some book reviews

everything was fine until whatever by chelsea martin

this is a collection of poems & short stories that crispin loaned me. this book was funny a lot but also sad a lot. i liked how there were sort of normal stories interspersed with quite odd things. what i mean is that there were sort of real introspective things about people and relationships then something sort of unpretentious and hilarious at the end of a paragraph maybe. maybe this was unintentional but it makes the stories seem warmer or something and like endearing. also there was good fine print. and the book has a good title so it seems like you are an interesting person if you read it on the train. 

follow me down by kio stark

did i already write about this here? this book was really nice. it was short but compelling about this girl who gets mailed an old photo in an envelope then she tries to find out who the person is in the picture. i think it was just really nice prose about a city really, all her attempts to find it, meeting people around her neighbourhood and in different parts of the city. the protagonist was also a redhaired babe who used that to her advantage to find out things and i sort of liked that she was unashamed of using her looks in that way, but unusually i didn't end up hating her because of this. 

instructions... etc by tim key

also loaned to me by crispin. this book was good to read at work because i could easily read a thing while waiting for somebody to pick up the phone and answer questions to me. it is real funny in an earnest way, like quite verbose but hilariously so. a good use of parentheses. one of my supervisors thumbed it at some point and seemed intrigued by it. i think it made me seem 'interesting' because actually yes a lot of the things in the book are weird instructions.  

wind up bird chronicle by murakami

the second haruki murakami book i have read. i liked a lot of it but towards the end i felt like i just wanted toru to stop meeting different people. i felt sometimes like the women in the books were too sexually available, or that's the way they were written which also bothered me. perhaps it was just masculine and i'm not used to that. i liked this thing that toru says about kumiko "I just want you to keep one thing in mind: anything of yours - anything at all, as long as it belongs to you, I will accept as my own. That is one thing you will never have to worry about". generally what i like about this book and the other murakami book i have read (sputnik sweetheart) is the way that really odd things seem to happen, like just going to sit in a well then somehow going into dream states that aren't really dreams or spending every day of the week just looking at people, then mysteriously meeting a wealthy benefactor, meeting women who can somehow heal other women of their pain - these things that 'seem strange' are written about not without curiosity but without surprise. i liked this, because it seems like the things we do in life like get up and go get a train somewhere, make eggs, do our jobs.. they are all done as routinely as you like. who's to say going to sit in the bottom of a well shouldn't be just as normal. i don't know, i'm not explaining that very well. but my overall sense was that peculiar things seemed to be more usual and i enjoyed that. perhaps it was the japanese sensibility of the book coming through. 

richard yates by tao lin

i didn't really like richard yates very much. i mean there were some things that i enjoyed at the start but increasingly i despaired at the way that haley joel osment treated dakota fanning who was clearly vulnerable and young and probably not obese. and i also didn't feel like haley was being reasonable towards the adults in the book but was portrayed as being a reasonable person. however crispin mentioned this good thing during a discussion of this book with some other people a month back, that it sort of showed how truly shitty things get between some people and how sometimes things are really truly fucked. or he said something better than that which i can't remember right now but maybe that was the gist of it. 

the sending by isobelle carmody

what can i say, this was the latest book in the obernewtyn series and i freaking loved it, but only because i'm a xxcore ten year fan of obernewtyn and even though it's quite a weird sort of series i'm going to keep reading it until it's finished. i had to leave my copy of this (along with richard yates) at my hostel in new york though because i needed to cut off some dead weight. 

the tiger's wife by téa obreht

got this for xmas. it was an interesting read. it seemed to sort of have echoes of things in murakami, but work in a similar way to 'everything is illuminated' actually, in the sense that there was a protag, then a sort of person who told stories, then a separate narrator of these things. it made me think more about stuff happening in the balkans and weird folklore. the murakami echo was this character who simply couldn't die just because he'd had an aunt who said 'you won't be able to die now' or something of that nature. it was a pretty good read actually and i thought it was written pretty beautifully. 

um next i am probably going to read 'there is no year' by blake butler but it is an unusually shaped book and hard to take on the train sort of. currently reading a bill bryson book though which keeps weirdly intersecting with my real life in an informative manner

elixir

a dance performance by xinia alderson

going to dance shows is something i ordinarily wouldn't do, not because i'm opposed to it, it just never crosses my mind to do so. it's only because i'm friends with a dancer that i've been exposed to dance (mostly contemporary), either by seeing her shows or by going to shows with her. this show in particular was important to me, as it was the first show produced by xinia's own dance company.

the show was inspired by zines, specifically it was inspired by a zine that i made about love, and there are some direct and indirect references to it throughout. although i feel it was more of a starting off point, an idea which evolved into something different over time. the show itself encapsulates so much of what a young life can be: silly, sad, sexy, awkward, getting drunk, making a dick of yourself, maru the cat (?), and hard out pashing (both people and inanimate objects). i suppose the most accurate thing that i can say about this show is that it was idiosyncratic. every piece was just another one of xinia's little mannerisms (sometimes literally). it was obvious to me that she put a lot of herself into it, and allowed each of the dancers to bring their own personalities to it also.

the surprising thing for me was how funny it was, and i was even crying with laughter at one point. i found the contrast between the goofiness and "profesh" dancing really hilarious. they'd go from contemporary to ballet to hip hop to [another type of dance why can i not think of others] to how you would dance in da club or in your room if no one was watching.

as well as the live dancers, there was a live band who played throughout the show. they did a cover of a mountain goats song 'broom people', which the dancers stood and just listened to (which seemed really nice), occasionally singing in unison to the chorus. felt really joyous. there was also a movie which was projected onto a sheet, of the dancers, just playing around and being goofy. made you feel even closer to the performance via feeling like you know the dancers themselves.

this show in particular made me think differently about a human body and what it can do/what it is for. bodies are not so much piles of meat and bone, but more akin to water or air or anything that flows. especially when you see dancers putting their bodies together, it transcends anything sexual and instead becomes about beauty, skin and movement, the spaces between things, fluidity.

everything in this show is 100% xinia, and watching it as her friend made me incredibly happy and proud of what she has achieved. me and my friends could barely contain our laughter, excited whispers, inappropriate clapping and at one point an even more inappropriate mexican wave.

xinia, we know what the inside of your head looks like now, it is funny and a little creepy but we like it.

(the programme was a zine, real good)

review of 'leap year'

or, what we learn about women and their predilection to romance via the 'rom com' genre

Leap Year (2010) stars Amy Adams as Anna, a successful and driven woman living in Boston. It's February. Her current employment is as a person who makes houses on the market look desirable for potential buyers. She says that her job is to make people aware of the 'potential' of new houses. Her boyfriend Jeremy (Adam Scott, from Parks and Recreation, Party Down) is a cardiovascular surgeon. She is very proud of him even though he constantly has to leave her at dinner and is fairly absent. They have a stable relationship and are applying to live in a very reputable apartment building. One night at dinner Jeremy gives her earrings instead of an engagement ring and then he has to go to a conference in Dublin. Anna remembers this old Irish tradition where women are allowed to ask men to marry them on February 29, so she hops a plane and decides to go do that. Of course things go awry and she has to get this handsome handsome man Declan (Matthew Goode, the babe who plays Colin Firth's boyfriend in A Single Man) to drive her there before the 29th.

This morning in the shower I was thinking about the themes in the movie. Anna's job, for instance, is indicative of the way she knows that things just seem okay. You can swan into an empty building, dress it up nice with various fabrics and ornaments, then take it all away again. Trinkets and other nice things are impermanent and thus unimportant. She is at pains to insist that her job has worth, the way she tells people that it's about showing the potential of a house, a life etc. This repetition becomes a farce and reveals that she does not actually believe in what she is selling people, that she knows her job is superficial.

There is a scene early on where Anna is talking to her friend about how stable and reliable her boyfriend is and how great their relationship is. She mentions something about how romantic movies have always led girls to believe that they should want something more mysterious or unusual or difficult, but she likes Jeremy and what they have and they seem to be 'on track'. But of course, after her crazy journeys with sexy Declan, she wants nothing more than adventure with a temperamental Irish man. I don't really like Amy Adams at all and maybe this is why I don't like Anna, but when I was contemplating this I realised that her character - the type who has 'always known' what she wants from life and her path - is just taking away one more man from the girls who already know that they want Declan types.

Another meaningful scene is during their road trip where Declan asks Anna what she would take if her house was on fire. Anna doesn't know. She legit can't think of a damn thing. When she is back in Boston and engaged to Jeremy, they are holding a party at their beautiful new apartment and she pulls the fire alarm. Jeremy hurries around getting laptops and phones, but Anna just stands there. At that moment when I was watching I just thought that I would be getting my laptop too, and wondered what the hell Anna wanted. But really this scene means that she is totally detached from that entire type of life and she wouldn't save anything, not even herself in that context. Also that she is rich enough to pay the fire department thousands of dollars for coming to their place without an actual fire scare.

So basically
-earrings and rings come in the same type of box
-women who appear to be satisfied with their job, their long term boyfriend and their life are actually not
-an Irish accent and a bit of stubble can make you forget that noise

notes on "a million bears" by spencer madsen

read the first poem, then i read the same poem again out loud
the next day on facebook chat i said to spencer:

"i liked the part in that poem where you talked about birds
i read that one out loud to myself when it was very late at night
seemed nice"

i read "if this is poetry then what was shakespeare doing
seriously" and did a giggle

i felt things whilst reading the part about the laundry room and i enjoyed how it was like one never ending stream of consciousness, and when i read it i was holding my breath but i was not aware of holding my breath and i liked the way that that made me feel

i laughed out loud at "stared at a bird that looked like the twitter bird thinking 'tell me how to get more followers, please'" and then read "chicken is a bird not a food people don't think about that i think" whilst nodding and making hand gestures that i guess conveyed "i know right"

read this re: existentialism "we are all fucked and it's okay because it is all beautiful" and thought repeatedly "yes, yes, yes" whilst wanting to go on facebook chat and tell spencer madsen "yes, yes, yes"

i read about intimate things like "if i rolled over / she would lightly / kiss my arm / half asleep" and thought about my own intimate things. i thought about being in bed with people. i thought about eyes and hands mostly.

reminded me of falling in love and the times that i was "falling in love" and wondered how many more times i will feel the "falling in love" thing and felt scared and excited

read tweets about his cat like "told my cat i may get a bird he said 'if you do i will eat it' i said please don't" and felt impressed with how many times birds had been mentioned so far

thought "#thatawkwardmomentwhen you realise everyone is alone and unhappy" seemed like a cheeky thing to say. thought that spencer madsen is probably very cheeky.

did two short laughs and then one long laugh at "wish the word tabernacle meant something more applicable in everyday parlance, like my tabernacle is itchy, or bro put your tabernacle away" "i think i just wish tabernacle meant penis"

read "listen to 'going to georgia' three times and feel okay each time" and then listened to the song "going to georgia" two times (intentionally not listening to it a third time)

when i read the poem about mallory whitten i remembered that the first time spencer madsen ever talked to me on gchat was to ask if he thought this poem was okay and i said that it was

i finished the book and thought that i would like to live inside of spencer madsen's head but be free to move away for periods of time if i wanted to

you can order his book from here

'review' of ben brooks - grow up

On Thursday 21 of July I woke up at 7am and went to the Melbourne airport to get a plane to New Zealand. I cried for the first half hour of the flight, then watched a movie with Bradley Cooper in it. James Duncan and Stacey Teague met me at the airport. I gave Stacey a hug and started to feel nervous while I was hugging her so I held her a bit tighter and nearly made her fall over. I hugged James Duncan. He smelt like coffee. He was holding a coffee cup in the front pocket of his jacket. I said "you smell like coffee, that's nice" then I felt weird.

Stacey drove us into town where we had plans to get dinner with Jackson Nieuwland. Stacey and I gabbed away in the front of the car and I tried to calm down. On the stereo there was a CD playing Coldplay, Fleetwood Mac, the Shlohmo remix of 'im da shit' by Gucci Mane that James Duncan introduced us to weeks earlier, plus some other music that was mutually accepted as 'good'.

We spent some time waiting on the corner of Krd and Queen street looking out for Jackson Nieuwland. Jackson is a very tall person, he measures around 6'7". I felt jittery. I think we were all anticipating his arrival. We had dinner at Renkon. Jackson's pupils looked huge. There was talk of super foods.

We drove back to the shack where Stacey lives with Huna. James had brought over a copy of Grow Up by Ben Brooks. I think he said he read most of it on the plane. I promptly began to read it with vigour. Reading this book was a very good distraction from having to ask where I would be sleeping that evening.

Grow Up is about Jasper who is a teenager doing high school. He seems to have a frank personality and the way he thought about things reminded me of Christopher from 'Curious incident of the dog' sometimes. Jasper frequently got up early. He listened to one of Avril Lavigne's earlier albums to feel safe or nostalgic maybe, which is what I have done with the album 'Let Go' in the past. He was trying very hard to comfort his nice friend Tenaya a lot of the time because she was sad. I thought the way they drank tea together was very sweet and sort of middle aged. It reminded me how one of my friends always requests that I pop the kettle on before she comes over.

It made me remember a lot of things about being a teenager and made me realise that a lot of those things that I felt then are still with me today, although I think most of my friends have stopped doing self harm.

One of my favourite parts was when Jasper is hanging out with Tenaya and he asks if they can watch episodes of Gilmore Girls. There were a lot of pleasing pop culture references. The friendship Jasper and Tenaya had seemed like the kind of friendship you have where time seems like it is very still, you could do just about anything together and want to do just about anything, but probably end up doing nothing and that seems okay and not like a waste of time usually.

I found Grow Up really easy to read and read most of it that first night that I arrived. It seemed like a good distraction from 'everything that was going on', plus I felt proud that I was reading something very quickly.

Before I read this book I read the review that was written about it on the Guardian website. When I read it I thought about another article I read on the Guardian website about electronic poetry, which was about how when you write about something as if it is literature, you are in doing so acknowledging its place among literature.

I think that it evoked some other feelings in me that were ~profound but because the book belongs to James I cannot refer back to it at the present moment in time.

book review: eat when you feel sad

On Friday last week I was trying to pump up my tyres in the front yard. This is an activity I cannot complete without lots of swearing, because I am stupid and I always forget how to use my bike pump. As I was uttering 'cunt' into the spokes of my back wheel, someone called to me over the fence. Lo, but it was the postie. "Having bike trouble?" he enquired.
"HAHAHAHAHA YES" I panted, standing up, feigning competence.
Taking out a package from his bike's swaddle, he said "I'll just pass this over then.."
I accepted the package from him. Immediately I brightened up. "Oh, this is for me! Thanks"
"Hope you get your bike working", the postie man said, with a wave.
"Thanks!" I hopped around with excitement. I hopped around with excitement and tore open the package. It was 'Eat When You Feel Sad' (henceforth will abbreviate this to EWYFS) by Zachary German. I pumped my bike tyres up and went to get my concession card made up at Clifton Hill train station.

After that I got the train to the city. I read the book on the train feeling pretty good about things. Last year sometime I read an excerpt of EWYFS on this site called Bear Parade. I remember liking it a lot, which is why I took the trouble to purchase it months later, despite overwhelming poverty.

The book is frankly a lot of 'Robert thinks', 'Robert eats', 'Broken Social Scene is playing', 'Lil Wayne is playing', 'they smoke cigarettes', 'Robert orders chinese food'. Robert seemed pretty bummed and like he didn't know what he really wanted to do with himself, or maybe I wasn't reading properly. One thing that I remembered from it as something to remember (yeah) is this quote after he 'breaks up with' Kelly: 'I don't like her clothes and I don't think she's--I don't want to introduce her to my friends, the ones who I don't have yet but who will be more like me, vain and judgemental and stuff' He thinks 'I need to stop being like this.' He thinks 'Run into traffic.' He thinks 'It's not going fast enough to kill me probably'

I really liked how Robert addressed his cat by saying 'hey baby' because it seemed really american and cute. I liked to imagine Robert as being a pretty cute indie boy vegan type. I think that Robert is a good character because it is a representation of how lonely life can be for young people in a big city or something. I don't know, I just vividly knew what he was like and had experienced the stuff he went through. I guess what I'm trying to say right now is that I'm listening to Broken Social Scene.

book review: the gourmet

The Gourmet is written by Muriel Barbery. I received this book as a gift for my 21st birthday. It is about a very famous food critic who is dying. He is trying to remember the best flavour he ever ate, then he thinks he will be able to die in peace. Most of the chapters are reflections about the different things he has eaten throughout his life, but every second chapter is from the perspective of someone in his life. It is revealed through these chapters that he is a terrible bastard and nobody really likes him at all.

the book is written with very descriptive language. at times I found it too dense to enjoy, which is another reason I think it took me so long to read. I read another book by Muriel Barbery last year called The Elegance of the Hedgehog and this was a book I enjoyed. It was more philosophical and contemplative, although similarly crafted. I found that I 'connected with it' more. I was amused to learn that she used the same apartment building setting in both books.

at the end of the book there are questions for discussion which I thought was interesting and unusual. One of the questions is "how significant is the theme of self deception in this story"? I have been trying to work out how that theme fits into the story because frankly that didn't seem to be a prevalent theme at all. Then I thought maybe that I did not read the book properly and wondered if the fact that it took me over a month to read a ~100 page book meant I forgot some of the details about self deception.

zine review #1

As Stacey mentioned earlier this week, we have decided to start doing videos. That's because we are shamelessly copying this guy Joseph. I've heard he goes alright*. Anyway I apologise for how low the sound is - TURN UP YO SPEAKERS - and the out of sync-ness of my video, but I really can't be bothered fixing it because I'm really hungry, plus in this version you can see the drawings best. At the end when I giggle I am saying "Stacey's got nice boobies"**.



The guy who drew this zine is actually in a pretty cool band called Psuche. I guess the video isn't a review as much as it is me showing you a zine I think is cool. Which is alright really.

*an Australian expression that here means "is a favourable chap"
**a phrase that here means "possesses agreeable breasts"***
***I was actually saying "Sticky is the best"