The Hare With Amber Eyes: A Hidden Treasure by Edmund de Waal

Here's a book disguised as a book about a tiny white ceramic rabbit which is actually about THE ENTIRE WORLD. Well, ish. 

Edmund de Waal is, apparently, a well famous potter. I guess however famous you are for potting (?) I'm going to be far too philistine to have ever heard of you. But, be that as it may, what I'm getting at here is that despite having put together a truly incredible, captivating book, that's not even his real job. But then, I guess a potter writing a book about a tiny white ceramic rabbit makes, I guess, more sense than a carpenter doing it.

This book charts the journey of a set of these tiny objects - Japanese netsuke - from where Edmund's distant relative bought them in Paris in the 1870s to Edmund's London home today. So what? So what?! These little guys - essentially a really old Japanese belt keepers - accompany a Russian Jewish family through Paris, Vienna, Czechoslovakia, back to Japan and then onto London, taking in some of the most vitriolic anti-immigrant, anti-Jewish sentiment, seeing the rise and fall of a fortune, witnessing incredible wealth, indecipherable suffering and cataclysmic change. They are toys, curiosities, emblems, talismans, treasures.

Also, there's a family tree in the front, and I really like that junk.

You need to be able to devote yourself to this a bit - it's non-fiction with people and places and names and events you're going to want to keep track of - but it's absolutely worth it.

You'll be sorry when I'm dead by Marieke Hardy

You will either LOVE this book, or you will FUCKING HATE IT. Some chapters, I switched between huge snorts of laughter to being semi-disgusted at her conduct, which has been pretty shady at times. I admire that Hardy has no filter (even employing quite an endearing mechanic where she writes about an episode involving someone else, be an ex-lover or a bestie, and then gets them to write their side of the story). They don’t always match up, so it’s fascinating exercise in memory and how we like to write our own histories. It’s pretty admirable but can also be way over-sharing. And this is a girl that likes to over-share. Over-sharing is her stock in trade. Often it’s backed up by hilarious anecdotes about being a borderline alcoholic with a penchant for bad boys in Melbourne bands during the Noughties. Does it seem a little premature for her to essentially be writing her memoirs to date? Just a tad. Has she achieved a lot for her young years? For sure (see her Women of Letters project) Does she come off like a petulant adolescent at times? Totally. Do I think she gives a toss? Not likely. Life

would be boring without firecrackers like her going off at random … I’m just kind of glad that I don’t have to deal with her at 2am on a Sunday night.

The Summer without men by Siri Hustvedt

Another one of my favourite writers; she of What I Loved (which was creepy and awesome and confusing) and The Sorrows of an American (unnerving and suspensful) but this sadly, was not my favourite book. I find her writing in this to be a little overwrought, or maybe over-thought, like she was trying to prove how smart and erudite sh

e is. Making a massive assumption on someone whom I’ve never met, I’d put money on her being fiercely intelligent, likes to fight with her husband after a glass of red too many and slightly high-strung. I like these women but she seems high maintenance (is this being sexist? I’m sure I could say the same of male writers – Franzen would be slightly off kilter for sure. Eggers, definitely). Can you make this judgement based on their writing? I point to cases of some other favourite female writers and say yes: I’m looking at you Joan Didion and Lily Brett. Anyway, back to the book. Man cheats on wife of many years with a young Frenchie, woman rents a house out of town and teaches a writing class for teenage girls, makes friends with the young neighbour and her family, gets visits by daughter, sees shrink, husband asks for wifey back at the end. No-one gets blown up, there is not much action, just the slow breakdowns and build-ups of human relationships. The whole thing is a little bit plodding, a little bit “let’s spend time in psychoanalysis land”, but there are rays of sunshine. Like when she as the teacher spends time with the bratty teenagers as they turn on each other (bought back many memories) and her friendship with her mum’s subversive nursing home buddy Abigail, who reminded me of my Gran. The rest is….mas o menos.

The Marriage Plot by Jeffrey Eugenides

Oh Mr Eugenides, you make me swoon with your literary smarts; your witty pop-culture references; your cliché-free relationship observations and your general cleverness. Now might not be the time to tell you that I never read The Virgin Suicides I thought maybe the praise was just a tad over the top. But you’ve really got me with this one.

Leonard. Never has a character with such an unsexy name been so captivating. Immeasurably flawed, hilariously depressed, unaccountable for his dastardly actions and constantly over-worked brain, he is one of modern literature’s most brightly coloured protaganists. He made me laugh out loud and cringe inwardly with every awkward incident. His long-suffering girlfriend (and maybe too long-suffering in the end for my tastes) Madeline is writing her thesis on “The Marriage Plot” which lies at the heart of many of Austen’s novels. She is a book lover, and I love reading novels that are self reflexive like that – ones that are nodding to the books that the author has been read, shaped by, appreciated to get to the point where he/she is writing one themselves. Then crazy Mitchell rounds out this love triangle, and the ending is neither treacly nor expected. And the whole book is just exceptionally clever and sparky and kind of amazing. I would put it up there with A Visit from the Goon Squad as being in my top five of the past five years. You can listen to an excellent podcast of Eugenides in conversation with the ABC's Books and Arts program here

Before I go to sleep by S.J Watson

Is it compulsory to have just your initials instead of your full name if you’re a crime writer? All signs point to yes. The premise of this book really got me in the store: woman wakes up next to a man she doesn’t know, has to read her journal to piece together that she has amnesia from a car accident, doesn’t recognise her husband but knows something is not quite right. I don’t read them often, but I am totally partial to a good thriller. This did not quest my thrill thirst though. It builds in a nice, unsettling way but the pay-off left me feeling decidedly short-changed.

A Fraction of the Whole by Steve Toltz

The first 60 pages of this book were unstoppable. And from there, it descended into a kind of Shantaram-/The Killing-style chaotic, unplanned, rambling, self-absorbed twaddle. Obviously that didn't stop me from reading it, but by the end I did want to write the guy an invoice for the hours of my life I spent reading this and will never recover.

The question of 'must I become my father/how do I step out from the shadow of my father and then crawl out from under the weight of my sumo-sized uncle?' and 'is there any such thing as 'good'?' are all worthy of a discursive narrative, but the characters in this book are too utterly ridiculous for any fruits of this pondering to have any credibility.

In a Shantaram-tastic way, some of the stories in this book are utterly brilliant. But it's like how simply wearing all your favourite clothes at once does not necessarily an outfit make. Countless people (those who short-listed for the 2008 Man Booker Prize, to name a few) disagree with me about this, but clearly they are wrong got something out of this that I didn't. Good for them.

Sorry dude, no dice.

The Reluctant Fundamentalist by Moshin Hamid

This is one of those 'I am talking directly to you, dear reader, as we sit here communing about something unrelated' guys. I am about 101% certain there is a literary term for that, and if I knew what it was I'd use it. But I don't, and well-looky here! I think you know exactly what I'm getting at. Shocker. Wait - I'll make a term up for you - direct-ism-alisation-alist. Say that out loud 5 times!

I can't help but feel I've read this before, but as I've discussed elsewhere, that's the whole point of this blog. I digress.

Brown guy from formerly-wealthy-but-now-in-decline, post-Rajish family goes to Princeton to learn the money making business. Falls in love with loaded white girl suffering from the wealthiest of ailments - poor mental health and literary aspirations - when suddenly(!) a large building explodes in the sky. You know where this is going, don't you?

It's a book about 'other' and 'love' and 'honour' and 'shit like that'. It will not change your life, but it will stave off spirit-crushing bordem if you should find yourself in a position where that's possible and this happens to be within arm's reach.