Reading In a Time of COVID19 (Part 2)

BUT WHERE WAS THE STAND???

Ok, ok. I heard you. And yes, I know how many people see Stephen King's mega-brick as the pinnacle of pandemic literature. Not to mention the BIG BOOK to end all BIG BOOKs. But would you believe that it took me a few minutes to remember whether or not I'd actually read it? And then about ten seconds more to find my review? So without further ado, and with the caveat that I'm actually quite a fan of King's, here's what I wrote back in February, 2013:

Allow me to distill this monster epic to its essence. A moderately scary guy picked up from the cutting room floor of a Cormac McCarthy novel goes to war with my great great grandmother in an America ravaged by a killer flu. Cue Armageddon Americana. The end. Widely considered King's greatest work, The Stand is reasonably engaging but about 800 pages too long. I'm surprised Peter Jackson has resisted making it into a trilogy.

Oh well... back to irregular programming!

I've been thinking a lot about other books that might be worth reading during these strange times. Three more categories sprang to mind overnight (can't say I've been sleeping all that well at the moment). I mean, we may be in this for a long, long time. Might as well try to knock off a few bucket list books while we can.

THE ISOLATED FEW (That Aren't Beckett, Marquez or Murakami)
First, in keeping with the general sense of malaise we've all been feeling, some plague-adjacent novels that deal with themes of isolation, quarantine and loneliness.

An Unnecessary Woman by Rabih Alameddine. A hugely life affirming, utterly gorgeous novel about a woman who locks herself away during a civil war and translates literary classics into Arabic. It's the book about loneliness and the intrinsic value of life you didn't know you had to read.

Caribou Island by David Vann. Although not focused on a solitary character left alone, this bleak survival story of a couple on the frozen Alaskan plains still manages to plumb the depths of isolation with chilling (sorry) power.

Euphoria by Heinz Helle. Speaking of bleak, this story of man versus man versus the brutality of nature is what I like to think of as The Road minus any prospect of redemption.

This Blinding Absence of Light by Tahar Ben Jelloun. A political prisoner is kept in an underground cell, not much bigger than a grave, for thirteen years. Jelloun's novel is a marvel, pitting the human spirit against extreme, solitary deprivation.

The Door by Magda Szabo Oh how I love this book. While not about isolation as such, it without equal when it comes to questioning how we "other" those we deem to be beneath us.

Anything by Thomas Bernhard. When it comes to misanthropic works of human isolation, few are as unforgiving as the novels of Bernhard. It takes a brave soul to wade into the swamp of his sentences, but if you're game, you'll be greatly rewarded (albeit it a kind of horrific and painful way). Of particular relevance is Frost, Correction, Gargoyles and The Lime Works.

What Belongs To You by Garth Greenwell The existential dread born of dislocation underpin this splendid novel about obsession and the human need for connection in what ever form one can claw it. Again, not exactly on point, but absolutely extraordinary for what it says about being alone in a strange place.

The Tenant by Roland Topor Another take on the mental collapse brought about by isolation, The Tenant is rightly considered a masterpiece of claustrophobic solitude. Polanski made a good movie of it, but nothing compares with the sheer brilliance and horror of the novel itself. In my all-time Top 5.

LEGENDS OF THE LONG FORM (That Aren't Tolstoy or Joyce)
If there was ever a time to hit those huge classics you've always meant to read, surely it must be now. There are so many to choose from, but these are a few of my favourites.

Les Miserables by Victor Hugo Granted you'll probably find yourself breaking into song every few scenes, Les Mis is a remarkably readable epic of poverty and revolution in France. I could hardly believe how quickly I raced through its fifty million pages.

Don Quixote by Miguel de Cervantes Okay so you might sing one or two songs along the way (what is it with classics and their musical adaptations???), but you'll most certainly be enchanted by the windmill-conquering adventures of the lunatic knight and his trusty sidekick. Weighing in at five thousand Les Mises, it'' take you a long while to get through, but I guarantee you'll be glad you did.

Moby Dick by Herman Melville A rip roaring adventure and a deeply detailed lesson on flensing in one, Moby Dick could probably have done with a huge edit, but you'll hardly care when you're standing with harpoon ready, sea spray whipping your face, waiting for the white whale to surface.

The Man Without Qualities by Robert Musil A book so stupidly huge that it's usually published in two or three volumes, The Man Without Qualities depicts life amidst the collapse of the Austro-Hungarian monarchy. Sounds gripping, right? Well, believe it or not it is. And the four billion gazillion pages fly by.

The Brothers Ashkenazi by IJ Singer Moving a bit forward in time... you're probably familiar with Isaac Bashevis Singer but not many remember his brother, Israel Joshua, who, in my opinion, was the better writer. This sprawling family saga is about as perfect they get. Another in my all-time Top 10.

Saville by David Storey Thought I'd go out on a limb here and add a forgotten Booker winner to the pile of classics. Storey is hardly spoken of in the same breath as Hugo or Cervantes, but Saville has a decidedly Dickensian air to it and so ought to sit alongside the others.

And the one I haven't read: Life and Fate by Vassily Grossman. I know a few people who consider this the greatest novel ever written. I'll get to it one day but I'm not sure I have the emotional fortitude to join Grossman on the front right now.

SERIES TO BINGE READ (That Aren't Proust, Powell, Mantel, Kanusgaard or Ferrante)

Netflix and its ilk have made us accustomed to binge watching countless series, one after the other, ad infinitum. Flicking through the various streaming services, I used to be all like, "Arghhhhh, how am I ever going to watch all this?" Now, only a couple of weeks into the pandemic, I'm more like, "Ah, crap. I've watched every episode of every show ever. Give me some books." So if, like me, you like losing yourself in a single world over the course of multiple novels, you might want to check out these.

The Border Trilogy by Cormac McCarthy Sure, he's written my favourite post-apocalyptic book of all time, but McCarthy is best known for single-handedly inventing the Western noir. The three novels that make up the Border Trilogy (All The Pretty Horses, The Crossing, Cities of the Plain) are each superb in their own right, but read together they make up an extraordinary feat of narrative bravado, with descriptive splendour and a fair dose of human tenderness to boot.

The Notebook Trilogy by Agota Kristof There's a current of abject brutality that runs through Kristof's chilling masterpiece of children set loose in a land ravaged by war. The three books (The Notebook, The Proof and The Third Lie) differ stylistically, clearly designed to offer alternative angles on the same theme. It all gets a little confusing in the middle, but when you come out the other side.... hoooo-weeee.... Mind. Blown.

Your Face Tomorrow by Javier Marias I'd rate The Infatuations as one of the greatest European novels of the 21st century. Go and read that. But when you're done, it's well worth checking out Marias's three book sequence (Fever and Spear, Dance and Dream and Poison, Shadow and Farewell). Steeped in intriguing philosophical concepts, it is also a bloody great adventure with all the undercurrents of crime and international intrigue that make Marias one of the most accessible literary reads.

The History of Bestiality by Jens Bjorneboe If you really want to wallow, Bjorneboe is your guy. He is one of the most confronting and difficult authors I've ever encountered, but spending the time working through his novels (they're actually quite short) is endlessly rewarding. But be warned: the story (likely apocryphal) goes that, when embarking on this trilogy (Moment of Freedom, Powderhouse, and The Silence), Bjorneboe said that by the time he was finished he'd know so much about man's capacity for inhumanity to his fellow man that he would no longer be able to live in this world. When the third one was done, he killed himself.

The Jesus Trilogy by JM Coetzee If I may quote myself from last year: "taken together, the three books (The Childhood of Jesus, The Schooldays of Jesus and The Death of Jesus) are remarkably enigmatic - but I think Coetzee is asking this: Stripped of the things that we consider fundamental to personhood - a name, an identity, a home, family, friends, language, control over our minds and bodies, longevity, community, etc. - is there some intrinsic value in having lived?" TL;DNR: Just read it.

The Discworld Series by Terry Pratchett Sometimes all you need is a good laugh, and nobody makes me laugh as heartily or consistently as Pratchett. The Discworld series has about seventy billion books, so they'll keep you occupied and overjoyed throughout. A much needed antidote to these shitty times.

Well, that's about it for my pandemic reading recommendations coverage for now. Hope to see you back here, where I'll be returning to regular programming in the coming days.

Reading In a Time of COVID19 (Part 1)

And just like that, the world changed.

Needless to say, the new normal is shit. Who would have thought that in 2020 we'd be locked in our homes, steering clear of one another, anxiously waiting to get a sense of quite how catastrophic this oncoming plague is likely to actually be. Hope resides in a combination of the ancient and the modern: physical isolation and medical science. To that end, sending a huge shout out to all who have tried not to be #COVIDIOTS and, most importantly, the essential workers on the frontline. No doubt this has made us reconsider how we ought to be valuing the different levels of the so-called societal strata.

One thing that has become increasingly apparent is the importance of reading at this time. It is not just a luxury but a damn necessity. To pass time. To stay sane. To be communal, to find new friends while separated from our communities. In the coming days and weeks, I'll try fill this blog with new short reviews and musings to point you in the direction of great reads. But for now, just a couple of recommendation posts, starting with these two lists - Pandemic Reads and Big Books To Live In. And whether you're turning to e-reading, rifling through your piles of unread books or availing yourself of all the wonderful indie bookstores that are staying open and delivering books to your door without you having to partake in any person-to-person contact just remember the new mantra. STAY SAFE. STAY HOME. STAY KIND.

PANDEMIC READS
For some people this might be cutting it too close. But if you are up for reading how some of the world's finest writers have considered life as we are currently experienced it, look no further than these extraordinary novels.
The Plague by Albert Camus.
Blindness by Jose Saramago
The Road by Cormac McCarthy
A Prayer for the Dying by Stewart O'Nan
Station Eleven by Emily St John Mandel
Light by Torgny Lindgren
Nemesis by Phillip Roth
The Last Town of Earth by Thomas Mullen
The Children's Hospital by Chris Adrian
The Trespassers by Meg Mundell
Severance by Ling Ma
Pale Horse, Pale Rider by Katherine Anne Porter

BIG BOOKS TO LIVE IN
If you're more inclined to escape this whole clusterfuck and lose yourself in a great, big book, then here are a few of my absolute favourite 400+ pagers, with links to the ones I've reviewed or discussed on this blog.
The Lost Time Accidents by John Wray (490 pp, but close enough and too good not to include here)
The Slaughterman's Daughter by Yaniv Iczkovits (525pp)
Europe Central by William T. Vollamn(832pp)
The Tunnel by William H. Gass (652pp)
The Luminaries by Eleanor Catton (848pp)
The Amazing Adventures of Kavalier and Clay by Michael Chabon (639pp)
Underworld by Don Delillo (827pp)
House of Leaves by Mark Z. Danielewski (662pp)

Might you brave Laszlo Krasznahorkai's Baron Wenckheim's Homecoming (512pp) before I do? Or might this be the time you finally trudge your way through the holy grail of literary bricks, Infinite Jest by David Foster Wallace(1077pp)? Whatever you choose, keep up the mantra: STAY SAFE. STAY HOME. STAY KIND.

And be sure to check back in a couple of days for more book-nerdy tips!

2016 In Review: The Shelf of Shame

Maybe it's the embarrassingly small number of books I've actually read this year (just clocked over the 90 mark, still hoping against hope to hit 100). Maybe it's my impending metamorphosis from reviewer to reviewed. Maybe it's just a food coma from nervous/festive eating. Whatever, I'm changing up this year's Shelf of Shame. No longer will I choose a Worst Book of the Year. The idea is rubbish anyway - I have a highly selective sample and to tar one with such a shitty epithet seems undignified when, in the real world of books, I'm sure there are far, far worse. Also, I've been a little out of touch with the literary hype machine so I can't pick a 'Most Overhyped'. Instead, I'm going to keep it simple. A bunch of books I am ashamed not to have read and a few books that truly disappointed me. Hopefully even in this pared down form, I can still piss off someone.

MY VERY OWN SHELF OF SHAME. LITERALLY.
A slow reading year means a shelf overflowing with unread books. And while I subscribe to Umberto Eco's theory of the anti-library (the unread books on your shelf are just as, if not more, important than the ones you have read), I can't help but feel somewhat guilty at not having had the chance to get to some of these. Needless to say, there are a ton more books I would have loved to get through this year but these are the standouts (along with the new ones from Zadie Smith and Sebastian Barry, neither of which I've had the chance to buy yet):

THE MOST DISAPPOINTING BOOKS OF 2016
2016 saw new novels from some pretty heavy hitters. For the most part I was impressed, if not bowled over. Michael Chabon charmed me with Moonglow. Sure, it was no Kavalier and Clay but it was fun, inventive and quite heartwarming. China Mieville gave us two short bursts of typically oddball flair with This Census Taker and The Last Days of New Paris. J.M. Coetzee returned to form with the dark and mesmerising The Schooldays of Jesus. And Colson Whitehead hit it out of the park with The Underground Railroad. Expect to see a few of these on my Best Of lists next week.

Alas, 2016 was somewhat less successful for five of my favourite authors who, it pains me to say, produced books that ranged from decidedly average to outright bad.

I'm not sure why I still get excited by a new Don DeLillo book. He hasn't produced anything great since his 1997 masterpiece, Underworld (though, to be fair, preceding that DeLillo managed the almost unthinkable, churning out a string of novels that could all lay claim to that title - White Noise, Libra, Mao II). Still, reading the promo guff on his new novel, Zero K, I was cautiously optimistic. Would it be the DeLillo of yesteryear, riffing on the possibility of eternal life? Or would it be his Philip Roth-like navel gazing grumble about getting old? Well, wouldn't you know it, it was both. Zero K started brilliantly. DeLillo created an entirely convincing world in which cryogenic freezing is a real option and where people meaningfully confronted the terror of premature death with the benefit of an existential safety net. Bang on, Don. Bang on. Then, of course, it all went to shit. The book became a plodding mess of melodramatic masturbation. And then it just got boring. It seemed that DeLillo himself had grown bored with the whole thing. Of course it's possible that he simply realised that the terrifying near-futures he once so presciently predicted have become our modern reality. Or, to put it another way, the man who once was our prophet has been relegated to the role of contemporary historian. And for that DeLillo is just not cut out.

Speaking of old codgers navel-gazing (well, actually, gazing a few inches south of the navel), Ismail Kadare followed up his astonishing short novel The Fall of the Stone City with unfortunate nad-fondling in A Girl In Exile. I'd have thought a sojourn into the whole "author obsesses over girl who likes his work" thing beneath him but even with the quite intriguing frame of forbidden books, secret messages and meta-narratives Kadare didn't manage to say anything of particular note with this one. To be sure, it was no The Humbling (quite possibly the most embarrassing 'old man book by a great author' of all time) but it was an unfortunate misstep nonetheless.

Holy crap, I'm segueing like nobody's business here. Just as I mentioned the whole framing thing, it jumps from behind the curtain to reveal itself as the achilles heel of two of my favourite authors. Ian McEwan ruined a deliciously sinister tale of jealousy and murder with the spectacularly clunky conceit of having a foetus narrate the tale. Plenty of critics thought it delightful and playful. I thought it was lame. I'm all for the suspension of disbelief, but ask me to be an outright idiot and I raise the middle finger to you, good sir. Given that the actual story this bag of unformed meat matter told us was so vintage McEwan, so reminiscent of The Cement Garden and The Comfort of Strangers, I am forced to raise the second hand, too. Following The Children's Act, you're at two strikes now, dude. Shape up.

A framing device was also the undoing of perennial B4BW fave David Grossman in A Horse Walks Into A Bar. As the title suggests, the novel is about a stand-up comic and takes place over the course of a single performance in which he falls apart on stage while telling the story of his life. As a tale of broken young adulthood, the book is really powerful. It's sad and disconcertingly familiar - we all knew a kid like Dovaleh and probably teased him at some point. That Dovaleh happened to have been a child in Israel immediately after the Holocaust and lived in the shadow of his parents' trauma only compounded the ordinary tribulations of childhood. It's not hard to see why he became a comedian. Unfortunately, that is where the novel really stumbles. Whenever Grossman goes into the joke-telling passages, the gags are uniformly crusty and old. You'll have heard them all before. And they weren't funny the first time. Maybe that was the point. I'm not sure. But even if it was, it is more off-putting than anything else which is a shame, really. A Horse Walks Into a Bar is the best book of my disappointing reads, but following on from To The End of the Land and Falling Out of Time it is greatly disappointing nonetheless.

The same cannot be said of Rabih Alameddine's snorefest, The Angel of History. Holy In and Out Burger, what was he thinking? I'd have hoped that Alameddine, who proved so adept at tackling big issues in the past, might have brought something new to his chronicle of the 1980s AIDS epidemic but, cloak it as he tried with a kind of cool conceit - Satan and Death battle it out over the soul of Jacob (a gay, Yeminite poet living in San Francisco) while Jacob's cat Behemoth watches on -, it was a plodding mess of a book that broke my heart for all the wrong reasons. All I could think of as I trudged my way through its treacly pages was the sheer delight of Aaliya, the narrator of Alameddine's revelation of a novel, An Unnecessary Woman. We learn of Jacob's friends and lovers, we learn of his prostitute mother who gave him away in the hope of a giving him a better life as well as his father - a wealthy client - who promises the world and turns his back on both woman and child. Heck, we learn any number of stories that ought to have moved me more than they did. But it is all a bit too overcooked to lift beyond mere sentimentality and by the end I felt that it had gone nowhere. I'll put it down to a misstep. And I might just go back to Aaliya. And Alameddine's hilarious impersonation of her. God I love him.

The Booker Prize 2016: F&*$ The Favourites

Well shiver me timbers and blow me down (and something about a bottle of rum... I could do with one of those). Ian McGuire's Cormac-McCarthy-On-The-High-Seas whaling epic has been scuttled in the harbour. Yep, the Booker Prize shortlist is out and my early pick - not to mention the bookies' favourite - didn't make the cut. Neither did JM Coetzee with his return-to-form The Childhood of Jesus or AL Kennedy with her much-lauded Serious Sweet.

If you haven't seen it yet, the six books vying for Booker glory this year are:

Paul Beatty (US) - The Sellout (Oneworld)
Deborah Levy (UK) - Hot Milk (Hamish Hamilton)
Graeme Macrae Burnet (UK) - His Bloody Project (Contraband)
Ottessa Moshfegh (US) – Eileen (Jonathan Cape)
David Szalay (Canada-UK) - All That Man Is (Jonathan Cape)
Madeleine Thien (Canada) - Do Not Say We Have Nothing (Granta Books)

I'm in two minds about it all. Might 2017 be the year that Booker broke free of its establishment chains and embraced the exciting underdogs? Or was my first impression when reading the long list right - it is a year that will fade into obscurity? For that matter where's the subcontinent? Where's Africa? Where the bloody hell is Australia?

Of course, I've only read one of the shortlisted books: The Sellout. Beatty has been basking in critical sunshine since its release, already having picked up a fair swag of rave reviews and a trusty old 2016 National Book Critics Circle Award for Fiction. I was only lukewarm on it - the idea of an African American guy trying to reintroduce segregation in his local neighbourhood is pretty funny, and the bits about his batshit crazy father are laugh-out-loud hilarious. However, the novel outstays its welcome, drawing the joke out that little bit too far to pack a knockout punch. Indeed, it was a Dishonourable Mention in my 2015 Most Overrated Books.

I've just started Graeme Macrae Burnet's novel and so far it's pretty cool. Notably, it continues the recent Booker trend of picking outsiders from genre fiction to sit alongside the more nose-in-the-air, port-swilling literary types. Deborah Levy is a bit of a Booker favourite, with her novel Swimming Home getting much love when it was shortlisted back in 2012. Reviews for Hot Milk have been generally positive (though not the slobbering adulation of the other) and I'm wondering whether Levy might be in line for one of those consolation Bookers a la Ian McEwan who won for Amsterdam when they regretted not having given it to him for his masterpiece, Enduring Love. That's not to say Hot Milk may not be deserving in its own right. I just haven't read it yet. Of the others, Szalay and Thien are unknown quantities and, tempting as it is to make wild and loose predictive pontifications (that's why you come here, right?), I might hold off until I've had the chance to give them a proper go.

That leaves Ottessa Moshfegh, the one contender that really interests me. Team Booker mistakenly bill it as her first novel but she did publish a decent length novella (of the kind for which both McEwan and Barnes won Bookers) called McGlue a couple of years back. The book was gritty, unrelenting and bleak yet still possessed of a strangely humorous undercurrent. If it's any indication of what to expect from Eileen, I suspect we have us a pretty strong dark horse.

It remains to be seen whether this really will be the blah-Booker or something completely refreshing. I'm still smarting that Coetzee and McGuire didn't make it but I suppose I now have reason to read three books I'd hoped to avoid. I can only be pleasantly surprised. I'll report back soon with my usual form guide. Until then... did someone say Nobel?

The Pulitzer Puddlemuck

No seriously... Is there some kind of cosmic literary prank being pulled here?

Hot on the heels of my Folio flip out, Team Pulitzer drop their announcement and, surprise surprise, give the fiction prize to another of the most overrated books of 2014. Yep, in case you haven't heard, this year's Pulitzer Prize for Fiction went to Anthony Doerr for his WW2 brick of a novel, All The Light We Cannot See. Of course, this isn't the first major plaudit for the book - it sat atop a fair few end of year Best Ofs, most... um... notably the New York Times Notable Books.

As for me, well, I didn't get around to reading it until January so it never made any of my lists. But had I had the chance, no doubt I would have stuck it alongside Akhil Sharma, Haruki Murakami and Ali Smith as one of the most overrated novels of the year. Sure, it's lovely and readable. The chapters fly by in short, sharp succession. The dual plot lines are engaging enough. However, when all was said and done, it struck me as a pretty decent book to read on the plane or beach, not a work of deep substance.

Now, as for the win, I haven't read the other three finalists. There is every possibility that the Doerr is better than Let Me Be Frank With You by Richard Ford, The Moor's Account by Laila Lalami or Lovely, Dark, Deep by Joyce Carol Oates. And this is hardly the calamity of 2012 when no award was given for fiction because the judges didn't feel anything was particularly worthy (despite having had three pretty excellent books on the shortlist). Still, I am really beginning to doubt my ability to gauge the literary landscape.

Oh well. At least I have still have this little corner of the interwebs to pontificate, whinge, call shenanigans and sing some apparently completely off kilter praises.

The End of The Folio Affair

Big breath. Big breath.

I realise that I'm a little late to the party here but I've been mulling this over for a couple of weeks now and, hard as it is for me to admit it, I'm just going to have to accept that The Folio Prize and I are never going to be friends. The excitement I felt, the anticipation of the David and Goliath battle with The Booker Prize, the deliriously happy marriage I rushed into. All over.

And... exhale.

You probably already know that the prize was recently awarded to Akhil Sharma for his twelve-year-in-the-making Family Life. William Fiennes, chair of judges, could not have been more laudatory if he tried:

"From a shortlist of which we are enormously proud, Akhil Sharma’s lucid, compassionate, quietly funny account of one family’s life across continents and cultures, emerged as our winner. Family Life is a masterful novel of distilled complexity: about catastrophe and survival; attachment and independence; the tension between selfishness and responsibility. We loved its deceptive simplicity and rare warmth. More than a decade in the writing, this is a work of art that expands with each re-reading and a novel that will endure."

I, on the other hand, bestowed a somewhat different honour upon it last year, when it came in alongside Murakami's latest offering as the equally most overrated book of 2014. You may perhaps recall my little spray:

"I was at a loss to understand the plaudits poured upon Akhil Sharma's slim offering, Family Life. It supposedly took him ten or twelve or twenty (or some other multiple of a ferret's average life span) years to complete and drew heavily from his personal experience of grief and dislocation. Stripped of its forest of laurels it is a fair to middling shrub of a novel about the immigrant experience. I can't help but feel that Sharma has a lot of friends in high places, none of whom could muster the guts to tell him that those umpteen years might have been better spent working on something else."

So what gives, Folio? Last year you gave it to George Saunders for Tenth of December and I bitched and moaned. That too had made my end of year list in 2013, also being named the most overrated book of the year. Am I that far off track? Have I become the accidental predictor of all future Folio Prizes? If so, might I suggest putting some early moolah on Ishiguro? Or maybe third time will be a charm. Just kidding, I'm sure I'll be wildly off mark again.

Confessions of a Festival Lackey

Three days on and I'm finally emerging from the wonderful afterglow of the Melbourne Jewish Writers' Festival. Over a year in the planning, the two days and one night turned out to be everything we'd hoped for and, to lean on a crappy cliche, more. Eighty writers from Melbourne, interstate and overseas, sixty volunteers and over two thousand tickets sold to sessions. Holy gefilte fish... Having been to a fair few literary festivals in my time, mostly as an avid lit lover/sycophant but more recently as a participant, I have to say this ranks up there with the best. I know, humility isn't my strong point. I could babble on about this for days but I've managed to whittle it down to a few highlights:

Favourite Sessions In Which I Did Not Participate
I went to plenty of really great sessions but three really stood out. Rachael Kohn's live video discussion with living legend Irvin Yalom was a scintillating exchange of ideas between two people of towering intellect, passion and talent. It really kicked the first day off with a bang. Peter and Renata Singer's session on the moral lessons a reader can learn from great literature was also a true delight to behold. Both Peter and Renata are amazing thinkers and I greatly appreciated the depth and substance of their perspectives on a whole range of books I already loved but hadn't quite thought of in moral/ethical terms before. Finally, Dara Horn in conversation with Tali Lavi was not only great fun but also gave the audience fantastic insight to the work (and workings) of one of American literature's young guns. Extra credit to Dara who took a punt on coming out to an inaugural festival that might just as well have tanked but, thanks in part to her, did exactly the opposite.

Session I Wished I'd Seen But Got Waylaid As A Panellist In The Other Room
By all accounts the session on Landscapes: The Sense of Place in Literature was unbelievable. No surprises there; the panel consisted of Linda Jaivin, Dara Horn and Maria Tumarkin and was chaired by Tali Lavi. I also would have loved to have seen the session on Trauma with personal fave Arnold Zable, who has worked with refugee communities and bushfire survivors, and Zeruya Shalev who survived a suicide bombing.

Personal Highlight #1
Who doesn't love crapping on about their favourite books? Heck, I've made an entire blog of it. So my session on Forgotten Gems with Arnold Zable and Renata Singer, chaired by former Jewish Museum director Helen Light was a real thrill. Arnold did Bruno Schulz's Street of Crocodiles, Renata did Clarice Lispector's Near To The Wild Heart and I (surprise surprise) did Mr. Theodore Mundstock by Ladislav Fuks. The audience really got into it too, with everyone jumping up to share their favourite 'forgotten' books. Great fun all round.

Personal Highlight #2
The Festival Hub. Whoever came up with the idea of combining the signing area, book store, coffee shop and general mingling space into one large marquee was a genius. There was a constant buzz as authors, volunteers, punters, booksellers and random strangers who happened to be passing by mingled and soaked up the incredible atmosphere.

Also, being behind the scenes, I got a lot of interesting insights into what it means to organise and participate in one of these beasts. Here, then, is a bit of advice for participants or, as I like to think of them:

Five Commandments For Writers At Festivals
1. Thou Shalt Not Be An Egotistical Douchebag. The best part of MJWF was how wonderfully collegial most of the writers were. They hung out, watched one another's sessions, were happy to talk with eager attendees; basically, did everything to give the fest a great vibe. Of course there were a couple who - despite their relative insignificance when held next to some of the other participants - thought themselves above it all. Reverse kudos to one spectacular douche who ruined his session with boring hagiographical arse-licking then had the audacity to castigate the organisers for failing to give him the respect he (and his subject) deserved. Add to that his disgusting rant against one of his fellow panellists who he (wrongly) accused of undermining him before the session. Bad form from a thoroughly average human.
2. Thou Shalt Remember It's A Festival, Not An Academic Conference. Ok, we get it. You're smart. You know a lot about the subject. But this is a fun gathering of like minded book lovers, not some stuffy university snorefest. By all means engage in a deep, intelligent, robust discussion with your fellow panellists, but don't open with a twenty minute exegesis of the minutiae of your area of interest. Wrong place, wrong time.
3. Thou Shalt Not Be An Overt Advertising Robot. You wrote a book? It's just come out? You want to promote it? No shit! That's why you were invited. And yes, a writers' festival is the perfect vehicle in which to do so. But judging by book sales at the event (and there were A LOT of them), the best kind of promotion was simply participating in an engaging way in whatever panel you happen to be on. People will want to read your book if they like you. Unless you are actually launching said book, there's no need to shove it down their throats.
4. Honour Thy Reader. Writing is a lonely, soul destroying pursuit. We don't get the chance to meet other people, let alone those who actually give half a shit about what we do. Therefore, when the opportunity arises, grab it with both hands, dance with it, hump it like an over-excited puppy, do whatever to seize the moment. Readers love chatting with you. They want to meet you. They want to know that you're a human too. They want to bounce their ideas off you, no matter how batshit crazy some of those ideas might be. This is the opposite of Commandment 1. Act accordingly.
5. Thou Shalt Turn Up. The one big disappointment of the festival was the no show of Israeli superstar (and personal favourite of mine) David Grossman. Apparently there was some miscommunication about the day - he thought it was to be Monday night when it was quite clearly scheduled for Sunday. Not throwing blame anywhere, but if you are a participant, make sure you know exactly when your session is booked and do everything humanly possible to be there. Luckily Sally Warhaft, who was supposed to conduct the interview, instead ran an impromptu session on politics and the media which was very well received by the disappointed crowd. Still, my point stands. Know your time. Be there. Of course, if you are likely to break Commandment 1 (and this most certainly doesn't apply to David Grossman who made an honest mistake and felt terrible about the whole debacle), feel free to ignore this one. You are not wanted. Douchebag.

Don't want to end on a sour note, so here are a couple of my favourite pics.

Irvin Yalom in Conversation with Rachael Kohn

The Festival Hub in Full Swing

Post-Session Selfie With Arnold Zable

Yukkin' It Up With Dara Horn

Neurotica Session with Nathan Serry, Kerri Sackville, Eli Glasman and Raphael Brous

It's Funny 'Cos It's Us with former Supreme Court Justice Howard Nathan, Dave Bloutsein and John Safran.

In-Panel Selfie seemed only fitting for a session called Voices From The Cloud: Internet Writing with Lee Kofman and Michael Gawenda

A carefully chosen excerpt from the festival banner...

2013: The Shelf Of Shame

Strap on your gumboots and wade with me into the muck. It's time to unblock this year's literary toilet.

MOST OVERRATED BOOKS OF 2013
Do you ever get the feeling that reviewers are just trolling us? These three books certainly made me think so:

All That Is - James Salter: Once upon a time this really old guy wrote a reasonably interesting book about a returned soldier's very ordinary post-war life. Everyone was so amazed that he could manoeuvre a pen in his arthritic fingers that they hailed it as a masterpiece. It wasn't. And they all lived deluded ever after.

Tenth of December - George Saunders: Is there a bigger darling of the literary set right now than George Saunders? The guy can fart in a jar and people will flock from every corner of the earth to take a whiff. Don't believe me? Read Tenth of December. A couple of great stories but, otherwise, a lot of gas.

The Ocean At the End of the Lane - Neil Gaiman: Kudos to Amanda Palmer. Having killed her husband in some vampyric ritual, she has managed to convince the world that the zombie-like husk with the Eraserhead hairdo that she trots out in public from time to time is the greatly loved fantasist and comic book legend. That's really the only way I can explain this humdrum, cliched fable. As for its critical reception? Witch! Witch! Burn her at the stake!

BIGGEST DISAPPOINTMENTS OF 2013
We Litnerds are an excitable bunch. Promise us something new from someone we love and you'll have us selling our mums to get our hands on a copy. I hereby apologise to my mum for trading her for the following:

The Quarry - Iain Banks. When an author you once loved dies just before the release of his final book, you hope against hope that it will be a fitting swansong. The Quarry came with all kinds of 'return to form' buzz. To a certain extent it was justified. The Quarry was a return to the disappointing form that had plagued Banks since 1995's Complicity. At least I'll always have The Bridge.

TransAtlantic - Colum McCann. Having written a true modern masterpiece with Let The Great World Spin, it seems McCann tried to recreate the same magic using a similar formula (disparate narrative strings flying out in all directions before coming together to reveal a spectacular tapestry). Unfortunately, TransAtlantic never really took flight. Without the passion, anger, wonder or whimsy of his previous work, it just felt like McCann was going through the motions. No matter how hard I tried, I just couldn't get into it.

Born Weird - Andrew Kaufman. Died disappointed.

FLAT OUT WORST BOOK OF 2013
I want to dig up Vladimir Nabokov, hand him to Amanda Palmer for reanimation, and set his flesh eating zombie on anyone who dared compare Alissa Nutting's truly awful novel Tampa to Lolita. He can start by ripping the brains out of the buzz-makers who promised us the most daring story written in years. Then he can move on to the reviewers who hailed Nutting's ability to get into the mind of Celeste, the young, female predator telling this crock of a story. Next up the bloggers, podcasters... hell, it's Nabokov. He can eat whoever the fuck he likes. How this book got serious traction absolutely astonishes me. The concept is not original - it was done before (and far better) by both Eleanor Catton and Zoe Heller. Nor is it daring or insightful. Rather, Tampa is cheap and tawdry erotic fan fiction, with plot holes so big you could fit an entire football field of teenage penises through it. Now would someone please pass me a shovel?

Premature Congratulations: What's With All The "Best Of" Lists?

Knock knock...

Hello?

Anyone in book world listening?

Here we are at the tail end of November and there's a sudden influx of Best Of 2013 lists. The Guardian just did their annual survey of authors. Goodreads has its poll running. Both Barnes and Noble and Amazon have already started flogging their picks in anticipation of the Christmas shopping rush. Even semi-respectable rags like Huffington Post and Publishers Weekly have blown their literary loads (and seriously, PW, Mohsin Hamid??? Did you even read that thing?).

HAVE YOU ALL GONE MAD?

There are still five weeks left. That's five weeks of reading all those books released this year that you have not yet had the chance to read. Best Of lists are for December. The last week of December, to be precise. Nobody wants to see your Best Of lists before that.

Grumble grumble.

Booker's War Of Undependence

It's like the War of Independence never happened!

At some point between me jumping on a plane in Melbourne and surfacing two days later from a jet lagged haze in Detroit, word had begun to get out that, as of next year, the Booker Prize would be welcoming entries from American authors. I have yet to see an official announcement, but BookNerd Universe is going nuts over the whole caper. Is it a brilliant move of Machiavellian literary colonialism or the desperate gasp of a prize fearing for its very identity? After all, Booker's long standing position as the "literary person's literary prize" took a serious beating after Rimingtongate and now stands to lose the mantle (or is that Mantel?) to the spanking new Folio Prize. I thought they'd answered their critics well with the announcement of an extraordinarily solid, if somewhat predictable, shortlist last week but they still seems to be bobbing up and down in the water, waving their hands in panic.

Opinions are strongly divided. On one hand there are those who welcome the move. It could, if Team Booker play their cards right, make the prize the undisputed top accolade for novels written in the English language. American fiction isn't quite the powerhouse it once was, so the playing field is fairly level. I, for one, am intrigued to see what would make a "Best of English Language" shortlist. I mean, think about it. Geographical borders seem silly these days. Two of the shortlisted writers for this year's Booker call America home. Isn't it high time we broke down the artifice?

On the other hand, there's something charming about a Commonwealth writing prize (as opposed to the Commonwealth writing prizes). America has annoyingly insular prizes coming out of the wazoo (The Pulitzer, National Book Award, etc) so why shouldn't the rest of the English speaking world keep one for themselves? This is like those stupid free trade agreements where only one side believes in free trade. The Booker ought to be literature's tariff! Furthermore, there's something je ne sais quoi about the Booker's current character that would be diluted with the introduction of American literature. Or, rather, there is something particular about American lit that I'm quite glad not to see in the Booker mix. Call it naval gazing self-consciousness, muscular self-assuredness or whatever; it's seldom found in the kind of works that get a Booker nod and I'm quite happy for it to stay that way. Oh, and isn't there already a Man Booker International Prize? Granted it is more like the Nobel, aimed at recognising the entire body of an author's work (especially those that seem to be ignored by the Swedish Academy) but still, wasn't that free-trade enough for the haters?

I'm sure this will continue to play out over the coming months (or years if it actually happens), but for now let's keep our eyes on the prize. Literally. Call me a cynic, but the timing could not have been worse. We have six books we should be talking about right now. Let's not take the limelight away from them.

Note: Less than an hour after I posted this, Booker made it official. See the full statement here

Battlefield Booker: Controversies That Do And Don't Count

A week on and the dust has settled on this year's Booker Long List announcement. For the most part, it has been well received but, as always, there has been the odd grumble about what was (and wasn't) on the list. In usual Bookworm style, I'll just weigh in where I'm not wanted.

The Sour Grapes Of Wrath
So your favourite author missed out? Boo hoo. So did mine. Not that I expected J. M. Coetzee to really get a look in with his decent but nowhere-near-as-good-as-his-early-stuff The Childhood of Jesus. Sure, I still long for my favourite living author to pull the first Booker hat trick, but if there's one thing I hate more than missing out it's someone getting a gold watch award (you listening John Banville?). I suspect that is exactly what Margaret Attwood was pinning her hopes on for Maddaddam, the final instalment in her fascinating Oryx and Crake trilogy. I'd have loved to see a sci-fi novel take the gong but, future time machine acrobatics notwithstanding, it was never going to happen. At least she it won aeons ago for The Blind Assassin.

Lots more whinging abounds with the passing over of Chimamanda Ngozi Adiche, Roddy Doyle (following up The Commitments sans soundtrack), David Peace, and two very well-received novels in Nadeem Aslam's The Blind Man's Garden and Kate Atkinson's Life After Life (will she ever be taken seriously by the establishment?). If you're gunning for any of these, don't fret. You can still rush down to your local bookie and place a few dollars/pounds/shekels on The Folio Prize. As Boyd Tonkin, observed in The Independent, the Folio judges have "a banquet of Booker absentees to consider."

Is The Testament Of Mary A Novel?
It is the question that pops up every few years: How long must a book be to qualify as a novel? When Ian McEwan won for Amsterdam, the curmudgeons in the audience choked on their cigars. The bloody thing came in at under two hundred pages. We all know, however, that it was the consolation Booker, given to assuage a country's collective guilt that the poor guy hadn't won it for the infinitely greater Enduring Love. Ergo, we all forgave him pretty quickly. Then the smug prick had the audacity to do it again with On Chesil Beach only this time he had upped the ante. That books was only one hundred and sixty six pages. Thankfully, we needn't have worried. Nobody is allowed two consolation Bookers, even if Atonement probably should have won five years beforehand. Then again, perhaps he shot himself in the foot with the atrocious Saturday, a book that sat between the other two works like a barbed wire enema.

The novella really came into its own when Julian Barnes pipped a shortlist of bargain bin wannabes with The Sense Of An Ending. At only one hundred and sixty pages, it had encyclopaedia buffs up in arms. I, on the other hand, loved it. Indeed, in a year of spectacular ordinariness (thanks Stella Rimington), it was the only book that could have won if the Booker wasn't about to be turned into a joke. It also must have given hope to Donal Ryan who is long listed this year for the equally brief The Spinning Heart. Not that anyone is on his back about it. The Booker virgin has been trumped by serial list-humper Colm Toibin, who's The Testament of Mary is only one hundred and twelve pages. In other words, you can read it on the toilet without anyone thinking you've fallen in. Personally, I don't see what the fuss is about. Mary is a fully realised, brilliantly executed piece of fiction, wider in scope and deeper of heart than at least a third of the other long listed works. I didn't close it and think, "Nice short story, Colm." Sure, it isn't Proust, but would you question the value of Camus's The Stranger (128 pages) or Orwell's Animal Farm (125 pages)? And how long is a piece of string exactly?

For That Matter is The Kills A Novel?
The novella controversy has been eclipsed by a much more modern concern: Can an exercise in multimedia reading constitute a novel? Richard House's The Kills is testing the boundaries of contemporary fiction (in the Booker sense). Not only is it really four books in one - its thousand-odd pages are made up of four separate novels - but it continuously guides the reader to online content that isn't in the physical book. The judging panel have said that they will only be looking at what's between the covers but that seems to be doing the work an injustice. Make up your mind team Booker. Either you accept multimedia and judge the book as a whole or you make some archaic decision to ban works that rely on online content (as opposed to online stuff that is essentially just promo). Perhaps The Kills is just the toe-in-the-water, setting some precedent for a not-too-distant future in which online content will be a common part of the literary landscape.

When Did The Commonwealth Reclaim America?
Ok, I get that America has stuffed a lot of things up lately, but do the poms really need to take it back? Apparently so, if this long list is anything to go by. Otherwise, it's pretty hard to explain the inclusion of Ruth Ozecki or Jhumpa Lahiri. Don't get me wrong. I really like both of them. But Ozecki is American born, to American and Japanese parents. She spends half her time in America. For six months a year, she hangs out in Canada. Is that enough to justify her annexation by the Prince George Alexander Louis fan club? At least Lahiri was born in London, the daughter of Indian immigrants. That's double Commonwealth cred points. However she moved Stateside when she was two and now identifies as an Indian American. Clearly the Yanks takes her for one of their own. She won The Pulitzer Prize. At what point, then, can we consider the umbilical cord well and truly cut? I kind of hope she wins just to be the only author ever to win both the Pulitzer and Booker. Then she can make a triumphant, albeit brief stopover in Australia just so she's eligible for The Miles Franklin. The possibilities are endless.

Self-Sourcing Literary Pudding

Some time down the track we will be able to pinpoint the very moment artistic enterprise fundamentally changed. I'm willing to suggest it was when Amanda Palmer managed to raise 400 bazillion dollars on Kickstarter to fund her spectacularly mediocre new album. Having listened to it, I'm guessing she spent about seventy bucks recording and the rest building an underground torture kingdom for her and hubby Neil Gaiman to frolic in with their manufactured gold robot minions. Not gold plated. Or gold leaf. Solid effing gold!

Whatever the future common consensus, there is no doubt that crowd sourcing has become a viable model for cutting out the old world gatekeepers and giving people what they want. It doesn't matter how shitty your band/film/interpretive dance project is; if people are dumb enough to want it they can now pay to make it a reality. That's not to say there hasn't already been some great crowd funded art. There's just been much, much more crap.

The idea has yet to properly take root in book land, though I imagine it is only a matter of time. And while my natural inclination is to mock it in advance - I can already see all the Stephenie Meyer/E.L. James/J.K. Rowling wannabes pitching tacky clones to the gullible masses and retiring to the Bahamas on the proceeds - I can't help but feel a small tinge of excitement. Writer, comedian and hardcore Yiddishist Michael Wex recently launched an Indiegogo campaign to fund the translation and publication of a lost classic, Joseph Opatoshu's In Poylishe Velde. That is a good thing. Whereas such works would never have been brought to the English speaking world and, let's face it, would have been consigned to the dustbins of history, people like Wex will be able to breathe new life into them, making our cultural environment far richer.

Crowd sourcing might just be publishing's white knight. For years we've heard about the shrinking advances, the decline in royalties, authors forced to survived on mulched paper and sour milk to survive. Moreover, many good books struggle to find a publisher willing to take a risk in these dire times. With sites like Kickstarter and Pozible, I dare say it will not be impossible for authors to raise more than they might otherwise have received as an advance in the off chance they could even convince a publisher to take the book in the first place. Crowd sourcing might also force more equitable contracts between authors and publishers, lest those that already have a name jump ship and just put their hands out to fans to fund their next project. I don't know. My head is in a bit of a spin at the prospect. It scares me to think that the industry will be overrun by Justin Biebers (or James Pattersons or Dan Browns) but Wex's project gives me hope that technology might yet be used for good. It certainly gives self-publishing the potential for a much more credible future in that it allows for those who choose (or are forced to choose) that path to finally afford editors and designers and layout people so their books won't be so darn shit. The again, a part of me longs for the old days of literary gatekeepers; those who are discerning enough to sift through the dross and present me with the cream of the crop. If a balance can't be struck, what will be left with? More American Idol rip offs? More bloody cooking shows? Another album from Amanda Palmer and Her Solid Gold Robot Orchestra?

Spare me...

First World Reading Problems Vol. 1: Translation Constipation

Translation Constipation (n): The anxious but seemingly fruitless wait for newly translated works by your favourite authors to be released into the swishing toilet of public consumption.

Without a doubt, my reading discovery of 2013 has been Goncalo M. Tavares. The guy is everything I look for in an author; funny, intelligent and mind-meltingly original. After the braingasm that was The Neighbourhood, I jumped headfirst into his Kingdom series, starting with Jerusalem and then moving straight on to Joseph Walser's Machine. It seemed each book I read was better than the last. But then something awful happened. I came to the end of the trail. As I reached for Learning To Pray In The Age of Technology, I realised that it was the last of Tavares's books available in translation.

Cue the neuroses, the night sweats.

I put the book back down, afraid to find myself bereft of such literary gold. Ever the resourceful guy, I went straight to the website for Dalkey Archives to investigate. The Kingdom series is made up of four books; the three I mentioned and another called Klaus Klump: A Man. Leaving aside how absolutely awesome a book called Klaus Klump just has to be, I thought it logical that Dalkey would be set to release it any day now. I mean, who would leave a brother hanging like that? I'll tell you who. Dalkey Archives. Clicking through the forthcoming titles page I saw a whole lot of hullabaloo being made of Desmond Hogan and Alvaro Enrigue but there's sweet nada about Tavares. It's an outrage, I tell you!

I vaguely recall feeling similar frustration with Hans Fallada and Irene Nemirovsky but, for as long as I was loving their work, there always seemed to be another title in the offing. I also know that a number of other non-English-speaking authors that I love have works yet to be translated: Enrique Vila-Matas, Laszlo Krasznahorkai, even Saramago. So why such an extreme reaction when it comes to Tavares? Because the guy is literary crack cocaine and I'm damn well addicted, that's why. Not just Pepsi Max 1.25 litres a day addicted, either. I'm talking beat up a nun, mug a girl scout, rub myself against broken glass addicted.

Please Dalkey Archive... Just Klaus Klump. Then I won't annoy you again. Until the bats come calling again in my poor empty warehouse of a brain... We all know there's another 13 instalments of The Neighbourhood you have yet to release. Don't do it for me. Do it for that sweet, innocent nun.

A Postcard From Purgatory

The abandoned husk of a Borders megastore languishes beside the highway, a sad portent of things once to come, now a grim reality.

Wait, let me start again.

It has been six days, four hours and twenty eight minutes since I last visited a bookstore; the longest I have ever gone without. My worst nightmare has come true. I am in a city with no literary soul. If once there was one, it has long since been exorcised. For this weary traveller, Detroit exemplifies the worst possible outcome of late 90s scorched earth commercial expansion - the establishment of huge barns that crushed the small indie sellers and then, when economic clouds began to stir, closed down leaving entire areas bereft of books. It's quite astounding. There are pretty much no bookstores to be found unless you are willing to turn to one of the great "white knights" of middle America, Barnes & Noble (which still has a strong, albeit soulless presence) or just give up altogether and hit Amazon. It is a sad, sad state of affairs.

Yet a bit of research suggests that all is not completely lost. There are a couple around if I'm willing to drive for a while. I guess I have no choice. But I won't have the joy of walking along any random street and stumbling upon a trove of hidden bookish treasure. God I love Melbourne.

This is the sound of a reader in despair.

Excoriation Blues (Or The Happy Hatchet)

Those of you who, like me, keep tabs on the wackier margins of the litworld may have heard that the first ever Hatchet Job of The Year was recently awarded to Adam Mars-Jones for his nuclear pounding of After Nightfall by Michael Cunningham. Granted, I've not read the book but the review, originally published in The Observer, certainly was a lot of fun. Check it out here!

We faceless minions who like to crap on about books do relish the odd opportunity to really sharpen our knives. I'll never forget when Andrew O'Hagan flew an ink plane into the tower of Don Delillo's awful post-911 novel, Falling Man. Few people would have cojones to waltz up to God's throne and take a dump on His shoes, so full credit to O'Hagan on that one. (If your memory doesn't stretch back to 2007 click here for a refresher). If only Dellilo had been given the opportunity to repay the favour when it came to O'Hagan's equally embarrassing effort from last year, Maf The Dog. Remember that? Didn't think so. It was the 'memoir' of Marilyn Monroe's dog, and resembled something that might have slipped out of Maf's backside after a particularly disagreeable meal. Either way, it was thrown over the fence of literary attention and promptly forgotten about. Alack alack, God (i.e. Dellilo) was no doubt too busy creating some other great masterwork to bother re-igniting long-snuffed fires.

There is, of course, a particular art to the hatchet job, one that some reviewers ought try to learn. Complete excoriations seem mean spirited if the bile is not tempered with the sharpest of wit. One that has recently raised my ire was David Gates's review of The Street Sweeper by Elliot Perlman in The New York Times Sunday Book Review. Talk about claws-out nasty. Gates doesn't so much review it as demolish every leg on which the book seeks to stand, including ones that I actually think are rather commendable. Am I the only one who finds it weird to slam a book for a possessing a fierce moral conscience, even if that conscience sometimes taints the narrative? And surely convenient contrivances in plot are commonplace even in the best works of fiction?

Weirdly, Gates seems to be waving the flag alone in his detestation. I haven't read the book (I have a moratorium on Holocaust books until mine is finished), but by all accounts it is, at the very least decent and, according to many, very good. Popular consensus amongst readers and bloggers (as opposed to the denizens of literary palaces) swings strongly in Perlman's favour. I'll wait to read it myself before forming an opinion. But for now, suffice to say, Gates falls into the very trap he thinks has slammed shut on Perlman's foot. Wit is the essence of the effective hatchet job. Gates takes Perlman to task for the 'humourlessness' of The Street Sweeper (I'd hate to see him review Cormac McCarthy or David Vann!). And yet, as opposed to when I was reading Mars-Jones or O'Hagan, during both of which I laughed heartily, I didn't so much as smirk with Gates. If it hand't been published in so venerable a paper I'm sure the review would have disappeared without a trace. I suspect now it will be the highlight of Gates's otherwise unremarkable career. Here's hoping good hearts prevail over mean spirits.

Shantaram Shitfight (And Now For Something Completely Different)

A lovely weekend in the Victorian countryside was almost ruined before it started thanks to the heady combination of a know-it-all house manager and my fat mouth. In a most unusual turn of events, my lit nerd bro-in-law and I arrived at our destination ahead of the others, which meant we were given the grand tour/orientation spiel which we were then supposed to pass on to the rest of the family when they arrived. All was going well until we reached the entertainment collection - a long shelf of DVDs, Playstation 3 games and books. The house is Indian themed so it's not too hard to guess what was on the shelves.

As I scanned the collection, the very Aussie house manager started to get rather excited. "I don't know if either of you are readers," he said (at which I died a bit inside), "but there's one book you have to read while you're here." And, as I guessed he would, he reached straight for Shantaram. Yes, bloody Shantaram. The wanky bible of every ashram-invading, pot-smoking, hygiene-averse backpacker ever to disgrace the subcontinent. Alas, Mr. I-Prosletyse-About-The-One-Book-I've-Ever-Read was only getting started. "It's a modern classic," he raved. "It won the Booker Prize".

Oh No He Deeee-n't.

The red rag had been waved and this bull was primed. "Um," I interrupted in my friendliest of tones, "no it didn't." He was adamant. "I can assure you it did." Here we go. Bro-in-law rolled his eyes and tried to look busy in the corner. "And I can quite definitely assure you it didn't. It wasn't even nominated." He stood his ground. I didn't want to sound like too much of a knob but, well, I'm a lot of a knob. "I can name the last twenty winners and Shantaram is not amongst them." He must have sensed then that either I was right or I was such a massively arrogant arse that it wasn't worth arguing with me (to be fair, the truth is a combination of those two things). "I take it that's your area," he said.

My fragile book nerd ego was placated, but not before fate added a little kicker for my amusement. Sitting right next to Shantaram was a copy of Arundhati Roy's Booker winner, The God Of Small Things. Touche, litgods. Touche.

The Uncertain Precipice: Awaiting the Likely Publication of Crumbs

Right now I feel like I've been stripped naked, shoved into a giant, curtain-covered glass box, wheeled into the city centre and left to sit there overnight, awaiting some great unveiling. Tomorrow, my story Crumbs, which won The Age Short Story Award, will (I am led to believe) be published in the Summer Reading Supplement of The Saturday Age, and will also be put online for hapless litnerds to stumble across forever more. It may well be something that every writer dreams will happen, but right now I'm a pathetic bundle of neuroses.

I've read over Crumbs several times and am certainly happy with it (notwithstanding the one annoying typo that I found and am really hoping the editors did too). But it's still a weird feeling, to think something you have made is going out into the world to be picked apart and judged by all manner of people you're never likely to meet. I had the same feeling whenever a Yidcore album was about to drop, but this has a much heavier weight of expectation. People will read it expecting it to prove itself worthy of having won.

If these nerves weren't enough, there's also an odd sense of uncertainty because, while I do recall the Books editor of the paper telling me it will be published on the first Saturday of January, I have yet to hear anything since and, the more I think about it, the more I suspect I could be wrong. I was pretty pepped up on adrenalin when I received the call. Yep, I have a sleepless night ahead of me (which will be ably assisted by little Louie), and tomorrow I'll either be posting a link to the story or returning here, tail between my legs, to sulk. Either way you're in for some high-end entertainment. See you tomorrow!

Flipped Off By Le Carre

For some really strange reason I was recently overcome by the need to read Tinker, Tailor, Soldier, Spy by John Le Carre. After scouring several sections of my local bookstore to no avail I asked at the counter if it might be found somewhere that I never venture (pretty much anywhere outside the literary fiction section). Turns out the only copy they had was one of those new Flipbacks, which I'd been wanting to try out for a while anyway. Fate, it seems, is a wacky mistress.

For those unfamiliar with this weird little publishing format, it's basically a mini-book, printed vertically and designed to be held in one hand, with your thumb acting as designated page-turning digit. Perfect, so the guff goes, for reading on the train, at the dinner table, on the toilet or following an amputation. There's a whole bunch of excellent titles on offer (David Mitchell, Steven King, Melvyn Bragg, Chris Cleave) and a couple of crap ones (James Frey, David Nicholls). I opted for a well-regarded, but to me hitherto unknown quantity.

Stuffing the thing in my pocket, I was immediately seized by a crippling fear of being seen reading it. Would it make me as much of a douche as people who read on e-devices? There have been no studies; the evidence just isn't there. I may become a statistic in some academic journal!

Figuring I was, at worst, taking one for the team, I settled into a comfy chair at home and worked my hand into a suitably contorted state to read it as intended. And yep, I hated it. Now, I can't work out if it's just that I'm not loving the novel itself and am projecting on the format or if it's the other way round. Or maybe I just don't like both. I didn't get very far with science at school. I do think, however, that a more apt experiment would be reading a book I love in Flipback format and seeing how that goes. After all, I enjoyed a couple of books on the Kindle and still hated that stupid piece of plastic. So if I ever get around to it I'll report back after reading Flipback Misery. Until then I'll just grumble about the RSI in my thumb.

A Last Ditch Booker Bitch

So it's the eve of the big announcement and Stella's club of cretins are no doubt still patting themselves on the back for choosing the most popular Booker Prize shortlist ever. And by popular, they mean the highest selling. Well done. What a fabulous achievement. It's like that time the Pulitzer committee nominated Dan Brown, Jackie Collins, Danielle Steel, Lee Child and James Patterson to take home America's big one. Or when Barbara Cartland won the Nobel Prize. Oh... wait a minute.

Meh, I guess they needed to hang their hats on something after the resounding shelacking they have received. I'm just going to pretend this year never happened.

(I am also prepared to offer a mea culpa should Julian Barnes win. In true cloak and dagger style, Dame Stella will have cunningly packed the list with average books so that Barnes could finally win it with one of his lesser works. In that case, bravo!)

Roast Swede: A Riff On The Literary Nobelity

Two days til the big Nobel announcement and yet again I find myself in a state of apoplexy. Will it go to a writer long-celebrated in the wider world a la Chinua Achebe, Haruki Murakami or Umberto Eco? Will it be a lesser known, but highly deserving writer from far afield a la Nurrudin Farrah, Antonio Lobos Antunes or Peter Nadas? Could the great anti-imperial trend finally end with those stuffy Swedes conceding that American writers like Philip Roth, Joyce Carol Oates, Cormac McCarthy, Don Delillo and E. L. Doctorow are, at the very least, worthy of consideration? Or will it just go to another ho-hum forgettable like Elfriede Jelinek?

Interestingly, Ladbrokes has Syrian poet Adonis (Ali Ahmad Said) as favourite and - get ready for this - Bob Dylan as number two. I assume they mean Bob Dylan the fiery troubador of old, not the more recent boring fuddy-duddy mumbler who embarrasses himself every time he staggers on to a stage. For my part I'd love to see it go to Milan Kundera, William H. Gass, Margaret Atwood or Ismail Kadare. And yet I have this sinking feeling I'm gonna be bitching about J. K. Rowling on Friday... Brace yourselves folks!