to say. So I feel like I'm inching towards *something* but I also feel like it's all pretty impossible.

My dear, supportive, writer-friend, the other day over coffee, drew me a picture. It was something like this:

And I'm like: yeah.

Going fishing again chickens

But this time it's more this

than this

I'm going west, and because I think I've been blathering about it for months, you already know this. I'm going to sessions at the Perth Writers Festival, and I'm booked in to do all sorts of writery goodnesses.

I'm hanging out with Sarah Toa, writer of Salt Story and blogger at A WineDark Sea, and I'm really really excited about meeting her and seeing her world.

After Perth I'm hiring a car and driving south to Albany, which is where Sarah lives. I'm going to meet new people and see new things, smell the air of the west and be under a different sky.

I don't know that we'll go fishing but we'll see the sea, oh yes.

Hope everyone well, back soon.

Windy old Melbourne Town

September always seems windy. My daughter was born in September, and I remember the trees thrashing outside the window as I walked the flat, my mother sitting on the couch timing contractions.

Since we got back from Hong Kong, we've been pretty busy. Princess had her wisdom teeth out last Thursday so I've been nurse: dispensing medications from the infirmary (a kind of table thing in the hallway), making soft food, taking her ice packs, making her swish salt rinses, mashing food, heating up tinned Campbell's soup. That sort of thing. The swelling is going down but she's still got a bit of bruising. I was a bit anxious because she'd never had anything other than a local anaesthetic before and she gets heart palpitations (which I again need to get checked out by a cardiologist) BUT it was all okay, and I could put away the catastrophising scenes of doom that filled my head as I sat in the waiting room. The dentist had also said one of the teeth had a hooked root and was perilously close to a large nerve in her jaw. There a no signs that it's not gone perfectly well.

It's the second week of the school holidays (third for P) which means no teaching for me and lots of writing time (ordinarily, and the last couple of days I've managed a lot of writing.) I've been walking the dog, continuing my healthy with my food. Day before yesterday I chopped off my hair. It had grown very long, down my back, and while I kind of liked the wild woman effect a side ponytail gave me, when I got up Saturday morning with what other people call bed hair and I call playdough hair, I realised the ends were just so ratty and all uneven (because I have this thing, you see, where I cut my own hair) and so I went into the bathroom and pulled it forwards and chopped it off on either side. So it's just past my shoulders, or on them, a long bob and a bit hacked at the back. Good for summer.

We finished Season One of Orange is the New Black. It is fucking amazing. Alex, have you managed to see any of it? I recommend moving it to the top of your list right now. We are pottering through West Wing, up to about early Season 5. And we re-borrowed Sopranos from Clokey's sister on the weekend and so I'm watching that (again, for me) with Princess.

Seriously, too much goodness.

Clokes and I are watching Big Brother but that's all I'm watching on tv. Did not re-invest in either X-Factor or any other reality tv. The other day caught five minutes of Winners and Losers. Oh my god. How can people watch it? It's so saccharine. Reminds me of what little I've seen of that Asher Keddie show, but much worse. The state of television is terrible and people moan about reality tv?

Reading: am reading various books. I am struggling to settle and go deep. Am flicking between different ones, including reading printed-out articles, interviews all to do with writing (The Paris Review series of interviews are amazing, if you like long-form and even writers you don't read, they are always insightful and interesting.) They go back to the '50s man, and you can search by decade or by person's name. Sometimes I think it's the best thing on the Internet.

I have started Eleanor Catton's The Luminaries, which is on the shortlist for The Booker Prize. She's twenty-seven, it's her second book and I hate her. She uses an interesting form in the book which is partly why I'm reading it; partly too I'm reading it because it's so frigging long, more than 800 pages and I'm curious to know how she sustains it well enough to be shortlisted in such a prestigious prize; alsoam curious to see how's she's done it at all. I also bought the shortest on the shortlist, Colm Toibin's The Testament of Mary.

Writing: over the weekend I wrote a long piece to submit to a journal that has a theme of SEX. I don't write sexy stuff but I'm a sex ed teacher so thought to angle it from there. We shall see. Then this morning I rejigged a piece I'd done on gadgetry and my hate for Apple products, and incorporated some commentary on the hate people have for Jonathan Franzen (and to a lesser extent, Tim Winton.) Not sure what I'll do with that, it's pretty ranty. And THEN I got an email last Tuesday from one journal to say they wanted to print something I'd submitted (it's a creative non fiction piece, kind of) and then last night, an email from a small publishing house who want to include a poem I sent them in their annual collection of stories. So. A few little things happening.

My big writing thing: I have to get my second manuscript to my agent early November. She wants to get it to publishers I think in February. They are keen to see it which is good but so much pressure because what if it's terrible?

Let's just look at this for a moment to calm down:  Putting time in perspective

Reading the Russians

The five big boys of Russian literature.

I consider myself pretty well read. But I've never read the Russians.

I tried to read Brothers Karamazov quite a few years ago, and no doubt I picked up my mother's copy of War and Peace a few times after one of her rants on how much she loved it, and oh Pierre, Pierre, sort of thing.

As you know I've just finished Lolita, and while Nabokov doesn't really count as one of the Russians when you talk about reading the classics (ok, he doesn't at all) I feel I've started on the Russians, and I am determined to read them.

I've read some of the English, and some of the Americans. I haven't read the French and don't really feel compelled to. But I am feeling compelled to read the Russians.

This is my list (after asking for advice elsewhere):

Dead Souls - Nikolai Gogol

Crime and Punishment - Fyodor Dostoyevsky

Anna Karenin - Leo Tolstoy. (NOT KareninA. D'oh.)

Fathers and Sons - Ivan Turgenev

War and Peace - Tolstoy.

And Anton Chekhov's short stories.

I just went down to the second-hand book store of Fitzroy Street where I never get anything off a list, and managed to get Anna K and Crime and Punishment. I also picked up a copy of Edward Said's Orientalism. I read Said when I was doing my lit. review for my thesis.

Recently, I just finished (after Lolita) a quick Helen Garner (The Children's Bach, and with it completed my reading and purchase of all her books - I think) and have started Murray Bail's The Pages, a slender book which I fear will accompany me only so far on my Russian journey. I might need to dip into other bits and pieces, or I might be able to read them solidly. We shall see. Wish me luck.

PS Managed to farm out the kids and spent the weekend at Werribee Mansion at the hotel there. Joseph's restaurant has a new chef and the food at dinner last night was amazing. We tootled around the place for 2 nights and a day; saw the animals, played pool, had a swim in the pool, wandered the mansion, watched Bruno on the in-house movie service, drank champagne that we took in, and on the Friday night, had a picnic on the floor of our room - it should be a new trend and I'm starting it now. Picnics on the floor of classy hotel rooms. Believe me, too much fun. Cheaper than room service.

day trip last week

last tuesday a friend and i went to check out werribee south, and campbell's cove bathing boxes, which i'd read about once a few years ago, and then again recently.

it was a sunny day, loverly, and we drove across the bridge and saw the new suicide barriers, and both felt yuck thinking about the little girl, and how people can do that, and how people can kill themselves etc and so by the time we had crested and gone over the top we were a bit quiet, and my friend paul had to concentrate because we were boxed in by mammoth trucks and i got a little scared.

first, we went to point cook. clokes and i have been trying to think "outside the box" about our accommodation iss-ews. but frankly, point cook is too far outside the box. i'd rather live in geelong, some beautiful places there.

first we found ourselves at sanctuary lakes resort if you don't mind. it was fucking horrible, and the lake was like a burley griffin wannabe. we drove around for a little while, and we each found maybe one house that we would pick were we forced to live at sanctuary lakes resort. my friend's an architect and he talks about 'good bones.' but not that day. apparently also the place is built on landfill which is dirty: i quote from a message thread "the ground is full of broken concrete and asbestos wall insulation steel rebar bricks chipboard topped with 12-18 inches of the original topsoil scraped of and dumped back on top of the fill."

then we went across to the other side of point cook road to some new estates. two literary pieces came to mind. one was ts eliot's the wasteland, and the other, for some reason, was dickens' bleak house. one of the streets was called home street; it was hopeful and pathetic in equal measures.

it was so depressing. i just don't like new houses and housing estates. if i had to live in a new house, i would choose something that was mock victorian or georgian or something. i can't stand the lack of character, and the formulaic designs, the mix and matchness. i like old houses. i don't care if the paint is peeling (like on our bedroom ceiling) or there are other signs of shabby - i have high ceilings and good light and well-proportioned rooms. i've lived in some shitboxes, really i have. in japan we didn't even have a bathroom in our first apartment and we washed on the roof and at the sento or the gym. it's not that i'm a princess, i can do rough. i just need to be in a suburb or area with soul. as far as i could see, all those new housing estates and satellite towns have no soul. not yet. they might. later.

so we hightailed it out of there. i hadn't seen anything that was remotely pretty; paul quite liked one of the display home offices.



just like the bellarine peninsula, no?


next stop was werribee south. well, there's a beach there did you know it? it looks not unlike queenscliffe and them there parts on approach (see photo above). we got out of the car at the spot where the river joins the ocean, and there were people, and the beach wasn't as bad as you would think. it is indeed a secret little gem. we had lunch at this fab milk bar, and chatted with the people running it. paul had a burger, i had a cheese and salad sandwich and we shared a bowl of chips. we had a coffee each and then shared a vanilla slice. the floor was amazing terrazzo with about 4 different colours and borders edged in gold. it was in amazing condition and at the doorway there was a built-in plaque with the date - 1959 from memory. we both agreed we'd thought it would be earlier, but the building itself was a big, blonde-brick number; very boxy and with a residence upstairs probably.




good-lunch milk bar.


next stop was campbell's cove.

when you get to the road the beach shacks are on, it looks like this:





cool, right? so we drove along behind the shacks, to see how long the stretch was. at the end of it, there was a car park. so we parked there. there were a few cars, and we thought we'd walk back along the front of the beach huts, along the sand.


it was a good idea, right?

so we parked the car, walked down onto the beach, looked around, and up the beach i saw two nude men. that's when i remembered that the article i read had said this was a nude beach.

oh, ok. no problem with that.

we went back to the car to get my bag etc, and then something like this walked out at us, from the scrub:

> sorry to disappoint, folks. i just spent about half an hour offending mine eyes by trying to find a picture of a fat, nude man. i can't find one that's right, so i'll just have to use my words.

so, through the bushes, towards our car walked a nude man, with a really big penis. he was old, and fattish, and headed our way. looking right at us, it was most disconcerting.

so we walked away heading up the beach, away from the nude action. i started to realise why there were so many cars, it's a beat, it's a gay beat!! i said to paul. we clung to each other in excitement, giggling like school girls, and went to look at the huts. as we walked, paul was saying he hoped his car would be alright and i teased him about men having sex on his bonnet, or ejaculating all over it.

and here are the beach huts, they are so cool:





campbell's cove beach huts.



as we walked along we met a couple who were outside one of the huts. he was getting on his waders to do some fishing and had a couple of rods down on the beach. she was sitting at a card table in the sun. they were friendly, and we chatted for a while, asking questions about the huts. they said it was wild down there in winter, a great time to go, or at the end of summer season, through autumn, and also in spring, before it gets too warm. they said sometimes the seaweed is so bad and it really stinks. they said also sometimes vandalism can be a problem. you're not meant to "stay there" but they said the local council turns a blind eye, and really it's better having some people around, otherwise there'd be nudists completely out of control.




some of the shacks are quite derelicte-my-balls, but others are even flasher than this one.




i liked this fence.







i'm guessing there's no "town water" so it's rain tanks.



we walked back to the carpark a bit scared of what we might see. there'd been heaps of traffic on the road as we'd walked along the beach and then back behind the shacks on the road. all men, and most of them old. saw one couple. maybe it's a dogging place? i don't know.

we got back to the car and there was actually a guy launching his boat near-by off a trailer. paul went down to the beach again, and there was a young dude (non-nude) there that i could see from inside the car where i was sitting. he was looking shifty, standing on the beach and looking at something in the shrubs? paul cam e back to the car, then as we were driving away another old nude guy walked through the bushes away from the clothed young guy.

it was seriously hideous but a bit exciting as well.


we drove back along the road, and the along the extension past the turn-off where we'd come in. there were a couple more cars down there, i think with masturbators. it seemed to be a younger man patch.

so that was it. we drove back across the bridge. i loved it down that way. i saw some seriously funky farm houses and there's a heap of horticulture going on, the air was scented with cabbages and other cruciferous vegetables.

happy weekend to you all. i am off being writerly tomorrow. there's a guy in the class that is kind of like the person who gets on the tram, and comes and sits next to you, and is weird and you don't want them to sit next to you because they might start shouting or talk to you in gibberish. last time, when we had to share bits of our work in small groups, his piece immediately reminded me of a confederacy of dunces. it was like it was lifted straight from it. he said he hadn't read it, didn't seem to have heard of it. i'm not sure i believe him. i told him i thought he'd like it, considering his own story. what i didn't say was that the character in his story, and the opening scene is very similar to stuff from that book.

however, an admission from me. once on this blog i said i was tired of the same-old, same-old fiction*, and sick of synopses on the back of books that go something like and so she returned to the family property, to rebuild her life and also rebuild the chook pen. well, tomorrow we have to take a synopsis, and mine reads like shit. exactly like the chook pen one. what to do? down the bottom, i have written "sounds like a crap marketing line" and put pertinent bits in bullet points. i don't know how to write a fucking synopsis; i guess i'll find out tomorrow. it's pretty confronting having to give people copies of your work, that's not finished, that still feels drafty. now i have to settle down and do some polishing.

*recent readings - the secret life of bees, ok for about 1/3 of the book, then got predictable and ordinaire; the reader, only ok but ultimately forgettable, didn't make much of an impression at all, maybe i shouldn't have seen the movie first; the dressmaker, wasn't sure about the style and had to stop, go back to the beginning and re-read when almost 1/3 way through because i was confused with all the characters, nobody seemed real or believable. i know it was gothic and hence meant to be strange, just didn't work properly for me; the gathering, fantastic. simply superb; the time traveler's wife, reading it now. love love loving it. the slap, not so much.

so out of 6 novels in the last 2 months i've liked precisely 2. maybe that's not too bad. i'm also reading the joan and bette gossip-bitch-fest. dipping into it when i want to get away from fiction.

also, don't know if my dad's read any of this yet. i was a little unsettled by the idea of him doing so, but then thought, fuck it. he was pestering me about it on and off over the years, perhaps it would make us closer? he's always busy doing his tax though. does anybody else's father always seem to be "doing his tax." is it a fatherly euphemism for something else? maybe he's a secret blogger?