On The Science of Not Reading Books by Amber

Here are some facts:
1. There is rarely a lot of sun where I live
2. When there is sun, I need to be in it
3. There is a relationship between sun exposure and number of books read, illustrated belowSee how, when there's not a lot of sun, like in Winter say, book reading is high. Then, when sun exposure is really, really super high, like when you're on holidays in a hammock, book reading is high, but in the middle, when sun exposure is kind of middling, book reading suffers. That's where I'm at at the moment. All I can do in the sun right now, when it's shining, is drink cider and roll around in the grass. So.

I did read one book, The Yacoubian Building by Alaa Al-Aswany and while vaguely enjoyable it really was just a poor man's version of Swimming Lessons and Other Stories from Firozsha Baag by Rohinton Mistry, which is a freaking awesome, Raymond Carver-esque short story collection of untold brilliance. Alaa Al-Aswany's characters were a bit 2 dimensional and his style just wasn't the evocative genius of Mistry. That said, I did hear the dude interviewed on the BBC's World Book Club show and turns out he's actually a dentist, so you know, maybe I shouldn't have expected too much?

In other reading news, I'm completely addicted to reading The Economist and have taken out a subscription. This is complemented by my other dirty little addiction, an economics podcast from NPR called Planet Money. I've become completely fascinated by the idea of economics - HOW DOES IT WORK?!?! What is this mad crazy system of money that makes the world go round? Or not go round, as increasingly seems to be the case? And how in the name of God are all these chumps making arse-loads of money out of a system I don't understand but am completely beholden too? Anyway, I'm loving it. It's like reading takes from another world...

So. In short: I'm reading a really nerdy magazine, and there aren't any books on the horizon for about a month or so.

Yours, with apologies and cute graphs,
Princess Amber Margaret

Holiday Reading Extravaganza by Various

A month-long holiday equates to a grown-up MS Read-a-thon for me. I love nothing more than packing a stack of books, lying somewhere with amazing scenery in the sun and devouring some choice words. You also want to choose books that are good, but not so good that you can’t bear to leave them in the spot that you finished them, ditching some excess baggage and making room for a newbie.

Since I can barely remember some of these, I won’t mess around.

The Lucy Family Alphabet by Judith Lucy

I started reading this on the plane, so it was the perfect pick up and put down type book, essential for when you’re on the move and not needing to get too involved with anything demanding. As Amber observed after reading it, it’s not a real book, which is true – it would have made a better Good Weekend feature. But parts of it were laugh out loud hilarious, probably only because I could imagine her whisky-voiced delivery. Non-Aussie readers would have absolutely NO IDEA what to make of this, and probably the thing I liked most about it was its sense of place; a crazy 70’s Australia filled with racist dads, cocktail franks and bad furniture.

A Song in the Daylight by Paullina Simons

Take the shame. I’m embarrassed to admit that I took this 700 page phone book with me, but I’d read one of hers in Brazil and chowed through it (the much better, or at least at the time, A Girl in Times Square, but on reflection I was probably just desperate for a book in English by that part of the trip). This was total housewife porn, where the woman has the perfect life, with shitty descriptive crap like ‘Larissa didn’t have a single mole marking her alabaster skin’ – who the fuck doesn’t have a mole on their ENTIRE body? Is she a robot? Anyway, it was completely vacuous and the two main American characters died the most ridiculous death in the outback of Australia. The end. Rancid. And I gained about 2kgs back in my suitcase. It was well shameful.

The White Tiger by Aravind Adiga

This was freaking awesome – one of those ‘It’s raining on my tropical holiday so I’m just going to read this book in 8 hours’ kind of reads. A book where the animal analogies actaully mean something, and aren’t just some lazy author threading. I’ve long had a soft spot for Indian authors (that original voice is like no other – punchy and so descriptive you can smell what they’re talking about) and it really took me from the poverty afflicted Darkness to the pollution filled streets of New Dehli. Take me there now.

Petropolis by Anya Ulinich

Post Chernobyl pulp fiction, of which I cannot recall much, so clearly I didn’t rate it.

The Girl With the Dragon Tattoo by Steig Larrsson

I personally blame this book for kicking off my ‘Illiteracy Disease’ of the second half of my trip; I started reading this, got about two-thirds of the way through, got to London and then couldn’t read a word that wasn’t accompanied by a glossy picture for the next fortnight. Of course it could have had something to do with arriving in London, but I prefer to blame this book, which was a pretty good plot spoiled by some grossly violent details. Goes to show that when you finally cave and read a book just because everyone you see on the bus is, things will not be pretty and there was a reason you didn’t read the goddamn thing in the first place. This is why I’ve never read Harry Potter and never will.

The Brief and Wondrous Life of Oscar Wao by Junot Diaz

Ahh the feted ‘Book You Take for the Plane Ride Home’ – possibly the hardest choice of all, but this beauty delivered on so many fronts. It was like reading a hip-hop song, if you can bear with me; original, fierce, lyrical and with something pretty important to say. Diaz as an author from the Dominican Republic has this completely unique insight into the atrocities committed in his country (which to be honest I knew nada about – I suspect his target demo) and is able to create what is almost two tales within one; an achingly funny and tender fiction book about the hapless Oscar Wao, with its pigeon pairing an unflinching non-fiction exploration into political corruption in DR.