This was a bit of a frustrating year for me due to complications at work. Looking back at it from the vantage point of a couple of years later now, I can see that my usual habit of structured reading (the previous read-through of all of Peter Carey in chronological order, and the follow-up of all of Patrick White in chronological order) was replicated in my decision to return to childhood by reading through all of the Asterix comics, buying the ones missing from my childhood collection, and those issued since I grew up. This allowed me a bit of a comforting wallow in nostalgia, and the easy symbolic successes of completing a collection. Plus it was a fun distraction when the eBay packages turned up in the mail at work.
January
This shows the results of a visit to the Music section of the Melbourne City Library, and a brief flirtation with the non-identical twin psychogeographies of the Wu-Tang Clan and London.
B1. Doctor Brodie's Report, Jorge Luis Borges (tr. N T di Giovanni).
B2. Visions Before Midnight: Television Criticism from the Observer 1972-72, Clive James.
B3. The Dirty Version: on stage, in the studio, and in the streets with Ol' Dirty Bastard, Buddha Monk and Mickey Hess.
B4. Ghost Milk: Calling Time on the Grand Project, Iain Sinclair.
B5. The Tao of Wu, The RZA (w. Chris Norris).
B6. Rise of the Super Furry Animals, Ric Rawlins.
B7. Japrocksampler: How the Post-war Japanese Blew their Minds on Rock 'n' Roll, Julian Cope.
B8. The Desert and the Dancing Girls, Gustave Flaubert (tr. Francis Steegmuller).
B9. Gilliamesque, Terry Gilliam and Ben Thompson.
B10. Dark Palace: the companion novel to Grand Days, Frank Moorhouse.
B11. Flacco's Burnt Offerings, Paul Livingston.
B12. The Wind in the Willows, Nancy Krulik. (spine: The Wind in the Willows Novelisation, Kenneth Grahame, adapted by Nancy Krulik. title page: Walt Disney's The Wind in the Willows, adapted by Nancy E. Kurlik, from the screenplay by Terry Jones, based on the novel by Kenneth Grahame).
B13. The Writer's Cut, Eric Idle.
B14. The Inner Man: the life of J. G. Ballard, John Baxter.
B15. Gray's Anatomy, Spalding Gray.
February
I finished the Edith trilogy of giant books by Frank Moorhouse and followed it up with Forty-Seventeen, which is interestingly both a prequel (written before the trilogy) and a sequel (Edith is an elderly lady in this one; obviously she fascinated Frank so much he had to go back and write 1800 pages about her earlier life). I enjoyed these books a lot and thought I had discovered a new seam to mine, so bought a few more of his books. Sadly the first one I read was a slight monograph called "Martini" and it was so supremely awful I have moved the rest of the pile to a cupboard where I will no doubt get to them... one day.
B16. Popular Hits of the Showa Era, Ryu Murakami (tr. Ralph McCarthy).
B17. The Ham Funeral, Patrick White.
B17a. Online Diaries: The Lollapalooza '95 Tour Journals of Beck, Courtney Love, Stephen Malkmus, Thurston Moore, Lee Ranaldo, Mike Watt & David Yow.
B18. 69, Ryu Murakami (tr. Ralph F. McCarthy). (spine: Sixty-Nine).
B19. Henry Handel Richardson, Vincent Buckley.
B20. Cold Light, Frank Moorhouse.
B21. ReBerth: Stories from Cities on the Edge, ed. Jim Hinks.
B22. Forty-Seventeen, Frank Moorhouse.
B23. Writing Home, Alan Bennett.
B24. A Book For Her, Bridget Christie.
B25. 250 Cartoons, Matthew Martin.
B26. The Double-Bass, Patrick Süskind (tr. Michael Hofmann).
March
This was a good month, though The Raw Shark Texts was a bit of a disappointment. Maybe I had set my expectations too high? It gave me a bit of a bad vibe, which I now diagnose as what everyone is currently going through with Ready Player One.
B27. Walls, Channa Wickremesekera.
B28. Nineteen Twenty-One, Adam Thorpe.
B29. Not to be Rude, Sarina Rowell.
B30. Travelling to Work: Diaries 1988-98, Michael Palin.
B31. Everyday Devils and Angels, Michael Leunig.
B31a. Stalin Ate My Homework, Alexei Sayle.
B32. The Sense of an Ending, Julian Barnes.
B33. The Raw Shark Texts, Steven Hall.
April
B34. The Sound of the Crowd: A Discography of the ‘80s, Steve Binnie.
B35. Bonkers, Jennifer Saunders.
B35a. A Nest of Occasionals, Tony Martin.
B36. Thatcher Stole My Trousers, Alexei Sayle.
B37. These Broken Stars, Amie Kaufman and Meagan Spooner.
B38. The Making of the Goodies’ Disaster Movie, Tim Brooke-Taylor, Graeme Garden and Bill Oddie.
B39. Great Interviews of the Twentieth Century, John Clarke.
B40. The Night the Prowler, Patrick White.
B41. The Birds, Aristophanes (trans. William Arrowsmith).
B42. The Twyborn Affair, Patrick White.
B43. Zero Waste Home: The Ultimate Guide to Simplifying your Life, Bea Johnson.
May
The A. S. Neill books, about alternative education in the UK in the sixties, I picked up simply because of references to them in British comedy shows - Summerhill was parodied as "Drumlake" in Brass Eye; 'Neill! Neill! Orange Peel!' was memorably (and mystifyingly to me as a child) part of The Young Ones.
B44. Summerhill, A. S. Neill.
B45. Barmy: The New Victoria Wood Sketch Book featuring ‘Acorn Antiques’, Victoria Wood.
B46. ‘Neill! Neill! Orange Peel!’, A. S. Neill.
June
B47. Vernon God Little, DBC Pierre.
B48. The Letter U and the Number 2, Negativland.
B49. England, England, Julian Barnes.
B50. Friends Like These, Danny Wallace.
B51. The Internet is not the Answer, Andrew Keen.
B52. Quean Lutibelle’s Pew, Louie Crew.
B53. A Complete Dagg, John Clarke.
B54. What is the What, Dave Eggers.
July
The Bill Drummond book here is a very limited edition published for his brief exhibition in Sydney. While it is an official Penkiln Burn publication, it doesn't seem to be mentioned on the Penkiln Burn site and seems to have been printed on demand. It sits on my bookshelf looking like the impoverished cousin to its stablemates, which are all perfect-bound on soft paper. I quite enjoyed the Margaret Atwood novel, but I think my tastes run to her more fantastic stories.
B55. Blood and Guts in High School, Kathy Acker.
B56. Ben Baker’s Comedy Cash-In Book Book (Second revised edition), Ben Baker.
B56a. Ben Baker’s Comedy Cash-In Book, Ben Baker.
B57. Is This Music?, Tim Worthington.
B57a. Lightning Rods, Helen DeWitt.
B58. Missionary or Cannibal?, Bill Drummond.
B59. The Blind Assassin, Margaret Atwood.
August
B59a. Fraud, David Rakoff.
B59b. Asterix the Gaul, Goscinny/Uderzo (tr. Bell/Hockridge).
B59c. Flood, S. Alexander Reed and Philip Sandifer.
B59d. Asterix and the Golden Sickle, Goscinny/Uderzo (tr. Bell/Hockridge).
B59e. Drop Out!, Robin Farquharson.
B59f. Asterix and the Goths, Goscinny/Uderzo (tr. Bell/Hockridge).
B59g. Asterix the Gladiator, Goscinny/Uderzo (tr. Bell/Hockridge).
B59h. Asterix and the Banquet, Goscinny/Uderzo (tr. Bell/Hockridge).
B60. The End of the Homosexual?, Dennis Altman.
B60a. Asterix and Cleopatra, Goscinny/Uderzo (tr. Bell/Hockridge).
B61. The Pretended Asian: George Psalmanazar’s Eighteenth-Century Formosan Hoax, Michael Keevak.
B61a. Asterix and the Big Fight, Goscinny/Uderzo (tr. Bell/Hockridge).
B61b. Asterix in Britain, Goscinny/Uderzo (tr. Bell/Hockridge).
B61c. Asterix and the Normans, Goscinny/Uderzo (tr. Bell/Hockridge).
B61d. Asterix the Legionary, Goscinny/Uderzo (tr. Bell/Hockridge).
B62. Cry, the Beloved Country, Alan Paton.
B63. Ragnarok: The End of the Gods, A. S. Byatt.
September
B64. Off the Map: Lost Spaces, Invisible Cities, Forgotten Islands, Feral Places, and What They Tell Us About the World, Alastair Bonnett.
B65. Meanjin Volume 70 Number 1, 2011, ed. Sophie Cunningham.
B65a. Asterix and the Chieftain’s Shield, Goscinny/Uderzo (tr. Bell/Hockridge).
B65b. Asterix at the Olympic Games, Goscinny/Uderzo (tr. Bell/Hockridge).
B66. The Temple of the Golden Pavilion, Yukio Mishima (tr. Ivan Morris).
B67. Sandman’s Advice to the Unpopular, The Sandman.
B67a. Asterix and the Cauldron, Goscinny/Uderzo (tr. Bell/Hockridge).
B67b. Asterix in Spain, Goscinny/Uderzo (tr. Bell/Hockridge).
B67c. Asterix and the Roman Agent, Goscinny/Uderzo (tr. Bell/Hockridge).
B67d. Flaws in the Glass: A Self-Portrait, Patrick White.
B68. Commodork: Sordid Tales from a BBS Junkie, Rob O’Hara.
October
With Three Uneasy Pieces, my Patrick White task came to a symbolic end. There are further publications and biographies which I will get around to (and haven't yet) but this unbelievably slim volume is the last new fiction he published. There is a bit of a sense of clearing out the backs of his cupboards with this, though he was of course still working on the novel that was eventually published posthumously as The Hanging Garden. The book by Ramzy Alkaweel about the Pet Shop Boys' album "Very" is one of the best books I've read in the 'all about an album' genre. It is a big step up from the book on They Might Be Giants' "Flood" I re-read back in August. Two albums that meant a great deal to me, but only one got the book it deserved. Ironically Alkaweel, over a hundred pages or more, devotes about six lines to the song that had the greatest impact on me ("A Different Point of View"). I was fourteen when the album came out, an incipient straight man, and while the sense of sexual freedom and possibility charted by the album largely sailed over my head, I took from it a lot of exuberation, delight in melody, and a prioritisation of treble over bass. Alkaweel was six (!) when "Very" was released and so it wove into the tapestry of his development in a way only open to little children, but I agree with everything he wrote and learned a lot from him as well. A compliment I cannot pay to the authors of the 33 1/3 book on "Flood".
B68a. Asterix in Switzerland, Goscinny/Uderzo (tr. Bell/Hockridge).
B69. Carry a Big Stick: a Funny, Fearless Life of Friendship, Laughter and MS, Tim Ferguson.
B69a. The Mansions of the Gods, Goscinny/Uderzo (tr. Bell/Hockridge).
B69b. Asterix and the Laurel Wreath, Goscinny/Uderzo (tr. Bell/Hockridge).
B69c. Asterix and the Soothsayer, Goscinny/Uderzo (tr. Bell/Hockridge).
B70. Memoirs of Many in One: By Alex Xenophon Demirjian Gray, Edited by, Patrick White.
B70a. Asterix in Corsica, Goscinny/Uderzo (tr. Bell/Hockridge).
B71. Three Uneasy Pieces, Patrick White.
B72. Smile if You Dare: Politics and Pointy Hats with the Pet Shop Boys, 1993-94, Ramzy Alwakeel.
B73. Great Railway Journeys, C Anderson, N Makarova, R Malan, M Palin, L St Aubin de Teran, M Tully.
B74. Spycatcher: The Candid Autobiography of a Senior Intelligence Officer, Peter Wright with Paul Greengrass.
B75. The Alice Behind Wonderland, Simon Winchester.
November
B75a. The Desert and the Dancing Girls, Gustave Flaubert (tr. F Steegmuller).
B75b. Attacks of Opinion, Terry Jones.
B76. No Known Cure: The Comedy of Chris Morris, eds. James Leggott and Jamie Sexton.
B76a. Asterix and Caesar’s Gift, Goscinny/Uderzo (tr. Bell/Hockridge).
B76b. Asterix and the Great Crossing, Goscinny/Uderzo (tr. Bell/Hockridge).
B76c. The Call of the Weird: Travels in American Subcultures, Louis Theroux.
B76d. Obelix and Co., Goscinny/Uderzo (tr. Bell/Hockridge).
B76e. The Twelve Tasks of Asterix, Goscinny/Uderzo (tr. Bell/Hockridge).
B77. A Wild Haruki Chase: Reading Murakami Around the World (compil. The Japan Foundation).
B78. The Dreaming Swimmer: Non-Fiction 1987-1992, Clive James.
December
Each December, wanting to hit my 100 book target with ease, I go to the library and borrow books that both look at least slightly interesting, and short. Amongst the exceptions here is the Evie Wyld novel, a novel bridging England and Australia in a way I can partly relate to, and which reflects the author's upbringing. Evie Wyld had an Australian mother, and the Australian scenes clearly come from a child's memory of visits to the Australian countryside. As an Australian, I can see tiny errors in this, but that's what memory is all about, and in a way what the novel was about. Amnesia by Peter Carey gave me similar pause for thought - set almost entirely in Australia (and in named Melbourne streets an hour's walk from my home) - but written by a man who left Australia in 1994. I sympathise entirely when the concept of being an Australian abroad, and carrying a version of Australia in your head wherever you go - but when I came back I was very much confronted with the difference between the old Australia in my head, and the new Australia in front of me. It doesn't take long for you to think about the differences between the Australia in your head and the actual Australia you left - your view of your 'country' is largely mostly to do with the social milieu of your family and friends, and the 'landscape' is primarily the landscape of the area you spent your youth in. I found the A. S. Patrić novel (winner of the Miles Franklin) and the Colson Whitehead novel (Booker shortlisted) pretty much without merit. The conceit in the Whitehead wasn't nearly fleshed-out enough to justify its use, though the whole was beautifully written. The Patrić was basically the novelisation of an underfunded Stan Original Series after Film Victoria had said no.
B79. Trainspotting & Shallow Grave, John Hodge.
B80. All the Birds, Singing, Evie Wyld.
B81. My Two Blankets, Irena Kobald and Freya Blackwood.
B82. Amnesia, Peter Carey.
B82a. Asterix in Belgium, Goscinny/Uderzo (tr. Bell/Hockridge).
B83. Scornflakes, Attila the Stockbroker.
B84. The Perpetual Race of Achilles and the Tortoise, Jorge Luis Borges.
B85. Mean Time, Carol Ann Duffy.
B86. The Seagull, Anton Chekov in a version by Benedict Andrews.
B87. The End of the World, Maria Takolander.
B88. The Peasants and the Mariners, Brian Bouldrey.
B89. Unspeakable Things: Sex, Lies and Revolution, Laurie Penny.
B90. Don Parties On, David Williamson.
B90a. Asterix and the Great Divide, Albert Uderzo (tr. Bell/Hockridge).
B91. Death in Venice, Thomas Mann (tr. H. T. Lowe-Porter).
B92. The Strange Library, Haruki Murakami (tr. Ted Goossen).
B93. Private Lives, Noël Coward.
B93a. A History of Capitalism According to the Jubilee Line, John O’Farrell.
B94. Oh What a Lovely War, Joan Littlewoods’ Theatre Workshop.
B95. The Resistible Rise of Arturo Ui, Bertolt Brecht (tr. Jennifer Wise).
B96. Love, Dishonor, Marry, Die, Cherish, Perish: a novel, David Rakoff.
B97. A Gap in the Records, Jan McKemmish.
B98. Fairy Tales, Terry Jones.
B99. Black Rock White City, A. S. Patrić.
B100. The Underground Railroad, Colson Whitehead.
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