The Salt Path | Raynor Winn #UKNonFiction

 

It has taken me a while to finish The Salt Path by Raynor Winn, not because I wasn't enjoying it, but simply because it became my walking backpack book. It was the perfect choice. It was a slim paperback (i.e. lightweight). It was about going for a very long walk. It was non-fiction and therefore easy to pick up and put down without needing to remember complicated plot points or narrative arcs. And the gorgeous cover design by Angela Harding was a thing of beauty to savour as a drank my coffee, in my favourite coffee shop. at the end of my walk.

The early pages are a tale of woe and misfortune. Winn and her husband, Moth, are in the 50's and suffer a serious of life-changing blows. From financial ruin, losing their home and discovering that Moth as a life-threatening illness, corticobasal degeneration or CBD. I occasionally felt frustration at their level of trust in the goodness of others (and institutions) and their lack of proper planning and forethought, but there was no denying their deep love and commitment to each other. 

After being made homeless, their young adult children were unable to take them in or support them, as they will still at the university/study phase of life. Some friends helped out for a while, but they did not want to be a burden to anyone. Moth's terminal diagnosis hung over them and memories of the life together in Wales on their farm, were too painful to face every day. So they packed up the few things they still owned, stored some, converted others into walking gear and backpacks, and decided to walk the south-west coast path around Cornwall. A mere 630 miles!

They used Paddy Dillon's little brown book, The South West Coast Path: From Minehead to South Haven Point as their guide. Which meant they had to start their walk, at what is considered, the hardest end first so that they could read the book front to back rather then back to front.

Raynor & Moth quickly discovered that they would not be walking as quickly as Paddy and that his idea of a slight incline was very different to theirs!

Sharing their story with other walkers, was also an eye-opening experience. If they mentioned they were homeless and basically penniless, they were treated as hobos to be avoided and looked down upon. But if they tweeked their story a little they could be seen as heroic, adventurous types to be admired or envied. 

The scenery along this walk is obviously amazing, and I do wish they had included some photos so that those of us on the other side of the world could picture it as we read. Of course, google provides the same service these days. 

The walk was also a lot harder than they thought it was going to be. From blisters, to extreme cold (even in the middle of summer), storms in a barely waterproof tent, and the price of food in many of these scenic, touristy seaside villages. Moth's illness slowed them down as well...for a while. Several weeks into the walk, they both realised that he was moving better, experiencing less pain and seemed to be improving. 

In the end, they had to do the walk in two stages, thanks to the onset of winter. 

Many things were left unsaid.

Did they discover a possible cure or at least, a way to slow down the onset of CBD, by doing this hike? Were they able to find work at the end of the walk? And somewhere to live?

I have to assume that many of these queries will be addressed in her latest book, The Wild Silence, or in the Conversation she had with Sarah Kanowski on ABC radio.

• Shortlisted Costa Book Awards 2018

Writers on Writers: Josephine Rowe on Beverley Farmer #AWW

 

Writers on Writers

In the Writers on Writers series, leading authors reflect on an Australian writer who has inspired and influenced them. Provocative and crisp, these books start a fresh conversation between past and present, shed new light on the craft of writing, and introduce some intriguing and talented authors and their work.

Published by Black Inc. in association with the University of Melbourne and State Library Victoria.

Josephine Rowe on Beverley Farmer was my first foray into the Writers on Writers series. It was a very literary affair. A non-fiction novella if you like (and I do, which means this can also be part of Novellas in November!)

I confess that I did not know very much about Farmer prior to reading this book, and I'm not sure I know a whole lot more now. But I suspect, she was that kind of person. Very private. Extremely shy. But I am curious to know more.

"This far, and no further. A familiar refrain of Farmer's throughout her writing life."

As Rowe explains, 'her characters are outsiders, foreigners, fringe dwellers. Expats and exiles, those returning home after long absences...' much like Farmer (and Rowe) themselves. It certainly seemed that part of Rowe's fascination for Farmer, was for what Farmer's life and work could tell her about herself as well. 

Most of the essay consists of Rowe discussing the nature of writing (her own and Farmer's) and what it means to be a reader (especially of Farmer's work). She notes that the 'conditions from which we enter, and to which we return when we lift our attention from the page, have bearing on wherever we are taken from the time in between.’ 

Rowe reveals Farmer's habit of notebook journaling and her ability for close, sustained observation as well as her belief in the age-old advice about keep on writing until something poetic pops out. 

every encounter with a text is influenced by the circumstances in which we read.

Like Farmer and Rowe, I am drawn to wondering about the life not lived. The shadows in our past and our 'reckonings with the past' that can produce a longing for elsewhere that we have all, no doubt, felt at times. This longing, though, seemed to drive Farmer constantly - as a source of creativity and a way to fend off loneliness.

Across Farmer's works there has always been an attraction to those beings who occupy two worlds...Once one has lived elsewhere, lived differently, it doesn't matter whether she stays to forge a new life or turns back towards the old, or moves on once again; there will always be the shadow, the after-image, of the life not lived.

Farmer was also on a mission for authenticity, with a 'fastidious concern for accuracy... for the evolutions of language in all its slipperiness.' She concerned herself with the all the opportunities we have to misunderstand each other and for being misunderstood ourselves. The power she has given to words, makes me feel a little nervous about reading her work. What if I don't understand? Or misunderstand? How would I even know?

Rowe was finishing this book as coronavirus escalated from epidemic to pandemic. 'We speak of this time as an intermission, a hiatus.' It made me wonder if that is a position that those of us in Australia are privileged to hold. We have had some lockdowns and spikes over the past nine months, but we basically have the virus under control for now. Being an island state has given us the ability to quarantine any and all incoming visitors. Since we cannot travel overseas easily or safely, the Australian tourism industry is, subsequently, booming, simply because we're all holidaying at home. It's easy to feel that any suffering we have had has been 'an intermission, a hiatus', a time in which we could be creative, recharge our batteries and declutter our homes! But I'm sure there are many here and abroad who feel very differently. Maybe what we're both trying to say here, though, is that solitude, or hiatus, and the reason for that intermission, is just another one of the circumstances that can play on a reader and a writer in different ways.

I am curious to see what kind of Covid-Lit emerges from this time. At the moment it seems to mostly be a little aside at the end of the book, where the author reveals how far through the editing process they were when the virus changed all our lives. It's like a place marker. 

I'm sure, though, that as part of the hiatus, many writers are penning their next book, that may or may not be set in a Covid-normal world. Whatever choice they make, their future readers will also bring their own understandings - to compare experiences or to wonder why the author chose to ignore it completely. Interesting times makes for interesting reading, we hope.

Rowe is the author of the novel A Faithful, Loving Animal (longlisted for the 2017 Miles Franklin) and three short story collections including Here Until August (shortlisted for the 2020 Stella Prize & QLD Literary Award).

Favourite Quote:

Our relationship with the past and those who populate it is constantly shifting, as is our awareness of the ways in which it has shaped us....In returning to our first stories, those most deeply etched, are we seeking the comfort of...the familiar arrangements and foretokenings a means of retelling the story ourselves so that we might reconcile ourselves to an ending? 

Facts:

• Beverley Farmer - born in Melbourne 7 February 1941 
• Died 16 April 2018
• Short story anthologies:
• Snake (1982)
• Milk (1983)
• Home Time (1985)
• Collected Stories (1987)
• This Water: Five Tales (2017)
Novellas:

• Alone (1980)
• The Seal Woman (1992)
• The House in the Light (1995)
Other:

• A Body of Water: A Year's Notebook (1990)
• The Bone House (2005)
• A Body of Water has just been republished by Giramondo Publishing.
• 1984 – NSW Premier's Literary Awards, Christina Stead Prize for Fiction for Milk
• 1996 – Miles Franklin Award shortlist for The House in the Light
• 2009 – Patrick White Award
• 2018 – The Stella Prize longlist for This Water
• Stan Grant on Thomas Keneally due May 2021.

#AusReadingMonth2020

#NovellasinNovember

#NonFictionNovember

#AustralianWomenWriters

Non-Fiction November - Week Three

 

Week 3: (Nov. 16 to 20) – Be The Expert/Ask the Expert/Become the Expert (Rennie of What’s Nonfiction): Three ways to join in this week! You can either share 3 or more books on a single topic that you have read and can recommend (be the expert), you can put the call out for good nonfiction on a specific topic that you have been dying to read (ask the expert), or you can create your own list of books on a topic that you’d like to read (become the expert).

This is one of my favourite weeks with Non-Fiction November. It's the week my wishlist really explodes!

I've been going through a Plague Lit phase recently. 

It took a while though. 

At the beginning of the Covid lockdown I read about how Albert Camus' classic The Plague (La Peste) had suddenly hit the bestsellers list again in France. I was amused and curious, but as the lockdown restrictions increased, and the virus got upgraded to a pandemic, it all felt too close, too real and too soon. 

But by June/July, the new Covid-normal was starting to feel, well, normal. My reading mojo returned and I found myself becoming obsessed to learn more about how previous generations had survived and thrived during and after a plague event.

I wanted to see if history could teach us some lessons.

It seems, though, that the main lesson history teaches us is that we fail, time and again, to heed the lessons of history!

My list of books is mostly full of fiction titles. I would now like to expand that into non-fiction. I'm particularly interested in learning more about the Spanish Flu of 1918-1920.

I'm hoping to learn more about the Russian Plague of 1770 - 1772 when I read Robert K Massie's book about Catherine the Great, but would be keen for more recommendations.

The Polio outbreak in the US (and elsewhere) is also something I'm curious about (after seeing a fascinating bio about Roosevelt a few years ago). Any Australian books that talk about what happened here during the 30's, 40's and 50's would be of interest.

Live Science, back in March of this year, listed the 20 worst epidemics and pandemics in history. My non-scientific explanation for the difference between a plague and a flu is that a plague is usually caused by a bacterium whereas the flu is viral. Both cross over from animals to humans. The concern right now is that antibiotics work on bacterium but not on viruses and that as we, as humans, encroach on more and more land once the sole domain of animals, more viruses will cross over.

In the list below you will also notice that most flu events last, on average, 2-3 years and that viral flu epidemics have been on the increase over the past 100 years.

1. Prehistoric epidemic: Circa 3000 B.C.
2. Plague of Athens: 430 B.C.
3. Antonine Plague: A.D. 165-180
4. Plague of Cyprian: A.D. 250-271
5. Plague of Justinian: A.D. 541-542
6. The Black Death: 1346-1353
7. Cocoliztli epidemic: 1545-1548
8. American Plagues: 16th century
9. Great Plague of London: 1665-1666
10. Great Plague of Marseille: 1720-1723
11. Russian Plague: 1770-1772
12. Philadelphia yellow fever epidemic: 1793
13. Flu pandemic: 1889-1890
14. American polio epidemic: 1916 - 1956
15. Spanish Flu: 1918-1920
16. Asian Flu: 1957-1958
17. AIDS pandemic and epidemic: 1981-present day
18. H1N1 Swine Flu pandemic: 2009-2010
19. West African Ebola epidemic: 2014-2016
20. Zika Virus epidemic: 2015-present day

My Previous Plague/Pandemic Reads:

• The Plague | Albert Camus
• The Stand | Stephen King
• Moloka'i | Alan Brennert (Leprosy)
• All Fall Down | Sally Nicholls (The Black Death) YA
• Hamnet | Maggie O'Farrell (The Plague)
• Oryx and Crake | Margaret Atwood
• Year of Wonders | Geraldine Brooks (Great Plague of London)
• The Pull of the Stars | Emma Donoghue (Spanish Flu)
• A Journal of the Plague Year | Daniel Defoe (Great Plague of London)
• Intimations | Zadie Smith (non-fiction Covid-19)

My Current Plague Reads:

• A Distant Mirror: The Calamitous 14th Century | Barbara Tuchman (non-fiction The Black Death)

Up Next:

• Pale Horse, Pale Rider | Katherine Anne Porter (Spanish Flu)

Plague/Pandemic Fiction Books On My Radar:

• Station Eleven | Emily St John Mandel
• Blindness | José Saramago
• The Last Man | Mary Shelley
• Nemesis | Philip Roth (Polio)
• Love in the Time of Cholera | Gabriel Garcia Marquez
• The Years of Rice and Salt | Kim Stanley Robinson
• The Dog Stars | Peter Heller
• The Pest House | Jim Crace
• The Children’s Hospital | Chris Adrian
• Severance | Ling Ma
• Fever 1793 | Laurie Halse Anderson (Philadelphia Yellow Fever Epidemic) 
• The White Plague | Frank Herbert
• The Passage | Justin Cronin
• Company of Liars | Karen Maitland (The Black Death)
• The Decameron | Giovanni Boccaccio (The Black Death)
• The Decameron Project 2021 | (Covid-19)
• The End of October | Lawrence Wright

Non-Fiction On My Radar:

• The Ghost Map: The Story of London's Most Terrifying Epidemic—and How It Changed Science, Cities, and the Modern World | Steven Johnson (Cholera pandemic 1846–1860 - obviously not bad enough to make the top 20 list above!)
• Black Death | Philip Ziegler (The Black Death)

I'm happy to learn about the science around each and every epidemic, pandemic or plague, but I'm more interested in the human stories. 

How did the plague or epidemic affect the lives and livelihoods of the average person? How did it spread? How did the people and their governments react to the crisis? What myths and propaganda grew up around them? What methods did they use to control the spread? How did each one eventually end? What was the price that the town/city/country/continent paid during and afterwards - economically, culturally, spiritually, artistically and medically?

Non-fiction is the name of this game, but if you also know of any fabulous fiction not already on my list, then please add that in the comments below as well.

My 2014 Holocaust and Coco Chanel Be the Expert post is here.
My 2017 Holocaust Be the Expert post is here.
My 2018 Napoleon & the French Revolution Become the Expert post is here.

My 2019 Japan Be the Expert post is here.

Non-Fiction November - Week Two

 

Week 2: (Nov. 9 to 13) – Book Pairing (Julz of Julz Reads): This week, pair up a nonfiction book with a fiction title. It can be a “If you loved this book, read this!” or just two titles that you think would go well together. Maybe it’s a historical novel and you’d like to get the real history by reading a nonfiction version of the story.

I'll start with the book pairings I have actually managed to combine in recent times.

• Only Happiness Here - Elizabeth and German Garden (both still to be reviewed)
• Vesper Flights - The Last Migration (both still to be reviewed)
• Fathoms - Moby-Dick
• Intimations - The Plague
• The Fire This Time - The Vanishing Half

But now comes your part!

I have some book pairings that I would like your feedback on. 

• This year I watched The Great (tv series) - a tremendously fun romp around the court of Catherine the Great before she became Great! I would love to pair this book with some great non-fiction about her. Can you recommend any?
• In an opposite pairing request, I loved Hisham Matar's Month in Siena a lot earlier this year. I would love a good literary fiction also set in Siena, possibly about the art world or historical in nature. Can you recommend any?

Non-Fiction November - Week One

Week 1: (Nov. 2 to Nov. 6) – Your Year in Nonfiction (Leann of Shelf Aware) 

• Take a look back at your year of nonfiction and reflect on the following questions – What was your favourite nonfiction read of the year? Do you have a particular topic you’ve been attracted to more this year? What nonfiction book have you recommended the most? What are you hoping to get out of participating in Nonfiction November?

Well, what a year it has been since last we last talked about Non-Fiction together.

I will NOT use the word unprecedented, but it has certainly been weird and unusual!

My reading year, was obviously, disrupted by Covid. I had a period of time where I found it hard to concentrate properly, where I sought out comfort reads and known authors. 

My working life had a non-Covid related hiccup early in the year, but mostly, I have worked right through bushfires, floods and now, a pandemic. Making animated book recommendations whilst wearing a mask has become a new skill to add to my CV!

My favourite non-fiction reads for 2020 can be divided into pre-Covid and Covid.

Fathoms wins hands down as my Covid pick, while A Month in Siena was the pick of the Pre-Covid stack. Whales and art appreciation; nature and beauty; environment and history; what's not to love. And they both have really orange covers!

The environment has been my main reading theme this year. 

I started The Cloudspotter's Guide in desperation during our summer bushfires. After months of smoky skies, I was hanging out for a sight of blue skies and white fluffy clouds. Fathoms jumped out at me because of the whales. After slow reading Moby-Dick last year, whales will now always call my name. 

I am also part-way through Vesper Flights, a collection of lovely essays about birds and nature by Helen MacDonald, and the very beautifully produced Phosphorescence by Julia Baird.

Social issues also felt important to me this year.

From books about lockdown and Covid, to Black Lives Matters and human nature.

Normally I read a lot of biography/memoir, but this year only three titles fit that bill. I'm part way through a fourth by Gabrielle Carey about Elizabeth Von Armin called Only Happiness Here. And I've just started a fifth by Raynor Winn called The Salt Path, which combines memoir with nature.

History also took a back seat this year, although I'm almost finished The Golden Maze (about Prague) by Richard Fidler and I've just started A Distant Mirror: The Calamitous 14th Century by Barbara Tuchman. Judging by it's size and tiny print, I may still be talking about this one for NonFicNov 2021!

My Covid Non-Fiction:

• Intimations: Six Essays (Covid/lockdown related essays by Zadie Smith)
• The Fire This Time (a brilliant collection of BLM essays & poems)
• Humankind: A Hopeful History (easy to read AND hopeful!)
• Truganini (the tragic story of the 'last' Aboriginal woman in Tasmania)
• Fathoms: The World in a Whale (a writers response to the distressing sight of whales beaching themselves on her local beach in Australia)

My Pre-Covid Non-Fiction:

• The Cloudspotter's Guide (if you've ever wondered what that cloud above you is called, wonder no more!)
• 7 Steps to Get Your Child Reading (a great guide for parents to get excited about reading with their kids with Australian links)
• 488 Rules For Life (an Australian comedienne's take on how best to live our lives!!)
• Talking to My Daughter About the Economy (I thought a bit of dad-splaining would help me understand the economy, but it didn't)
• Sand Talk (an Indigenous perspective on how to make sense of this world we live in)
• A Month in Siena (a glorious, thoughtful month in the life of Matar as he ponders art from the Sienese school and his father's death)
• Ten Doors Down (a touching memoir about adoption)
• The Adventures of Alexander von Humboldt (a disappointing graphic novel version of one of my favourite all-time non-fiction titles, The Invention of Nature)

My aim for this year's NonFicNov is to finish the several half read books by my bed and review them! As many of them are also Australian titles, I will be able to combine them with my very own AusReading Month, also running throughout November.

November Reading Challenge Sign Up Post

As many of you are well aware, November is THE month for reading challenges, with FIVE that I know of vying for our attention.

Naturally, MY own challenge, AusReading Month gets top billing here, but I am keen to combine some of the other options, with my Australian books, if I can. 

This means being a little organised.

I'm one day early, but this will be my sign up/introduction post for all FIVE book events happening around the world in November. 

Tomorrow, the MASTERPOST for AusReading Month will go live with a linky for all your posts, reviews etc. The Masterpost will be set as the featured post on the right hand side of my blog, for those of you who use a computer or laptop, to make it easy to find throughout the month.

For AusReading Month I plan to finish and review: 

• The Last Migration | Charlotte McConaghy (NSW on my bingo card)
• Our Shadows | Gail Jones (WA or NSW or even VIC)
• Stone Sky Gold Mountain | Mirandi Riwoe (QLD)
• Elizabeth and Her German Garden | Elizabeth Von Armin (NSW or FREE)
• Cockatoos | Brent of Bin Bin (aka Miles Franklin) (NSW)

My Australian non-fiction reads, that will double as options for Non-Fiction November are: 

• Only Happiness Here | Gabrielle Carey (NSW)
• Phosphorescence, On Awe, Wonder And Things That Sustain You When The World Goes Dark | Julia Baird (NSW)
• The Golden Maze | Richard Fidler (FREE)
• Writers on Writers: Josephine Rowe on Beverley Farmer (VIC)
• Griffith Review 68: Getting On | various authors (FREE)

A couple of children's books are on my radar too:

• Catvinkle and the Missing Tulips | Elliot Perlman
• Landing With Wings | Trace Balla
• The Stolen Prince of Cloudburst | Jaclyn Moriarty

I only have to find a book written by or in the ACT to complete two lines of the AusReading Month Bingo Card. I could reread one of my Marion Halligan books or jump in Paul Daley's Canberra? Other suggestions welcome, especially if it's a short story, essay or poet.

Non-Fiction November may be the inspiration I need to also finish these half-read books:

• A Distant Mirror | Barbara Tuckman 
• The Salt Path | Raynor Winn
• Salt Fat Acid Heat | Samin Nostrat
• White Fragility | Robin DiAngelo
• Vesper Flights | Helen Macdonald
• The Passenger: Japan | Europa Editions | various authors

For German Lit Month I plan to read: 

• The Land of Green Plums | Herta Müller - a very slim book that has the benefit of also being a #ReadingtheNobels contender.

Margaret Atwood Reading Month with Naomi & Marci is the perfect opportunity to read my very slim copy of The Penelopiad. 

Novella in November has been revived by Cathy & Rebecca. A novella has a word count of 17,500 to 39,999 words. Cathy & Rebecca have added a 150 page guide to help with classification.

• Elizabeth and Her German Garden | Elizabeth Von Armin (the latest Penguin edition comes in at 104 pages)
• The Penelopiad | Margaret Atwood

Finally, many of you who follow my instagram account will know that November is also JACARANDA month in Australia. Sydney puts on an amazing display every year, for about 3-4 week, from the end of Oct to mid Nov.  Which leads me to my very own personal challenge for November.

• I aim to take as many #iamreading pics with a jacaranda tree for backdrop as I can!

It has been a wet week, causing many of the blooms to drop early.

This is one of my favourite reading spots looking out over Mort Bay into Sydney Harbour.

Griffith Review 63: Writing the Country edited by Julianne Schultz & Ashley Hay

Image: James Tylor, Turralyendi Yerta (Womma) 2017 Photograph with ochre & charcoal.

Place. Land. Country. Home. These words frame the settings of our stories. Griffith Review 63: Writing the Country focuses on Australia’s vast raft of environments to investigate how these places are changing and what they might become; what is flourishing and what is at risk. 

How we speak of and to the world we live in requires us to make sense of where we are and where we’re going; it requires us to describe, interrogate and analyse our places from the smallest to the grandest of scales. In the second issue of Griffith Review, published fifteen years ago, Melissa Lucashenko wrote of ‘earthspeaking, talking about this place, my home’. All these years later, the need to hear all sorts of earthspeak has perhaps never been more urgent.

In the past, I would have gobbled up the stories, essays, poems and articles in a Griffith Review edition in one fell swoop. Leaving me with a general impression of the theme of the edition and a vague memory of some of the pieces. But this time, I decided to go slow.

Slow Reading is my new mantra. I want to read as thoughtfully, consciously and carefully as I can as often as I can. Obviously, not all books lend themselves to this approach. Some stories are lightly told, some favourite series are formulaic although lovable and comforting and some books are nothing more than a quick, easy holiday read. They all have their purpose, time and place.

But some books deserve more. And sometimes I deserve more!
Sometimes I want to devote more time to one book so that I can savour each moment, delve deeply and create a rich reading memory of my time with the book.

In recent times. Les Miserables was one such book, and I'm currently reading Moby-Dick with this slow reading approach. Back in February, when I acquired my copy of the Griffith Review 63, I decided to do the same. To slow read each essay and story. To let each one stand alone in my memory.

I confess, I didn't think I would still be reading it in November!

It also left me in a quandary about how best to record my slow reading experience. Giving each piece it's own post would be too laborious for me and rather dull for you, oh brave internet wanderer who landed on my page!

The passing of time has allowed the answer to present itself to me. Just like my Moby-Dick chapter posts, I will present each essay with a brief snapshot of the things that caught my eye or captured my imagination. Poems and stories I will leave for another time.

Introduction: On Suicide on Watch? The Enduring Power of Nature | Julianne Schultz (26th Nov 2018).

• societies and cultures evolve in response to the environment in which people find themselves.
• unforeseeable natural events have destroyed some civilisations...but others have been undone by over-exploitation. 
• Arnold J Toynbee quip - more civilisations die from suicide than murder.
• A classical historian and writer of comparative history.
• Hugely popular and influential in the 1940's and 50's.
• Now criticised for being more of a Christian moralist than an historian - ouch! (Encyclopedia Britannica).
• Schultz believes that we may be on 'suicide watch' but we can still feel optimistic with a 'sense of agency'.
• McLean Foundation and The Nature Conservancy commissioned writers for this edition.
• The McLean Foundation is a family foundation that has four areas of interest: protecting Australia’s biodiversity; supporting inter-city, rural and remote literacy programs for disadvantaged Australian children; rural tertiary education scholarships; and community development programs. 
• Their environmental funding to date has included establishing and supporting The Nature Conservancy Australia and their Nature Writing Prize. Robert McLean is the Chair of The Nature Conservancy Australia, a Senior Advisor to McKinsey & Co, and a Board Member of Philanthropy Australia.
• I love that people like Robert McLean exist. Read his 2011 bio in the SMH here.

Essay: Crossing the Line | Ashley Hay

• or the destruction of the Great Barrier Reef.
• There are mechanisms and consequences we can already see and understand (the known knowns).
• There are effects and impacts we can see happening without yet understanding why, or how they might impact each other (the known unknowns).
• And then there are the 'unknown unknowns', the layers of knowledge about our planet's natural systems, their requirements, their reactions and interactions that we don't know about yet. The Things that we cannot see coming.
• 30 yrs ago the CSIRO investigated what would happen if we doubled the concentration of carbon dioxide in the earth's atmosphere. 
• 'Most of the consequences that science then predicted would occur by 2030 we've already seen.' Griffith University's Emeritus Professor Ian Lowe.
• Including Perth's rainfall declining by about a quarter in 30 years. But what wasn't predicted was the decline by two-thirds of the run-off rate. 
• 'it's hotter and drier when it rains, which means there's a more dramatic reduction in run-off' - which means there is less water available to be collected when it does rain.
• A road trip is a kind of mediation. Time and space stretch a little and you pay different attention to the landscapes you move through.
• biophilia - love of nature
• The Permian-Triassic extinction, 252 million years ago, wiped out more than nine-tenths of all species. It took the ecosystems effected about 5-8 million years to recover.
• The unknown unknowns in all of this are each and every one of us: what we purchase, what we vote for and what we insist on, as much as how we live.
• Hay's solution - pay attention, witness this moment, imagine the unknowns, imagine what's coming next.

Essay: Lost and Found in Translation | Kim Mahood

• Books in books - Kangaroo (D H Lawrence), Voss (Patrick White), To the Islands, Tourmaline, Midnite, Visitants and The Merry-go-round in the Sea (Randolph Stow), Animal Farm (George Orwell), Tracks (Robyn Davidson), The Songlines (Bruce Chatwin), Belomor (Nicholas Rothwell)
• what is consistent in all these books is the presence of Aboriginal people in various configurations.
• Ochre and Rust (Philip Jones) songlines are a 'kind of scripture, a framework for relating people to land, and to show that their relationship is inalienable.'
• The major songlines, such as the Seven Sisters, are like arteries that carry the life force of the culture through the body of the country.
• songlines are fixed in the landscape
• but they can be performed anywhere, with permission.
• the land is as conscious as the people who live in it.

Essay: Boodjar ngan djoorla: Country, my bones | Claire G Coleman

• My bones are in the soul of Country, and Country is in my bones.
• No matter where we go Country calls out to us.
• I wept when I realised Country had not forgotten me even when I did not know Country. My old-people, my ancestors, would care for me.
• Truth escapes in the end, lies cannot live forever.

Essay: A Fragile Civilisation: Collective living on Australian soil | Stephen Muecke

• Ancient Indigenous civilisations and/or modern Western civilisations.
• I would like to define civilisation as planned, sustainable collective living.
• Yolngu as Indigenous example.
• If the Yolgnu have flourished for up to 50 000 years, while the kind of civilisation based on large cities could self-destruct after only a few hundred, perhaps it is time to recalibrate what we mean by civilisations.

Essay: The Planet is Alive: Radical histories for uncanny times | Tom Griffiths

• Amitav Ghosh - The Great Derangement: Climate Change and the Unthinkable (2016)
• we are knowingly killing the planetary systems that support survival of our species.
• we half aware of this predicament yet also paralysed by it, caught between horror and hubris.
• Anthropocene - a new geological epoch that recognises the power of humans in changing the nature of the planet, its atmosphere, oceans, climate, biodiversity, even its rocks and stratigraphy.
• The Great Acceleration - from the 1950's when the human enterprise suddenly exploded in population and energy use.
• Or the Sixth Extinction - humans have wiped out about two-thirds of the world's wildlife in just the last half century.
• Big History - David Christian - history of the universe - global storytellers.

Reportage: A Change in the Political Weather? Forecasting the future of climate policy | Paul Daley

• Carl Feilberg - late 1800's Queensland - human rights activist & environmentalist.
• Bio coming soon by Robert Ørsted-Jensen.
• Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change (IPCC)
• Daley wrote this piece Nov 2018 and talked about politicians being out of step with public opinion about climate change and that this would be evident in the federal election in 2019. Instead it showed that journalists were out of step with the broader public opinion about climate change. They were (I am) living in an inner city bubble and we all made the mistake in thinking that the rest of Australia (rural, suburban and city fringes) felt the same as us or had the same priorities and concerns.

Essay: We All Took a Stand: Margaret River versus the coal industry | David Ritter

• Loved this piece.
• I had no idea that this even happened - there is power in our stories if we choose to tell them.
• The community of the Margaret River took on the coal industry and won.
• Australia's approval systems for fossil fuel mining are antiquated and loaded towards the interests of developers.
•  In this case, the political and business elite decided, emphatically, that some things are more important than the extraction of fossil fuels.

Essay: Life and Death on Dyarubbin: Reports from the Hawkesbury River | Grace Karskens

• The Real Secret River: Dyarubbin | 2017

Essay: Rebuilding Reefs, Restoring Memory: At work in the waters of history | Anna Clark

• Clifton Springs shellfish reef restoration project, near Geelong.
• R H Tawney - doing history well meant contemplating the processes of how (and where) the past relates to people in the present.
• over 95% of native flat oyster & blue mussel reefs have disappeared across southern Australia.
• each generation remembers what fisheries were like at the beginning of their own lifetimes, so that the baseline of that ecosystem subtly changes over time...an ever-lower bar is set as the 'new normal'.

Reportage: The Butterfly Effect: Stalking a giant in PNG | Jo Chandler

• 1906 | Albert Stewart Meek
• Ornithoptera alexandrae | Queen Alexandra's birdwing - largest butterfly in the world.
• rural people do not always understand the outsider notion of 'conservation', and outsiders do not always understand what villagers think of when they imagine 'development'.

Memoir: The Suburbsm the 60's: What use a scrap of bush? | Kate Veitch

• Growing up in Vermont and Nunawading.
• An outdoor life, playing in the nearby bush.
• Naturally, we never talked about our adventures to our parents. Nor did they ask. This was an era when parents had better things to do than hover over their children, monitoring their every move.
• Healesville Freeway Reserve | 2012
• The importance of place & childhood spaces.

Reportage: Eating Turtle: Changing narratives of the normal | Suzy Freeman-Greene

• Heron Island
• the heroes of the story are scientists.

Memoir: It's Scary but Nobody Cares: Challenging Australia's reputation for deadliness | Ashley Kalagian Blunt

• A Canadian view of Australia, drop bears and other deadly creatures.

Essay: Valuing Country: Let me count three ways | Jane Gleeson-White

• In 2008, Ecuador became the first country to recognise the rights of nature.
• Rights-of-nature laws also now in Bolivia, New Zealand, India and Colombia.
• three ways of thinking about the natural world - country, natural capital, rights of nature.
• 2016 Fitzroy River Declaration recognises the river as a living ancestral being with its own life force.
• 2017 Yarra River Protection (Wilip-gin Birrarung murron).
• 2018 petition to protect the legal rights of the Great Barrier Reef.
• Capitalism is fundamentally opposed to preserving nature.
• ecological economics.
• protecting the environment is a good thing for humanity | Carl Obst

Reportage: Ghost Species and Shadow Places: Seabirds and plastic pollution on Lord Howe Island | Cameron Muir

• Runner-Up Bragg UNSW Press Prize for Science Writing 2019
• Shortlisted for the Eureka Prize for Science Communication
• flesh-footed shearwaters | mutton birds
• they vomit plastic. The parent shearwaters here are slowly feeding their chicks to death with plastic.
• the plastic blocks their digestive tracts and can pierce internal organs.
• A torrent of plastic is coming. More plastic was produced in the last fifteen years than in the previous fifty. 

Essay: The Cost of Consumption: Dispatches from a planet in decline | James Bradley

•  2018 Living Planet Report
• The sheer scale of the problem makes it difficult to think about.
• As creatures disappear, we forget them, as baselines shift we adjust, and the world as it was is lost.
• The Great Acceleration
• For while population growth has played a part, the rise in GDP and energy far outstrips the rise in population. In fact it is humanity's booming middle classes...who are the problem. The ecological footprint of an average Australian or American is three times that of a Costa Rican, and almost eight or nine times that of the average Indian or African. It is also, significantly, double that of many Europeans.
• The real problem is the insatiable consumption of the world's wealthy.
• We already possess the technologies to deal with the problem - renewable energy, sustainable farming practices...better education and literacy, especially for women...basic income...progressive taxation and economic reform...better governance....
• Environmental justice is also social justice and intergenerational justice. But it is also interspecies justice.

Essay: Climate Change, Science and Country: A never-ending story | Brendan Mackey

• the climate norm will be there is no norm.
• scientists are not catastrophists - they project rather than predict.
• Climate change may be a scientific discovery, but it is the humanities and creative arts that speak to what this means.

Reportage: Remaking Nature: Novel strategies in modified landscapes | Andrew Stafford

• Bitterns in Rice project
• Yandina Creek Wetlands

Image Source

Essay: Transforming Landscapes: Regenerating country in the Anthropocene | Charles Massey

• regenerative farming
• Many of the world's desertifying environments are the result of human activity. In Australia - as in the Middle East...
• in mismanaged landscapes the small water cycles are destroyed.
• capitalist market economy believes in continual growth. Nature is viewed as a raw material for wealth and property creation.
• to become landscape literate.
• Paul Hawken | human brain is not wired to deal with future existential threats.
• Project Drawdown
• This is not a liberal agenda, nor is it a conservative agenda...this is a human agenda.

Essay: Encounters with Amnesia: Confronting the ghosts of Australian landscape | Inga Simpson

• Judith Wright | The love of the land we have invaded, and the guilt of invasion - have become a part of me. It is a haunted country.
• Louisa Atkinson | 1853 | The Illustrated Sydney News | Nature Notes

• Eric Rolls | A Million Wild Acres | 1981
• Mark Tredinnick | The Blue Plateau | 2009
• One of the most obvious characteristics of Australian nature writingnis the tension, for non-Indigenous Australians, around how to write about our connection to the places we love, knowing that those places were stolen from others, and possibly sites of violence.
• Although thinking of ourselves as a bush nation, we are, in fact, urban and suburban - and increasingly illiterate in nature.
• Nature writing...is...about wanting to belong, a yearning for connection with the natural world and the places in which we live. To be at home....Instead of trying to write ourselves all over the landscape, it is time to hear what it is saying and write it deeper into our selves.

This is the very first Griffith Review I have read from cover to cover. 

Previously I have enjoyed the occasional essay or story when an online prompt led me to the one free monthly read I am allowed as a non-subscriber. I was, however, particularly drawn to the topic of this edition. I figured it would have lots to say about the environment, climate change, Indigenous perspectives and landscape. It did. 

My Goodreads wishlist has exploded as I pour over the individual the bibliographies and I have found new authors to explore. I have discovered new-to-me websites and environmental projects that not only provide the scientific facts about climate but also give us all hope that we can really look after this planet we live on, if we really want to.

I won't be able to devote as much time as I have for this edition to all future editions, or even to catching up on the back list editions. It will be a case of cherry-picking the topics and authors that interest me or challenge me the most.

The various essays, stories and poems in this edition, helped me to complete several squares on my AusReadingMonth Bingo card - NSW, VIC, QLD, TAS and WA. As a bonus, I also ticked off a few nearby islands - Heron Island, Lord Howe Island and PNG.

#AusReadingMonth
#NonFictionNovember

Trace Fossils by Alice Gorman

I plan to read Alice Gorman's Dr Space Junk vs the Universe (2019) in the very near future. Knowing I wouldn't have time to feature it during this year's #AusReadingMonth, I decided to search for any other examples of her essay writing instead, to give us all a taste of what's to come.

Trace Fossils: The Silence of Ediacara, the shadow of uranium popped in the Griffith Review 55: State of Hope | Jan 2017 - an edition dedicated entirely to South Australia. It also appeared on The Conversation: Friday essay | 3 Feb 2017.

I'm rather fascinated by the whole idea of space archaeology (the archaeology of orbital debris, terrestrial launch sites, and satellite tracking stations), which is the field that Gorman lectures in at Flinders University. However, she began her career working on Indigenous stone tool analysis and the Aboriginal use of bottle glass after European settlement, which is where this essay is coming from.

My first question was what are trace fossils? Gorman describes them as - the preserved impressions left by the passage of a living body through sediment.

Wikipedia expanded this by saying that they are impressions or other preserved signs of activity left by animals, plants, protists, and bacteria. These can be tubes, lines, scratches, or other features, like dinosaur footprints or shrimp burrows. They are created in soft sediments and have been found in rocks as far back as the Late Precambrian (2 billion to half a billion years ago).

Apparently South Australia, around the remote areas of Woomera and the Nullarbor Plain, have plenty of trace fossils on offer. This area was once covered by glaciers during various ice ages followed by seas as the glaciers retreated and the earth warmed up. Storm surges caused an influx of sediment that embedded fern fronds and other sea creatures. Segmented worms were squashed, curled up on the bottom of the sea bed.

As Gondwanaland was created these old sea beds were pushed up into mountain ranges.

Which brings us to the Ediacaran Period, a geological period I had never heard of before. It began 635 million years ago and ended 542 million years ago with the Cambrian explosion of animal life. It's a relatively 'new' period, only receiving official status in 2004. Ediacaran fossils were first discovered by Reg Sprigg in 1946 in the Ediacaran Hills, Flinders Ranges. They indicate the earliest forms of complex life on earth.

Now you know!

Gorman provides a very readable, easy to follow potted history of the area to current times. From giant megafauna and Aboriginal life, the arrival of colonists and cattle, the hunt for uranium, a rocket testing range to nuclear bomb testing.

Aboriginal people became a trace fossil in the land deemed empty – hidden in plain sight. Kokatha, Pitjantjatjara, Adnyamathanha and Barngarla people lived on missions around the state, and gathered in coastal towns that offered them the employment that the rocket range had promised but didn’t deliver. 

At this time, white Australians thought Aboriginal occupation had been a few thousand years at most, and many believed Aboriginal people were dying out – the inevitable result of the “stone age” being superseded by the “space age”.

Visiting these areas devastated by livestock and human intervention is a sobering experience, yet Gorman is constantly fascinated by the small details, the junk, if you like, that is left behind. Whether it's a crushed fern fossil from a billion years ago, a twisted coke can in the sand or twisty ties left tied to a fence around a nuclear test site. They all tell a story.

Modern uses for this remote area of SA now include detention centres, farms for giant wind turbines and tourism.

the same apparent “emptiness” that brought rockets, nuclear tests and detention centres now attracts commercial interest in storing nuclear waste from other nations. It’s the end of a cycle that starts with the mining and export of Australian uranium. The redistribution of uranium is a very Anthropocene process, part of the dismantling and reassembling of the planet.

As a long-time fanatic of geology, archaeology, anthropology and evolutionary studies, this tantalising but brief glimpse into the life and times of the desert of South Australia has stirred some dormant microbes of excitement and intellectual stimulation within me.

It's funny (peculiar) how only last week I was considering my collection of fossil books as a possibility for the Non-fiction November | Be the Expert week. Ever since, I've had these vague stirrings of longing to reread the Leakey family bio and the various books on Pompeii, Troy, Charles Darwin, fossils and evolution that I have tucked away somewhere.

Curiously my current fiction read, The Garden of Fugitives by Ceridwen Dovey also has a Pompeian archaeology story strand. Finding Gorman's Trace Fossil essay was obviously meant to be.

If you can recommend any other books about archaeological digs, fossils or evolution, I would love to hear about them in the comments below.

Image source

Favourite Quote: deep time is always waiting to burst through the crusts of the surface.

Facts:

• To find out how Gorman became a space archaeologist, you can read about it on her Dr Space Junk blog.
• Trace Fossils was the winner of the the Bragg UNSW Press Prize for Science Writing 2017

Till Apples Grow on an Orange Tree by Cassandra Pybus

From chaste kisses to lost innocence; from the bohemian world of sixties Sydney to the counterculture in San Francisco; from radical feminism to disillusion, Cassandra Pybus opens the door on her own remarkable life and transforms it into a mirror which reflects ourselves. Her candid and passionate journey through personal memory and history offers a meditation on place, on politics, and on the pain of disappointment and betrayal, interwoven with an unexpectedly heart-warming love story.

 A few years ago I spotted this little gem on the shelves of a second-hand bookshop. It was almost AusReadingMonth and I thought that it would be the perfect slim read to fill out my schedule. For reasons I can no longer remember, I didn't fit it into my schedule that year. Or subsequent years...until 2019.

It was a prompt from within the Griffith Review 63 (that I'm currently reading) that brought Till Apples Grow on an Orange Tree to the top of my TBR.
Cassandra Pybus wrote a memoir piece for the Griffith Review titled Every Path Tells: Traversing the Landscape of Memory. I thoroughly enjoyed her writing and quickly realised that reading one of her books might help my Tasmanian box in the AusReadingMonth Bingo card.

Every Path Tells was an essay about the power of story telling, walking as meditation and the capacity of nature to soothe the soul. In Pybus' case, the natural environment was Tasmania, Lower Snug in particular, the home of her family and full of happy childhood memories.
However, at the start of the essay she finds herself, in her thirties, in Sydney, realising 'the simple proposition that my life was unfolding without my willing it.'

A trip back to Tasmania changed everything.

Suspended beneath Australia like a heart-shaped pendant of sapphire, emerald and tourmaline, Tasmania is where the world peters out in a succession of rugged peninsulas that ultimately crumble into the vast expanse of the Southern Ocean. Peering through the small window as the plane descended across the jagged Freycinet Peninsula into the tiny Hobart airport, I felt an inexplicable surge of pure satisfaction. It was as if Constantine Cavafy spoke directly to me: 'Arriving there is what you are destined for'.

Her descriptions of her walks are just lovely. I could almost smell the forests and feel the imprinted paths through them. I wanted to follow the desire lines to see where they might lead me too.

For Pybus, they led her home. To a strong sense of family and belonging, and to a second chance of love. For me, I gained a greater desire to see Tasmania for myself, to read more of Pybus' works and her bibliography has now added Heather Rose's Bruny and Robert MacFarlane's Understory to my wish list.

I confess that I knew next to nothing about Pybus. Reading about her interest in nature, feminism and history made me wonder how on earth this had happened. Surely with these common interests, I should have bumped into her writing somewhere before in the past 20 years.

For whatever reason, though, this was my first excursion into her writing and opinion.

Till Apples Grow on an Orange Tree was a memoir told via unconnected essays-as-memory. In one of the early essays I recognised elements from the her Griffith Review piece that had been reworked. I'm fascinated by this process. As a journal writer from way back, the reworking of an old idea that has had to time to be re-evaluated with maturity, new knowledge, experience and perspective is something I have played with at various times in my writing life. I'm sure I will have more to say about this process when I get to the end of Helen Garner's, Yellow Notebooks though!

A curiosity was discovering that Pybus and Garner had been friends, or at least friendly. But no longer. She delicately revealed that there is no more possibility of a friendship. I will now be searching for C or P references in Garner's notebook!

Pybus' essays started in the 1960's with her high school years, her best friend, Chloe, their uni years, messy love affairs and Chloe's eventual and tragically dramatic suicide. She explored her parents back stories with sensitivity and love.

I responded to her discussions about not belonging and transitory migration. I also moved around a number of times as a child, and struggled to find a place to belong as an adult. Pybus discovered that she could reinvent herself over and over again as the past does not hold you. Whereas I found, that you could run from your past as often as you like, and try to reinvent yourself any number of ways, but the past would always come back. It may not hold you, but it will haunt you until you face it squarely head on. And accept it and yourself.

Pybus' second chance at love also resonated with my own story. Maybe one day I will have the resources to reflect on my own love story, to give it a writerly meaning and context. It's an idea that itches and scratches at me occasionally, but I have many reservations. Like Pybus I believe that we all tell stories to give shape to our lives, but not every story needs to be made public!

I thoroughly enjoyed her history pieces about Tasmania. Lower Snug, Bruny Island and the  Indigenous history of this area.

We cannot remake the past, but surely the promise remains that we can remake the future, if only we can find it in ourselves to acknowledge the injustice of the past - from which we have benefited - and make some recompense.

Her pieces on Port Arthur and the Chinese in Tasmania felt less convincing though. A bit too meandering, and at times they felt like a writer in search of a story, any story.

Reflections on the Vietnam war protests from someone who actually participated in them will always be interesting for those of us too young to really remember this time.

A few of her pieces were obviously early thoughts about a topic that later became books - White Rajah: A Dynastic Intrigue (after spending time in Sarawak with her her husband's work) - The Woman who Walked to Russia: A writer's search for a lost legend (or a travelogue through the Canadian wilds). This piece also considered the pros and cons of solo travel; sometime I have also had plenty of opportunity to ponder.

I thoroughly enjoyed my time in Pybus' hands and will happily read more by her in the future, especially if it's about Tasmania. Her connection to the home of her early years, shines through with an authenticity and heart that makes these pieces rise up above the rest.

Facts:

• Pybus won the Colin Roderick Award in 1993 for Gross Moral Turpitude.

Week 3 - Non-Fiction November

Week 3: (Nov. 11 to 15) – Be The Expert/Ask the Expert/Become the Expert (Katie at Doing Dewey): Three ways to join in this week! You can either share 3 or more books on a single topic that you have read and can recommend (be the expert), you can put the call out for good nonfiction on a specific topic that you have been dying to read (ask the expert), or you can create your own list of books on a topic that you’d like to read (become the expert).

As discussed in my week 2 Non-Fiction November post, I'm keen to know more about the GDR, life behind the Wall and the impact of the Wall coming down in 1989. So if you have any expert knowledge on this topic, please feel free to share in the comments.

However this week, I will turn the non-fiction gaze back to me, to show off  highlight some of the stuff I know, thanks to books!

Previously I have explored the Holocaust, Coco Chanel and Napoleon.

My 2014 Holocaust and Coco Chanel Be the Expert post is here.
My 2017 Holocaust Be the Expert post is here.
My 2018 Napoleon Be the Expert post is here.

This year we will travel to Japan.

My fascination with Japan goes back to my high school days when I studied Japanese for two and half years. Sadly, I am nowhere near as proficient in the language as that impressive claim might otherwise sound. But my obsession with cherry blossoms, tea ceremonies and Hiroshima dates back to this time.

I vaguely remember watching the TV series of Shogun back in the early 80's, but priests running around old Japan with swords failed to really capture my imagination. Not long after, A Town Like Alice was turned into a TV drama in Australia starring a young Bryan Brown. Here I learnt about many of the Japanese atrocities that happened in Malaysia in WWII. When my family moved to Cowra and I started taking Japanese classes, these were the two stories which formed my main views about Japan.

Quickly I was caught up on Cowra's own very personal history with Japan during WWII via the so-called Cowra Break-Out. Cowra still maintains a Japanese war cemetery from this time and now has a beautiful Japanese Garden created by Takeshi "Ken" Nakajima. This is where I caught the Japanese fetish for cherry blossoms. For five formative years during my teens, whilst we lived in Cowra, visiting the gardens in the spring time was the thing to do and something to look forward to. Long before selfies and hashtags, I was hooked on getting photos of swirling pink blossoms!

During my China phase in my twenties, I read a number of stories and histories that depicted the Japanese soldiers in China between the two world wars and into WWII. It was not a happy experience for the Chinese.

Over the years I have also read and watched a number of stories about the Japanese bombing of Pearl Harbour, life in Changi prison, the fall of Singapore, the battle of Midway, the Kokoda Trail, the Burma Railway, the Vyner Brooke nurses captured in Singapore and James A Michiner's Sayonara.

It has only been in the past decade or so that I have finally started reading books set in Japan, written by Japanese authors.

Murakami was my first love, but I have broadened my range into Japanese classic literature, popular fiction and haiku (including Basho's travelling haiku classic Narrow Road to the Interior).

You can check out ALL the books on my blog that have been labelled 'Japan' or you can read about my non-fiction picks below.

• The tsunami of 2011 has spawned many books including Strong in the Rain by Lucy Birmingham & David McNeill. But my favourite was Ghosts of the Tsunami by Richard Lloyd Parry - an in-depth study into the effects of the tsunami on one particular community.

• I adored Murakami's What I Talk About When I Talk About Running. I'm not a runner, but this books still resonated on so many levels. Highly recommended.

For tales of modern travellers in Japan try:

• Jane Lawson's Tokyo Style Guide - full of amazing vibrant photography.
• Neon Pilgrim by Lisa Dempster - a terrific description of a young woman's attempt to walk the 88 Temples of Shikoku.
• Peter Carey wrote a slim volume about taking his teenage son to Japan in Wrong About Japan.
• And I wrote a post in which I discuss the best travel guides to take to Japan.

Children's books also feature on my backlist:

• Yoko's Diary edited by Paul Ham was an award winning book about the story of a Hiroshima victim and her half-brother, who survived.

I continue to LOVE books about the food and culture of Japan. Most of these are still reads in progress, as I dip in and out of them when I can.

• Tokyo Local by Caryn Liew & Brendan Liew
• Tokyo by Steve Wilde & Michelle Mackintosh
• Rice Noodle Fish by Matt Goulding
• Shinrin-yoku by Yoshifumi Miyazaki
• Onsen of Japan by Steve Wilde & Michelle Mackintosh

And because I can't help myself, I have a collection of non-fiction books about Japan, waiting for me to have the time to read them. Have you read any of these? Which ones should I prioritise?

• Lonely Planet's Best of Japan
• Hokkaido Highway Blues by Will Ferguson
• Riding the Trains in Japan by Patrick Holland
• Absolutely on Music by Murakami and Ozawa
• Autobiography of a Geisha by Sayo Masuda
• The Book of Tea by Kakuzo Okakura
• Men Without Women by Murakami
• Hiroshima by John Hersey
• Lost Japan by Alex Kerr
• On the Narrow Road: Journey into a Lost Japan by Lesley Downer
• The Wages of Guilt: Memories of War in Germany and Japan by Ian Buruma

It took 35 years, but last year, for my 50th birthday, I finally saw cherry blossoms in Japan! It was a truly magical experience. Worth the wait in pink gold!

If you have any more inspired choices about travelling, living or eating in Japan, or any biography/history recommendations about the Japanese experience of WWII, I'd love to know.

Arigatou-gozaimasu ありがとうございます

Week 2 - Non-Fiction November

Week 2: (Nov. 4 to 8) – Book Pairing (Sarah of Sarah’s Book Shelves): This week, pair up a nonfiction book with a fiction title. It can be a “If you loved this book, read this!” or just two titles that you think would go well together. Maybe it’s a historical novel and you’d like to get the real history by reading a nonfiction version of the story.

Book Pairing was made easy for me this year, thanks to my most recent book group read. Normally I highlight the books I've read during the year, that go together nicely (I could have done Moby-Dick and Why Read Moby-Dick? or the bio about Mary Wollstonecraft and her daughter, Mary Shelley with Frankenstein, The Monsters we Deserve, FranKissStein and A Vindication of the Rights of Woman.) But no.

This year, I'm asking for your help to pair me up with a book or two.

For November we read Confession with Blue Horses by Sophie Hardach. I quickly realised as I was reading that the history of the GDR was one that I was very unfamiliar with. I'm not sure how that happened.

I've studied WWII, the Holocaust, the Russian Revolution, the Cuban Revolution and the Chinese Revolution. I've read about the American war in Vietnam and I studied Germany between the wars. In fact, I've circled right around the GDR, but have never entered.

I vividly recall the night in 1989, in my final year at Uni, when we all sat around in the common room together to watch the Wall come down. We were young and full of our own futures, but that night, we were suddenly made aware that we were watching history in the making.

And now thanks to Confession with Blue Horses I want to know more.

I currently have these non-fiction options on my wish list:

• Günter Grass - From Germany to Germany
• Anna Funder - Stasiland: Stories from Behind the Berlin Wall
• Christa Wolf - Patterns of Childhood
• Jana Hensel - After the Wall

And thanks to week one of Non-fiction November, I have added: 

• Nina Willner - Forty Autumns: A Family's Story of Courage and Survival on Both Sides of the Berlin Wall

Do you know of any more (non-fiction) books about the Wall, the GDR perspective, history, the after effects etc? Please help.

Week 1 NonFiction November

I'm so busy, with so many different things at the moment, that I'm simply going to jump straight into this challenge. I'll save the friendly chit-chat for the comments I expect to make as I travel around all the other participants posts.

Week 1: (Oct. 28 to Nov. 1) – Your Year in Nonfiction (Julz of Julz Reads):
Take a look back at your year of nonfiction and reflect on the following questions -

(1) What was your favourite nonfiction read of the year? 

• To start with I will list my non-fiction reads over the past 12 months by genre.
• Favourites will be highlighted.

Memoir/Biogrpahy

Romantic Outlaws: The Extraordinary Lives of Mary Wollstonecraft and Mary Shelley by Charlotte Gordon

Three Women by Lisa Taddeo

Becoming by Michelle Obama

All Happy Families: A Memoir by Herve Le Tellier

(A) The World Was Whole by Fiona Wright

(A) Any Ordinary Day by Leigh Sales

Nature/Science/Environmental

Strong in the Rain by Lucy Birmingham & David McNeill

(A) City of Trees by Sophie Cunningham

(A) Australian Dreamscapes by Claire Takacs

The Hidden Life of Trees: The Illustrated Edition by Peter Wohllenben

Feminism

(A) Accidental Feminists by Jane Caro

A Vindication of the Rights of Woman by Mary Wollstonecraft

Health/Self-help

Everything is F*cked: A Book About Hope by Mark Manson

(A) The Feel Good Menopause Guide by Nicola Gates (Not yet reviewed)

(A) Create Calm by Kate James

History/Politics

(A) From Secret Ballot to Democracy Sausage: How Australia Got Compulsory Voting by Judith Brett

(A) Rusted Off: Why Country Australia is Fed Up by Gabrielle Chan

The Silk Roads: A New History of the World: Illustrated Edition by Peter Frankopan (Not yet reviewed)

Inglorious Empire: What the British Did to India by Shashi Tharoor

Indigenous

(A) On Identity by Stan Grant (Review to be published. Link is to my goodreads page of quotes.)

(A) Welcome to Country: A Travel Guide to Indigenous Australia by Marcia Langton

Food

(A) Family: New vegetable classics to comfort and nourish by Hetty McKinnon (Recipes to try)

The Cookbook by Ottolenghi

Simple by Ottolenghi

(A) Special Guest by Annabel Crabb & Wendy Sharpe

(A) Sydney Seafood School Cookbook

Lifestyle

(A) Bohemian Living by Robyn Lea

Books on Books

The Real Jane Austen by Paula Byrne

Why Read Moby-Dick? by Nathaniel Philbrick

The Novel of the Century: The Extraordinary Adventure of Les Miserables by David Bellos (Review to be published)

(A) Books That Saved My Life: Reading For Wisdom, Solace and Pleasure by Michael McGirr

Art

(A) Mirka & Georges: A Culinary Affair by Lesley Harding & Kendrah Morgan

(A) A Painted Landscape by Amber Creswell Bell

Children's

(A) Sorry Day by Coral Vass

(A) Waves by Donna Rawlins

(A) So She Did the Story of May Worth by Simi 

(A) Young Dark Emu by Bruce Pascoe (Review to be published. Link is to my goodreads page of quotes.)

(2) Do you have a particular topic you’ve been attracted to more this year? 

• I can see that memoir/biography has stayed my favourite form of non-fiction (no surprises there!) 
• The pleasant addition this year has been an increase in the use of and interest in cooking interesting things again now that B22 and B19 have moved out of home (we love them heaps but it's lovely just being two grown ups, eating grown up food again). 
• I'm also enjoying the gorgeousness of coffee table books more.

(3) What nonfiction book have you recommended the most this year? 

• Any Ordinary Day
• Mirka & Georges

(4) What are you hoping to get out of participating in Nonfiction November?

• to show off the wonderful Australian non-fiction books I've read this year.
• to finish the three (Australian) non-fiction titles half-read by my bed.
• to find the next must-read bio/memoir.
• I'm also keen to hear about more graphic non-fiction & finally read my copy of Andrea Wulf & Lillian Melcher's illustrated The Adventures of Alexander Humboldt.