Mister Pip - comment by @deniswright

Lloyd Jones Mister Pip The Text Publishing Company 2006

I'm coming to the conclusion in my old age that you can never say you’ve read a book if you’ve read it just once. At least, I can't say that about me. When I decided to write down a few thoughts about this book, it had been a couple of months since I'd read it for the first time, so I had to go back to it to remind myself of simple things; names of the characters etc.

  I was immediately absorbed back into the book again, and though I'd enjoyed it (if that's the right word for something that tells you some things you don't want to know) first time around, it wasn't till the second time that I really let the rich earthiness of the tropics flow over me once again as it did in my own childhood in Queensland.

  Maybe that's why I enjoyed the early part of the book more than the last few chapters, though saying this does too little credit to the author. He writes beautifully and consistently throughout.

  The characters are drawn very well, from Matilda, the centre of the tale, giving us a first-person account of the world as it expanded and exploded around her, to the enigmatic people in her life. Her mother, a complex character of love, bitterness and betrayal, represents the best and worst of adopted western faith overlying the veneer of primal religion that really nurtures and gives meaning to the lives of the villagers. Mr Watts, (Pop Eye) - or as he becomes, Mister Pip - opens the eyes of the children to a strange new world – that of Pip in Great Expectations. His gentle way of teaching becomes an endearing quality as he looks after his wife, Grace.

  The stories of the older villagers who are invited to the school to talk to the children in an adult show-and-tell are wonderful. There is nothing you can possibly anticipate in what they are about to say, and they do so in their own special way.

  The odd thing about this book is that it made me realise for the first time ever that I had a lot in common with the Pip of Great Expectations, which I'd read a hundred times as a child. Fortunately in my personal story there were no Miss Havershams, but there were many of the warmer characters in Pip's life who I could identify. Maybe it was Matilda who jolted me into this recognition of myself; it certainly never occurred to me before. But that's my tale and doesn't belong here.

  Over the charm of the story hangs the presence of the copper mine and the terrible things it did to the lives of these people. I guess we rarely if ever think about what our insatiable need for this metal does to the people who stand in the path of the mining companies who see them as a nuisance at best and a lethal threat when the chips are down. The Company can get the Government to call in troops to terrorise and butcher them; the dreaded 'redskins'  – and the villagers are powerless to stop them. Resistance only makes things worse. And we benefit from this need for copper, and therein lies our guilt, for we are either ignorant of it or say it's out of our hands.

  That is something that remains with me. Matilda pays our price; others like Mister Pip pay a worse one, even if ultimately she gets from her own labour some of the benefits as well.

  And of course, she unearths the great mystery hidden until the end - the truth about Mister Pip and his wife, Grace.

  Yes, definitely a thumbs up from me.

Denis Wright
@deniswright
deniswright.blogspot.com

Foal's Bread @roseofhurlo

I didn't exactly grow up on a farm, and certainly not with horses (always been a bit scared of them to be honest, even in the compulsory tweeny horsey period), nor in the 1930s and 1940s. But my grandparents were dairy farmers, and we spent plenty of our early years on the farm doing farm stuff, town and city kids of school teacher parents that we were. And my Nana had a stroke while she was hosing out the cow shed after milking, at 72, and never recovered. A life of hard work on the farm. My Grandad stuck on for a few more years, grubbing thistles, milking, bailing and things, until another stroke left him writing notes on a pad to communicate with us. A farming life is and always has been tough. This is part of what came back and resonated with me reading Foal's Bread, a marvellous, inspired and tragic novel about our farming heritage.

The horses and the jumping are everything in the book, beautifully portrayed but I kept thinking about three things. The brutal, relentless life on the land. The tough life for girls growing up in these times, with tragic consequences lasting a lifetime and beyond. And the terrible blows that life can deal people, but leave them, somehow, grand and glorious. I don't want to give too much away but (as per my previous tweet) the opening chapter is stark, stunning and devastating and it's sadness runs all the way through the book, not in a sentimental way, but in a terrible tough way. The relationship between Roley and Noah is glorious and unbearable -such pain. And the sadness of the mother, so tough, so beaten down by the relentless blows of life, so awful but glorious in the way she hits out in response, and so ultimately terribly triumphant stays with me. But also, so do the cats, the wonderful mostly warm aunties and the tough judgmental Nin.

Truly I think Gillian Mears has written a great Australian novel that captures a time and a piece of history that is gone, but a part of our culture that is still there, with all its awful and its wonderful bits. And, as this is my first attempt at #tbkclub, at blogging and at any sort of book group, please forgive the over-use of adjectives.

@roseofhurlo (and @roseofadjectives as it turns out)

Are you a parallel or serial reader?

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For most of my life, I was a 'serial' reader. That is to say, I read a book from start to finish (or ditched it, if it didn't grab me) and began another. This makes a good deal of sense when you read printed books. It's tidier for a start.

   When I acquired a Kindle eBook reader, everything changed. I got one because I was unable to read print books any more except with great difficulty, but that is another story.

   On the Kindle, I became a 'parallel' reader. At the moment, there are over a hundred books on the tiny device, with capacity for three times that many, at least. I've stopped putting more on because the ones on there will probably see me out. But my library of current books, all hundred+ of them, sits on my pillow. Some I haven't opened yet.

   This way of reading changes everything – in my case to something more natural to me. If I wake and want to read for ten minutes, I go down the list, and make my selection. Up it comes on the screen; gloriously, at the exact point where I left off when I stopped on the last occasion. If I have an hour (all too rare!) I might select a weightier tome, figuratively speaking. Again, it is ready for me, at the spot where I stopped before.

   I'm blessed with the capacity to remember immediately everything that's gone before in what I've read, even after days – for a limited time at least. So there's no lack of continuity.

   Some (few) books on my Kindle are bought; one in fact, Mister Pip, was bought as a surprise gift for me with ten bucks and true generosity of spirit by the kindly @ameeee. Most classics or other works I'm curious about are downloaded free from sites like Gutenberg.org

   So, you must understand, I am very far from the cutting edge of what's the newest book to come out – too far in some ways, but there are reasons for that, irrelevant here. I'm practically an antiquarian of the Kindle Reader, which I'm sure will be a total bore to many.

   So what are the books I've either completed recently or am still reading – some for the second or nth time?

Completed

Mister Pip
The Turn of the Screw
Gutenberg the Geek
The Hagakure
The Mysterious Stranger

Read in print form, up to 30 years ago and re-reading

Zen and the Art of Motorcycle Maintenance
Reminiscences of Queensland
The Tale of Genji
Mysticism and Logic and Other Essays by Bertrand Russell
The Art of War [two versions, here's one]
Adam Bede

Reading for the first time

The McCarroll version of the Tao te Ching
Romola
My Man Jeeves by P. G. Wodehouse
From the Five Rivers
Traditions, Superstitions and Folk-lore by Charles Hardwick

Perennials

The Tao te Ching [Gia-fu Feng/Jane English]

There's one more I'm re-reading and absolutely luxuriating in. This is one I'd recommend as a Book Club book that I'm sure most people would love if they've not read it already. But I'm not saying yet....

Denis Wright

 

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The Architecture of Happiness

Posted on behalf of Anne Powles [@Qyntara]

I recently read de Botton's book Religion for the Atheist and was discussing with my son, @jonpowles, the problem with it as I saw it. That problem was essentially that the author, has, I think, some extremely good ideas, but despite his rather nice style, he carries them far beyond what I view as convincing and this rather detracts from the force of his initial thesis. He also does not recognise that a lot of us non-combatant Atheists already do much of what he advises. (I am, however, considering holding an agape!!) Jon said that The Architecture of Happiness he considered was the best he has written, particularly from this respect. He gifted me an iPad copy.

I think that book review you pointed out reflected much of what I think so far about The Architecture of Happiness.  He comes up with great ideas but over-talks and over-thinks them. I am therefore finding I can enjoy it more in short reads, which is not my normal way of reading.  Meanwhile I have enjoyed an unusual Who-dun-it by James Patterson featuring narcissistic personality disorder.

@mazpow I know you are busy but some of those tomes you are currently reading about early childhood language development might indeed be relevant to adult book club development!!

Anne Powles [@Qyntara]

How might this work?

I was a relative latecomer to the idea of a twitter book club. I read your blog entry on this subject with great interest. Anne, I agree with your fundamental points about why it is likely to fail.

   When I got enthused about the idea of such a club, I tried to think how it could work. You might remember I proposed a hashtag #TBkClub. That's 7 characters only  [or 9 if you include a space plus the #]. #TwitterBookClub is 17 characters out of the precious 140, but it has the virtue of being easily remembered.

   Mine was a mistake, because it was not easy enough to remember. My hashtag is useless in that case.

   Still, that isn't the real problem. Ten more characters makes little difference. It's impossible unless you're a master of haiku to say anything worthwhile about a big topic in a short sentence, and even then you'd have to be Basho.

   As well, not everyone is savvy about how to use hashtags. They don’t always know that if you put #TBkClub in the search field of their Twitter program, it will create a line of tweets solely under that hashtag.

   Also, we're all doing other things. There are several books open to discussion and as a Denis-come-lately I've read only one of them. In fact, I know only Mister Pip. Some who are interested have managed to get part way through a particular book. That's life. Most of us are too old or irreverent to be told to stand in the naughty corner, especially when we have valid reasons for not making the time to sit down and enjoy that book.

   There are probably only a couple of ways it could work. Here's one.

   I've created this new blog (the one you're reading now!) – http://thereadingroom7.blogspot.com.au/ – that, if the idea has legs, someone else will need to take over well before my Use-By date has gone. A willing person, perhaps with Blogger experience, can take it over at any time as curator. I'm just the builder, though it needs very few, if any furnishings to work.

   I'm using this piece as a sample posting, keeping it very simple.

   The comments section is open to all. For this blog, it's really the powerhouse section. For the sake of simplicity, for those without Google or other accounts, it may work best if you use the Anonymous option to comment, and just sign it at the end of the comment however you like (e.g., with your twitter identity?)

   All you'd have to do then is post a message to Twitter that you've added a comment. Your comment can be identified individually, but I won't go into that now.

   It's quite simple using cut and paste for the curator to make a new posting of any comment/book review, if required, so it has its own identity for further comment.

   What this does is to give anyone a fair word length to comment, or write a short book review.

   Clear as mud?

   Ask a question as a comment!