While seeking something new and enjoyable to read for the time out at Kurrajong I was wandering thru the Exmouth news agency where there is quite an eclectic selection of books. In the biography section I noticed MP the biography of Michael Petersen a legendary and iconic surfer from the 70s. I read this a number of years ago and really enjoyed it. Next to it was a title I hadn’t seen before – Surfari by Tim Baker.

I picked it up and skimmed the back cover, where I read that the book was about Baker and family’s (sponsored) round Oz journey of surf adventure in a Jayco Expanda and Toyota RAV4. I was intrigued. Apart from the shared love of surfing there was the ‘big lap’ connection and (I presumed) a love of writing.

I opened it, browsed the writing style and straight away I knew I was going to buy it. Baker is a surf journo, has edited Tracks magazine and written a couple of surfer bios (Occy and Fanning) He tells a great tale and in the first chapter he describes his middle aged malaise and his hopes for a more inspiring life. I’ve been there… He is a year younger than me and his story sounded like a fun way to wile away a couple of days on the beach.

So being a tightarse I immediately googled the book and found it on Amazon. Ten bucks on Amazon or $29.95 in the newsagency?… Tough decision. I downloaded the sample right there and had a read that night. I bought the book and stashed it for a day or two while I finished Lila. That was a slog…

And then the fun began. Baker is an engaging writer as well as having the ability to reflect and observe what’s going on around him and inside him.

It was April 2009 that we set off for our lap with two kids and a surfboard and we shared many similar experiences to Baker and family. (Here’s how ours came about…)

While the book chronicles Baker’s surf odyssey it is much more than a piece of surf porn. He takes time to discuss the history of the areas he visits, the culture and context he is experiencing as well as reflecting on the challenges of family life and personal development in the midst of it all.

As a middle aged man Baker felt he was writing about surfing more than he was actually getting in the water and this was part of his plan for redressing the imbalance. As he travels he discovers it’s harder to duck off for a quiet surf than he had anticipated. The responsibility of family, driving and working make it difficult and at times the grand vision became a mirage.

His daughter is homesick within a day (been there done that…) the surf doesn’t turn up on schedule and then there is the delicate balancing act of hitting the water and spending time with the family – while not losing your cool. He tells a very honest story of losing it with his young son and what he learnt in the process.

He writes guardedly of some of his best surfs choosing not to identify the location, but I think I pegged his anonymous spot between Merimbula and Eden as it was where we scored some great waves too. He doesn’t even mention Cactus by name, despite its legendary status and there are several other spots he wisely choose to leave to your best guess. It seems localism is still an issue in the wilder parts of Oz.

I sympathized with many of his experiences. The ‘night of the bogans’ had me chuckling in bed as I read – imagine a maroon falcon sliding into camp with 5 heavyweights set for a big night on the turps and you get the picture.

I remembered the many grey nomads who treated our kids so well and who were kind and gracious when they may have been wanting to escape pestering children.

I shared and still share his hatred of the generator. Why anyone would want to tuck themselves away in a remote and serene part of the world only to arc up a clattering piece of machinery for 3 or 4 hours each day is beyond me. It’s been one of my pet peeves on this trip – thinking you’ve finally found ‘the spot’ only to have Stan and Dorothy roll up and kick the genny into life so they can watch a bit of telly… Get a grip people…

Baker leaves home as a ‘teeth grinder’ and hopes the road trip will be a panacea for this problem – not so much… Just a different set of stresses… He introduces us to some interesting people around the country as he searches for surf and he has some brilliant if understated surf sessions.

That he finished his trip in the north west of Australia in Exmouth gave the book a little more resonance again. As we left Exmouth we dropped in for one final bite of the cherry at Dunes Beach, but Mother Nature was not playing nicely. A small choppy swell, blustery onshore winds and a badly timed tide meant we  took one look and drove on. This was a bit of his experience, although he seems to have got his fair share of amazing waves as well.

If you also share a love of camping and surfing and want an entertaining and very readable book, while taking some time to reflect on the challenges of middle age then this is a gem.

As we left for Cape range I was keen to restock the library, as I had cut thru my first stack of books and was needing some fresh inspiration.

My intention was to finally finish Lila by Marilyne Robinson, a book I have started 3 times (and got well over half way thru on each occasion) but then become bogged down in. It feels like it’s worthy of a greater effort from me – I loved Gilead and enjoyed Home, but this one just fails to ignite each time I tackle it. So I commit to finishing it…

I finish Lila in the way an amateur runner finishes a marathon. I slog it out and refuse to quit but I’m so glad when it’s over. Perhaps it’s the mood I’m in, the distractions around me or my need for some simple, more readable and entertaining material, but Lila just doesn’t cut it.

I wander in and out of attentiveness and regularly have to go back and read whole chapters to remember just what is actually happening in the story. But I finish it late on the first evening at Kurrajong and now I can delete it from my tablet. It no longer haunts me as the unfinishable book…

Gould’s Book of Fish however… I accidentally bought two copies of this on Amazon and have not been able to get a third of the way into it before feeling like I am lost.

For the record Lila is the third in Robinson’s trilogy of novels set in the fictitious American town of Gilead and revolving around the life of an elderly Congregational minister – John Ames. This is the story of his second wife – Lila – and it tells of her life from birth into a family of homeless drifters thru to her marriage to Ames.

It’s a powerful story as Lila is ‘stolen’ from her family by Doll and endures a life of wandering hardship before finishing up in Gilead and finding a friend in Ames. The unlikely relationship between the conservative, genteel preacher and the somewhat feral and fickle Lila is the making of the story, and the child they conceive together makes it a little more interesting.

Ames ability to love and accept Lila and to pronounce no judgement on her past is the beauty of the story, but it just seems to meander interminably and ends up becoming an exercise in endurance rather than joy.

I will devote a whole post to my next book though as it’s been a wonderfully easy read and an all too brief source of late night chuckles.

So here’s what I have been reading over January… In this order

My mate Stu recommended this one. A fair read, but didn’t go where I thought it might. Not much to say about this one.

This bloke was a legend when I was a kid and I thought it would be interesting to hear about his life. It was well written, but did tend to put George on a pedestal. While it acknowledged his flaws you never felt like there was much of a critique of his life – more of an explanation. I enjoyed it, but more for the nostaglia than the balanced treatment of the subject.

Same subject but this time written from the point of view of his sister. I thought it would be interesting to hear a ‘non-professional’ perspective on Best. It was ok, but definitely read like the lament of a sister.

When a leading evangelical ethicist changes his mind on how he sees homosexuality then its worth a read. This is a short and very readable book and a good intro the issue. I didn’t find it convincing on its own, but it did cause me to begin re-thinking.

I thought another biography would be good and given I was planning on launching into some weighty subject matter I figured this would be worth a read. And it was. Its quite explicit in parts so be aware of that, but I think that actually allows you to feel some of the pain. I appreciated an insider story of life as a gay Christian man and the struggle that accompanies that situation.

This one’s been recommended a few times and with good reason. Its a strong case for a revisionist view of homosexuality. I didn’t find it the easiest book to follow, but I thought Brownson made some good points and he has pushed my thinking some more.

This one was a ‘two views’ type of book – one for and one against. I didn’t find Via’s arguments very strong at all, and Gagnon was much stronger albeit dry and boring as hell.

So that’s my holiday reading…

I just finished Khaled Hosseini’s latest ‘And the Mountains Echoed‘, another sprawling family saga with its base in the Afghanistan area. I found his first two books wonderful, even if they were a tad melancholic, but this one sputtered along and just didn’t have the energy of his previous work. There were moments of brilliance but periods of confusion as I would wonder ‘where is this going and what has it go to do with the original storyline?’

My critique would be that the novel suffered from having too many characters who were introduced obscurely. Hosseini will regularly change voice in his writing without letting on that he has done so. You find yourself 10 pages into a chapter wondering who is narrating this time and what connection it bears to the rest of the story. This happened regularly and at first it was a clever way of luring the reader in, but once the ‘cast’ grew it became confusing and difficult to remember who everyone was. You would read a chapter for 5 minutes and feel like you had been air dropped in the middle of a jungle and now needed to get your bearings if you were going to find a way out.

If I had to sum up the purpose of the story then it would be something to do with family… yeah… not that clear, but possibly how our roots and connections matter and need attention if we are to know who we are.

Hosseini is a very good writer and generally enjoyable to read, but this one felt like hard work at times as I laboured thru the various sub stories wondering where they were headed. Perhaps a second read may be more fruitful, but I’m not sure I feel sufficiently inspired to go there.

So – there you have it…

After my disappointment with the movie version of The Turning I was hoping for something substantially better in Winton’s new novel Eyrie. The synopsis from Penguin is below. It didn’t really grab me as it sounded like a departure from much of what I love in his writing – the rugged coastal settings and the rough characters who inhabit those spaces.

 

Tom Keely’s reputation is in ruins. And that’s the upside.
Divorced and unemployed, he’s lost faith in everything precious to him. Holed up in a grim highrise, cultivating his newfound isolation, Keely looks down at a society from which he’s retired hurt and angry. He’s done fighting the good fight, and well past caring.

But even in his seedy flat, ducking the neighbours, he’s not safe from entanglement. All it takes is an awkward encounter in the lobby. A woman from his past, a boy the likes of which he’s never met before. Two strangers leading a life beyond his experience and into whose orbit he falls despite himself.

What follows is a heart-stopping, groundbreaking novel for our times – funny, confronting, exhilarating and haunting. Inhabited by unforgettable characters, Eyrie asks how, in an impossibly compromised world, we can ever hope to do the right thing.

 

I’ve heard some say its not a plot driven novel and maybe it is less so than others, but the storyline is still intriguing. Where it excels is in picking up on the challenges of middle age dreams that have gone sour. Of lives that have gone bad and of the ‘soldiering on’ that happens as people just have to get by. The brooding melancholy that is so characteristic in Winton’s novels is strong in this one.

Keely has lost hope and given up when he stumbles across Gemma, a broken woman with a messy family life who ironically is at times more together than he is. He has tumbled ‘down the ladder’, losing wife, career and everything, finishing up in a dingy one bed flat in Fremantle where he drinks and pops prescription medications to ease the pain of his dark life. The story is set against the backdrop of economic boom times here in the west so Keely’s malaise is even more terrible. As an environmental activist his number was up and was fired. There is some enviro-commentary in the story but it doesn’t feel overly moralistic or preachy.

Gemma is ‘nan’ to 6 year old Kai, who appears to be autistisic and she is his primary carer because his mum (Gemma’s daughter) is in prison and his dad is a druggie. Gemma is a fantastic character. Broken, messed up, angry and volatile. refusing to be helped, needing to be helped, receiving help and then spitting in the face of those who help… she is a lost soul in a world that is spinning out of control. She is a wounded animal snapping at the hands that try to heal her.

Gemma manages to hold down a night fill job (while leaving Kai at home alone) and the guts of the story revolves around her relationship with Keely and his attempts to help her and Kai while his own life is in chaos.

They meet accidentally on the verandah one day. She recognises him from the street where they grew up – where her messed up family were continually rescued by his – where his dad and mum were a virtual foster service to kids who were victims of all sorts of abuse. Keely’s dad, who has died is portrayed as something of a hero, a Christian, a no nonsense pastor, who wasn’t all talk, but who actually gave a damn about people.

Gemma describes him:

Him and your mum – they never went soft, didn’t fake it, never gave up. If his heart hadn’t give out, he’d’ve been up and back at it. That was him, what I loved about him. He had that boilin thing in him. You know: Fuck this, let’s do somethin about it. Of all that churchy talk, son, it was the only thing rung true to me. Like he said, believe what ya like. Think what ya like. You’ll be judged for what ya do. Even if ya cock it up. Die tryin.

There is a chapter devoted to Keely’s dad, and its another great Winton depiction of faith at its best. Nev is a man of action, a bloke who was prepared to use his fists to protect the innocent in the name of Jesus. Nev and Doris live a faith that welcomes the down and outs and shows compassion when everyone else looked away. They get kicked out of ‘real church’ for being a bit rough and into social justice and start a church in their home and then Nev starts a church among the motorcycle community… The more I read Winton the more I sense that he gets the kingdom – he has a sense of who we ought to be as the church – but religious buffoonery just seems to piss him off.

The story follows some pretty inane and unexciting tracks – the lives of those who are screwed up and finding it hard to see any way out. There is a hopelessness about the lives of Keely and Gemma that is disturbing because you know that this is how it is for some folks…

As with most of Winton’s stories these are people you know – people you have met – who have lived in your street and you ‘know’ their stories.

The ‘plot’ revolves around a demand for money from Gemma by her daughter and her druggie partner along with threats and intimidation. Keely is forced to get involved, but realises he is nothing like his dad. He is confronted with his own impotence and fear – all while he is recovering from his career and marriage failure. He is a total disappointment to himself.

I loved the grittiness and rawness of Eyrie and my only disappointment was the final chapter. The ending didn’t work for me, but the rest was wonderful.

I’ve been using a kindle for around 18 months now and its functional, small, gives fast access to heaps of good reads, but… it just doesn’t feel like a book.

Which raises the question – ‘what is a book?‘

Is a book a collection of information and ideas or is a book a physical item to be held, smelled, thumbed and treasured?…

You can see where this is headed can’t you?

I see great value in the kindle and I doubt I’ll get rid of it, but after reading 60 or 70 books on it I always feel a little gypped when I finish the book. I am realising I have a physical attachment to books more than I do to ideas or storylines.

I have tossed plenty of books out in the last few years – a kindle would be a real winner for these kinds of books – simply hit ‘delete’… but I have also got a collection of my favourites, the ones I like to have there just in case… Just in case what?… I’m not sure. Maybe so I can pick them up and read them when I feel like it, maybe to lend to a friend?…

I like the ‘sample’ versions on kindle, I like the savings in $$, I like the portability… I really do… but I miss a ‘good book’.

Which leads me to wonder if there is something in the kinaesthetic experience of reading that is more significant than maybe we have realised. Sure – you can read a kindle in bed, in the beach, upside down, you never need to worry about it being too thick, or destroying the pages when you fold it back on itself… But I’m missing books.

So I think its time for me to clear the shelves of some more ‘junk’ and to replenish again with some treasures.