Blog Archive

1 November 2024

New books and a new baby!

About a week had gone past and there had been no sign from Mike at NoHappyNonsense that he was active on his website or Neocities in any way. I know this because I have nothing else to do in my life except creepily wonder about what other people are doing. I wondered whether he was busy. I wondered whether he had lost interest. Then, suddenly, a day or so ago, Mike announced he had helped to populate the world with another human being! This was not on my bingo card. Congratulations Mike, and pass them on to your wife if you think to. I know things will be new and sometimes difficult for a while, but you’re an intelligent fellow and I’m confident you and your wife will find so much joy in your new child.

For those wondering what Mike’s connection is with the Reading Project, Mike wrote some reviews for us a while ago under the pseudonym ‘Hasty’. I’ve also written some pieces for his eMagazine, EarRat Magazine.

I have nothing quite as exciting or life-changing as a baby to report for myself. I’ve now read and reviewed four of this year’s Booker shortlisted novels and I have started the fifth, Stone Yard Devotional by Australian writer, Charlotte Wood. I hope to have all six novels read and reviewed by 12 November when the prize is announced. Of the four that I have read so far, this is my order of preference:

1. The Safekeep by Yael Van Der Wouden
2. Creation Lake by Rachel Kushner
3. James by Percival Everett
4. Held by Anne Michaels

I had to accompany Jenny into Sydney on Wednesday and while there I took the opportunity to look in Abbeys Bookshop. I was naughty and bought three new books. The first, Waverley by Sir Walter Scott, is credited as being the first historical novel written, and it lends its name to the set of twenty-eight historical novels Scott wrote during his career. I’ve previously read Rob Roy, although I enjoyed Ivanhoe more. Fans of Jane Eyre will probably know that Charlotte Brontë took inspiration for her ‘mad woman in the attic’ and the climactic fire in her novel from Ivanhoe.

I also bought the Rubaiyat of Omar Khayyam, a Persian poem from the eleventh century, which became popular in the West when it was translated by English poet Edward FitzGerald and published in 1859. I’ve never read it, but I keep coming across references to it and talk about how good it is, so I felt compelled to give it a look. The third book I bought was because, initially, the cover caught my eye. Edward Marston’s The Wolves of Savernake is an historical crime fiction set in the period of William the Conqueror. It is the first book in the Domesday Series. There are currently four books published in the series.

- bikerbuddy

4 November 2024

Ah, the joy of fatherhood!

I mentioned in my last post that Hasty from NoHappyNonsense had just had a baby. I’m long past that stage now. My eldest son is twenty-six. But whether you’re a new dad or an older dad like me, you always think your kids are going to think you’re cool. That they’ll want to be just like you when they’re grown up, and when they’re with their friends, maybe coming home from school or at a shopping mall when they’re older, and you just happen to bump into them, they’ll turn to their mate and say, maybe before you even know they’re there, “That’s my dad. He’s pretty cool. Let me introduce you to him.”

This morning, I found my son watching a video and having a cackle over it. When pressed, in my cool-dad way that I ask him questions, he admitted that the attraction of the video lay in its representation of a father figure. In short, the following reminded him of me!

That’s all that needs to be said. My illusions are shattered. Such is the lot of parents!

- bikerbuddy

11 November 2024

Booker Predictions

I finally finished the last review of this year’s Booker shortlisted books this afternoon. I left Samantha Harvey’s Orbital until last because it is possibly the shortest book in the list.

I’ve had some successes (and some failures) predicting the Booker prize since this website began. This year I can’t make a clear prediction, even though of the six novels I only gave The Safekeep five stars. That had a lot to do with personally enjoying the book more than the others. Percival Everett’s James is currently the favourite to win, but I’m not sure about that. Everett’s The Trees was my favourite to win back in 2022, but I didn’t feel it for James, however good it is.

My views about Held were unambiguous in my review, and I don’t think it should win, although I can see how it might. I personally favour Orbital or Creation Lake as likely winners. They have some mild similarities. Rachel Kushner’s thriller is strangely peppered with meditations on human prehistory which remind me a lot of Samantha Harvey’s novel which considers humanity’s place in the universe. But if it was to be one of these two, Creation Lake would be my choice. I think it was more original in its structure and its ideas. For instance, in Orbital Samantha Harvey employs a common idea in one chapter to give a sense of the scope of all of time, by contracting it into a single earth year. The doomsday clock was the same idea, which placed nuclear annihilation at midnight. In general, I found Kushner’s use of prehistory and the question of Neanderthals and homo sapiens to be more original and thought provoking, coupled with a more complex and satisfying plot.

I think any one of these books could win (of course), but if I’m to make a prediction (or more accurately, show my favour), I would have to pick Creation Lake (or maybe The Safekeep?)

We have another two days to find out how wrong I am!

- bikerbuddy

13 November 2024

Booker Winner Announced

In my last blog post my prediction for the Booker Prize was a little ambivalent, and that tone continued in a newsletter I sent out to our subscribers late yesterday. I’ve just watched the Booker announcement on YouTube to learn that Samantha Harvey’s Orbital is the Booker Prize winner for this year. It was one of three books I settled on that I thought were worthy of the win, although my heart was leaning more towards Creation Lake.

Orbital was the last of the Booker Prize shortlist I read, and I remember thinking as I read it that it is a thought-provoking book. I appreciated its respect for science, and that the understanding that science affords us is inspirational and awe-inspiring. The novel follows the lives of six crew members of the International Space Station for a day, but the real story is humankind’s tenancy of our planet and our frightening and humbling insignificance in the universe.

Looking back on it, maybe the choice of the Booker committee should have been obvious. Creation Lake has a lot going for it, but Orbital’s ending was unusual and so apt for its subject. It had a sparse human story, but in this case, that was appropriate. A worthy win!

- bikerbuddy