Pennants for Farmer Bart?

It may be that Farmer Bart Brassica has got into the spirit of the season (or vis versa) but for the past week he has been seen sporting this interesting rooster finial on his trusty trident. Does Bart have something to crow about or is it his way of saying  'chicken-shit'  to the seasonal madness? Granny Egg has hatched a theory that this rooster head man is  an old Brassica family emblem, and this is both a penance and homage to his ancestors. Mavis suspects this elaborate baloney is a ploy by Granny Egg to induce a level of filial piety in Mavis and guilt so she gives Granny a whopping cache of Christmas gifts.

It has to be said though, that Bart is doing a brisk farm door trade in his new, minimalist crop of Christmas trees.

Bart's Blue Heaven

Heedless of the writing on the wall, Bart stands to stare at this blue Bugatti. Bart's vehicle of choice is the tractor but a racy de-capito sedan has its attractions, especially for those whose hair is unbudge-able by wind.
Bart is pondering whether the number on the side refers to the price or has some obscure numismatic or mathematical connotation, being sub-prime and if this is the kind of car Mr Farmhand might turn up in.  What would Mavis say if he bought it? All of this may be driven by pre-Christmas neurosis, Bart does his best to ignore the festive season for reasons which may shortly come to light.

Can Somebody Set The Table ?

Can somebody set the table? Silver, something old is best. Fish Forks and knifes, silver tines from other houses, other lives. This set, in pen and wash, might be good only for printed matter, literary bon mots, paper plates and paper napkins. 

Set the Table, the archetypal job of childhood, poner la mesa, is, I hear, going out of fashion, following in the wake of plates of food in separate rooms and TV meals, none of which can rightly be called dinner.
Tonight I've made a Tiramisu, a variant with layers of sabayon - made with creme de cacao, and potent, layered with barely sweetened mascarpone and beaten egg whites ( the kitchen hand says, it's is like chasing clouds) layered in between the coffee-dipped savoiardy, the whole thing dusted down with grated dark chocolate. Thank goodness for dessert spoons.

Incomplete Elements - When is something too sketchy?

This is yet another sketchy sketch from my favourite Sydney ramen place Tanpopo, opposite the Oaks in Neutral Bay.  Looking back over the sketches, it would be the kind of distortion of truth that poets are so good at to say they have noticeably improved. It might even be that they have got worse, as here Julian, who is sadly leaving Tanpopo, looks a bit like Clark Kent. Is this the manga influence, or a cryptic reference to his amazing skills of food transformation?

Title Clues in Yoko Ogawa's Novel

Last week I read 'The Housekeeper + The Professor' by Yoko Ogawa. If you look closely at the image of the cover I've scanned in - and it is only in writing this that I paid attention to this detail myself - you can see that it was bought at LifeLine . Should I note the coincidence, that the characters in the story each are a lifeline to each other, though, naturally this should be the case in any good novel. The plus sign, instead of the more usual word 'and' or the ampersand '&' on the title page is also telling, Much of the connectivity in Ogawa's novel turns on the surprisingly properties of numbers, how they contain and reflect on each other. The number property that is the central metaphor in the first chapter is so wonderful, that, and perhaps I am a little susceptible to the eloquence of numbers, it bought tears to my eyes.  In case you haven't read it I will not spoil it for you by explaining here.  This is a just about perfect novel for me, understated, rich in mathematical metaphors, with a sense of realisation without any of the obvious tying up of ends that lesser writers resort to end a book. 

My only quibble is I feel slightly guilty that in buying it second hand I have deprived Yoko Ogawa of royalties. Perhaps CAL should consider this problem and create an option to donate royalties for writers?

The Cloud Hour - When White is Really Blue

It has been my fond misperception that clouds were mostly white. Was it all those early puffs of cotton woolliness daubed on the mid-blue skies of that grainy and forgiving art paper handed round in kindergarten? This turning blueness happened last Sunday afternoon, the harder I looked the bluer nearly all of that which was once white seemed.  What will go next? The grass? The stars?

By the Knitting of the Bollards - Dee Why has Treble Tribal Types

  In a move that suggest something of a psychedelic parterre, an Alice-esque take on bobbles, afghan squares and plain old stripes, these four bollards were all dressed up, knitta-style, and that they had no where to go was no problem at all.

Classic Tanpopo - Four People in Search of Story

What is dinner but a chance to tell a story?Or at least get one off the ground.  Of these four people all seemed intent on telling it like they would like it to be.  What else can one do?
Drawing-wise, mostly I lament my lack of skill with perspective, colour, shadow, the built environment and witty attention to detail but still it is fun even to get one percent of the scene collected, especially while eating something delicious, notably the grilled Kingfish jaw at Tanpopo.

A Peek at an Unpicked Peck of Unpickled Peppers

Bart is fairly glowing with the reflected radiance of this crop of Yellow Onomatopoeic Peppers. Or, more accurately this is how Bart refers to this variety of peppers, having been in something of a quandary of indecision ( a bit like a quarry but much more cramped, according to Frank Winkler, the self-declared local expert on rock breaking), and muttering Red Peppers? Yellow Peppers? Red Peppers? Yellow Peppers? Red Peppers? Yellow Peppers?,  without cease, until the Mr Farmhand, who has taken over the new nursery section in The Whistle Stop Floriste Shoppe ( to be known as The Whistle Stop Floriste Shoppe and Plant Emporium once Mavis Eggwhistle funds a space for the extra words on the front window, said Oh, For Pete's sake, enough with the Onomatopoeia, and plonked  three dozen seedlings down on the counter. Bart is hoping he can interest in Mavis in a short walk in the Peppers before they start to wilt, or succumb to a November frost.

Branching out with Knitteds

 Finding Knitta style woolens inside a garden? Brilliant! From a little ways off the woollified tree in this Rozelle terrace front garden seemed to have a humdinger crop of over-sized golden oranges. Closer up, they proved to be pom-poms, with an avant-guard striped garter stitch understory. And then there was the catch-all thingy on the budgy cage. This sets an inspiring  standard for serendipity.   More power to the knitting needle.

Eyes Down - Racing to the End of 1Q84

Marukami's novel, 1Q84, purchased in Tokyo last year, presents a  challenge, a strange book that gets stranger, it weighs in at close to 1,000 pages. With a theme Marukami comes back to again and again,  adolescents who fall irretrievably in love in High School, separated by circumstance but are always in search of their True Love. Yes, for the modern reader, this is the High Romantic platform mixed with so very weirdly and so well with the gothic fantasy, the uber otherness of multiple realities, that this boy meets girl story has more kinks in it than a packet of ramen. Here we see  Theo racing along the last chapter of the book just before a large a delicious bowl of Hokkaido Ramen arrives. Of course that tell tale yellow wall behind, not to say the name, means this is yet another Episode of Dinner at Tanpopo!

Diner in Blanc~ A Serious Case of the Dress Ups

Last Saturday I joined in what might be a very large dinner party, a picnic fresco y el blanco, a group of devoted foodies, and around 1,500 versions of what to wear when you're wearing white. The first Diner in Blanc in Sydney was picture perfect, as proved by a host of photo snappers both the kind in white, passerbys in their civvies, or the popular pre-Halloween option, fancy dress. The whole thing was glamorously gregarious puzzle for Sydney punters.

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Whiskful Thinking

These two broom,  perhaps stilled in mid-sweep from their own bewitched animation, camouflaged by dappled shade, lie on the path beside the Ota  River in Hiroshima. The  twig broom's no fuss technology  has endured millenia, like bread, perhaps because it works. While it would be far-fetched to call it elegant, it has its own endearing aesthetic, a sense of the wild wielding, of giving short shrift, sweeping leaves and litter off their feet.

Return to Keirle Park for the Scratchy Paper Blues

And it's not just blues. It's the pinks, yellows and purples.   The idea is terrific and so is the little stick that comes with it but oh la la that rainbow hippy effect is just all too much.Frankly this paper stinks. One good thing about the smell is that it made me seek a better ventilated spot than the very comfy car seat which is my usual view point. The Norfolk Pines are a wonderful subject but I am sorry to say I short-changed this tree and only got the top half in.  The effect is odd echo of the graffiti (below) along the south edge of the skate park.

 

Voila! Playing with Violas

Is there something underhanded here?  Of late Farmer Bart Brassica has aspired to what Mavis Eggwhistle calls 'floral fiascos', trying to out-style a certain local farmhand's recent success as a horticultural pin-up person. Here Bart is aiming for a dramatic Spanish effect, in the style of the Toledo master of the still life, Juan Cotan. How Bart comes to be muttering things about Cotan is a complete mystery to all the folks in Lambertville but some fear he has been browsing Art Catalogues.  This may be due to some confusion on Bart's part who may have believed he was ordering Portraits from the Prairie, when due to an intermittent dyslexia, he ordered Portraits from the Prado. 

Top Ten Secret Sydney Days for Visitors ~ Number 1 The Rock Pool

While there are the obvious pleasure of surf beaches, many visitors  miss what is one of the great contemplative treasures of the Australian east coast, the rocky beach headlands with their natural intertidal rock pools.  The rock pool is a world in microcosm, a glinting and glorious brilliant home to to dozens of small animals such as anemones, periwinkles, barnacles, crabs as well a intricate algae species, and sometimes, as you can see here emerald green sea grass. Rock pools are best viewed around somewhere half way between high and low tide. (Check the Tide Time Table at  http://www.maritime.nsw.gov.au/docs/Tide_Tables.pdf).

One of the easy places to see rock pools is the northern rock platform at Balmoral Beach . To get there take the Taronga Zoo Ferry from Circular Quay ( this takes about 20 minutes), if you're up a for walk along the foreshore of Sydney National Park,  talk the path to the right as you leave Taronga Ferry Wharf , heading north-east and you'll find the path which is well signed. Keep going around Bradley's Head, around  Clifton Gardens Park, through Chowder Bay,  where you can stop at either the Baccino  kiosk right at the water's edge for a coffee or cold drink, or at the Baccino Cafe which is up the stairs a little further. If you don't feel like walking take the 238 bus from the ferry bus stop and get off at Balmoral Beach,  just at the end of Raglan Street is probably the best spot.

You can take the Chowder Bay Road, which make a longish loop past the Sydney Institute of Marine Science,  up the hill turning left into  Middle Head Road, till you ge to the stairs down to Balmoral Oval.  There is also a path just to the left of Baccino Cafe with  stairs that go up and over the hill to the meet up with the Balmoral stairs.  Down the stairs, take the path around the oval to Balmoral Esplanade. You can find a detailed map of this walk and other maps of Mosman at http://www.mosman.nsw.gov.au/mosman/place/maps.

  If the weather is warm the beach is a peaceful place to swim, and on weekdays is not at all crowded.  There are quite a few casual cafes with great coffee, like the Boatshed Cafe, if you're need lunch.  Walk north along the beach, past the bus shed (remember this for the return trip!), past the small island connected by a curved bridge, past Bathers Pavilion (also a great place for lunch and the menu is posted near the front door ) and then along the beach, past the man-made 'babies pool) till you get to the rocks.

Some kind of light sandshoe is best for walking on the rock platform. This rock platform goes all the way around to Chinaman's Beach but this is quite a challenging work and you will find many wonderful rock pools just past the point. Don't take anything, shells or seaweed from the pools, as this is prohibited, some creatures, such as the Blue-Ringed Octopus are poisonous, so as general rule don't pick up sea creatures. 

Once you've had enough in your rock pool viewing you can catch the bus back to the city from the bus shed.  For an interesting and free bus ride around the district, you can do a circuit on the free Mosman Rider bus which runs every half an hour, there are bus stops for just next to Awaba Cafe on the corner of  Awaba Street and the Esplanade.  You can find information on all the ferry, bus and the free Mosman bus at  http://www.mosman.nsw.gov.au/mosman/transport/public-transport.

Tanpopos' Tempura Trap

OK, so on our previous visit to Tanpopo, Julius, one of the chefs, sent out a complimentary and  incredibly delicious  bowl of tempura for us. We had never ordered the tempura before and perhaps he knew this.  So  last night I ordered tempura, and set to to sketch what was on the table before it arrived.It might be that we look starved, or perhaps, and more likely the opposite, but Julius sends us out a delicious green salad topped with some extremely tender thin slices slow braised of waygu beef.  Then a simply enormous dish of tempura arrives, as well as the Grilled salmon, which the waiter Ellie tells us is a half portion, though it is plainly not. Theo is having ramen but kindly helps out with the tempura (here you see an inexact drawing of his hand and skeric of the New Scientist). When we finally get through our food, and get the bill, we see they have tried to undercharge us, and have to hide extra money under the bill and run out quickly so we can't get be pressured to take back any money. All the staff seem pretty happy about this undercharging joke. This is seeming more and more like a surreal film by Goddard.

Meet the Makings - What is the Collective Noun for Inks

This line up of inks, brings with it the question what might be the collective noun for inks. A Writ of Inks, a Well of Inks, a Rorsasch of Inks, a Sink of Inks? If they are lined up do they become a Cortege or a Procession, if they circle are they a Proscenium or an Arch,  if they huddle are they a Muddle, and if they keel over, collectively, are they a Spilt?

Tarantula - New Play by Alana Valentine

Ok, so what is the conceptual link between the street art in Newtown and the new play by Alana  Valentine which has just premiered at the King Street Theatre In Newtown?  Something about the creation of roles and personas, the two characters busy creating a third, the omniscient 'eye' being all us theatre-goers sitting in the dark?  It is a very funny play about Lola Montez and female desire, about being tough and being open-hearted and balancing the two, with terrific performances by Zoe Carrides and Michael Walley.  Go and see it while it's still on.

Tanpopo goes Manga !

The messy sketchiness of Friday's drawing shows I am spending more time eating and less time drawing,  This week ended up with two visits to Tanpopo in Cremorne  once on Friday for ramen and on Sunday for grilled king fish and their very good pork belly. We have reached a miraculous point at Tanpopo where the chef sends out special dishes for us to try, some slow braised waygu beef and ginger, a little dish of king fish tempura and a croquette of slightly fermented soy beans but last night we hit the jackpot and got a large dish of tempura, with gloriously fresh bean curd, eggplant, zucchini and chicken hiding an intense and delicious broth, the whole crunchy, soupy construction zingy with rounds of green shallots that played a bit of trick with the green pattern on the bowl. We usually never order tempura but now we are converted.

And what better place than Tanpopo to try out the new Manga mera app on my phone!

When is a Room Too Small ? Pointed Moments of Honesty

Is this large sign a just too honest statement about the dimensional challenges of this advertised hotel room? Or does it refer to the act of poking, of course by which I mean the metaphorical act of not minding one's own business. In any case the room, small or not, is ephemeral and perhaps, in any case, you'd like something a bit bigger?

Frame by Frame, The Pre-Billed Signal Box

The signal box, beloved 3-D substrate of the street artist, has been pre-hit up up in Brisbane, leaving both its functionality as a reference point about failed signals and adding local colour. This arty one perhaps is a reference to Alex Harvey's song, Framed? Perhaps not, but still there is an argument that those rollers are a sly nod to Harvey's rolling rrrrr's.

Brunswick Street Beauties - Brisbane's Architectural Shiners

Visiting Brisbane, while there funky shops, wonderful restaurants, stacks of groovy coffee spots, galleries and miles of river to glide over on the Rivercat or the charming City Ferry, a few hours spent meandering the streets will reward you will such classics as these three Queenslanders, all from Brunswick Street.  I was preconditioned to notice - well it is hard to miss - the lime green detail on the house above by a stylish young woman in a plain fifties style black dressed cinched with a thin lime green belt. Perhaps she is a local and inspired by this wonderful two-tone green weatherboard wonder?  There are more treats in store along the road, two of which are below. And though here I've stuck to the Federation and late Victorian, Brunswick Street generously includes all architectural periods. Might a whole street, a tour de force of Qld's building  history be declared a National Treasure? Yes, I do declare! 

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Curiosity and the Corduroy Alpacas

We were warned that the alpacas were not exactly reliable as to their manners but this one, with his fashion shot perfect focus on the middle distance looks too pretty to spit. There is a snow-slope groomedness to the just shorn fleece that is reminiscent of a chenille bedspread.  

This fellow was at the Alpaca Farm in Broke, in the Hunter, and will make a cameo appearance in a poem about lunch at Whispering Brook Winery, which is just done the road.

In The Lush - Frank goes Hoe Up

Ever since Frank Winkler heard the rumour that Mr Farmhand had been paid for modelling work by an English gardening magazine, (see A Turnip for the Books) Frank has loitering in various picturesque places and gesticulating madly to get folks to take his picture. The trouble is that, for photographic purposes, Frank is an over-gesticulator, and because of that run-in toasting marshmallows on his hoe (see Rhubartive Moments in Field Work),  his gardening implement is not in any way attractive.  Consequently, some folks have been shouting at him to Get That Hoe Down!, which Frank in is select way of hearing takes as an invitation to party, which as we see here has spurred him on to something of wild dance in the dahlias. Luckily Mr George Loreto was able to take this snap of Frank with his back turned, to avoid Frank sending George a bill for his modeling fee.

Sunday with a View to Bouddi National Park

Sunday morning, it seems nearly too prosaic to put in the edge of brown red roof tiles, when the horizon so completely trumps it as the ascendant horizontal line. But the roof's regularity and pattern  seem remind one that the the upside of repetition is pattern. Off in the distance the headland, a part of Bouddi seems unassailable, a constant stone watcher of water. Copacabana, despite the echo of  frenzy in all those o's and a's, remains a sleepy hollow, with enough sky and water to keep you wondering.

Holgarised - Increasing the Cartoon Ratio

Well, back at Tanpopo for dinner. This place now feels pretty well like home, except that wonderfully we get excellent Japanese food, that I neither to shop or cook, and nobody asks us into the kitchen to clean up. Last night it was the vegetable gyoza, then grilled King Fish jaw, surely the best cut of fish, with its convoluted anatomy so the firm white flesh is bone-sweet, with a slightly salty crisp skin , and a dish of pork belly, any fat long melted off, in a sweet gingerish soy based sauce with great dabs of mustard on the side and stack of perfectly braised boy choy, along a with the green salad tempts me away from ramen. As a special treat the chef gave us some seared tuna sashimi, with grated ginger and lemon, merely because we are regulars! Before the food came I did this quick sketch of Mr T, working hard on a jumpy jumpy game app.  The sketch is holga-ised, which may be good thing, as I had an ink pen, one pink pencil and one purple pencil, so the colours were, hmm, well, not working. 

The Well Spoken Orange Slice

After a warm-up exercise of candying cumquats on Saturday morning I set out  to glace slices of blood orange, starting out with the syrup leftover from the cumquats and gradually adding more sugar to supersaturate the oranges. After quite some time, perhaps an hour, time on Saturday morning is not the bustling weekday time that gets measured in minutes, I removed them to a tray and put them to dry at 100C with the oven fan on, turning them over now and then. They are now a kind of kitchen treasure, ostensibly waiting to be used in a fruit cake or fancy cheese plate, or perhaps dipped in dark chocolate to go with coffee, but they are far too easy just to eat, surreptitiously after duly admiring the glace spokes.

Coffee to Crow About

It might be hard to find a roof line trickier, in its intersections, angles and general about-faces than the  Crows Nest Community Centre. It suggests a maths theorem that is yet to be proved. The drawing here, scribbled in while having a coffee at Bean Drinking - on the south side of Crows Nest square, goes, well pear-shaped would be the wrong metaphor,  let's say, Straw House Blown Over By a Wolf Shape below the first roof line. This means I need more practice and will have to go back and spend more time drinking Bean Drinking's marvellous coffee. 

Under a Cloud - Dark Thoughts on a Fine Day

There are days when Mavis Eggwhistle, literally, lives under a dark cloud. Some might be tempted to call it despair but it seems this particularly black cloud came out of her oven when she accidentally left it on for a day or two  when she was trying to cook ornamental candied yams in anticipation of Turkey Day.  There is no denying that Mavis was mighty annoyed when the fire brigade arrived and said various quasi-negative things - which did nothing to dispel this black  blot on the Eggwhistlean atmosphere. Bart Brassica mumbled something about how the Carboniferous was his favourite cuisine but Mavis still isn't speaking to him, despite the very lovely autumn weather in Lambertville.

If The Fit is Finn - Two Green Shades

Years ago there was a radio show called Adventures in Good Music, which I enjoyed. Now there is Adventure Time, which, while I am not in any way a zealot, I must be a fan.  So, someone in my house says he is planning on a going to a Year 11 Informal Character Party as Finn and can we /I convert the very elegant woven backpack to one just like Finn's? So, I study Finn's, noting the two-tone straps, the two-tone body, its stretchy nature, and the green cover flap.
So, I find fabric and sew, also I velcro.  A vestigial memory of the various uses of bias binding inspires me, so the back straps are a wrap!  Theo sews on the final detail, that telling button. One of my very first friends was, in part, cartoon, so now this looks just right.
I am not sure if I've  over spent on time on this, but right now, I am more inclined to consider it might be an investment.

Shady Strawberry Fiats Forever

In what amounts to a brilliant fiat, as Bart Brassica himself has been telling Mavis E, he  has managed to lure his shadow back by placing this extra large strawberry on his head.  It is unclear why shadows find strawberries so alluring or how the idea came to Bart in the first place, but as you can see there is his shadow or a reasonable facsimile of it.  How this will work out as a permanent arrangement has Granny Egg a little flummoxed .  She expects if the  current high temperatures continues,  the mercury in Lambertville today hitting 86 degrees Foreign Height, as Granny has it, Bart may find himself in something of a jam.

The Key to Operatic Moments?

 

 Like the message, 'Drink Me' that Alice finds, the Opera House seems to be loaded, by dint of those vast arcs, shining heroic whites, the complex intersect of curves and sky, to be saying Draw Me. For me this is nearly an act of arrogance, a devil-may-care lack of respect, tackling a subject which is beyond what I can render with any verisimilitude. So, why not I thought? In general buildings get the better of me, it is like perspective has given me the cold shoulder. Mercifully the Opera House is all hips with nary a shoulder in sight.  The new cafe terrace on the top floor of the MCA gives a good view but Wharf 4 lookout point (above) seems to be the optimal distance.

 

Cartoon Hat Man - Gone is Gone

More than experimental, this is touch and go, or at least the hat is. Better make that gone.

The Architecture of Flotsam - Manly Lagoon

Why do things aggregate?  I found this half-formed tumbrel of things that float by the edge of Manly Lagoon, walking back to Keirle Park. The longer sticks seem to form, well sticking points, while the smaller leaf litter makes knotty cross-overs . Is this the way star dust might accumulate. I expected this clump to have more rubbish but there is not such a lot of it.  Hazarding a guess, the green seeds might be mangrove babies out to find a place in the world?

Umbel Days and The Timely Procession of Parsley

On this side, what I consider to be the up side, of the planet, at this latitude,  it is time  to plant parsley, which as a garnish Michelle Pfieffer in the movie 'The Fabulous  Baker Boys' once deemed the equivalent of the song 'Clouds', though the otherway around.  Of course, the garnish parsley which she so flippantly flipped off her plate was ghastly, a tough brittle plate filler that time had leached of all flavour. Not so the just picked stuff, the still wondering where it is parsley, the kind of parsley that this parade of babies ( not real of course but some as we know are realer than others) are celebrating.

The Glad Hand - A Winklerism

Of all the farmhand work, edging the gladioli is perhaps the most exacting, and accordingly attracts the highest hourly rate.  Frank Winkler considers himself to the Glad Hand par excellence has told most of the folks between  Lambertville and Princeton that there is a Gladiologist Guild and anyone hired for Glad work, either edging, as we see here, or gilding, which is highly specialised, must apply to Frank to join the Guild. Members are sometimes known as Gladioters or more colloquially as Glad Hands. Mr Farmhand says Pshaw!, no one who count to ten and back would be silly enough to pay Frank fifty dollars to join a Guild set up by Frank, saying the whole idea was a pure and out Winklerism.

This rare photograph of Frank Winkler whitewashing gladioli edges is kindly provided by Ms Ingrid Periz.

Cupidness

There might be something not quite rational - OK there is definitely something not rational - that while I am happy to blog prose, pics, micro-text like words, punster titles and drawings I am often shy of posting poems, it seems too like self-publication ( yes, yes, see above). However once something has slipped off into the state of general publicaton I figure it might not be unreasonable [there, that imposter Reason again] to post the occassional poem. 

So, since Cupidness, slipped into the The Australian Review last Saturday, I figure it, and Cupid, are fair game.

Cupidness  

For years Cupid is my boss, sending me to stand

talking and fidgeting in bars, to lose concentration

in conversations. The dress standards she exacts

mean expensive underwear, legs groomed to silk

slickness so that each might fall for the other

as it tests for smooth.  There are letters of demand,

where I write myself into delicious corners, journal notes –

part belligerent part fieldwork, late night calls to make, windows

to stare out of on long bus rides and sentry duty in phone boxes .

Then almost I think I’m fired, slipped off the payroll,

unemployed, no more night shift, no more stupid bar work

but then I find, here I am again, doing this. 

(C) Carol Jenkins

Autobiblio -graphical - The Reading List

Last year this list of classics, purportedly from the BBC, very often with the claim that someone in the BBC said, on average, people (presumably British peeps) had read only six of these. Invariably, in a classic case of self-selection, every bookish soul who read the list reported they had read three or four or a dozen times the average.  On reflecton it seems too rash a statement for the Beeb.  Reading the list the various circumstances of reading, or reading failures came to mind. It seems history can be measured out in any units, fridges, burnt toast, rock and roll and books.

I am not sure if my tally means I am a keen reader or haphazard, missing important, nay seminal novels that I should be loath to admit. In annotating the list I've put those I've read in their entirety. in Bold  and Italicized the onesI started but didn't finish.  



1 Pride and Prejudice - Jane Austen  Twenty times? Thirty? Who knows, this is my comfort read- - the thing to read if I am depressed, or lazy, or happy. It’s funny and I love the wilful mistakes , the gaffs, the awfulness of Mr  Collins and Lady Catherine and then, tragedy and finally realisation dawning .

2 The Lord of the Rings - JRR Tolkien  Only finished read this top to tale this very Month. I now see why people re-read it. Tolkien has a worrying biblical grandiosity but once the story gets going its Epic.

3 Jane Eyre - Charlotte Bronte   For some reason I cant fathom now I read this only three times

4 Harry Potter series - JK Rowling  Why do you have the whole lot on the list?  The first few went down well, but by The Half Blood Prince I was half-hearted and didn’t even start.

5 To Kill a Mockingbird - Harper Lee   Yep,  lapped it up, and the movie, the sort of book to read once a decade.

6 The Bible, Hardly even a verse has passed my eyes, even though I’ve found the Gideon version in a few  hotels. Too Far fetched for essays but not far fetched enough to be Epic.

7 Wuthering Heights - Emily Bronte  This belongs on my read it again list,  I read it once then again about three months later in my early twenties. Even the Kate Bush song does it for me. Higher, madder, stronger.

8 Nineteen Eighty Four - George Orwell – A high school read, in summer, when 1984 was about ten years off , the rat cage spooked me for some time. Later I read Zamyatin’s We  which put it in perspective - a bit.

9 His Dark Materials - Philip Pullman  Nope – but I will look into it

10 Great Expectations - Charles Dickens . Yes, twice, the second time as the lead in to my Year of Dickens when I was 39 and thought it was ready to read every Dickens.  It ended up taking  two years, starting with GE and finishing with Bleak House.

11 Little Women - Louisa M Alcott  Yes, and the sequels as young lass,  very cheap hard back copy on yellowish paper that was  Christmas present from my Granny, might have been eight. All very vivid

12 Tess of the D’Urbervilles - Thomas Hardy OH yes, twice, first time I cussed my way through saying No Tess, don’t do it. The second time she seemed just as fey, though the parents were, if anything worse.

13 Catch 22 - Joseph Heller   Yes, Yosarian, the bit where he says he’s cold bit in like mental frost bite

14 Complete Works of Shakespeare Nope – do seeing nearly all the plays count?

15 Rebecca - Daphne Du Maurier  Thanks for reminding me, so far this exists more as a noir ‘50’s movies than a book,  but now it's on my To Read list.

16 The Hobbit - JRR Tolkien   Once a teenager and twice  as a mother – once the whole thing out loud, and once again on holidays at a loose end when there was nothing else left to read.

17 Birdsong - Sebastian Faulk Nope but will listen out for it.

18 Catcher in the Rye - JD Salinger  Year 8: I was standing, looking for something in the single bookcase of science fiction titles in Woy Woy High School Library, when Anne Chipchase who was in the year ahead of me , and standing behind me in general fiction, pointed this book out to a friend, as being ‘filthy”, so as soon as they left I got it out straight away. While I loved Holden I nearly completely missed the point he was a sick puppy.  When I reread it 2 years ago it seemed dated.

19 The Time Traveler’s Wife - Audrey Niffenegger.  My friend  lent this to me, and I sniffed at it and the woman’s weekly sticker but hey, but  it was  good pot boiler.

20 Middlemarch - George Eliot  Essential reading in my twenties,  again not sure why I’ve not reread this.

21 Gone With The Wind - Margaret Mitchell, High school , it was doing the rounds of my group, a summer read after I saw the movie at the old Regent on George Street. I remember I was wearing a white broderie anglais dress and was so gobsmacked by the movie that I walked out in a daze and didn’t notice the stairs, slid down the whole set with dress getting higher and higher, while the next session, seemingly full of nuns came up the stairs, ignored my descent.  Naturally all my friends laughed at me.

22 The Great Gatsby - F Scott Fitzgerald I read this first year uni and felt grown up.

24 War and Peace - Leo Tolstoy   I started this when  I was 12 and did not get past the list of characters.  I bought it last summer and it is on my bed side stack – and I have not made much progress, despite good intentions and decades.

25 The Hitch Hiker’s Guide to the Galaxy - Douglas Adams   The whole set – the kind of book I wish I hadn’t read so I could read it again for the first time.

27 Crime and Punishment - Fyodor Dostoyevsky.  By some strange plotting I managed to read  a part of this on a big trip flying over Russian airspace – I am not sure if  I paid enough attention.

28 Grapes of Wrath - John Steinbeck  Whoa yes,  the summer of 1978, a second hand copy as everything was then.  Engrossed I took it on a picnic and, as we were trespassing on Water Board land around The Chain of Ponds in the Adelaide hills and given short shrift, I accidently left it behind, which was torture.  Found another second hand copy, it rained that night and I always believed the book to have dissolved and entered into the Adelaide water supply.

29 Alice in Wonderland - Lewis Carroll .  This is a tonic and should be read once a year at least, I’ve read it perhaps a dozen times and it makes me feel clever, like the best sort of contagion.

30 The Wind in the Willows - Kenneth Grahame.    A many read book, it made me laugh, especially Toad going Poop, Poop. This book seeps in, on holiday in Oxford, when my daughter was 9, driving in a black cab down a green laneway to a boat shed restaurant on the Cher, she said,'This is just like Wind in the Willows.'  And it was.

31 Anna Karenina - Leo Tolstoy . This was a late read, about 10 years ago and a knuckle biter.

32 David Copperfield - Charles Dickens   Maybe this was number three in my Dickens or bust project, a kind of consolation prize when I had to move to Perth.  There is a story that the model for Miss Haversham lived on King Street, Newtown and got stood up in St Stephen’s Church, a lovely sandstone job by Blackett, that I got married in. Does this mean qualify as literary resonance?

33 Chronicles of Narnia - CS Lewis  I read this aloud to my daughter, when was 5 and 6, and then we watched the series of video  ( might still have them !) and then re-read some to Theo. I love Mr Tumnus.

34 Emma -Jane Austen  When I read this, my Aunt’s copy, when I was 16 I thought Emma was pretty darn reasonable. Wow, it was something of a shock rereading it at 23.    A favourite read agai.

35 Persuasion - Jane Austen .  I didn’t read this until the year of my big read up, first year after university, and have reread it probably only twice.

36 The Lion, The Witch and the Wardrobe - CS Lewis  Yep – why is this listed separately?

37 The Kite Runner - Khaled Hosseini

38 Captain Corelli’s Mandolin - Louis De Bernieres  When it was first published  (90’s?) , a ripper. Pity about that terrible movie, I could have slapped Nicholas Cage.

39 Memoirs of a Geisha - Arthur Golden  Nope, I am snobby about this and think are you mad, why read this when you could read Tanazaki’s great saga The Makioka Sisters?

40 Winnie the Pooh - A.A. Milne I read this about 80 times when I first got it when I was six, a second hand copy, red cloth hardback with lovely pages.  When I was 20 I had a Winnie-the Pooh calendar and remember a fellow called Tony who came to visit , dark circles under his eyes, who spoke sentences bereft of g’s, asking what it was about, I said it was a Children’s book , the sort you Dad might read to you at bedtime. , he shook his head, “my Dad never read us no stories, just belted us, but It’s nice isn’t it”.  He died of a heroin overdose a few years later.
41 Animal Farm - George Orwell  I read this at High school, scary stuff.

42 The Da Vinci Code - Dan Brown  My daughter bought this for me for Christmas about 4 years ago and I had to read it.  It was a page turner but what a know it all.

43 One Hundred Years of Solitude - Gabriel Garcia Marquez.  I read this when I lived in The Residence on King street, working full time and studying for a post-doc diploma in labour law, this seemed  a hell of a lot better than Constitutions of Trade Associations.

44 A Prayer for Owen Meaney - John Irving  No

45 The Woman in White - Wilkie Collins The shifts in narrator, the mystery and that filmy dress, I was hooked,  my friend Julia lent this to me  when I lived in Adelaide,  in the second year of my BSC.

46 Anne of Green Gables - LM Montgomery . Have a vague recollection of  reading  this young, and remember virtually nothing.  Perhaps I didn’t?

47 Far From The Madding Crowd - Thomas Hardy Yep, in my Hardy period,  at 19 to 20. Doesn’t everyone read Hardy then?

48 The Handmaid’s Tale - Margaret Atwood  Started this and it was too creepy and depressing.

49 Lord of the Flies - William Golding   Read it for school, which still didn’t put me off.

50 Atonement - Ian McEwan   Started it, saw the movie and well, sigh, it’s still on my bedside table.

51 Life of Pi - Yann Martel  Yes, but I thought it was silly by the time I was half way through. Vivid but I kept wondering if this as really a parable I couldn’t quite make out. Great beginning.

52 Dune - Frank Herbert I read this in year between high school and year, when I had a year off to collect myself and earn some money. I was working in the Tax Office, and got chronic appendicitis ( probably my bad diet and habits) and went home, doubled up , took to my  bed and read Dune .

53 Cold Comfort Farm - Stella Gibbons Brilliantly I’d read all those bucolic romances,  including Mary Webb type books and a folksie  nature colume in the Guardian Weekly , before I read this.  Seth , the Mog-lantern ,,, ahh I laughed till I cried.  A book to re-read every 5 years.

54 Sense and Sensibility - Jane Austen  In my 40’s I reread this every second year .

55 A Suitable Boy - Vikram Seth

56 The Shadow of the Wind - Carlos Ruiz Zafon

57 A Tale Of Two Cities - Charles Dickens  I remember starting this in a chair in my bedroom in Boreham Street in Perth, and there was the answer to one of the world’s most frequent trivia questions.

58 Brave New World - Aldous Huxley  Must have been  the year I  moved to Adelaide and repeated two subjects from 1st year, there was a 2nd hand book seller at the South Entrance of the Central Markets which was cheap and full of dog –eared Penguin classics.  Later I went to read Zamyatin’s We and thought it the  better book.

59 The Curious Incident of the Dog in the Night-time - Mark Haddon  I read this when my son Theo was in Year 4, there was an boy in his class, C,  with Aspergers and other troubles at home who was a dreadful bully and made life miserable for a number of the boys.  Theo read it after me and said the boy in the book  was much nicer person than C.

61 Of Mice and Men - John Steinbeck  In High School, my friend Bonnie lent it to me when I was living at her  house.  It always reminds me of her mother’s house and the new extension with the lovely polished wooden floor.

62 Lolita - Vladimir Nabokov

63 The Secret History - Donna Tartt  Occasionally I read crime and this one I read in about 2005 , often standing up in my bedroom, as I picked up the book and read a bit while I was ferrying things to and fro,  for some reason this standing up reading does not seem to me I am being a slacker and reading when I have work to do.

64 The Lovely Bones - Alice Sebold

65 Count of Monte Cristo - Alexandre Dumas

66 On The Road - Jack Kerouac  One uni summer holiday I stayed with friends, couch surfing in Newport, making trips to Dial-a –book for more books, eating salami and cheese toasties ( ugh, I go now) and not going to the beach. I read this and thought Kerouac was a sexist wanker, read Bound For Glory and loved it, now that is a road book and a half.

67 Jude the Obscure - Thomas Hardy

68 Bridget Jones’s Diary - Helen Fielding  This took me about one night to read. It’s that very good thing a funny book, the P &  P plot gives it some credibility but who cares, the real cred may be the blue soup.

69 Midnight’s Children - Salman Rushdie  I bought a signed copy of this, on the recommendation of Miss Chapman in Clays Bookshop in Potts Point in 1982 or 83. It had that gorgeous whiff of hot vinegar and chilli.
70 Moby Dick - Herman Melville

71 Oliver Twist - Charles Dickens   A part of the Great Dickens read, from 1996-99. The scene where Bill Sykes does in Nancy was terrifying, even a hundred years + after it was written

72 Dracula - Bram Stoker  There was a great Penguin edition called Three Gothic novels which included this, Frankenstein and The Castle of Ontranto (sp?), I read this when I was living in Wilson Street, after seeing Klaus Kinsky in Nosferato , and set me off on a Gothic binge.

73 The Secret Garden - Frances Hodgson Burnett  I didn’t read this until I read it to my daughter when she about 8,  it was lovely.

74 Notes From A Small Island - Bill Bryson

75 Ulysses - James Joyce   I read maybe three page of this when I was 16 sitting on the front verandah of my parent’s house in Woy Woy.  It was summer and the port wine magnolia was blooming, I was puzzled and lost.

76 The Inferno - Dante

77 Swallows and Amazons - Arthur Ransome After buying this for my daughter, she chucked aside and I read it.

78 Germinal - Emile Zola – I started with   A Love Affair,  got some speed up, and then read Zola, Zola, Zola, the year of the Big Read after I finished my BSC. I bought a copy in a bookshop, second hand and some new, that was on Elizabeth Street, Sydney about opposite Museum Station ,  when I was there a toy poodle ran round the bookshelves twice yapping  and a man near me said,’ who put the batteries in that!” which seemed so urbane that I went back quite a few times to that shop to buy more Zola and see if there would be any more quips.

79 Vanity Fair - William Makepeace Thackeray

80 Possession - AS Byatt  Read this when I was 31,upstairs in my bedroom, terrace house, with muslin curtains lying in puddles on the floor, and loved the collage of it, it was romantic.  Wouldn’t want to read it again, as I suspect the mood would be ruined, especially after hearing an interview with Byatt on the Bookshow where she explains she is a genius , knows everything , especially everything about neuroscience despite never studying science

81 A Christmas Carol - Charles Dickens Mr Tate, in 6A read this out loud to the class and it was wonderful. I;ve reread this a few times since but the first time was perfect.

82 Cloud Atlas - David Mitchell

83 The Color Purple - Alice Walker – I thought I would finish this when I didn’t have a baby but it’s been waiting on the bookshelf for 1.5 decades.

84 The Remains of the Day - Kazuo Ishiguro

85 Madame Bovary - Gustave Flaubert  I read this as a Uni student and took it with me  while waitressing at Dirty Dicks theatre restaurant,  and gained a terrible efficiency so I could rush back to the change room, dose up on a few paras, and re-enter the world of faux- English banquets,  serving food to drunks,  in a daze of Russian drawing rooms and assignations, muttering ‘Emma, Emma.”

86 A Fine Balance - Rohinton Mistry After a few chapters,  I found I was too wimpy, or the book was too bleak. One day I will be brave and read the whole thing.

87 Charlotte’s Web - E.B. White  My recollection is I bought this for my sister ( who is much younger than me), and I read it after she did.

88 The Five People You Meet In Heaven - Mitch Albom.  No – I am not even putting this on my to-read  list, the title is too irritating.

89 Adventures of Sherlock Holmes - Sir Arthur Conan Doyle  I’ve just downloaded this to my iPhone and I am reading it in queues, and in bed. Would Holmes have figured this out?  I haven’t finished it but I am sure I will.

90 The Faraway Tree Collection  I had successfully been oblivious of this until my mother gave my daughter a complete set of it, I was a bit well-whatever. Then I had to read some of it, well the lot of it. It’s really annoying.

91 Heart of Darkness - Joseph Conrad  .My favourite Conrad is The Secret Agent, but I read HOD in my  early twenties, and it made such an impression on me that Kurt’s words, “The horror, the horror” came floating back to me, with eerie calmness,  when I went parachuting a couple of years later, when it was clear to me I was going to crash into a tree.

92 The Little Prince - Antoine De Saint-Exupery    Sigh, was this so lovely that even now I feel  like the whole thing was a word , starting with M which I cant bring myself to write? I read this when I was 18,left school, not yet at university, - and it was cult, I went on to read all Antoine De Saint S’s books the flights into the desert, the night mail – if one could conjure  ten people  up for dinner he would be on my list.

93 The Wasp Factory - Iain Banks  No – I know Banks but I am not a fan.

94 Watership Down - Richard Adams At fifteen,  maybe sixteen WD  was idyllic, I’d seen Ring of Bright Water ( otters, not rabbits, but hey..)  and this seemed linked in its landscape setting.   I had an inkling it was really not rabbits, but

95 A Confederacy of Dunces - John Kennedy Toole  - After buying my copy of this from Clay’s bookshop in Potts Point , and enjoying it I became mysteriously bored – the character was secretly pompous? I doubt if I gave it a fair chance but reading is like that , it can be very tolerant or very unforgiving.

96 A Town Like Alice - Nevil Shute  My mother was a member of Book of the Month, so I read this at hight school , as part of my read everything at home ( hyphenate all that) because it was there.

97 The Three Musketeers - Alexandre Dumas

98 Hamlet - William Shakespeare  1st year high school – the soliloquy , “ I have of late, but wherefor know not, lost my mirth,…”  made me dizzy.   The kind of effect usually associated with drugs or sex.  Thank you to Mr Rouse, who was my English teacher, for throwing me in at the deep end.

99 Charlie and the Chocolate Factory - Roald Dahl  When my daughter was six we ( all in the house who could read) read all of Dahl’s children’s books, once, twice or more. We had a Roald Dahl party, where we had snozcumbers and frobscottle and bird pie, yes, and I love Gene Wilder and Johnny Depp.

100 Les Miserables - Victor Hugo