Life after Life

I've known of Kate Atkinson for quite some time, generally hearing good things, and I've been meaning to read her for ages, so when I saw Life after Life on BorrowBox I knew it was finally time. And I'm so glad that I did. Now of course I can't believe that I've left it so long. At least she has an amazing back catalogue all ready for me to explore.

The structure of Life After Life is fascinating. Nowhere near linear. Not like anything you've ever read before. So complex. But a necessity I guess given the premise of the story. A premise so complex it needs an About the Book before beginning. 

What if you had the chance to live your life again and again, until you finally got it right?

A kind of sliding doors concept I guess. A small change makes a huge impacts, and literally changes lives. It starts with a bang (literally) with a grown-up Ursula Todd shooting Hitler! Then we go back to the Todd family home, Fox Corner, on a snowy night in February 1910 where Ursula is born. Ursula is the middle child of five born to Sylvie and Hugh Todd.

 Ursula is born (repeatedly) on February 11 1910.

Jimmy's arrival had the effect of making Ursula feel as if she was being pushed further away from he heart of the family, like an object at the edge of an overcrowded table. A cuckoo, she had overheard Sylvie say to Hugh. Ursula's a bit of an awkward cuckoo. But how could you be a cuckoo in your own nest?

There is just so much in this book. The fox motif, the English class structure, the roles of women over time-within the family, within the workforce. The broad sweep of the narrative covers the major events of the early twentieth century - WWI, WWII, the Spanish flu epidemic of 1918-19, with a few chapters set in the 1960s.

I particularly liked the chapters covering WWII- the London Blitz comes alive in Kate Atkinson's prose. It's incredible. Everyone knows that the Blitz was awful of course, but I had never really thought about how awful it was to live through the seemingly endless German bombing raids, night after night. The enforced practicalities of that life. The horrors of that life. 

The physical book has an Author Note at the end where she called The Blitz the "dark, beating heart of the novel", but she feels that it isn't all about the war, and if she was to be pressed to say what it is actually about, then she would say that Life After Life is about being English. 

The storyline and the sections set in Germany didn't work so well for me. I found them far fetched! Which is a stretch given I'm quite happy to accept the initial premise of the book, and all the toing and froing in time. Indeed I enjoyed all that, it is frightfully clever. But that is really a relatively minor quibble. I did love Kate Atkinson's writing, her clever turns of phrase, her humour, are just my kind of thing. 

Pamela's support for the expeditionary force had taken the form of a mass production of dun-coloured mufflers of extraordinary and impractical lengths. Sylvie was pleasantly surprised by her elder daughter's capacity for monotony. It would stand her in good stead for her life to come. 

I'm really not sure what to make of the book as a whole. What am I to believe now? Did Ursula get it right in the end? I'm really not quite sure what to make of the ending. Life After Life would certainly reward a re-read, or a re-listen in this case. 

She had been here before. She had never been here before. 

I especially loved the narration by Fenella Woolgar, she has such a delightful, plummy English accent, so perfect for the story, and does wonderful regional and international accents and voices for the many different characters. It's such a shame that she doesn't do A God in Ruins (a companion novel to Life after Life), but I guess that book is Teddy's story (Ursula's younger brother) so it makes more sense to have a male voice. Although I see that Fenella Woolgar does narrate Kate Atkinson's current book Transcription, so I might need to have a listen to that one too. 

Dewey's 24 Hour Readathon The Fifth

I can't believe that this is already my 5th Dewey's Readathon.!

It's an 11pm start time for us in Australia in Spring. So it's quite a day of waiting around, just waiting to start. I filled in my time today going to a Lifeline Book Sale. Naturally, I bought quite a bag of books. I haven't really planned a TBR this time round. But I decided to kickstart my Readathon this time with one of the books I bought today. A book of short stories. 

I even started a little early as I'd waited long enough. 

I'm very keen to use this Readathon to get back into my #LesMisReadalong. Rather shamefully somehow back in May I put my copy of Les Mis down one day and didn't pick it back up again til today. I have no idea why. I was really enjoying it. I have been in quite a reading slump this year though. I'm not so much reading as listening at the moment as the vast majority of my book intake has been via audiobooks for the last few months. 

But I've done it. I've just reread the last chapter I read in May. V2B8C1. And now onwards... It's such a shame it's after midnight. 


Sunday 1230

I had a nice long sleep and a Sunday morning sleep in, then out to brunch with friends. It's such a gorgeous  spring day here, and we enjoyed a short stroll in the gardens after. Just so that I haven't completely wasted readathon time I was listening to an audiobook while I was out (although I live in a small town, and it literally took me about 4 minutes to drive to brunch), I did finish off 20 minutes of Chapter 1 when I got home. It's fascinating. Highly recommended.

Sunday 1800 (Hour 20)

I've had a lovely restful day, even if I haven't made as much progress as I would've liked (and when is that ever the case?)

1 nap
7 hours sleep
30 minutes Any Ordinary Day
45 pages Living Alone and Loving It
53 pages Les Mis
57 pages Beneath the Earth

Sunday 2300 (in reality Monday morning, after midnight)

So I managed to fall asleep sometime after 10, and long before 11. I could count the number of times this happens per year on one hand, and of course it happened tonight. So my planned gallop to the end with a third short story was a bit of a wipe out. 

My final tally

2 naps

7 hours sleep

67 minutes Any Ordinary Day

77 pages Les Mis

80 pages Beneath the Earth

83 pages Living Alone and Loving It

A total of 240 pages. Which is not what I had hoped to read, but better than nothing. And much better than I would have done without a readathon this weekend, my reading has definitely been slumped for some time now. Months. 

I'm very glad to have picked up Les Mis again, and am now only 4 months behind, and not 5. Still it does give me some chance of catching up again so as to be able to finish it. I'm 549 pages in, much longer than any other book I've read this year. It's rare for me to pick up a book longer than 500 pages. Actually, 400 pages makes me nervous...

The Art of Frugal Hedonism

I plucked this book off the library shelves a few months ago when I was cruising (somewhat uncharacteristically) in the Business section! I'd never heard of The Art of Frugal Hedonism, but was captivated by the title and cover. I shoved it in a pile of other books and brought it home. I've borrowed it several times since that day. And read it cover to cover. 

I started reading it one day when at a bit of a loose end, and was immediately pulled in right from the Foreward by Clive Hamilton. It's all really well written as well as being interesting. It's fun and funny, and not at all stodgy.

Annie Raser-Rowland and Adam Grubb really know their subject as the book was born out of their beliefs and experiences. In 2016 they were living on $105 each per week (including bills, but excluding rent/mortgage payments) compared to the Australian average of $440 (artificially low because it is including adults and children alike). The Art of Frugal Hedonism is a manifesto of sorts of how to value-add your life without actually paying for it. It teaches us that if we consume less, we have don't have to earn as much to live the same life, we can work less and live more- and it's better for the environment.  

As we grew older, dear reader, your authors noticed that a lot of people in our unbelievably affluent society were struggling to thoroughly enjoy life, despite having it so good. 

The book is 51 chapters full of anecdotes, tips and advice on how to live this life, but with an added dash of philosophy. I particularly enjoyed a new 3 Rs. Relish, Recalibrate and Revel in Resourcefulness. Chapter 2 is simply called Relish, and it advises us to use our own nerve endings to our advantage. They offer rather unconventional advice such as

Stroke your dog's ear between thumb and forefinger and marvel at its silkiness. Snuggle into your bed on a cold night and actually grin about how good it is... Enjoy the rocking movement of a train... Call it mindfulness, call it living in the moment, call it relishing- it's recommended by psychiatrists, hedonists, Buddhist monks and cheapskates alike. 

Stroking my dogs ears has long been one of my favourite activities. It's glorious. And obviously free (well apart from the dog food and vet bills). 

Chapter 6, Recalibrate your Senses suggests a way for us to really appreciate what can be everyday treats for us. 

The basic blueprint for modern first-world living is normalised hyper-abundance and hyper-stimulation, punctuated by desperate attempt at escape when the fallout becomes too distressing. These attempts usually take the form of bouts of restraint (like diets), or of collapse (like illness, or 'lie-by-a-pool-for-two-weeks-getting-drunk' holidays). Frugal Hedonism inverts this pattern by normalising an elegant sufficiency of consumption, and then artfully dotting it with intensely relished abundance.

They point out how good a cold beer tastes after a sweaty day of working in the garden with a friend. How good a hot shower feels after a week or camping (I do know how that feels but fervently hope never to experience it again, I can Relish my daily shower without having to Recalibrate by camping).

Reveling in Resourcefulness, Chapter 17, reminds us how good it feels to problem solve, to fix something that otherwise may be no longer used, or thrown out. I've taken up mending things this year, which does not seem all that big a deal I suppose, but I was so proud of my efforts mending a hole in my flanelette sheet that I took pictures and sent it to friends! Those sheets have lasted out the winter just fine (and indeed are still on the bed, winter isn't quite finished where I live), and I didn't need to buy new sheets this winter. And it seriously was rather quick. Previously I would have consigned them to dog blankets long ago. 

Everyday life used to provide people with ample opportunity to experience the satisfaction of being canny, constructive, and creative to achieve an end via the constant necessity of making things and repairing or repurposing them. Apparently, this feeling is so pleasurable that as those necessary activities which supplied it dwindled, we have invented leisure activities to supply it in their place- cutting up brand new fabric to use for recreational quilting, finding 'shed' projects to tinker on, building model aeroplanes, doing puzzles, gaming. 

Blogging?

Perhaps I would rename Chapter 20- Indulge Your Curiosity, to Remain Curious, to fit with my R theme. I've already recognised the need to remain curious as an important principal in my own life. Curiosity may have killed the cat but it certainly brings great joy to humans. Annie and Adam suggest that knowledge can function in lieu of material goods, and that it is "deep hedonism".

As your understandings amass, you begin to sense the world around you as a dense and majestic cathedral of thrumming, interconnected functions and stories. 

I loved this book so much, I suspect that I'll buy my own copy at some stage. And I'll definitely be searching out their other book The Weed Forager's Handbook and most definitely try to do an Edible Weed Walk on my next visit to Melbourne.

If I'd been paying attention I would have noticed Lisa's review at ANZLitLovers last year.

Or heard the RN Lifematters interview with Annie Raser-Rowland.

I'm not exactly sure if this book qualifies for the Australian Women Writers Challenge, as the second author is a man, but will list it anyway as I'm sure more people would love it too. And I hope they will tell me if it doesn't. Actually I'll ask on twitter. 

http://australianwomenwriters.com

Midwinter Break

I didn't think that I'd heard of Bernard MacLaverty before Midwinter Break, his most recent book, but I see now that I have heard of (but of course not read) one of his previous titles- Grace Notes. I saw people talking about Midwinter Break on Booktube earlier this year I think. Something about it really appealed and when I saw the audiobook in my BorrowBox I was soon downloading it. 

Gerry and Stella are an older Northern Irish couple living in Scotland. Gerry, is a retired architect, Stella a retired teacher. Gerry is slipping further and further into alcoholism and the hold that whiskey has over him, while Stella has a deepening faith. Stella's faith has always been strong, whilst Gerry has long been a non-believer. Stella organises a short holiday in Amsterdam for them as a midwinter break. Unbeknownst to Gerry she has an ulterior motive for selecting Amsterdam as their destination. 

The whole story is told over just the three or four days of their trip to Amsterdam. It is often incredibly detailed. But it tells the story of their marriage, how they met, some of the trials they have weathered during their marriage. I can't remember ever reading a book by a Northern Irish writer, but certainly the themes of poor upbringings, Catholicism and alcohol are familiar from other Irish reads. I appreciated the nuanced details like the shape of the head on a Guinness when it has been poured, and before it has been sipped. 

I really enjoyed this beguilingly simple tale of a marriage at a crossroads. And I enjoyed Amsterdam as a setting. One of my friends was there as I was listening, and I visited Amsterdam myself in 2013. I've been to Anne Frank House, and to the Rijksmuseum, both destinations for Stella and Garry on their trip. Although I don't know that I saw any of the same paintings at the Rijksmuseum. It is a big place I guess. I certainly don't remember The Jewish Bride. 

The Jewish Bride
I'm really glad that this is no longer thought to be
a father bestowing a necklace on his daughter...

I listened to the audio version and definitely liked the narration of Stephen Hogan, his delightful Irish accent was perfect for the story. Sometimes the time slips weren't terribly obvious and I would need to double back to check what was happening, and when. Lots of audiobooks do this, which is most frustrating- they really need to add a brief pause, that would be indicated in the printed book by formatting or a slight gap.

Vulture's Best Books of the 21st Century ... So Far

A very interesting list appeared last week from New York Magazine and Vulture (and I just love the supercool graphic for the article). An attempt at establishing a 21st century cannon. An ambitious pursuit. This is not the first time I've seen a list trying to do this, but is the biggest list thus far. The list encompasses fiction, memoir, poetry and essays. 

Book of the Century (for Now)

The Last Samurai - Helen De Witt 2000

12 New Classics

The Corrections - Jonathan Franzen 2001

Never Let Me Go - Kazuo Ishiguro 2005

How Should a Person Be? - Sheila Heti 2010

The Neapolitan Novels - Elena Ferante 2011-2015

The Argonauts - Maggie Nelson 2015

2666 - Roberto Bolaño 2008

The Sellout - Paul Beatty 2015

The Outline Trilogy - Rachel Cusk 2014-2018

Atonement - Ian McEwan 2001

The Year of Magical Thinking - Joan Didion 2005

Leaving the Atocha Station - Ben Lerner 2011

The Flame Throwers - Rachal Kushner 2013

The High Canon

Books endorsed by two panelists

Erasure - Percival Everett 2001

Middlesex - Jeffrey Eugenides 2002

Platform - Michel Houellebecq 2002

Do Everything in the Dark - Gary Indiana 2003

The Known World - Edward P. Jones 2003

The Plot Against America - Philip Roth 2004

The Line of Beauty - Alan Hollinghurst 2004

Veronica - Mary Gaitskill 2005

The Road - Cormac McCarthy 2006 (see my review)

Ooga-Booga - Frederick Seidel 2006

The Brief Wondrous Life of Oscar Who - Junot Díaz 2007

Wolf Hall - Hilary Mantel 2009

The Possessed - Elif Batuman

The Particular Sadness of Lemon Cake - Aimee Bender 2010

Mr Fox - Helen Oyeyemi 2011

Lives Other Than My Own - Emmanuel Carrère 2011

Zone One - Colson Whitehead 2011

Gone Girl - Gillian Flynn 2012

NW - Zadie Smith 2012

White Girls - Hilton Als 2013

My Struggle: A Man in Love - Karl Ove Knausgaard 2013

The Goldfinch - Donna Tartt 2013

Dept. of Speculation - Jenny Offill 2014

All My Puny Sorrows - Miriam Toews 2014

Citizen: An American Lyric - Claudia Rankine 2014

Consent Not to Be a Single Being - Fred Moten 2017-2018

The Rest of the (Premature, Debatable, Arbitrary But Still Illuminating) Canon

The Amazing Adventures of Kavalier & Clay - Michael Chabon 2000

The Amber Spyglass - Philip Pullman 2000

True History of the Kelly Gang - Peter Carey 2001

The Beauty of the Husband: A Fictional Essay in 29 Tangos - Anne Carson 2001

The Last Report on the Miracles at Little No Horse - Louise Erdrich 2001

Austerlitz - W.G. Sebald 2001

Fingersmith - Sarah Waters 2002

The Time of Our Singing - Richard Powers 2002

The Book of Salt - Monique Truong 2003

Mortals - Norman Rush 2003

Home Land - Sam Lipsyte 2004

Oblivion - David Foster Wallace 2004

Honored Guest - Joy Williams 2004

Suite Française - Irène Némirovsky 2004

The Sluts - Dennis Cooper 2005

Voices From Chernobyl - Svetlana Alexievich 2005

Magic for Beginners - Kelly Link 2005

The Afterlife - Donald Antrim 2006

Winter's Bone - Daniel Woodrell 2006

Wizard of the Crow - Ngūgī wa Thiong'o 2006

American Genius, A Comedy - Lynne Tillman 2006

Eat the Document - Dana Spiotta 2006

The Harry Potter novels - J.K. Rowling 1997-2007 (read 1/7)

Sleeping It Off in Rapid City - August Kleinzahler 2008

The White Tiger - Aravind Adiga 2008

The Lazarus Project - Aleksandar Hemon 2008

Home - Marilynne Robinson 2008

Fine Just the Way It Is - Annie Proulx 2008

Scenes From a Provincial Life: Boyhood, Youth and Summertime - J.M. Coetzee 1997-2009

Notes From No Man's Land - Eula Biss 2009

Spreadeagle - Kevin Killian 2010

Super Sad True Love Story - Gary Shteyngart 2010

Seven Years - Peter Stamm 2011

The Sense of an Ending - Julian Barnes 2011

1Q84 - Haruki Murakami 2011

The Gentrification of the Mind - Sarah Schulman 2012

Billy Lynn's Long Halftime Walk - Ben Fountain 2012

Capital - John Lanchester 2012

The MaddAddam Trilogy (Oryx and Crake, The Year of the Flood, MaddAddam) - Margaret Atwood 2003-2013 (read 1/3)

A Constellation of Vital Phenomena - Anthony Marra 2013

Taipei - Tao Lin 2013

Men We Reaped - Jesmyn Ward 2013

Family Life - Akhil Sharma 2014

How to Be Both - Ali Smith 2014

A Brief History of Seven Killings - Marlon James 2014

Preparations for the Next Life - Atticus Lish 2014

The Sympathizer - Viet Thanh Nguyen 2015

The Light of the World - Elizabeth Alexander 2015

The Broken Earth trilogy - N.K. Jemisin 2015-2017

What Belongs to You - Garth Greenwell 2016

Collected Essays & Memoirs - Albert Murray 2016

The Needle's Eye - Fanny Howe 2016

Ghachar Chochar - Vivek Shanbhag 2017

The Hate U Give - Angie Thomas 2017 (see my review)

All Grown Up - Jami Attenberg 2017

The Best We Could Do: An Illustrated Memoir - Thi Bui 2017

Tell Me How it Ends - Valeria Luiselli 2017

Priestdaddy - Patricia Lockwood 2017

Red Clocks - Leni Zumas 2018

The Largesse of the Sea Maiden - Denis Johnson 2018

Asymmetry - Lisa Halliday 2018

Read 9/100

DNF 1/100

I think probably the most remarkable thing about this list (apart from how few I've read) is how few of these books are books, and authors, that I've never even heard of. 49/100. Yes, just about half, including I think, the best book of the century so far. I feel like I might have heard of The Last Samurai, but I really think I'm just really remembering the 2003 Tom Cruise movie of the same name - which is not at all related to the book, and one that I've never actually seen, samurai action films not being my thing.

Sadly I do think that I don't actually want to read a fair proportion of the books that I hadn't already heard of. Many of the others are on my TBR. I have a few of them in the house. The list was collated from selections by 31 critics and authors. Only seven of them agreed on The Last Samurai. It is of course a very Amero-centric list. Peter Carey, an Australian who has lived in America for decades, is the only Australian to make the list. 

Thanks to Steve Donoghue for alerting me to this list. 

The Art of Taxidermy

I do love a verse novel, so I was very excited when I spied The Art of Taxidermy in the Text Catalogue earlier in the year. I eagerly awaited the publication date, and then ordered it from my local bookshop. I picked it up this week. I've really been in a bit of a reading slump for the past few months (and a blogging slump too), and I thought a verse novel would be good for what ails me. It was. 

The Art of Taxidermy tells the story of Charlotte, Lottie, living in South Australia with her father. Her mother has died and her Aunt Hilda hovers closely, helping look after both Charlotte and her father. Lottie is 11. She is a rather sad and lonely child. Alone at school. 

Back there with the kids

who didn't talk to me

was like being at a funeral

every day. 

Lottie becomes obsessed with death.

At the age of eleven

I fell in love

with death

She starts collecting dead things - frogs, skinks, lots of birds, even a red-bellied black snake. But of course all this creates a "fusty fug" in her bedroom and attracts the attention of Aunt Hilda, who is far from enthusiastic about Charlotte's new hobby. 

On a visit to the museum with her scientist father Charlotte sees taxidermied specimens for the first time.

They are perfect-

perfectly dead. 

Not shrinking?

Not disintegrating?

Lottie becomes even more interested in the dead, subsuming her grief for her mother. 

I pulled on layer after layer of her:underwear, stockings,shirts and skirts,coat and shoes.I wrapped myself in herfolded myself upuntil it feltlike a warm hug.

Besides the more obvious themes of grief and death, there are themes of friendship, loneliness, glimpses of Aboriginal culture and Aboriginal relations with white Australia, and the history of German immigrants to South Australia. The book is also full of appreciation for our Australian wildlife and in particular our wonderful birds. 

The Art of Taxidermy was shortlisted for the 2017 Text Prize. The gorgeous cover and illustrations are by Edith Rewa. 

Sharon Kernot is a South Australian author and poet. The Art of Taxidermy is her second novel. 

Teaching Notes

http://australianwomenwriters.com

The Barefoot Investor

A separation and divorce makes you reconsider pretty much everything in your life and I've been doing quite a bit of reconsidering lately. Of course there are so very many changes over this time, some positive, some not so much, but there are also many new horizons, new opportunities, many new and different ways of looking at and doing things. One of the big ones is the way that you do things with money. It can take a while to realise that this doesn't need to be the same as when you were married. Especially if that way wasn't working particularly well for you anyway. It's important to do things your own way now.

I'd never paid all that much attention to our finances during the marriage. I earn a good wage and I thought that that would be enough and things would just happen. Well, they don't just happen, you still need to do things to make them happen. But I'm doing those things now.

I've come a long way in the past three years, and more particularly in the past year. I'm debt free (apart from the mortgage) but things can always be better. I've come to realise that just because things had been done a certain way for the past 20 years they may no longer feel right, that way may not fit me any more. I've already changed a lot of things that I do in my life. So, it was time to really look at matters financial.

I reserved The Barefoot Investor at my library and got cracking. The Barefoot Investor has been huge over the past few years, with over 850,000 copies sold! Clearly lots of people have found Scott Pape's methods helpful. It's a quick enjoyable read for a finance book, although I found his jocular, blokey banter a bit much at times.

A lot of the Barefoot message is about empowerment and control, control over your money and your life.

The goal of the Barefoot Investor can be summarised in one word: control. 

Scott has nine steps to financial freedom. Most are very sensible things. Consolidate and pay off your debts. Have a buffer for emergencies. Buy your house. Get your super in order. He has a specific way of doing this with multiple buckets (separate online accounts where you parcel off your money).

The bucket system doesn't appeal to me really. I don't want to do that, so I'm not going to. And I don't think I need to. I'm starting this process at Step 7.

I do like that he doesn't like budgets though. I really don't like budgets and don't work well within one.

For most people, budgets don't work. They're like surviving on a grapefruit diet. 

Budgets set you up to fail. You feel like a loser with no willpower. 

Exactly.

But Scott Pape is big on conscious spending. Which dovetails very nicely with the decluttering and minimalistic (lite, super extra lite minimalist) approach that I've been trying to adopt of late.

Environment Victoria says the vast majority of what we buy ends up in landfill within six weeks of purchase. 

Six weeks! Can that really be true? I don't see how. Food and consumables sure. But the rest of it? It's hard to imagine. 

Scott's sensible advice has helped me work out my priorities, and some strategies.

Become an investor, not a trader.

Make saving automatic. Increase your pre-tax super to 15% (or up to $25, 000 - the current annual maximum). 

Super should be the centrepiece of your long-term investment program.

The best place to invest your money for the long term, regardless of your age, is super.

Your greatest investment weapon is time. 

Great. Time isn't exactly on my side, but I can certainly make use of the time I have left as a worker. Speaking of which, Scott is a big advocate to "Never, Ever Retire"! What? I've just really started thinking about how to make retirement happen, and now he's telling me I shouldn't ever retire... Well we'll see about that I guess.

I wish I had made many of these decisions and changes years ago. But I didn't, and there's nothing I can do about that. But I'm making the right moves now. Scott likes to say "I've got this". I haven't got it yet, but every fortnight it's coming closer. And I might just get myself a new pillow. 

You can listen to Scott Pape on a podcast with Mia Freedman.