#27. The Amateur Marriage: Anne Tyler

So I gave up reading about writers, and started reading about marriages instead. The Amateur Marriage follows a similar theme to Love and Other Infidelities, in that it looks at how a marriage goes wrong. But what I also enjoyed about this is its exploration of what must have been an incredibly common phenomenon - couples marrying in the heat of the moment amidst the chaos of World War II, only to be left with the reality of post-war America, living in the suburbs with someone who may be all wrong for them, wishing they had made different choices, but having to live with the consequences.
This book also gives a view of the whole lives of central characters Michael and Pauline by taking jumps forward in time - how they get together, raise their family, fall apart, what they do next, and how their children grow up.
There is something of the detached observer in Anne Tyler's writing, and I feel I don't know enough of the characters. This is particularly frustrating in the subplot of the vanishing of Michael and Pauline's daughter Lindy - I wanted to know more about how they coped with it, why she did it, what happened to her. So it was a little dissatisfying in this respect.
And maybe this slightly dispassionate tone comes from the fact that the characters, for the most part, lived a life devoid of passion - even any enjoyment, it seemed.
Despite this (and I do like a bit more excitement and passion in my books), it was beautifully written and a thoroughly enjoyable read.

#26. Love & Other Infidelities: Helen Townsend

This is the book I always thought should have been written - about what happens after the 'happily ever after', when you find 'the one' and everything is meant to be clear and easy from then. When I was younger, I used to wonder why people wrote about the search for someone to love, and what happened after they had proved to be the wrong one, but not about what happened in between. Well this certainly does – charting the slow crumbling of a marriage in gut-wrenching detail.
Set in Sydney, the novel works chronologically through the years from 1975 to 1994. Each chapter has multiple narrators, so you get the perspective of various characters on the complicated interweaving of relationships over two decade. This device, while unsophisticated and a little jarring in the early chapters when you're trying to figure out how these people fit together, highlights how different a single situation - especially the inner workings of an intimate relationship - can look through different eyes.
In the end, though, it just made me feel kind of sad - and maybe that's why people tend not to write these books.

#25. Girl from the South: Joanna Trollope

I love Joanna Trollope, but I haven't read one of her books for years - not since Marrying the Mistress and Other People's Children. I love her style of writing, especially because the characters she creates and the scenarios she places them in are so real, and yet still light-hearted and engaging enough to ensure that you don't feel depressed at the unrelenting reality of it.
Girl from the South straddles London and Charleston, South Carolina to examine thirty-something angst - finding love, finding the right job, working out where you fit in, and so on. There are men who can't commit, girls who can't work out whether they want to be married mothers or to go a completely different way, and all are feeling like time is ticking - that things should be getting serious. Of course, my favourite character is Tilly, the features editor (there I go with the writers again!), who can't get her boyfriend Henry to marry her and instead ends up in an unsuitable relationship with unsuitable William who has been in love with her forever.
It should be predictable and irritating - but it's not. And that's the joy of Joanna Trollope.

#24. Chocolat: Joanne Harris

Now I realise that I may be one of the last remaining people on the planet not to have either read this book or seen the movie with Juliette Binoche and Johnny Depp, but somehow I managed to completely miss both, up until now.
I loved this book, and its light-hearted whimsy was the perfect antidote to the increasingly depressing tales I have been reading recently. It has such a lovely array of characters, and I enjoyed stepping into the little village of Lansquenet every night with Vianne and her daughter Anouk, and imagining that lovely patissier with its beautiful chocolate delights. But it had just enough conflict and darkness to avoid sickly sweetness.
It also reminded me of the pleasures of fiction for its own sake, unclouded by too much 'worthiness'.

Dog vs cat people

You know the old dog vs. cat people argument - that you're either one or the other?
Personally I'm a rabbit person (but with definite underlying leanings toward dogs).
Anyway, my mum recounted a conversation she witnessed (and participated in) last week at, of all places, a medical clinic. A woman was raving to another woman about how fantastic Elizabeth Gilbert's Eat Pray Love was, how life-changing, etc [insert Oprah here]. Until another woman piped up to say she didn't like it. And then my mum told everyone she hated it. Couldn't finish it. Didn't even get out of Italy.
So this got us thinking, is Eat Pray Love the new dichotomy dividing women of a certain age? Is the world now split into women who loved it, and women who wanted to give Elizabeth a good smack and tell her to stop whingeing about having a crap marriage/not wanting kids/lusting after younger men/NOT BEING ABLE TO MEDITATE for heaven's sake and just get on with it?
Could it become a kind of shorthand to find out whether you're going to get along with another woman, or whether your world views will be inconvertibly divergent?
Come on, you can tell me - which side of the Eat Pray Love fence do you sit on?

#23. Blinding Light: Paul Theroux

I'm conscious that I'm becoming a bit of a whinger on this blog. But really, I've had a bad run with books lately. Unfortunately, this one is no different. (Fortunately, this run of bad choices has definitely ended, as I am reading Chocolat by Joanne Harris at the moment and enjoying it immensely - a chocolatier/witch in a French village is just what I need.) First of all, I'm placing a temporary ban on any books with writers as their central characters. I get the whole 'write what you know' thing, but really, after about six books so far this year, it gets a little tiresome, and given that I find myself mired in the writing process on a daily basis, doesn't really provide the escapism I'm looking for in my fiction.
I hated this book. I hated the misogynistic, self-indulgent character of Slade Steadman, a one-hit-wonder writer who was fabulously successful and made a fortune from travel goods, who goes on a 'drug tour' of Ecuador and finds a hallucinogen that makes him able to pen a brilliant second book, through rendering him temporary blind. I hated that this long-awaited masterpiece was just about him reliving his various sexual experiences (like it was so fascinating to others). I hated that he managed to get his supposedly intelligent doctor girlfriend Ava to act like a glorified dictaphone and then in her time off, become his sexual puppet. I hated the weird introduction of Bill Clinton's infidelity into the storyline. And I particularly hated the continuing fiction he acted out in his life about being really blind, when he was just doping himself up every day.
In fact the only part I liked about the book was when he eventually got his comeuppance. But my short-lived enjoyment was ruined when two-dimensional Ava turned into a conniving, malicious lesbian. At first I wanted to applaud that she finally shook off whatever was keeping her in his thrall, but she was so nasty it just didn't make sense. Where was that backbone when he was being such a pain? The 'twist' in the story was reminiscent of some well-worn morality tale, and held about all the interest.
Just don't go there.
For the time being, I'm also swearing off gritty realism. You can have far too much of a good thing.

#22. Breakdown, Breakthrough – The Professional Woman's Guide to Claiming a Life of Passion, Power and Purpose: Kathy Caprino

I didn't really read this book out of choice – it is research for a ghostwriting project I am working on. It's a bit too 'I am woman, hear me roar' for me, and I was embarrassed reading it on the bus. Plus, given that I'm not currently having a breakdown or seeking a breakthrough, it didn't really resonate with me (well, until I got to the middle, when I started to think maybe I could do with a breakthrough too...). Putting all that aside for the time being, if I was a professional woman struggling with questions like, "Is this all there is?", "Why can't I manage better?", or "What do I want to do with the rest of my life?", then I can see it might help. Basically Caprino discusses 12 disempowerment crises, which relate to women's relationship with self, with others, with the world and with higher self. Caprino says she has experienced all 12 crises personally, which to me, suggests she must have been something of a train wreck at various stages. But never fear, she broke through and explains how everyone else can too. Each chapter describes the experience of other women who have been through the particular crisis it is focusing on, therapy-speak on how to identify and get over it, and then a series of action steps and a Breakthrough affirmation (it is a self-help book after all).
Despite the slightly annoying tone, it largely presents common sense, and I think the format would really work for someone feeling overwhelmed and a bit stuck, as it provides a simple way to work through the issues they are facing, perhaps start getting some perspective and move forward towards something better.

#21. Let's Not Screw It, Let's Just Do It: Richard Branson

I was really looking forward to this book after reading Richard Branson's first book, but it ended up being a bit of a disappointment. A lot of the material about his life was obviously taken almost straight from Losing My Virginity, and it seemed to have been written for a 12-year-old. Plus Branson comes across as a little patronising. The 'lessons' for business life and entrepreneurship it presents, while sound, are a little basic – but it's the kind of book you would turn to for inspiration, rather than guidance. And Branson is certainly one of a kind.
One thing I did find quite encouraging was that even though in some ways Richard Branson seems like an entrepreneurial force of nature, it still takes time for his various ventures to get off the ground... he plugged away for two years trying to get advertisers in his Student magazine (he was still at school, but even so), and it took five years for Virgin to get their trains up and running. So as well as boldness, courage and innovative thinking, persistence is obviously one of his greatest attributes – and I think that is something that gets missed in Branson's 'business cowboy' image.

#20. Unless: Carol Shields

So if feels like I've overdosed on Carol Shields a little bit now, perhaps because Unless, though far more accomplished, felt very much like Duet, which I read only a few weeks ago. Again the central character is a female writer (who seem to pop up in EVERYTHING I read at the moment - what is my subsconscious trying to tell me?) who is a mother to three daughters, the eldest of whom has decided to 'drop out' of society and beg on a street corner. She is always on the same corner, and although the other members of her family try to engage with her, she never acknowledges them.
The whole story is about how her mother tries to continue to function, not having lost her daughter through death but somehow losing her more completely - through an inability to touch her or to understand what could have lead her to this point. Shields' characteristic 'voice' is as strong as ever, spare and elegant, but I never really got a true sense of the ravaging pain this mother felt - just a kind of hollow reflection of what it might be. There were glimpses of it, through letters to other writers and public figures, filled with impotent anger covered by a veneer of polite debate or admonishment. In this way it was a little disappointing - I wanted a much more visceral sense of how this experience marked her.
I think I'm just a bit over this style of writing – need something quite different. Of course, the next book in the pile is Blinding Light by Paul Theroux... with a male writer as the central character. That would be right.

#19. Good to Great: Jim Collins

Good to Great was one of these business books I had heard a lot of people talk about, and so decided to read myself. What surprised me when I picked it up was that rather than being the musings of some self-identified management 'guru', it was instead based on the results of a five-year study at the University of Colorado. Collins' previous book, Built to Last, was similarly based on a research project, looking at what it was that made enduring large companies successfully.
In Good to Great, he looked at what made good companies make the leap to being great companies. And these were not just 'flash-in-the-pan' successes – the selection process ensured that the 11 companies included in the study produced outstanding results for 15 years. The methodology for both the selection of companies, their analysis and the comparison with others in their sector was complicated and data-driven, and ultimately this is what makes the book good. Collins and his team of graduate student researchers puzzled over the data to truly understand what made these companies tick, and sometimes they had to deal with information that on the surface, didn't seem to make any sense.
In the end, they came up with a conceptual framework, based on the findings of this research, that shows how a good company can make the leap to greatness.
The components of this framework were:
1. Level 5 Leadership
2. First Who, Then What
3. Confront the Brutal Facts
4. Hedgehog Concept
5. Culture of Discipline
6. Technology Accelerators.
These six components work together through a buildup and breakthrough stage, and Collins also makes the comparison between what he calls the Flywheel and the Doom Loop – one where a company creates positive momentum, and the Doom Loop, as you might guess, where it is negative momentum.
Throughout the explanation of this theoretical framework, he uses examples of the 11 Good to Great companies to illustrate how they work in practice, and there are extensive appendices providing more detail of the analysis and research process. There is also a section which links the concepts from Built to Last with those discovered through the Good to Great study.
While overall it is grounded so much more heavily in verifiable fact rather than someone's opinion and as such contains excellent insights for business owners, as a book I found it hard going at times.
I also had a few question marks over some of the companies included under the heading of 'greatness' – for instance, in terms of performance Phillip Morris delivers, but should we really be looking to a company which profits from addiction as a model? Another of the 'great' companies was Fannie Mae – while in 2001, when the book was published, surely no one could have predicted its role in the unwinding of the US economy, but still, reading the comments about its innovative model of packaging mortgage backed securities and the role these played in its success left me a little bemused in the light of recent events.
Definitely worth a read for anyone aspiring to create a large, 'great' company – or if you're interested in a more empirical approach to business-building theory.

#18. On Beauty – Zadie Smith

This is the first book by Zadie Smith I have read – I was originally looking for White Teeth as I have heard so many good things about that, but had to settle for this. With the description on the inside flap saying it was about an English academic living with his family in a college town in the US and the consequences of a short-lived romance between young couple, I was hoping for something a bit like David Lodge. Especially when it was supposed to be 'very funny indeed' as well. It didn't turn out to live up to that kind of level of fun unfortunately - and as well as being a bit serious, it lacked coherence. What was it about? The problems associated with marriage in middle age, race issues, academic politics... who knows really. But none of it was very funny. The other issue I had with it was that there was no central protagonist – instead, Smith seemed to have about 15 characters who she alternated between, presenting parts of the narrative from their various perspectives. As a result, I didn't care about any of them, or really understand what they were about. It felt as though she got halfway down the path of illustrating what drove some of the actions and then went somewhere else... leaving a very unfinished feeling. Disappointing.

#17. Duet – Carol Shields

Duet is actually two short novels – Carol Shields's first two books, previously published as Small Ceremonies in 1976 and The Box Garden in 1977. In the introduction, she says she always thought of them as companion novels, as they are about a pair of sisters, Judith and Charleen. Actually, to be accurate, the first is only about Judith, although the sisters are brought together by their mother's late-in-life second wedding in the second book.
While the characters are carefully wrought and the writing is engaging, these feel like very small stories – they don't have any of the complexity or the emotional impact of a book like Larry's Party, for instance. I found myself wondering often, 'What is the point of this story?' and 'Is that all?' The plot in the first book, in Duet named 'Judith', sets up what seems to be an explosive secret, buy in the end the anticipated fireworks do not ensue, and instead it seems to simply fizzle out. They really feel like novels with training wheels, as if Shields had not yet developed the skills to make her books fly and leave a lasting impression. Having said that, even these slightly underdone books are streets ahead of the works of so many other writers.

#16. Prosperity – Arch Angel

OK, so I actually finished this book before the Bloomberg bonanza, but I wasn't sure I was going to post about it (or add it to my reading list) as I was a bit embarrassed that I had read it. But I did, probably because in the current climate, prosperity seems a little thin on the ground, and it had a rather fetching picture of some angel wings on the cover.
The inside cover explains Prosperity as a practical guide to some simple changes you can make to your life to live abundantly. It is written as a series of ten meetings, between 'Arch Angel' (the author) and Ned and Kate, a pair of materially and spiritually bankrupt young people who need a great cosmic kick up the butt to get their lives back on track. Each meeting contains the dialogue between the three, and includes some 'homework' exercises each week for the reader to try at home, which are the same ones the fictional Ned and Kate experiment with, and report on their results.
While it is hopefully twee and cringeworthy some of the time, if you are interested in the whole Secret/quantum physics/abundance 'thing', it actually explains some of the concepts in a more comprehensible way than anything I have read or seen before, and provides a roadmap to introduce them into your life, if you so desire. Whether they work - who knows? What was also refreshing for me is that it does not only focus on material wealth as the expression of prosperity or abundance, but also considers quality of life, spirituality, and your relationship with and contribution to others - which all seems a lot more sound than just being able to "manifest" a parking space next to the entrance of the shopping centre.
Embarrassing confession over. Next up, Carol Shields. Not sure she would take a second look at a self-help book if she fell over it.

So many books, so little time...

I read a particularly funny column in the Sunday Life magazine last week, about 'The rise of the dummy mummies', written by Rachel Cooke. She basically asked why it was necessary for new mothers to become "boring, selfish and smug", and how it impacts on non-mothers like herself.
She said when people ask her why she doesn't want to have children, she usually says, "I'm worried I won't have enough time to read". Good point.
This was then followed by an existential crisis while I was at the library, about having to make good book choices – after all, just how many books will I be able to read in my lifetime? Does that mean I need to guard against duds, even if I manage to keep up a rate of 40+ books a year? And what if, for a period while meeting the needs of hopefully forthcoming children, this falls to just 20 a year, or even 10? Am I going to miss out on some really good books?
While the beauty of libraries for me is the abundance of choice and the absence of penalty for making the wrong choice (no money invested, no compulsion to finish it, just take it back), this dilemma has thrown a whole new light on things. Thoughts?

#15. Bloomberg by Bloomberg – Michael Bloomberg and Matthew Winkler

As we are on the verge of launching our own online content service, AssociationWire, I picked up this book as I thought it would be interesting to read the insights of someone who has built a billion-dollar company through providing information and media.
It was interesting to read about Michael Bloomberg's early career as a Wall Street hotshot for Salomon Brothers and how he was eventually 'set free' after 15 years, going on to establish a company built first on the Bloomberg financial information console, which would become an essential for traders the world over, but then added to the empire with news, TV, and other media. Written in 1997, it now seems a little outdated, and one wonders what he would make of the internet explosion that has happened since then, with its incredible impact on the media and transmission of information.
I guess the key difference between his company and a business like ours is that when he started up, he had received a lazy $10 million (in 1981, no less) as a payout from Salomon, so he was hardly on the poverty line. While he preaches about creating a lean and hungry company, in my view, any business that can afford to spend four years in development isn't that lean and hungry. But in light of Bloomberg's success, it was obviously time well spent.
I enjoyed reading about the development of the business - later chapters, expounding his views on management, business, technology, philanthropy, and perhaps most irritatingly, how great America is, are less engaging. The structure leaves a bit to be desired - for instance, the chapter on his early life and the influences of his parents is second-last, which seems a little strange. Mostly, I think the book suffers from a lack of light and shade - his endlessly positive, blustery tone leaves you in no doubt of his will to crush every obstacle he faces, but there is little sign of the moments of self-doubt, sheer terror and crushing disappointment that surely are part of every entrepreneur's journey to the top. He even paints the failure of his marriage as little more than a necessary development in the evolution of two people, but without any real emotion. For this reason, the book sometimes reads like a corporate brochure-cum-history of the Bloomberg business, and in it, Michael Bloomberg lacks the humanity that someone like Richard Branson, for all his own success, conveys. I have real difficulty with the American 'corporate warrior' act, and frankly sometimes he sounds like a complete tosser – but then when you think about it, it is no mean feat building a company of the size and complexity of Bloomberg, so maybe he deserves to blow his own trumpet.

#14. Shantaram – Gregory David Roberts

This is a simply epic novel, both in terms of its sheer size (930 pages) and its range. It is based on the life of Gregory David Roberts, a convicted bank robber and former heroin addict who had, at the beginning of the novel, escaped from a high security prison in Australia and landed in Bombay. The book follows his experiences as he becomes involved with a motley crew of characters, is introduced to slum life through a network of Indian friends, and becoming involved in a branch of the Bombay mafia. He ends up, with his mafia don father figure, in a warzone in Afghanistan helping the militia, before returning to Bombay. At times, it seems as though it simply isn't possibly that one man experienced so much 'adventure', for want of a better term, but then a life of crime, organised or otherwise, presumably takes one in directions unavailable to most others.
I found it to be a story of great contradictions - that a man who writes so lyrically, and who expresses such love for other people and for India could be so violent. Similarly, that his criminal friends, particularly the all-powerful Khaderbhai, could be so philosophical and deeply spiritual. And in fact, the endless soul-searching and discussions of the meaning of life wore a bit thin.
My favourite parts of the book were about his experiences of life in the slum, of Indian life and the family he built in Bombay. It was amazing to think of how these communities actually work to provide their residents with security, when they look as though they are simply hanging by a thread. And there were some charming anecdotes along the way, such as the story of Kano the bear and his two blue-painted bear handlers, who regularly got into trouble.
Although the book felt too long in places, generally it was hard to put down, and was an amazing, rollicking and sometimes hair-raising journey.

#13. Small is the new big, and 183 other riffs, rants and remarkable business ideas – Seth Godin

Godin includes a warning at the beginning of this book – not to read it all at once, as it might give you a headache. He's right. As the title suggests, it is a collection of his blog posts and other writings from eight years, about business, the online environment and the world in general. What ties them together is Godin's unique way of turning accepted wisdom on its head and throwing new light on things, but at the same time, making you think, 'Why didn't I think of that before?'
At a time when the business environment has never seemed worse and fear and contraction is the order of the day, Godin provides comfort and inspiration about the possibilities for small business (after all, small is the new big and small businesses can zoom...), and challenges you to make whatever you do remarkable. It's the perfect antidote for all the downturn/recession talk.
As a special bonus, two of Godin's e-books have been included in the book - the one on website design gave me a totally new understanding of what a website is actually meant to do, and his booklet on blogs breaks this new medium down at a functional level, to explain the purpose of different types of blogs, which I found a lot more helpful than the usual hype.
It's the type of book I would want to keep going back to for more inspiration - fortunately, you can get daily updates from his blog for that instead http://sethgodin.typepad.com/

False starts

My pace has slowed and it has been a little while since my last post, for a couple of reasons: I haven't been reading quite so much, and I have had a few false starts with books I simply couldn't be bothered finishing.
The first was Focus: The Future of Your Company Depends on It, by marketing guru Al Ries. This book was recommended to us by our business coach, but both my husband and I couldn't make it past the first few chapters. While the message was quite clear – companies which lose focus on their original business and try to diversify through line extensions suffer – after the 63rd example and still no hint of what is a preferable course of action, I was over it.
The second book was a bit disappointing for other reasons. The Cruise of the Vanadis looked promising – it was the recently discovered diary of a Mediterranean sailing trip taken by Edith Wharton, then in her 20s, her husband and a friend in 1888. It was illustrated with colour photographs taken just a few years ago. And while I loved the idea of tracking such an adventure, and Wharton wrote about their destinations and their history in great detail, it lacked any description of the human aspects of her travels – very little about the people they met along the way, and almost nothing about her travelling companions. So it became a little like reading a guidebook, but without the colour or sense of character. And I had to give up on it too.
Hopefully I'll make it to the end of a book soon - although one of my current reads, at 935 pages, isn't the most likely candidate!

#12. Sole Survivor – Derek Hansen

Just when I thought nobody wrote a book in chronological order any more, along came Sole Survivor. While the blurb on the back kind of paints this as a romance, it is much more of an adventure. Based on a remote part of the New Zealand coastline in 1966, it brings together three quirky characters – Red O'Hara, a damaged veteran haunted by visions of his time on the Burma Railway, Angus McLeod, a retired policeman desperate for a son, and Rosie, an ex-doctor turned market researcher, as they are thrown together in a tough, remote bay. They learn to co-exist and co-operate, bound by a common mission to deter Japanese trawlers from illegal fishing near the shore - and as they did, I became totally drawn along with the story and very attached to the characters... so much so that I have missed them since I finished the book last week.
Most of all, the description of each of the three small bachs, set in bush overlooking the ocean and rugged Wreck Bay on the tip of Great Barrier Island, provides plenty of fuel for sea/treechange fantasies.

#11. The Irresitible Inheritance of Wilberforce – Paul Torday

This book follows Wilberforce, a software developer who has built and sold a multi-million dollar company, before insinuating himself into a clique of aristocratic friends, including the eccentric wine merchant Francis Black. The story in fact begins at the end of Wilberforce's life, as he has become an alcoholic and is speedily drinking himself to death, and in subsequent sections, steps back in time two years until the root of his current dilemma is revealed. For this reason, the book is at its most depressing at the beginning, and gradually becomes lighter as you see what his life once was. So while the character of Wilberforce seems quite repulsive at first, you become more sympathetic to his fall from grace - especially as his growing addiction to (he would say love for) wine under Black's tutelage leads to the loss of his friends, the breakdown of his marriage, the death of his wife Catherine, and eventually a catastrophic financial decision clouded by delusion. Torday's writing, and in particular, his characterisation, reminds me of Mark Haddon's work in A Spot of Bother - strange little people stuck in odd situations, usually of their own making. Despite the dark spots, an enjoyable read.

#10. The Young Widow's Book of Home Improvements: a true story of love and renovation – Virginia Lloyd

I had started to become a little dissatisfied with my reading so far this year - yes, there were some pleasant diversions, but nothing really blew me away, until Virginia Lloyd's memoir of her all-too-brief relationship with her husband John, his battle with cancer and her subsequent struggle with her life after his death as well as the mammoth task of restoring an old Sydney terrace, riddled by rising damp, to its former glory.
Lloyd's story is utterly tragic - when at 32, she meets the 'man of her dreams', he is already terminally ill with cancer and has suffered through seven years worth of increasingly futile treatment for a rare type of bone cancer. They start a relationship anyway, and marry, although his disease progresses quickly, and he dies one month shy of their first wedding anniversary, leaving Lloyd a widow at just 34.
The narrative blends an account of their time together, as their lives were increasingly impacted by John's growing pain and immobility, and how Lloyd tries to pick up the pieces and move forward with her life after his death. The house's advanced state of decomposition and the huge amount of restoration it requires provides an apt metaphor for the process Lloyd must also undergo to recover from her emotional trauma.
While it is in no way overwritten or overly sentimental, Lloyd conveys the power of the love between her and her husband. It is perhaps a testament to this love that although the outcome was pretty clear from the beginning of their relationship, she not only seemed to have no hesitation about what she was getting into, and afterwards expressed no regret - rather gratitude - that they had met and fallen in love at all, only that it was over too soon. Sometimes it is horribly raw; but for a book with such a sad story, it is... well I wouldn't call it anything so twee as uplifting... but it certainly is as beautiful as it is moving and heart-wrenching.

#9. Making Waves: 10 years of the Byron Bay Writers Festival - edited by Marele Day, Susan Bradley Smith and Fay Knight

I picked up this book because I like writers' festivals - well, actually, that's not true... I like the IDEA of writers' festivals, but when I actually get there I get frustrated by the crowds of middle-aged women who are just certain there is a novel within them, just waiting to get out. Anyway so this book was a kind of compromise - get the writers' festival vibe without actually being there. And sadly my experience of the book was much like my experience at writers' festivals - slightly bewildering and disappointing. The editors of this book seem to have compiled the anthology with some very loose rules - it appears all the authors must have been a guest at the Byron Bay Writers' Festival at some point, but there the connection ends. Some of the pieces were keynotes or presentations made at the festival, some were pieces about the experience of the festival, and some were pieces snatched from other sources, with the only relationship to the Writers' Festival that they turned up once. The ordering of the chapters was odd too – a longish essay by Christopher Kremmer on 'American Empire: Politics and Culture in the 21st Century' butts up against a piece of fiction by Roger McDonald. It's a bit jarring, and I would have preferred some sort of thematic organisation.
There were some gems, though, that made me glad to have picked this up. Among them, Kate Grenville's Thea Astley lecture from 2005, called 'Saying the Unsayable', which showed off both her incredible eye for historical research and her ability to bring a scene from the distant past into full colour - which, from what I have read, makes The Lieutenant such fascinating reading. Hilary McPhee, who I have always enjoyed reading, gave a speech at the opening dinner of the festival in 2002 on the state of writing and publishing in Australia, which was of course of interest. There were some, by turns, touching and funny anecdotal pieces by Ruth Ostrow and Nick Earls, a chapter by Larry Buttrose on capital-t literary Theory which brought back fond memories of my tussle with Postmodernism at uni, and a wonderful round-up of writings by Aboriginal authors on their sense of place and their connection to coutnry by Anita Heiss.
But perhaps reflecting my initial attraction to this book, my favourite pieces were about the experience of being a writer at the festival - Mungo MacCallum's nightmare experience at the Melbourne Writers' Festival, and his joy at the contrast with the Byron version; Robyn Williams recounting how he had to be dragged out of bed by the organisers as his forgotten session was already underway; and Di Morrissey, a Byron native, about doing the rounds as a popular author and the scandals that inevitably surround such an event.
Looking back, there were actually many more 'highlights' in this book than I remembered - but I'll attribute my lukewarm response to a lack of editorial flow.

#8. Real You Incorporated: 8 Essentials for Women Entrepreneurs – Kaira Sturdivant Rouda

As a guide to developing your own 'real' brand as an entrepreneur, this was very practical and would be really handy if you were just starting out in business. As you work through the eight 'essentials', you build up a chart summing up you, your passions, your brand, positioning, culture and customers, which gives a comprehensive picture of how you see yourself and your business. There was much more to this book though, with 25 other 'life lessons', as well as stories from other female entrepreneurs, other books to read, questions to think about and action steps - and I think if you were going to get the most from it, you would really have to spend quite a bit of time working through all these questions.
It did come from that very American corporate marketing perspective, which grated on me a bit, and sometimes it didn't seem clear whether it was targeted at smaller businesses or women starting out, or women leading large corporate entities - in particular, the chapter on designing your premises really wouldn't be relevant for most new businesses! But generally, I found the message of following your own passions and being authentic in the way you run your business to be quite inspiring.

#7. Alfie – Bill Naughton

Now having not seen the film (either the Michael Caine or the Jude Law version), I didn't really know what I was expecting, but this certainly wasn't it. I thought it would be a bit light, a bit cheeky, and it was in places – but underneath Alfie's cocky swagger and the women on high-rotation, there was something a bit sad as he deals with TB, loses his son because of his inability to grow up and stop being such a cad, and deals with the consequences of getting his mate's wife into 'trouble'. Despite the fact that he referred to every woman he was with as 'bird', or worse, 'it', I liked him enough to feel sorry for him. And thankfully, there was no convenient redemption at the end - he was still the same shameless, selfish Lothario as he was in the beginning.
Still, I can't imagine how slimy Jude Law was picked for the part in the remake of the movie – he would have been nowhere near rough enough.

#6. Three of the Best: the Modern Woman's Guide to Everything – Candace Lewis and Margaret O'Sullivan

This book is more a reference guide than a straight read – and seems to be the latest brainchild of those clever people at ABC Books, probably hoping to repeat the runaway success of their Spotless and Speedcleaning books.
When they wrote in the blurb on the back, "Now there is no need to rip all those useful articles from newspapers and magazine (which you can never find when you need them)", they must have been talking about me - especially as I have folders, files, and boxes full of useful articles, most of which I never refer to. And really, one little book which covers ways to keep your relationship passionate and what to do if you get arrested has to be handy.
Although the concept seems fairly simple - three of the best things to do/buy/make/think in a whole range of categories loosely grouped under headings such as Fit, Beautiful, Peace, Fuel, Survival, Downtime, and Stand Up – I think they have been a little cheeky sometimes, adding in some extra points when obviously there were more than three 'best' options to cover.
The best way to read this is obviously to dip into the chapters depending on what you need to know, but in the spirit of this blog (and because I'm a bit odd like that), I read it from cover to cover. So here are some of my 'Three of the Best's:

Three of the Best Bits of Useful Information
1. 3 Car Tricks – including how to jump-start a car, how to recover from a skid, and what to do if your brakes fail.
2. 3 Bra Fittings – this should be a god-send for anyone else who is terrified of those ladies in the underwear department of David Jones but would still like to wear the right sized bra.
3. Nail Fix-Its – as my dear husband reminded me when I was cursing a smudged nail, this section has some handy tips so you don't have to start all over again.

Three of the Best Entries Least Likely to be Read
1. 3 Ways to Make New Friends – apparently the keys are work, entertain (who? strangers?) and get involved. But would someone really look this up??
2. Most of the recipes – really, if you need to look at a book like this to work out what to cook, then the chances of you inviting your 8 closest friends over for a three-course dinner party are surely pretty slim.
3. 3 Cosmetic Tattoos. At least I hope so. Because as far as I have seen, this is rarely a good idea.

Three of the Best Bizarre Bits
1. In the section on Survival, helpful bits of info like how to stop someone from choking and emergency phone numbers sit alongside 'apostrophe survival' – how to correctly use apostrophes. While I applaud the effort to try to get people to use them correctly, hardly a matter of life or death.
2. 3 Car Colours You Wouldn't Be Seen Dead In – so next time you're trying to choose the colour of your new car, apparently white, light and bright are the safest options. Good to know.
3. 3 Undies – while I totally concur with Target and La Perla as good options for buying underwear (or I would with the latter if I was on a six-figure salary), sex shops as top of the list?

#5. Dream Angus – Alexander McCall Smith

This is one of Alexander McCall Smith's lesser known books, and with good reason. According to the book's introduction, this "story" is a retelling of the myth of Angus, the Celtic god of dreams. And while there certainly was a dream theme running through each of the chapters, some of which returned to the story of Angus, and some of which were stand-alone tales, overall it seemed shallow and quite unsatisfying (and left me, at times a little disoriented). McCall Smith employs a more lyrical and slightly whimsical style in this book, best demonstrated in my favourite chapter, 'Is there a place for pigs there?' It follows the story of Pig Twenty, a pig grown in a research centre purely for the purpose of harvesting his organs. He spends his days shut up in a concrete enclosure with only a small window in the ceiling, until one day, he is rescued by a keeper, who, finding out that the scientists plan to end Pig Twenty's life, decides to take him home. Unfortunately the keeper is found out, and has to take the pig back to the centre to face certain death. The keeper takes the pig back across the fields.
"Halfway across, they stopped to rest. Pig Twenty sat down and looked at the sky, as if puzzled, floored, by its sheer immensity. He might have thought, if he thought at all: is there a place for pigs there? Is that for pigs?"
Despite my lukewarm response to the rest of the book, I loved this story, and especially this passage... perhaps because I like pigs, the idea of Pig Twenty in silent contemplation of the sky, for the first time in his short life, is a lovely one.

#4. Secrets of Small Business Owners Exposed! - Dale Beaumont

This formed part of my reading for inspiration for the new business year, but it was actually a little disappointing. I recently re-read Secrets of Female Entrepreneurs Exposed!, when I was in a bit of a slump as far as our business was concerned, and it really did give me a shot in the arm, partly because the interview subjects in the book had achieved much greater levels of success and some of them were household names. By contrast, the businesses featured in this book were a bit more run of the mill, and although it goes a bit more into the nitty-gritty of how to make smaller businesses successful (relevant for us at the moment), it wasn't as much fun to read.

#3: The Post-Birthday World – Lionel Shriver

I finished this book about a week ago (and at 517 pages, that was quite an effort) but it has taken a little while to digest and work out how I felt about it.
The basic premise of the book is a Sliding Doors-type scenario - children's book illustrator Irina McGovern effectively decides her future on the basis of whether she takes one particular action... betraying her long-term partner Lawrence by kissing professional snooker player Ramsey Action, or not. There is one version of Chapter One, but two versions of every chapter following, alternating between the two realities Irina could possibly have found herself experiencing. This, as well as Shriver's extraordinarily detailed rendering of both characters and everyday events, accounts for the sheer size of the book. It is an interesting structural device, but sometimes the juxtaposition of Irina's chosen paths seems rather too neat, and at one point the plot collapses into the type of "self-reflexivity" that my postmodernity lecturers at uni would have wet themselves over, but which to me is totally twee – with Irina writing and illustrating a children's book showing two alternative realities flowing from a crucial decision made by the main character. Yes, we know how clever you are, Lionel Shriver – we don't need you to paint us a picture.
Although I did enjoy this book, it did seem to drag at times, and in fact I set it aside for a while and read something else before coming back to it. I think my struggle with it, aside from the pace, stems from the fact that to me both alternatives seemed pretty grim in their own ways. In one version, Irina's relationship with Lawrence seems completely passionless, and although its familiarity and routine was meant to be sufficiently attractive to Irina to hold her steadfast in this partnership, I couldn't see the attraction myself. And while Shriver goes on and on about the passion and particularly the sex in Irina's relationship with Ramsey, it seemed to be a totally combative situation without much outside the bedroom going for it. So when later Irina and Ramsey profess their eternal love for each other, it has a hollow ring to it.
The 'moral' of the story, if I have read it correctly, seems to be that no matter what choices you make in life, they are the right ones, and in fact you end up pretty much in the same situation anyway. While the narrative arc of this book seems to illustrate that very tidily, I'm not so sure life follows such a perfect pattern. Not a bad read if you like a good human drama though.
PS. Here is an interview with Lionel Shriver when the book was released... she found the inspiration for the book in her own choice between two futures.

#2: Tears of the Giraffe – Alexander McCall Smith

Reading Alexander McCall Smith's books is, to me, a bit like eating boiled lollies – very sweet and a bit addictive, but without a huge amount of substance, although they are lovely stories.
My family are great fans, although I have to admit I was a little sceptical when the first McCall Smith book I picked up was The Careful Use of Compliments, the third book in the Isabel Dalhousie series – and rather than being fascinated by the protagonist, I just wanted to slap her. Fortunately, my stepfather convinced me to give McCall Smith another go.
Tears of the Giraffe is the second book in The No. 1 Ladies' Detective Agency series, based in Botswana, and its reflections on daily African life are part of its appeal. It picks up where the previous book left off, following Precious Ramotswe and her detective pursuits, and her burgeoning relationship with Mr J. L. B. Maketoni, the local mechanic, who has a much larger role in this book, as well as a swelling cast of equally engaging characters.
Although the book is light and charming, along the way McCall Smith makes subtle comment on the character and development of Africa, but nothing so heavy-handed that it feels moralistic or preachy. Mma Ramotswe's eminently sensible approach to unravelling the intricacies of her clients' lives is certainly one of my favourite aspects of this book, as well as the unexpectedly elegant and just downright quirky anecdotes with which McCall Smith peppers the prose – for instance, the woman's husband who 'died of burps'.
With two more books in the series, I might have to go back for just one more.

#1: The E-Myth Revisited: Why Most Small Businesses Don't Work and What to Do About It – Michael E. Gerber

So I had high hopes for this book, having heard SOOO much about it in business circles, and to get us off to a good start for 2009. But I have to say, I wasn't that impressed... Gerber's basic concepts around the entrepreneur, manager and technician and establishing a turnkey business make sense, and it seems to set out a fairly clear structure for following the model he proposes, but I didn't like the case study he used – I found it a bit confusing and cringe-worthy. Anyway, as most business books are not known for their literary merit, I guess the true measure of whether it has been worthwhile will come down to whether the model actually works for us – and that will require some work over the next few weeks (and quite a lot of it, by the look of it).
Fortunately I've got a few works of fiction on the go at the moment too so it's not all dry and dull.