Back to the Books

After a break from blogging of 2 weeks, I've recently finished my latest round of reporting - completing over 200 reports and the marking and comments that accompany all that, along with the writing, checking and editing - so I now find myself retuning to some books that have been on hold and make mention of some that have vanished off the shelf and have been replaced by others.

I finished reading the Thames and Hudson Dali, a small paperback version which proved to be a major disappointment.  Initially it read well, with good background info on Dali's childhood and student days, but quickly descended into a laborious series of quotes from letters and journals with little insight into the artist's sense of vision. Illustrations were good and included some I had not seen before, but the book very quickly glossed over the last 40 years of Dali's life and I could not recommend it.

I've replaced it with a recently purchased version of Taschen's Dali which seems to have greater integrity and I hold out more hope from it. The Taschen series have been excellent with the ones I have purchased and although only $20-$25, they offer great value. If its anything like the Taschen book on Rothko I read last year, I'll be more than pleased.

Of course, now the administrative side of teaching is out of the way (more or less) I'm hoping to relax with some reading that provides pure entertainment... so who could be better than the Grand Master of the crime caper, Donald E Westlake?

Watch Your Back has been sitting on my shelf for about a year and this week I've dusted off the cover and started on the latest John Dortmunder crime caper. All the old friends are there and Westlake's writing has improved with age. It's a great shame he is no longer with us, but he has left behind a wonderful body of work under his own name as well as the Parker series under his pseudonym Richard Stark. I read Westlake for two things only : great plots and laughs. This one is shaping up quite nicely and all going well I should polish it off in the next few days. Keep your eye on the blog for a fuller review.

Burn brightly, Pete.

Tintin Art Book

Directors Sir Peter Jackson and Steven Spielberg have written the forewords to a new book on the art of The Adventures of Tintin. The book will accompany a new film made by the two directors, The Adventures of Tintin, due for release next week in Britain. Oscar winners Joe Letteri and Richard Taylor also share their insights into making the film in the book. The art has been created by NZ Weta artists (and if you plan on buying it before seeing the movie, be aware that it does contain spoilers!).

Moulinsart, the official organisation that looks after the world of Tintin, has contributed an introductory chapter on the comic's creator Georges Remi, aka Hergé. The book, The Art of The Adventures of Tintin, is to be released in the United States, United Kingdom, Australia and New Zealand on October 13 in a 200-page hardcover book and digital e-book. Trailers for the film have been up on the web for some months now and the new movie is due for release in London in a few short days.

Bedside Reading

In the last two weeks, some books have moved off my bedside table to be replaced by others. I usually try to mix my reading so there's always about 4 or 5 books on the go together and I can shuffle between them as mood takes me. The mix is usually culture/technology; art; biography; religion and fiction (usually crime or detective). This week I've finished a technology book and Steve Marriott: All Too Beautiful, the biography of Small Faces and Humble Pie's frontman. A mod who set fashion standards in the sixties and contemporaries of The Who, Marriott's performances were legendary. He then left and went on to do it all again with Humble Pie in the US, but drugs and the excesses of the rock'n'roll lifestyle, coupled with his own self-destructive personality were to defeat him in the end seeing him playing small pub gigs up until his death at age 44 in a housefire. Possibly schizophrenic, a prima donna who carried grudges for years, but above all a white man with a black voice whose talent was instantly recognizable, All Too Beautiful is tragic in its telling of Marriott's failures and successes.

The other book that has held me mesmerised for a few weeks now has been The Shallows by a past editor of the Harvard Business Review, Nicholas Carr. The book describes how human thought has been shaped through the centuries by “tools of the mind” — from the alphabet, to maps, to the printing press, the clock, and now in our lifetimes, the computer.  Carr also weaves a fascinating account of recent discoveries in neuroscience on brain pasticity by such pioneers Merzenich and Kandel. Our brains actually change in response to our experiences and the technologies/tools we use to find, store, and share information can literally reroute our neural pathways. As a consequence there are profound changes in the way we live and communicate, remember and socialise - even in our self-concepts. By moving from the depths of thought to the shallows of distraction, the web is actually fostering ignorance. The Shallows is not a manifesto for neo-luddites, but a reminder of how far the Internet has become entrenched in our daily existence and is affecting the way we think. As a teacher, its a book that compels me to examine my own growing dependence on  technology and question my reliance on it as a teaching tool. Carr's book is one I'll be returning to again in the next few months.

The Shallows has been replaced by Hamlet's Blackberry: A Practical Philosophy for Building The Good Life in the Digital Age by William Powers. Powers thesis is very similar to Carr's but nowhere near as complex or empirical, rather more personal and anecdotal. Both books are easy to read, but Powers' is more warm and fuzzy and tends to be more about his own personal journey through technological dependence and his questioning of how far we should go forward  or relent and try turning the clock back.  I must admit that after The Shallows I found this a little simplistic and it is lingering on my shelf at the moment until I get my head back into it. So if you've been reading the blog and noticed the change of position of books on Shelfari, this might explain why. You may also have noticed some other purchases that have appeared.

At least once a month, I haunt a little-known bookstore in the next suburb that has an excellent range of books at great prices. Today I picked up a copy of The Lost City of Z: A Legendary British Explorer's Deadly Quest to Uncover the Secrets of the Amazon' by David Grann (in perfect condition for just $3!!). Colonel Percy Harrison Fawcett was the last of a breed of great British explorers who ventured into 'blank spots' on the map with little more than a machete, a compass and unwavering sense of purpose. In 1925,  Fawcett believed the impenetrable jungle held a secret to a large, complex civilization like El Dorado, which he christened the 'City of Z' and he and his son set out to find it. They vanished without a trace. For the next eighty years, hordes of explorers searched for the expedition and the city. Many died from starvation, disease, attacks by wild animals, and poisonous arrows. Others simply vanished. In The Lost City of Z, David Grann retraces the footsteps of the great Colonel Fawcett and his followers, in an attempt to solve one of the greatest mysteries. Looks like a cracking good read! It seems there's a healthy amount of ego in some of the biographies I've been reading of late - from Marriott to Fawcett and even the late Steve Jobs in the iCon bio I read earlier this year. I'll be interested to read this biography and see just how far Fawcett's self-confidence extended.
Burn brightly, Pete.

At Tiffany's

Truman Capote and Harper Lee

Forgot to mention that I finished reading Truman Capote's New York city novella ‘Breakfast at Tiffany’s’ recently. I'd been wanting to track down a copy as I'd read Carol Matthau's autobiography (Among the Porcupines) earlier this year and she knew Capote and was the inspiration for the Holly Golightly character. (see my earlier post) Very much a tale of the 40's or 50's, Breakfast is a lovely story of 100 pages in a novella format with succinct, short sentences and every word placed thoughtfully on the page. Most of the details about each character are left to Capote's well written New Yorker dialogue that allows the reader to hear the angst, dreams, and fears in a very real and tangible way. This character driven tale has the delightful Holly Golightly radiating at the centre of the smiles, frowns, excitements and despair. 


I was surprised at how much of the dialogue remained in the actual film script, but the tale is dialogue driven so I shouldn't have been. Some changes for the movie of course with Holly's "profession" cleaned up a little and the inclusion of the Hollywood happy ending, but an enjoyable read and it made me wonder at Capote's ability. It seemed entirely appropriate with it being his birthday this week and a friend currently visiting NY. (I've been hearing about Central Park and Knishes this week and I hope she finds time to dress in black and be photographed outside Tiffany's eating a bagel in sunglasses - a must do for any woman visiting NYC). So, an enjoyable read and one I was pleased to track down and have read in the break. The book I bought has two other short stories in it which I'm hoping to polish off in the next few weeks -  Capote's writing is excellent!


Burn brightly, Pete

“How to Read 70+ Books in a Year”- Scott H. Young

Over the past two years I’ve read over 120 books. If you add up partial books I read for specific segments, that number would be well over 140. But only four years ago I would have read 10-12 books per year. Although reading at least seventy books a year sounds difficult, it doesn’t require a huge investment of time.

Here’s how I did it:

Step One: Learn to Speed Read
Some people see speed reading as a magical technique to ingest thousands of pages per hour. Therefore it tends to divide those people who are mystified by it and those who think it is a complete fraud. I’d like to argue that speed reading is neither. The term “speed reading” itself is a bit off. The real idea behind speed reading is that you know how (and when) to speed up and when to slow down. With a few basic techniques you can get a sizable increase on your maximum speed.

Summary tips for speed reading:
1. Use your forefinger to follow the line on the page. This focuses your vision onto a specific part of the text.
2. Practice read textbooks faster than you can comprehend. This isn’t actual reading but it will make you familiar with using your finger and slowly increase your maximum speed.
3. State your purpose before starting to read. This will allow you to focus on information you need and reject information you don’t.

Step Two: Always Have a Book

This one may sound obvious, but the best way to increase the amount of books you read is to always have a book. Gaps of a few weeks without any reading material means several less books you can read each year. Worse, time spent without a book breaks down your reading habits so it can be harder to start again. If always having a book to read sounds to constrictive, maybe you’re reading the wrong article. You need a passion for finding new ideas and learning. Outside pressure won’t help.

Step Three: One Book at a Time
I strive to never read more than one book at a time. There are a couple reasons for this:
1. You can’t read two books simultaneously, so having two books partially completed isn’t going to accelerate the amount you are reading.
2. Each book uses up your mental RAM, making it more likely to forget critical details when switching between books.
3. You keep reading a bad book instead of tossing it. Either keep reading a book or get rid of it. Don’t put it on “hold” while you skim through other books.
4. Reading one book keeps you focused.

Step Four: Fill Gap Time With Reading
Gap time is the small windows of five to ten minutes you can’t schedule activities in. This could be waiting in line at the dentist, a spare ten minutes hanging on the end of your lunch break or a fifteen minute gap between classes. Reading is the perfect filler for gap time. Usually I can find a total of twenty to thirty minutes each day just in gap time. With that amount you can read at least forty books a year on gap time alone. That means you could get over three dozen books read annually – without investing extra time. The only requirement to utilize gap time is that you carry a book with you.

Step Five: Cut the Television and Web-Surfing
The next way to grab a bit more reading time is to cut background noise. Background noise is the activities you do when you don’t have anything to do. Usually television or web-surfing, this often means watching programs that have zero entertainment value or rechecking your RSS feeds for the fiftieth time today. Create the habit of reading whenever you don’t have something planned. Television and internet usage can be great, if you are watching shows you enjoy or making good use of the net. But if the shows aren’t adding anything to your day, turn them off and pick up your book.

Step Six: Keep a To-Read List
My to-read list is a perpetual Amazon shopping cart filled with books recommended to me. Motivating yourself to read a current book is as simple as having books after it to read. My to-read list motivates me to finish a current book because I’m interested in searching through the one after it. Keeping a to-read list also takes the effort out of tracking books. I almost never need to go into the bookstore and just browse. Whenever I get a link for an interesting book, I add it to my Amazon shopping cart in advance.

Getting Started
I don’t need to tell you the benefits of reading books. As a kid you probably saw tacky motivational posters in your school informing you that, “Reading is Power!” The motivation to read seventy books a year needs to come from within. External pressures like getting good grades, pride from considering yourself more academic than your friends or hoping to find that perfect answer at the bottom of a self-help bin aren’t going to cut it.

Pressfield's War

I've just finished re-reading Steven Pressfield's War of Art for the third time. It seems I return to it every 12 months to give myself the necessary creative kick in the arse to get myself motivated and lift my self belief past the level of getting out of bed in the mornings. The War of Art is subtitled Break Through the Block and Win Your Inner Creative Battles and is divided up into three sections:

   1. Resistance - Defining the Enemy

   2. Combating Resistance - Turning Pro

   3. Beyond Resistance - Higher Realm

Pressfield's work had impressed me the first time round when I read it in 2009. Since then its been on constant loan to friends except when I'm re-reading it.  I had never really warmed to his third section on my first two readings. This reading I found the final section (where he introduces the idea of the Divine Muse) the most useful and the most challenging, with none of my previous reservations and hesitations. Lately, I have been feeling a little like Jesus' third servant in the parable where the money/talent is buried and the servant is called into answer for his inaction. Pressfield has helped awaken that sense of responsibility - so let's hope we see some more creative activity and actual physical production in the coming weeks/months.

I've also read Pressfield's earlier books - the golfing novel/movie Legend of Bagger Vance (which he tells the story of in this book) and his military/historical work on the Battle of Thermoplylae Gates of Fire, - both I found entertaining and challenging as well.  If you haven't come across The War of Art yet, seek the book out. Its a very easy read, large print and you should be able to work through it quickly. I'd recommend it to anyone engaged in any sort of creative work. If you're suffering from roadblocks and obstacles, Pressfield may be what you need to galvanise yourself into action.

Burn brightly, Pete

Cain Enabled

I just discovered that the Guardian this week ran an article announcing the discovery of a lost novel by one of my favourite authors, James M. Cain. Like a hardboiled Hemingway, Cain's pen gave us  stories we've all come across: Double Indemnity, The Postman Always Rings Twice, Galatea, Serenade, The Butterfly - many of them made into films, including the recently re-made Mildred Pierce. Writing mainly in the 1930s and 40s, Cain first found success with The Postman Always Rings Twice (what a novel to start a career with!) and his books have always been in publication. I've been a fan since the 80s when I was able to pick up some of his hard to get novels when I was working in the States. So I was overjoyed that writer Max Alan Collins was responsible in part for this piece of literary detective work and the novel (The Cocktail Waitress) has in fact been discovered, is currently being edited and will be published sometime next year. 


Apparently Cain had re-written the ending just before his death and mentioned it in an interview. Both versions have been found and it will be interesting to see which version ends up on the printed page. Hard Case Crime who are publishing the novel said that handwritten notes and edits appear in the margins of numerous pages of the manuscript, and that Cain was working on final revisions until close to the end of his life in the late 70s. Cain died in 1977 at age 85 somewhat dejected that his magnum opus was refused publication - he'd spent 20 years of his life in semi-retirement polishing the novel only to have it knocked back by publishers. So, a cause for celebration in this household and I'll be interested to see what his writing was like in his old age.

Burn brightly, Pete

Cracked Earth

Every now and then I attempt a new author I've never tried before and as a result I've just finished John Shannon's 1999 novel Cracked Earth. Earlier this year I'd read his debut novel, The Concrete River, and was suitably impressed and so I've now read the second in the series. Chandleresque (and therefore similar to Robert B. Parker), I've enjoyed both books and will probably pursue the Jack Liffey series via Amazon as I've only come across one place here in Oz that stocks them. Both these novels were OOP for a while and have only recently been reissued which is a good sign and there are now eleven books in the series. 

In Cracked Earth, a former Hollywood star Lori Bright hires private investigator Jack Liffey to find her missing fifteen year old daughter Lee Borowsky. Lori shows Jack a fax of a kidnapper's ransom note demanding $50,000 and no cops. As the book progresses and he gets closer to his prey, Jack finds himself trapped between the cops, software developers and the standover men of Los Angeles and he threatens to walk out on this case. Then the book shifts gears with a Los Angeles earthquake providing a massive wrench in the action. 

A little reminiscent of a talkative Harry Bosch, John Shannon's first two novels reek of Raymond Chandler updated to the 21st century. He is capable of capturing the mood of the LA city scene, gritty characters and a nice mix of situations like movie making and earthquake aftershocks. Not highly recommended (although still enjoyable) - unless your a fan of Raymond Chandler, but an interesting diversion from my normal reading mix of authors.


Burn brightly, Pete

Peel and Piazolla

Ahhh - another day of holidays ..... lazing around listening to Astor Piazolla's Tangos and watching old episodes of The Avengers (the Mrs Peel cool 60's variety, not the Marvel comic version - although I've seen a few of those on ABC 3 this week as well). Nothing too taxing at the moment - just catching up on reading and thinking and feeling very alone in an empty house for most of the day. I'm almost finished my John Shannon novel; have started re-reading Kenneth Clark's work of genius on Landscape (I'm planning on watching some of his old TV series on Civilization next week, if time and family schedules allow); I have also caught up with washing and doctor's appointments (did you know there's no real cure for Tennis Elbow other than rest? - Goodonya Doc!); transferred some old State of Origin matches from VHS to DVD (only the ones where Qld wins); washed and tidied to Piazolla's fantastically sensual music (just how erotic can a piano accordian get?), and generally rested.

And somehow I will have to force myself to put up with a whole week more of this again next week! Tomorrow I get my son to drive me back to Coolangatta to rack up hours on his Learner's log (30 down, 70 more to go!) and I'll make another foray into the world of secondhand books. So think of me hard at it tomorrow making my way down to the sunny Gold Coast while you're working wherever you find yourself. It'll be hell!
Burn brightly, Pete.

How Books Work...

Walter & Carol

I've just finished reading Carol Matthau's Among the Porcupines. I think it may be out of print and you would need to search 2nd hand stores to track down a copy, but it would be well-worth the effort. This is possibly one of the best biographies I've ever read - warm, sometimes heart-breaking, amusing, jaw dropping, but above all an enduring romance with genuine LOL sections. Harpo Speaks is the only biography I've read that comes anywhere near close. You'll need to read this with a non-judgmental frame of mind as the author is quite frank and open about her sex-life, romances and views on life. Carol Matthau was a woman of incredible strength and great love and understanding up until her death soon after Walter in 2003. She lived an extraordinary life - from foster homes as a child to a fairy tale existence as the teenage daughter of a multi millionaire with 6 maids, 2 butlers and permanent chefs.

Author Truman Capote first set eyes on her at age 14 when she was stark naked and remained a firm friend. He modelled Holly Golightly on her for his short story Breakfast at Tiffany's recounting the times when they would meet for breakfast - coffee and donuts outside the famous jewellers in downtown New York. She counted Gloria Vanderbilt and Oona Chaplin as her closest friends, was a wife of the poet/writer William Saroyan and lover of critic James Agee.

When she met and fell in love with Walter Matthau, he was married to another woman. Her life had changed drastically as a broadway actress and she was to fall deeply in love and spend the next forty years with a man with a major gambling addiction, but also an incredible lust for life coupled with an amazing talent and commitment to his craft which saw him nominated and win both Tonys and Oscars.

Carol's book had me laughing one page and welling up in tears the next with her stories of her love for Walter, the fights, the insights into friends and associates like Chaplin, Wilder, and a myriad of other talented artists. If you can find it, get it and hold on to it. Well recounted, an easy read and a memorable volume of insights  into a group of unique characters and a charmed life.

Burn brightly, Pete.

Disappointing DH

I had not read D H Lawrence for over 30 years and I recently chose to read his last published work, "The Virgin and the Gypsy" which was discovered in France after his death, as a part of my reading program for the year. For the last thirty years I have consistently read at least 50 books throughout the year, averaging one per week and aiming for the grand 52 whenever possible. So this is number 15 for the year (a novella - chosen in part because of its brevity) and it has all the classic Lawrence themes - uncivilised civilisation, social prejudice, family relationships. Unfortunately it lacks the polish and rigorous editing that Lawrence put his published works through but it does have some nicely drawn characters and he has caught the nuances and language of teenage girls well. I found myself struggling to be sympathetic or involved with anyone in the story. Lawrence was one of my favourite authors in my college days and his poetry in particular influenced me with his wonderful descriptive turns of phrase. But if you're looking for a Lawrence, head to Sons and Lovers or Women in Love and leave The Virgin and The Gypsy parked on the shelf.

 And now its on to a bit of a romp and a laugh or three with the inimitable Joe R Lansdale and Flaming London .

Burn brightly, Pete