The Woman in White

First of all a confession… I am not, strictly speaking, “reading” this book, but listening to an audio version. Audio books provide a really convenient way to increase your amount of reading, if you commute or spend time at the gym you can listen to the audio. Fortunately there are more and more excellent audio titles available through the public libraries in Perth and they are narrated by some fine actors.

At the moment I am “reading” The Woman in White by Wilkie Collins. Incredibly, The Woman in White has never been out of print since it first appeared in serial form in Victorian England (1860) and it still has readers in its thrall.

The narrative hook draws you into the story right in the beginning when the hero, Walter Hartright, comes across the mysterious woman in white late at night on a lonely road north of London. She stops him, appears agitated and asks strange questions. Later on our hero comes across some men who are searching for the woman, claiming has escaped from an asylum. Then the story moves to another location where Walter meets another woman in white. Is this a doppelganger? As the story develops, Hartright becomes a type of Victorian detective as he follows clues along the way to discover the truth about this mysterious woman: who is she and why was she so agitated, why is she on the run?

In many ways Wilkie Collins' novels were forerunners of contemporary crime fiction and they certainly influenced many current writers of crime and mystery. Collins most famous novel is The Moonstone (published 1868) which Dorothy L Sayers considered "probably the very finest detective story ever written". I plan to read The Moonstone next and I already have downloaded a free ebook copy onto my Kindle.

As an aside, Wilkie Collins was a great friend of Charles Dickens and he lead quite a sensational life for Victorian times.

My post for the July readit2001 Twitter #whodoneit

Books read so far, in 2011

I'm trying to read more this year. Here's a list with comments on the books I have read so far in 2011.

The Good Earth by Pearl Buck
a classic that has stood the test of time

Burying the Bones by Hilary Spurling
a biography of Pearl Buck's life in early 20th Century China

Passage to Juneau by Jonathan Raban
I had not read JR before and was blown away by his erudition and wonderful descriptions of sailing the inside passage, from Seattle to Juneau

Coasting by Jonathan Raban
an earlier book by JR, about sailing around the British Isles

Larry’s Party by Carol Shields
my expectations on hearing positive reports about this book from friends when it first came out, were not quite met

Enchantment and Sorrow by Gabrielle Roy
Gabrielle Roy is not well known in Australia at all, but is one of the most famous French Canadian writers. She wrote in French and this is a translation of the first part of her autobiography, set in Manitoba in the 1920-1940s. If the French Canadians had it rough in Quebec, those in the isolated French communities were even worse off.

Flashman Papers by Macdonald Fraser
well what can I say. Politically incorrect, but very flashy in a boy's own adventure way!

The Resurrectionist by James Bradley
a strange dark tale about "body snatchers" in 19th Century London. It is based on the story of the Burke and Hare murders. I will seek out some more of James Bradley.

Things Fall Apart by Chinua Achebe
you must read this post-colonial classic from Nigerian writer

The Road by Cormac McCarthy
Must read some more of CMcC have seen the film of The Road and the book is equally stark and grim

No Country for Old Men by Cormac McCarthy
terrific

Mothers and Sons by Colm Toibin
short stories, set in Ireland, all around this theme, each quite different.

Dancing Backwards by Salley Vickers
one of her latest, but not as good and her previous books such as Miss Garnet's Angel and The Other Side of You

Ruby in her navel by Barry Unsworth
Forget the silly title, this is a terrific well researched historical novel set in Sicily in the 12th Century, when Sicily had a Norman king (Roger) and Saracens and Christians worked along side and shared power for one brief period in history. Very informative and enjoyable. I am an Unsworth fan.

Barry Unsworth by Pascali’s Island
this is one of Unsworth's earlier books set in pre- WW1 in the dying days of the Ottoman Empire. Good read

Five Bells by Gail Jones
this is the first book of Gail Jones that I have read. It's set in Sydney on one bright summer day and tracks the intertwining lives of four adults and a child. The title comes from classic Australian poem Five Bells by Kenneth Slessor which I have also been delving into. A wonderful book. The various story lines propel you forward and the language is beautiful and poetic. The subject of the poem, Five Bells, is echoed in the novel as well.

The Angel and the Octopus by Simon Leys
some great essays here and I especially enjoyed the ones about China under Mao.

Books I read in 2010

I’ve been inspired by Ruminations list of books read in 2010 to come up with my own list of what I read in 2010. I hadn’t actually kept track, apart from the bookgroup readings, but here’s an approximate list of those read in the year. New Year's Resolution read more in 2011...

B indicates the bookgroup ones and A the Australian ones.

1. A year of wonders : a novel of the plague by Geraldine Brooks
2. Frenchman's Creek by Daphne du Maurier
3. War and peace by Leo Tolstoy
4. The spare room by Helen Garner (A)
5. Parrot and Olivier in America by Peter Carey (A)
6. Lovesong by Alex Miller (A)
7. Purple hibiscus by Chimamanda Ngozi Adichie.
8. Half of a yellow sun by Chimamanda Ngozi Adichie.
9. Ordinary Thunderstorms by William Boyd (B)
10. The Other Side of You by Sally Vickers (B)
11. Olive Kitteridge by Elizabeth Strout (B)
12. Jasper Jones by Craig Silvey (A) (B)
13. Wanting by Richard Flanagan (A) (B)
14. The Black Englishman by Carolyn Slaughter (B)
15. The Red Highway by Nicholas Rothwell (A) (B)
16. The Girl With the Dragon Tattoo by Stieg Larsson
17. The Girl Who Played with Fire by Stieg Larsson
18. The Girl Who Kicked the Hornets' Nest by Stieg Larsson
19. A Journey Tony Blair

Highlights

The Spare Room by Helen Garner would be my highlight. It's about a friend dying of cancer who comes to stay in the spare room. Don’t be put off by the subject matter as the clear writing and honesty make it shine. What a wonderful writer Helen Garner is, and she is not afraid of tackling difficult subjects. Joe Cinque's Consolation is another amazing book by HG.

Ordinary Thunderstorms is a rollicking good whodunit story about a guy who loses all his ID and survives on the streets of London while trying to get back his life and find the criminals. It would make a great movie. I’ve read another by William Boyd (Armadillo), also excellent and they did make a movie of that.

And I finally read War and Peace which, according to Elaine in Seinfeld was really meant to be called “War what is it good for” ;). Once you get your head around all the characters (hint: make a list) and the fact that they all have many different names you can get an entree into the story.

Two of these I read as ebooks on my Kindle: A Journey Tony Blair and Lovesong by Alex Miller

Six of those, the (A) ones are Australian literature. Geraldine Brooks is Australian too, but I don’t think of her as writing about Australia, especially.

Sharing a Google Doc

This year with our 2010 Book Club votes I have decided to share it on the Web as a Google doc. Here it is above with the embedded code. Google also makes a separate web page version for shared docs and also gives you a link to the doc on the Web. The doc contains our votes for 2010 rating the books from 1-7.

Book review Ben McNeil The Clean Revolution

Photo from jety's photostream
http://www.flickr.com/photos/jety/3315217963/

Book review of Ben McNeil’s new book The Clean Industrial Revolution

I recall hearing environmentalist David Suzuki speaking during a visit to Perth in 1999. He was addressing the global challenge of climate change. Someone from the audience asked him: “can science save us?” and Suzuki replied that he wasn’t convinced that it could.

Since that time our region is experiencing the impact of climate change, with fires and record low rainfalls in much of southern Australia. Perth rainfall in 2009 so far is 60% below average.

Ben McNeil’s timely new book, The Clean Industrial Revolution, takes us through the latest scientific research, and provides strong economic arguments that support urgent action on climate. Australia faces a particular challenge in the new low carbon age. Our vulnerable position as a high carbon, high energy economy is isolating Australia from the rest of the developed world and our trading partners. The book outlines many opportunities for business in the new carbon free environment which will include new “green collar jobs”. But, as McNeil points out, business will always act in self interest, so government must lead the way with legislation to introduce a strong carbon trading scheme. Our Emissions Trading Scheme (ETS) or Carbon Pollution Reduction Scheme (CPRS) is a long time in coming.

To quote from the video Discovering the future :the business of paradigms: “when the paradigm shifts everyone returns to go”. McNeil’s book does a good job of outlining ways forward as the paradigm shifts and Australian’s trading partners turn away from high carbon economies like ours.

Ben McNeil is a climate scientist and an economist. He’s also a senior research fellow at the Climate Change Research Centre at the University of NSW and is on the executive of Federation of Australasian Scientific and Technological Societies

McNeil’s book should be picked up by public, government, university, TAFE, school and special libraries.

A One Book Meme

The One Book Meme has been posted by:
reeling and writhing and Ruminations

Here's my go at it:

One book you’re currently reading: The White Tiger by Aravind Adiga
One book that changed your life: Bury My Heart of Wounded Knee by Dee Brown
One book you’d want on a deserted island: The Name of the Rose by Umberto Eco. So many ways to interpret this book. After reading this my friend went into the Claremont bookshop and asked the owner what else they had that was like The Name of the Rose. She was told there IS none!
One book you’ve read more than once: Lord of the Rings by J.R.R.Tolkein
One book you’ve never been able to finish: An Instant of the Fingerpost by Iain Pears
It's the sort of book I normally like, but when Pears started looking at the story again through different eyes I sort of lost interest. I should give it another go...one day.
One book that made you laugh: The Monkey Wrench Gang by Edward Abbey
This one was hard. And then I remembered this hilariously anarchistic adventure I came across in the 1980s. I must read some more fun stuff.
One book that made you cry: A Fine Balance by Rohinton Mistry
It's wonderful, but pretty grim
One book you keep rereading: Pride and Prejudice and everything by Jane Austen, what a genius. How many novels of that period are still so fresh?
One book you’ve been meaning to read: Sophie's World by Jostein Gaarder
After buying it some years ago it's still sitting on my shelf
One book you believe everyone should read: 1984 by George Orwell

This was fun, but if I did it again next week I'd probably come up with a different result.