Mother Mary Comes To Me

Image credit: Penguin Books Australia

Reading a memoir can be a daunting thing, especially if you know nothing about the author/subject. On the one hand, it could inspire you to find out more about the subject: read their books, listen to their music, watch their films, etc. On the other hand, it could also deter you from adventuring down this unknown avenue, depending on how well the memoir is written or if the subject’s story is one that is appealing or relatable.

And then sometimes you sit flat in the middle of the road between the two. This was my experience with this month’s book club read: Mother Mary Comes To Me by Arundhati Roy.

Mother Mary Comes To Me chronicles the emotional, environmental, and circumstantial events that shaped Arundhati Roy into the woman and writer that she is today, with many of her life’s most significant events either directly involving or drawing her mind to her mother whom she describes as both her “shelter and storm”. From a turbulent relationship stems an eye-opening and almost impossible mother-daughter love story between two strong, defiant, and inspiring Indian women.

I was not aware of any of Roy’s work before reading this book. And while I found Mother Mary Comes To Me to be an engaging and truly amazing book of love, admiration, and incredible narratives, I cannot honestly say that I am itching to get myself a copy of The God of Small Things or The Ministry of Utmost Happiness.

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The book’s poignancy comes from the respect with which Roy writes about her mother, even when she is describing moments of abuse, drama, or neglect. Throughout its chapters, the book changes tone with the telling of different, incredible life narratives from Roy ranging from studying architecture, becoming an actress, and laughing off the ridiculous arguments that powerful men put forward for her arrest. While the tone changes from anecdotal, to mocking, to reminiscent, throughout the entire book there is this underlying current of love and respect for her mother that carries the book along and through it, the book also becomes a little bit of a memoir of Mary Roy as well. We learn about this strong-willed Indian woman who opened a school, took down/reshaped inheritance laws, and built a community around herself despite her loud and dramatic personality. What keeps you turning the pages is the way in which Roy writes about these seriously scary events that either she or her mother were at the centre of: there is a distinct lack of fear, almost nonchalance, in her descriptions of her court appearances, her traversing jungles with guerilla fighters, and way in which authorities tried to silence her or her mother. It’s awesome.

While it hasn’t completely inspired me to rush right out and acquire Roy’s fictional or non-fictional collection of works, Mother Mary Comes To Me has made me glad that I now know that these awesome women are real.

Author: Arundhati Roy, 2025

Published: Hamish Hamilton, Penguin Random House UK, 2025

The Mushroom Tapes: Conversations on a triple murder trial

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Stories are everywhere and, whether we truly realise it or not, they make up who we are and how we navigate the world. Everyone is the protagonist of their own story, and we seek to absorb more and more stories over the course of our lives to have goals to works towards, add sweetness and spice to our existences, and fill the free moments when we don’t have to be ‘on’.

One story that has caught the majority of Australia in a paralysis grip in the last year has been that of Erin Patterson, a stay-at-home mum who invited her ex-husband’s devoutly Christian family to a special lunch, from which three of the four attendees died from poisoning from death cap mushrooms. Of course I was aware, but did not follow the story myself – true crime is not particularly something that I am drawn to – but for many Australians the court trial of Patterson was the hot topic for conversation, discussion, analysis, and dissection.

The Mushroom Tapes is a collaborative work of non-fiction from Helen Garner, Chloe Hooper, and Sarah Krasnostein – a narrative transcript of their various conversations they have with each other over the course of the trial.

This is a true-crime analysis like no other. These three intelligent and inquisitive women do not only discuss the trial proceedings, the characters in the courtroom, and the motives/meaning behind the crime. The book is also a unique exploration into the country’s collective obsession with Patterson’s crime. Absolutely everything from marital disappointment, to the female fascination with true crime, to intimacies of the kitchen, to the tendency to make retro dishes for special occasions is put under the microscope and poked and prodded to see just how many ways they can be reshaped.

The read itself is very easy and digestible. Being transcripts of their recorded conversations in the car as they drive to the trial, in the hotel room after court, on the phone when other commitments kept them separated, the book reads as intelligent and artistic banter between friends; like one might have around the lunch table. Simple, narrative descriptions of the people and places they visit over the course of the trial help to build the world and add the visual element that draws us into the voyeuristic world of the book, and like any conversations the tone swivels and swerves between the curious, the sympathetic, dramatic, humorous, morbid, and melancholy.

Image credit: Text Publishing

While I’m not sure if this is a book that I would read again, it was different and certainly fascinating to hear down-to-earth voices talking about the bigger picture that sits in the background of a courtroom drama.

Author: Helen Garner, Chloe Hooper, & Sarah Krasnostein, 2025

Published: The Text Publishing Company, Victoria, 2025

Box Office Poison

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After quite a long stint of fantasy, history, and cats it was certainly time to take a break from fiction and dive into reading about my other great love from the human experience: films. I’ve had a love of movies from a very young age, particularly talking about the reasons why I like certain movies, what makes them so good (or sometimes bad). So, when Partner gifted me Box Office Poison by journalist Tim Robey, you better believe I was excited to read it.

Beginning with Intolerance (1916) and finishing up with Cats (2019), Box Office Poison, a term that was once used to describe actress Katherine Hepburn, chronicles the delicious dramas and disasters of a carefully chosen lineup of cinematic flops.

From billowing budgets that bankrupted studios, to the increasing social need for censorship, to creative conflicts, and misread interpretations of source material, the book is more than a mere collection of reviews about films that bombed. It simultaneously is an exploration into the Hollywood evolution story, the changing times, and how cultural, social, and technological attitudes and aptitudes influence the industry. Robey explores a whole range of potholes and roadblocks that caused films to underperform at the box office, as well as outrage social groups, destroy careers, demolish empires, and sink into obscurity. Each film’s entry focuses on a different villain: budget balloons, social intolerance regarding sexual identities, scheming moneymen, and more besides, and what makes the book particularly interesting is the fact that a compelling evolution narrative takes shape in the background, telling a story despite the unconventional, compilation format of the book.

Image credit: Amazon

Robey writes professionally as well as with an attitude and a deep love and appreciation of cinema, providing a reading experience that feels a bit like a lecture of a favourite subject in university. Both facts and opinions are delivered with the same passionate tone that enlightens and excites the reader as well as very subtly draws their attention to the evolution narrative taking place in the background.

Box Office Poison is both a fascinating and fun collection of film reviews that gives insight into a huge industry as well as chronicling an intriguing tale about its evolution over the last century. While it’s insightful and entertaining, it’s also provocative and piques a desire to track down the films that it examines and give them a watch (a few of them anyway).

Author: Tim Robey, 2024

Published: Faber & Faber Limited, London, 2024

Storytellers

Image credit: simonandschuster.com.au

I am on a quest. A quest to read every book in mine and my partner’s personal library. I recall the moment that I decided I wanted to build a library; I had just finished reading the first book in the Inkheart series by Cornelia Funke. In that book there are many celebrated quotes from classic literature that set the tone for the upcoming chapter and I found this a lovely detail and it made me want to read all these canon classics. At this stage I would have been about 20 and while I read a fair amount as a child, I completely gave up during high school and it was only at the end of my adolescence that I decided to get back into reading. I have never looked back; so I have accrued a collection since then and it’s my quest to read them all… as well as all the books that my partner has brought into my life.

While this is a noble pursuit, I do often find it hard to stick to the path because, now that I am an avid reader, I have developed an addiction to buying new books, thus furthering myself from completing my quest by adding another brick to the road. And while culls have happened over the years, because all that glitters is not gold, I’ve still got a long way to go. Longer now because in the last 3 weeks I have treated myself to five new books. But I refuse to be mad at myself because I’m loving the new batch so far. I have started with Leigh Sales’ newest, Storytellers.

A collection of interviews from journalists, anchors, editors, photographers, camera operators, and producers, Storytellers is a really fascinating and down-to-earth exploration into journalism. It’s a book that seems very simple on the surface, but when you’re reading it, you discover that there are so many layers and so much more going on that you initially thought. It’s a look into the journalism and news entertainment industry, a peek into the world of broadcasting, a seminar on how to write for multiple mediums, and a guide on how to socially function in the world.

What’s really clever and fascinating about the book is that you actually see the craft of which Leigh and her interviewees are speaking being applied to the page. Throughout the book the same question is asked a lot of the time, but never in the same way. And each variation on the question that Leigh asks prompts fresh and unique answers from the guests. Then of course we have these wonderful stories and anecdotes from the guests themselves that are a great blend of funny and moving.

Image credit: penguin.com.au

While all writing has a structure, Storytellers is visually the most structured book I’ve read. It’s made up of bold questions and normal answers with factual introductions written in italics. The presence of so many paragraphs bordered by a good solid page gap before the next question doesn’t create a feeling of disjointedness that some nonfiction interview books can have, but rather it makes it all the more compelling and easier to just power through because they are such good markers to aim for when you’re reading in a timed bout, like a lunchbreak. You can get lost in this book when you have the time, but you can also easily reach a good stopping point so that you can get back to work.

I absolutely loved everything about this book and would highly recommend it to anyone and everyone. It’s funny, fascinating, insightful, and inspiring. You might get some tips on how to be a better listener, or a good insight into how to land a job in journalism. It’s really a treasure trove of tidbits and there is something for everyone. Go out and get yourself a copy of Leigh Sales’ Storytellers!

Author: Leigh Sales, 2023

Published: Scribner, and imprint of Simon & Schuster, Australia, 2023

Norma Jean: The Story of Marilyn Monroe

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As an avid reader and consumer of content, I am in two minds as to how I feel about biographies. On the one hand, I love them because I get to know someone or someones that I’ll never meet in my lifetime and it’s a fascinating thing to develop relationships with people without them knowing of your existence. And I say ‘someones’ here because in quite a few cases of biographies, at least the most compelling ones, you not only learn about the subject matter, but the author as well. I love this. But at the same time, I dislike them because the genre can oftentimes be a trap, set to lure lazy or unemotive writers and the world can then become flooded with books on the same subject, with many of them being boring or uninspired. A good biography provides a deep and layered reading experience, while a bad one is unengaging and an insult to the subject.

But then on a third hand, there are some biographies that tread the fine line between being good or bad and just end up being interesting, kind of insightful, fine. This is the kind of experience I had this week whilst reading Fred Lawrence Guile’s Norma Jean: The Story of Marilyn Monroe.

Told in six parts, each chronicling a significant chunk of Marilyn’s life and its greatest milestones, the book paints a realistic and identifiable picture of one of Hollywood’s most iconic screen actresses. It’s both a subjective and sympathetic exploration of Marilyn’s character, carefully placing just as much focus on the various people that populated her inner circles as the enigmatic blonde herself.

When it comes to biographies, I do have a fear that they could ruin the subject for me; and of course this is solely dependent on the writing, but it’s still a valid fear. As social creatures with effervescing brains that are constantly fizzing away, we have the luxury in this modern age to form relationships and attachments to people that we’ll never meet, even people from the past. Marilyn is one such love for me and I think what made me take so long in plucking this off my ‘To-Read’ pile was this fear that it might be a bland piggyback ride, using the starlet’s own tragic story as the hook and not putting in any extra work to make the book compelling. I am happy to report that this was not the case. It’s not the emotive outpouring of a gushing fan, rather a sophisticated and often sedated exploration into the phenomenon that was Marilyn Monroe. Underlying the subjective prose is another voice that reads with something like an emotional stream of consciousness: curious, analytical, and mesmerised by the subject. I quite enjoyed this book’s tone and found myself getting through it quite quickly because not only was I fascinated in reading about a person I admire, but getting a sense of the author’s relationship to her as well.

Image credit: Babelio.com

And I think it’s this thought that has tipped my opinion of biographies back to being favourable because it’s a truly unique experience: the equivalent of being in a fan club, or just genuinely striking up conversation with a stranger about something when you realise you have that thing in common.

Norma Jena: The Story of Marilyn Monroe is an interesting biography that doesn’t necessarily swim with the emotive appreciation of the subject or the reactions to their dramas, but rather plainly talks about it with a calm voice that then develops into something more layered and complicated the more that it talks about the subject.

Author: Fred Lawrence Guiles, 1969

Published: First published in Great Britain by W. H. Allen & Co. Ltd, 1969. This edition published by Mayflower Books Ltd, 1971.

Let's Explore Diabetes With Owls

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After the exciting reading experience that was Daisy Darker, I’ve been running on a bit of a literary adrenaline-pinch. You know that feeling when you read a book that you enjoy so much that it re-addicts you to the feel of reading? I’ve had that all week. The next book on the pile on my bedside table was a work of non-fiction belonging to my partner, which he recommended I read before we released it into the wild to find a new home. So the excess adrenaline I had from Daisy Darker has been successfully sunk into David Sedaris’ Let’s Explore Diabetes With Owls.

A series of random chapters that chronicles random scenes and moments of Sedaris’ life, the book is a little bit memoir and a little bit think-piece, but all entirely funny and fascinating. While Sedaris chooses to focus on small, seemingly unimportant anecdotes to share with the reader, the common thread of each chapter is that it explores Sedaris’ relationship with the world its inhabitants. From dissuading a telemarketer from sending him a cellphone, but hoping that he’ll call again to chat, to bonding with his sister and father over a colonoscopy, Sedaris shapes each episode into something of a love story; exploring the different loves of partners, families, and society.

Despite never getting to the Chekhov’s diabetes of the title (the owls make an appearance though), Sedaris’ book is an interesting and down-to-earth memoir that feels like having a friend over for coffee and just catching up. The jagged and random series of events chronicled are enjoyable and light conversation, while simultaneously doing what human discussions do and trying to make sense of the world on a deeper level. The idea that, despite centuries of novels, poems, songs, and theses, we still don’t have a solid grasp on how our world and its inhabitants affect us and our relationships, is very subtly underlying each story. More so as Sedaris reminisces of times gone by when childhoods were so different to the ones of today, how our relationship with technology has changed, and sexuality and gender identities were a little less confusing.

Image credit: Erie Reader

Overall, I enjoyed this book. The prose is simple and conversational with smatterings of slightly judgmental humour colouring the chapters. There are some scenes in which I couldn’t tell if the opinions put forward were indeed the author’s own, or a voice adopted to reflect society, and while these scenes sometimes made me uncomfortable (namely a scene talking about trans people, and then reinstating Jesus Christ as the king of the world), for the most part I powered through this book quick enough and found myself compelled by the author’s voice and the stories he was telling.

Author: David Sedaris, 2013

Published: Abacus (Great Britain), 2013

How We Love

 

Image credit: Allen & Unwin

Continuing with the stack of post-lockdown titles that I had been keenly waiting for, this week I entered the world of Clementine Ford. I witnessed her love, lose, crush, and grow in her latest book, How We Love.

If you’ve read Fight Like a Girl and Boys Will Be Boys, then you’re probably used to the passionate and factual narratives about gender that Clementine Ford has become known for. How We Love is a definite step in the opposite direction, however it is no less passionate or important than her previous works. 

Beginning with a confronting chapter about her relationship with her mother and watching her battle with cancer, How We Love is a series of love stories depicting key romantic and love-filled relationships that have shaped Ford into the beautiful woman she is. Mostly memoir, but also personal exploration into the strange methods of acting on and recognising love (rather like a lengthy thought-piece), it’s a book that’s filled with feeling, reflections, and understanding. 

Image credit: The Guardian

What I loved about this book, the thing that kept me turning the pages at a machine-gun pace, was Ford’s incredible ability to put frustratingly incomprehensible feelings (like anxiety) into words, structured sentences, and crisp images. I was impressed and awed by Ford’s poeticism as well as her incredible talents in observation of her environment and herself. To then be able to succinctly put these observations and feelings into a string of profound and beautiful sentences made me question by own abilities as a writer. There’s rawness to Ford’s prose, making all her stories relatable and thus sparking the feels in the reader. 

If you’re a fan of Clementine Ford, then I would absolutely recommend How We Love: it’s warm, real, and (mostly) reassuring. It’s a book filled with love and hope, needed now at the end of the world. 

Author: Clementine Ford, 2021

Published: Allen & Unwin, NSW, 2021

Well Hello: Meanderings From the World of 'Chat 10 Looks 3'

 

Image credit: Penguin Books Australia 

You only need to look at the number that makes up the ‘non-fiction’ category this page’s little side-widget to know that I don’t read a lot of non-fiction. It’s kind of ironic because, like most people, my tastes are influenced by the people I surround myself with, and the media I consume. Considering that non-fiction is a veritable well of inspirations and recommendations for broadening one’s cultural horizons and tastes, you’d think I’d be all over it. 

Well, after literally just closing the cover of this week’s read, I can tell you that I’m inspired to be a lot more adventurous with myself: everything from books, to films, art, and cooking. This week I read Leigh Sales and Annabel Crabb’s Well Hello: Meanderings From the World of ‘Chat 10 Looks 3’. 

This book is a delightful 300+ compilation of interviews, transcripts, lists, and anecdotes from Sales and Crabb’s podcast Chat 10 Looks 3, which features the two friends chummily chatting about what they’ve read, watched, or cooked during the week. I’d never heard of it before and have, since starting the book, taking to listening to it from the start on my morning runs. And it’s absolutely delightful!

It’s funny actually; because I’ve been listening to the podcast parallel to reading the book, it actually made the reading experience easier because the chummy and nonchalant tones of the two ladies is exactly the way you want to read this. On the surface the book is a collection of the podcast’s highlights loosely organised into chapters with a relevant theme (e.g. music, cooking, etc.), but on a deeper level it’s a warm and lovely depiction of an everyday friendship. I think the most lovely thing about it is that because it’s a friendship between two people within public awareness, and it’s been on display in audio form, book form, and live show form, it inspires other friendships, and positivity, and random acts of kindness (see the chapter about the Chat 10 Facebook Community). This is so lovely because it’s real and attainable and what the world needs, especially in these troubled times. 

Image credit: The Australian

I also love that this book has inspired me. To cook more, bake more, read a wider and diverse range of books and articles, listen to different music... maybe even get around checking out Hamilton...

For a warm, funny, inspiring, and just all around delightful afternoon read with your cup of tea or morning coffee in bed, I would highly recommend Well Hello!

Authors: Leigh Sales, Annabel Crabb & Miranda Murphy

Published: Penguin Books, 2021 

Stephen King on Writing

 

Image credit: Booktopia

As we’ve established from previous posts, there are many little things in life that I enjoy the experience of, particularly when it comes to literature: closing a book and then just innately knowing what to read next, plucking a volume from the shelf at random and discovering a new favourite, to name a few. The newest experience to add to this list is picking a book that might help research or gain insight into something you’re writing about, not doing exactly that but sparking some new inspiration. I just closed the cover on Stephen King on Writing, a truly engaging, helpful, and down-to-earth read. 

Part biography and part memoir on the craft, On Writing is both entertaining and insightful. King regales his readers with true adventures and misdemeanours from his life –most of which revolve around the inspiration and the creation of his well-known stories- as well as helpful little titbits about everything from plot, to character development, to dialogue, editing, and publishing. 

While King strives to remind readers that these tips are just his personal opinions and way of doing things, there’s a certain level of authority mixed with a down-to-earth vibe that infuses the paragraphs and inspires full attention and respect; like a nonchalant uni professor you could also have a beer with after class. 

Image credit: Goodreads

Balancing against the insightful pointers about the creative process is the anecdotal stories that King inserts about his own life, creative episodes, and even his own thoughts towards some of his most celebrated characters. It’s particularly interesting hearing about his disdain or reluctance towards certain works that ended up winning him acclaim or recognition (e.g. Carrie). 

Filled with humour, hints, and heart, On Writing is a great memoir: helpful as a tool for aspiring writers and entertaining for anyone who likes Stephen King. Definitely worth the read!

Author: Stephen King, 2000

Published: Hodder & Stoughton, A Hachette Company (UK)

Going Solo

 

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This week I continued on with the life of one of my favourite childhood authors, diving with him right into the madness and mayhem that was Greece, East Africa, and the Middle East during the Second World War. This week, we were Going Solo.

Picking up more or less where Boy left off, Going Solo chronicles Dahl’s life as a young man leaving England to work in Africa, joining the RAF when war broke out, and finally coming home again after three years abroad. Dahl recounts with great clarity exciting adventures in every chapter ranging from encounters with deadly snakes, to being in a plane crash, to being almost shot at a military road block. 

I found this book interesting for a number of reasons. 1) It tells a true story that is exciting, dangerous, and horrific. 2) It was slightly strange to read a book from an author I recognise as a children’s author, which is directed towards a more adult audience. While Boy still had this fantastic tone of innocence and childlike wonder, Going Solo really is a more mature recounting of Dahl’s life, both in narrative content and the way he frames those stories. 

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The danger and horror of many of the situations and environments is perfectly conveyed through blunt and simple prose, I do rather like the way that Dahl does not opt for long-winded paragraphs of exposition and description, but manages to get sufficient drama and emotion through short sentences and dialogue. Thanks to this, Going Solo is a reasonably fast read, giving you that accomplished feeling at the end of a book much faster. I thoroughly enjoyed it. 

Author: Roald Dahl, 1986

Published: Jonathan Cape Ltd (Great Britain) 1986, Farrar Straus Giroux (USA) 1986

Boy

 

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Leaving behind the world of the fantastical and significantly dated literature, this week the book that I plucked off the shelf was a swift and glorious look into the childhood of one of my favourite authors: Roald Dahl. 

Simply entitled Boy, this book chronicles Dahl’s boyhood from kindergarten right through to his first job at the age of eighteen. Dahl regales readers with stories of mischief, fearsome authority figures, and chocolate, all of which inspired some of his greatest works. 

After the struggle that was Gulliver’s Travels, I was most definitely in the mood for easy reading for the next little while. And Boy proved to be exactly that. Reflective of its title, this is a short and sweet little autobiography that I particularly enjoyed, not merely because it’s the life of one of my all-time favourite authors, but because the book itself is a work of non-fiction that is targeted towards a young readership. While it tells true stories, it tells them in such a simple, yet exciting way that captivates and expertly paints vibrant images in the mind, making it just as engaging as a children’s fictional novel.

Dahl was one of the earliest authors I remember loving as a child. I can remember sitting up with my dad after dinner –this was just when I was getting a handle on reading, so 6-7 years old- and reading Matilda and Charlie and the Chocolate Factory out loud to him. The simplicity and childlike innocence with which he writes his novels is prevalent here in his autobiography and I was emotionally transported to that dining room table, reading to my dad. 

Image credit: American Library Association

Despite the simple prose, Boy is also a comparative reflection on the way things have changed, particularly travel, educational disciplinary routines, and medical procedures. Indeed there are some scenes in the book that are quite gruesome and horrifying, making me quite grateful that I did not grow up in the 1930s. 

From page one, Boy is a fascinating glimpse into the life of one of literature’s most celebrated and beloved authors. I am keen to open the cover of the next instalment: Going Solo. 

Author: Roald Dahl, 1984

Published: First published in Great Britain by Jonathan Cape Ltd. First published in the USA by Farrar, Straus & Giroux, 1984

Fathoms: the world in the whale

Image credit: Booktopia

So it seems that I’m on a bit of an oceanic theme with my choices of books in the last couple of weeks. First, it was Hemingway’s captivating tale of an unlucky fisherman who catches a monstrous marlin, and this week it has been a most creative and informative exploration into the world of whales and whales in the world. This week’s book was Rebecca Giggs’ Fathoms: the world in the whale.

A breathtaking and challenging piece of nonfiction, Fathoms begins with an anecdote about the author’s own encounter with a humpback whale beached on her local beach in Western Australia, and then polymorphs with each chapter into a different way in which humans connect with whales. 

Giggs blends natural history, biology, philosophy, science, and myth to explore the significance of whales in the natural world as well as the human one. How we are captivated and connected metaphorically, materially, poetically, and charismatically to creatures we still don’t know so much about. 

The book looks at whales as endangered species, as garbage warehouses, as fashion essentials, as food, as bio-diverse economies, as islands, and as popstars. And through her mixture of scientific and poetic prose, she delivers a challenging and wondrous reading experience. 

Image credit: rebeccagiggs.com

Fathoms is one of those rare books that is illuminating, provocative, educational, and enlightening. But possibly what makes it so special is its sincere fascination with both the good and bad side of the whale-human relationship. While there are many chapters devoted to the horror that humankind has inflicted on whales and the environment they inhabit, Giggs does not travel down a preachy or aggressively opinionated path. Indeed, her final points are about hope and how there is still reason to have it, even though so much damage has already been done. 

While I initially found the book really hard to get into, once I embraced the poetic way in which she writes, as well as the creative perspectives she adopts in each and very chapter, I was completely swept up in Fathoms’ magic, like drifting with a tide. I would highly recommend this book. 

Author: Rebecca Giggs, 2020

Published: Scribe Publications (Victoria), 2020

In Cold Blood

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    Amongst the immersive worlds of fantasy and historical periods years gone by, the ‘real world’ can be just a beautiful, immersive, and horrific. While a large part of authors and reader use the novel for voyeurism and escape, the other part use the medium as a great shovel for treasure hunting and digging deep below to find the roots of society. One masterful example of this is Truman Capote’s ‘nonfiction novel’, which was the book of choice this week. 

    Built on interviews, newspaper articles, and official statements, In Cold Blood retells in ‘fictional novel form’ one of Kansas’ most brutal and disturbing murder cases of the 1950s, the massacre of an entire family in their home by two drifting misfits. Following the murder, the clueless hunt for the killers, the eventual arrest, the trial, and the execution, Capote explores the social war between ‘50s ‘ideal American culture’ and the rise of James Dean-esque ‘rebel’ culture. 

    Understandably controversial when it came out, considering that the trial was actually happening at the time of writing, Capote’s inspiration to make something artful out of something morbid and horrific is a touch pill to swallow. But In Cold Blood is a truly fascinating book! The prose is a wonderful mixture of poetic and factual language that reads like a fiction until it suddenly brings you back to earth with a reminder that this is a true story.

    I would image the controversial edge of the novel comes from the scenes in which Capote writes about the two villains, writing intimately from their POV, humanising them. Such literary treatment delightfully conflicts with the brutal and motiveless murder at the heart of the book.   

Image credit: Wikiquote

 But Capote does much more than just write a great nonfiction novel. Also skimming over other, similar murder cases, the book is an exploration into the protruding rifts in American society during the time, the main being the butting heads of the idealistic, wholesome, 1950’s ‘fellow American’ and the James Dean rebel. While there is also a slight exploration into mental illness and the criminally insane, the central theme of the book is simply the jealousies, resentments, and impatience of human nature and how even the most ‘normal’, socially stable, and mentally organised person can be brutal and cold. 

    An intriguing, rich, and compelling book, In Cold Blood certainly earns distinctions as one of the greatest examples of the nonfiction novel and true crime novel ever written!

Author: Truman Capote, 1965

Published: Random House (New York), 1966.

Any Ordinary Day

Image credit: Penguin Books Australia

So this week, I decided to take a break from the fiction and fantasy and classic literature and delve into something a little more modern and relevant. Having bought this book over a year ago, I figured now was a perfect time to read it, considering all that’s currently going on.

This week’s book was Leigh Sales’ Any Ordinary Day.

A gorgeous work of non-fiction, Any Ordinary Day sees journalist and 7:30 host Leigh Sales tackle the most tremendous and hardest of questions to answer: what happens after the worst day of your life? Leigh crunches numbers and contemplates the stories of a handful of people who have seen/been the victim of great trauma, asking them what it was like before, during, and after this one event that changed their lives.

Amongst stirring tales of resilience, horrible blindsides, and frightening close-to-home traumatic events, Leigh discovers the causes and functional reasoning behind our actions, words, and experience before, during, and after times of great stress, trauma, and grief.

She pads out each chapter with a satisfactory blend of stories and academic facts, making it a very informative piece of non-fiction that is also engaging and emotionally stirring.

Image credit: Disrupted Festival

One would think that such content as the Lindt Café Siege, familial homicide, freak accidents, and degenerative illness would be a rather dispiriting and depressing reading experience, but somehow Leigh manages to leave her readers at the end of each chapter with an uplifted feeling rather than bone-crushing melancholia.

While the book certainly does not set out to be like a media puff piece about the enduring spirit of humanity, a fair part of those feels are unavoidable as Leigh chronicles very sweet and down-to-earth interviews that take away the media furore of these highly-covered news events and brings reality closer to home, each one closing on messages about the awesome power of communication, love, laughter, and human kindness.

It’s a gorgeous read!

Author: Leigh Sales, 2018

Published: Penguin Random House Australia Pty. Ltd. 2018

One Hundred Great Books in Haiku

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Sometimes it can be hard for one to find a short and succinct read that delights and informs. Such little books are very hard to find. But they do exist!

About a week ago, my partner and I found ourselves in a bookstore and came across a delightful little work by David Bader, which condenses one hundred ‘great’ literary works into haiku. We then had a most enjoyable time, while waiting for our lunch to be served, reading them to one another and trying to guess what books they were.

One Hundred Great Books in Haiku is exactly what its title suggests. Following a humorous foreward by Bader, it’s a collection of original haikus that hilariously summarise a bunch of literary classics.

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The overall reading experience is one of absolute delight, uplift, and warm chuckling. Not only are the poems very funny and entertaining, the book also inspires one to grab these great works from the shelf and become absorbed.

For the witty literate, I would highly recommend One Hundred Great Books in Haiku.

Author: David Bader, 2005

Published: Penguin Books, 2005.

Journeys to the Other Side of the World

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As I’ve said before, voyeurism is the primary attraction of literature for many people and while fiction, truly, is a wondrous way to have exciting and magic experiences without ever leaving the comfort of your couch, I would recommend that people give non-fiction a go for the same reasons. While most people see non-fiction as expositional or educational and only bother if they’re invested in the subject matter, I am here to say that those people are missing out and that you can have the same magical voyeuristic experiences while reading about places that exist right outside your door.

This week, my adventure from the Shelf spanned across New Guinea, Australia, and Madagascar with Sir David Attenborough’s Journeys to the Other Side of the World.

Following on from his earlier memoirs that chronicle three earlier ‘zoo quests’, this book sees Attenborough and Charles Lagus travel across the globe in search of exotic animals to film and capture, as well as strange and fascinating aboriginal lifestyles to document. While Adventures of a Young Naturalist was all about the animals (with a few human interactions thrown in), this book focuses just as much on the various races and tribes of people that populate the planet with their own religions, ceremonies, and ways of surviving in lush or harsh landscapes.

Attenborough’s sophisticated prose and expositional style of writing, intermingled with various personal tones, opinions, and anecdotes, continues to blend the line between boring naturalist textbook and stimulating non-fictional read. Each chapter of the book is a reminder that there are stories and characters out there in the real world that are just as fascinating and funny as those from an author’s imagination.

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While the book is not, admittedly, stimulating the entire way through –there are some areas that, unless you’re very interested in the subject matter, become a little dry and require perseverance- the majority of its pages are filled with interesting facts, stories, anecdotes, and characters that are sure to spark interest and imagination; maybe even spark a desire to travel to a few of these places and see them for oneself. This is what makes it a good book.

Journeys to the Other Side of the World is a collection of memoirs written by Sir David Attenborough –taken from journal entries- and compiled into a complete novel. The three ‘zoo quests’ contained are Quest in Paradise, Zoo Quest to Madagascar, and Quest Under Capricorn. It was first published in 1891 by Lutterworth Press as Journeys to the Past: Travels in New Guinea, Madagascar, and the Northern Territory of Australia and was rereleased as Journeys to the Other Side of the World in 2018 by Two Roads.

Eggshell Skull

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The primary draw of reading is the voyeurism that the experience promises. It’s a delectable, exciting, and a little naughty feeling that comes with looking over the fence at a world that you’re not a part of, just sneaking a peek. Of course these experiences offer readers excitement, drama, and ethical conundrums to work through, stimulating their brains every which way but loose. Then sometimes there are those books that hit too close to home, that immerse you in such a way that the anxieties and drama and horrors feel as though they are actually happening to you, making the feelings of depression, panic, and anger hells real. I had this experience this week, reading Eggshell Skull.

A memoir by Bri Lee about living with trauma, coming to terms with its severity, and then mustering the courage to stand up and fight back against it, Eggshell Skull is brutal, searing, and quite remarkable. The last time that I felt this emotionally affected by the central character was The Girl on the Train. Lee’s story of battling against a one-sided legal system, seeing the heartbreaking repetitiveness of rape and assault cases as a judge’s associate, and fighting against her own depression and post traumatic stress, is one that provides readers with an inspiring reading experience as well as a wholly depressing one.

Being a memoir, the book holds this beautiful bare-all tone as Lee writes in an everyday vocabulary and manages to put highly personal and emotional feelings and scenarios into words that an audience can fathom. We all know it’s near impossible to voice how we’re feeling (especially if we’re depressed or irrationally terrified), but Lee does a wonderful job, and it’s her voice and her words that immerse the reader and give her book the incredibly moving reading experience it does to its audience.

Every step of the way, I went through the feelings that Lee was describing; the empathic part of my brain whirring on overdrive. I was angry and having loud rants to myself when she described the absurdity and incompetence of the system, I could see myself drinking as she does, and feel those feelings of insecurity and hopelessness. One might argue that this is not the reading experience that people want, but right here and right now, I’m telling you it’s the one that we deserve!

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Despite a lot of its content, Lee’s book is not about taking down the system, or necessarily being an angry feminist pointing out the inconsistencies, lurches, and harsh imbalances between gender representations in the legal system. What Lee’s book did for me was openly say that you can talk about your feelings because it’s guaranteed that someone out there feels just like you. Yes we’re all different, but on a number of levels we are all the same, therefore the bad feelings that we feel have been felt by someone before and can be spoken about: people will understand.

I want to thank you, Bri, for your wonderful book.

Eggshell Skull is a memoir by Bri Lee chronicling her year in the legal system as a judge’s associate, and then three years as a complainant. It was written in 2018 and published by Allen & Unwin.

Adventures of a Young Naturalist

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This week on the Couch I’ve decided to take a break from the world of fantasy and opt for something fascinating, educational, and real: David Attenborough’s memoirs, Adventures of a Young Naturalist.

This intriguing and eloquently written book chronicles three key expeditions at the beginning of Attenborough’s career in which he, Charles Lagus, and Jack Lester travelled around the globe to film exotic animals in their natural habitat, as well as capture some to bring back to the London Zoo. The expeditions were called ‘Zoo Quest’ and this book covers the first three in which the trio travel to Guyana, Komodo to find the legendary Dragons, and Paraguay to find giant armadillos.

A blend of modern history as well as autobiographical stories and anecdotes, Adventures of a Young Naturalist is the perfect fusion of educational and entertaining literature. Attenborough’s recognisable voice serves as a wondrous inner narrator, which makes the stories and bouts of exposition all the more accessible and digestible because it causes the book to read more like an intellectual dinner conversation rather than a dry heap of history and lectures.

Attenborough’s prose is beautifully structured and infused with a distinctive ‘documentary narrator’s’ vibe as well as a number of more personal descriptions of his adventures, which makes the reading experience all the more enjoyable. The book’s division into three parts, each detailing the adventures upon three different journeys, helps to break up the monotony that always sits on the fringes of non-fiction works (especially ones that chronicle history) and the photographs that are also included serve as a wonderfully refreshing break from the (admittedly) long stream of narrative.

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Despite the majority of the adventures being quite fascinating and inspiring feelings of reflective/sympathetic hope, disappointment, and desperation in the reader, the book can on occasion become a little wordy; making the reader take in the words on the page without really penetrating the meaning or feelings behind them, but aside from that one downside Adventures of a Young Naturalist is a captivating book, definitely a must-read for fans of Attenborough and his wonderful BBC Earth documentaries.

Adventures of a Young Naturalist is a collection of memoirs from Sir David Attenborough, compiled from various notes and journal entries over many years (1955, 1957, and 1959) and first published as a complete novel by Lutterworth Press in 1980 (Zoo Quest Expeditions: Travels in Guyana, Indonesia and Paraguay). This edition was first published in 2017 by Two Roads.