Post by wheelspinner on Dec 19, 2010 20:25:32 GMT -5
Soon I will be heading off for Christmas, into the barbarous backblocks. I will be liberated from both work and internet connection, and it will probably be too stinking hot to do anything other than sit by the aircon, digest Christmas dinner, watch the cricket and read. Reading time will also be maximised while we are driving into aforesaid barbarous regions.
So what shall I take with me? First, like the project manager I am, I need to complete currently open tasks: Cronin's The Passage, Jacobson's The Finkler Question and local crossword-setter David Astle's Puzzled.
From then it will be onto the bank of books that stares accusingly at me from the desk shelf as I write this. I'm figuring at least two novels and two non-fictions, keeping up the blend of fact and imagination that has proved so fruitful for me in 2010.
The non-fictions are easy. Legendary Australian singer-songwriter Paul Kelly has written a superb book called How to Make Gravy, which tells his life story through the device of discussing the origin of the lyrics of his most famous songs. Kelly is a great lyricist - G may recall him as the writer of Dumb Things - and he has now turned his hand to a great memoir.
My other venture into non-fiction will allow me to at least indulge the idea of cycling while I am stranded in a wildernesses that consist of 90% potholes and dirt roads, which one should never attempt with shiny blue racing bikes such as the prized possession that appears as my avatar. The Lost Cyclist promises to make me feel guilty about my indolence. It's a book in the style of The Lost City of Z, about a 19th century cyclist who disappeared whilst attempting to ride around the world, and an attempt to solve the mystery of his disappearance.
Narrow losers here are Hellhound on His Trail, a book about James Earl Ray's pursuit of MLK, and Alison Weir's The Lady in the Tower, about Anne Boleyn's time in the Tower of London while she awaited the separation of head and State.
Top of the fiction shelf has to be Jonathon Frantzen's Freedom, which is getting rave reviews from everybody, including some people who've actually read it. Freedom is an absolute doorstop of a book, so I might not get any further but, just in case, I shall take along Damon Galgut's In A Strange Room, to further my research into why the Man Booker Prize judges have been such misguided prats in recent years.
Novels I am finding hard to leave home are The Laughing Policeman, which is next up in the Sjowall and Wahloo Martin Beck detective series that I am ploughing through. David Mitchell's The Thousand Autumns of Jacob de Zoet is another one that is calling to me, but I'm not sure there's room for yet another doorstop in a car that will be bulging with Christmas presents and other goodies.
Of course this may all change if I get given a nice shiny new book by Santa.
So what will you all be reading as you while away the end of the year?
So what shall I take with me? First, like the project manager I am, I need to complete currently open tasks: Cronin's The Passage, Jacobson's The Finkler Question and local crossword-setter David Astle's Puzzled.
From then it will be onto the bank of books that stares accusingly at me from the desk shelf as I write this. I'm figuring at least two novels and two non-fictions, keeping up the blend of fact and imagination that has proved so fruitful for me in 2010.
The non-fictions are easy. Legendary Australian singer-songwriter Paul Kelly has written a superb book called How to Make Gravy, which tells his life story through the device of discussing the origin of the lyrics of his most famous songs. Kelly is a great lyricist - G may recall him as the writer of Dumb Things - and he has now turned his hand to a great memoir.
My other venture into non-fiction will allow me to at least indulge the idea of cycling while I am stranded in a wildernesses that consist of 90% potholes and dirt roads, which one should never attempt with shiny blue racing bikes such as the prized possession that appears as my avatar. The Lost Cyclist promises to make me feel guilty about my indolence. It's a book in the style of The Lost City of Z, about a 19th century cyclist who disappeared whilst attempting to ride around the world, and an attempt to solve the mystery of his disappearance.
Narrow losers here are Hellhound on His Trail, a book about James Earl Ray's pursuit of MLK, and Alison Weir's The Lady in the Tower, about Anne Boleyn's time in the Tower of London while she awaited the separation of head and State.
Top of the fiction shelf has to be Jonathon Frantzen's Freedom, which is getting rave reviews from everybody, including some people who've actually read it. Freedom is an absolute doorstop of a book, so I might not get any further but, just in case, I shall take along Damon Galgut's In A Strange Room, to further my research into why the Man Booker Prize judges have been such misguided prats in recent years.
Novels I am finding hard to leave home are The Laughing Policeman, which is next up in the Sjowall and Wahloo Martin Beck detective series that I am ploughing through. David Mitchell's The Thousand Autumns of Jacob de Zoet is another one that is calling to me, but I'm not sure there's room for yet another doorstop in a car that will be bulging with Christmas presents and other goodies.
Of course this may all change if I get given a nice shiny new book by Santa.
So what will you all be reading as you while away the end of the year?