Reviews

Dancing and Romancing

shallowreader 9 Comments

Dancing is awesome.

Dancing is sexy. The bass pumping, the throng of bodies moving to the beat at a club or a dance festival, a vibe that buzzes, hearts jolting, culminating in make out sessions, hook-ups, one night stands or the foundation of many a relationship. It is a feeling that is hard to describe and I can honestly say that I have as yet to read a romance novel that has nailed the dance scene.

Dance moves matter and they can make or break a budding romance. A poorly written dance move in romance fiction can completely throw me out of a story. Take Anne McAllister for instance. Now I adore her books. ADORE! She is an autobuy author for me, however…in this scene in “One Night Mistress…Convenient Wife” our heroine is yearning for the hero, they’ve been fuck buddies but the insensitive hero has yet to recognise that this is lurrve. They are at a wedding and our heroine is dancing with another wedding guest.

He moved fluidly, grinning broadly as he drew her with him, leading her easily, spinning her, moving her as efficiently as if she were a rag doll with no bones and no brains of her own.

Ummm. No. Just. No.

Lucy Ellis’s fabulous debut which gave us the line “I’m not your mistress. I’m your girlfriend” turning every convoluted Mistress title on it’s head (who on earth calls anyone a mistress in this day and age) has the hero Alexei taking heroine Maisy out to a supper club for a bit of dancing. Sure. This would be fine if you are in your 70s but they are in their 20s, in ITALY! Find a freakin’ club. Even villages in Italy have nightclubs!

I’ve read peculiar scenes where the couple go out for dinner and have a little dance on the dance floor with diners looking on, gyrating scenes, wanton dancing, ballroom dancing – and I am as big a fan of Strictly Ballroom as anyone but I do not find ballroom dancing hot and sexy (though if you do read Ainslie Paton’s Grease Monkey Jive). I don’t want to read about a couple lambada-ing (it’s the forbidden dance – so forbidden it should not be danced), I don’t want to read about dirty dancing, even Patrick Swayze looks daft doing it let alone someone trying to describe it in written form. And I certainly don’t want to read about the slow, sen-su-al dancing where the heroine wonders if that is his belt she can feel against her stomach or something else hot and ridged. Frankly, I read these scenes and I suddenly feel as though I am at Les Larbey and Margaret Bland’s Galaxy of Dance.

There is nothing more unsexy than an awful dancing scene. It nullifies any sense of romance, any sexual tension, any frisson that may have been present between two characters. Let me tell you about such an event.

Many many years ago, I had a double date with my friend Anna, her boyfriend and a friend of his. I had met this guy several times and I liked him. He was funny, he wasn’t hard on the eyes, he dressed well. He ticked most of the boxes. Anyway, the poor guy suggested a night out. As I was cautious about going out with a guy I had only met once or twice I suggested joining our mutual friends at a nightclub in Kings Cross that I enjoyed going out to. I turned down the offer of a lift and Anna and I drove and met them there. The night was going well. It was hot. The music was pumping. Everyone was getting their groove on. And then the guy I was with, the man I was on a crowded dance floor with, disappeared momentarily. Not “he walked out the door to go to the loo” disappeared. More “is that the strobe light or has a poltergeist stolen his body” disappeared. My eyes quickly glanced around and there he was, on the dance floor in a split formation just as he was coming back up with a full 360 degree twirl.

He looked at me as though to say “Have I got the moves for you, Babe”.

I schooled my face while my soul screamed “Nooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooo”. I raised my eyebrows in a “Well, now we know that at least one of us is limber” look while my internal monologue was pulling together an exit strategy. We finished up the dance and I made the “I need help powdering my nose” signal to Anna and we departed subtly to the euphemism.

Upon the toilet door closing behind us, in horror I exclaimed “He did the splits on the dance floor”

“I know” she commiserated with me.

“We have to go” my voice was panicked.

“Absolutely. We cannot consort with such riffraff” Anna said (or kinda said something like that I am sure because that totally sounds like something Anna would say).

We walked out and found the guys. Mr DanceMoves came to my side and asked me if I saw him do the splits. I do recall answering “I certainly did see you”.

As per our agreement, Anna made excuses of tiredness, I made excuses of being her driver and we both made excuses that we were fine walking to the car without them and we left them both to tear up the dance floor without us. We got to the car, we drove down to Harry’s Cafe de Wheels and ate pie floaters while laughing about the most atrocious dance move evah. John Travolta on the screen is one thing but the reality of him on the dance floor is terrifying.

 

However, this is a scene I have read in many a romance but not with the positive pie outcome I had. How did the dance scene go so wrong in romance books? Why don’t we have more hot and sweaty clubbing scenes. Where are the music festival hookups?

Don’t give me bullshit that millionaires/made up royalty don’t club. Tell that one to Mary and Fred, Kate, Wills and Hazza.

Don’t give me bullshit excuses about cultural differences. Greek, Russian, Spanish billionaires are the leaders of the party throng, for what is Eurovision but the search for the best Europop song for the coming summer.

And don’t give me bullshit age excuses, that the clubbing scene belongs only in New Adult fiction. I have friends in their forties who regularly go to clubs and festivals. The only reason I am not with them is that I hate triggering my tinnitis. And I don’t have tinnitis because I danced at a supper club. I earned my tinnitis in clubs, discos and festivals thank you very much. Fabulous days and nights spent dancing to the pumping beats of UFO, Dig, JestoFunk, Beastie Boys, Chemical Brothers, and so many more. For it was the summer of 1994, dancing at Bondi Pavillion to UFO at Vibes on a Summers Day that I finally noticed one of my friends whom I had known for 3 years had THE best dance moves. He was a groover. He had the funk. And we danced the day away. And we got married 2 years later where we continued dancing with great friends and great music. And this only happened because John had the right dance moves and I didn’t need to buy another pie floater! (Happy Birthday John!)

I now want to read a romance with some quality pumping beats.

The Physicality of reading in Greek

shallowreader 3 Comments

I recently finished reading Άλφα by Βασίλης Παπαθεοδόρου (Alpha by Vasilis Papatheodorou). It is the first novel written in the Greek language that I have completed since 1985 when I read Hemingway’s The Old Man and the Sea.

I regularly read Greek. I have a Greek twitter feed which keeps me updated with publishing and library news. I read Greek library blogs, I occasionally read the local history essays from my dad’s region of Greece, Agrafa (mum’s area doesn’t have a local history section). I’ve read my bilingual publications of poetry, church guides and ancient plays with the English translations helping fill any gaps in my vocabulary. To add to all these, I read picture books, magazines and newspapers. However, these are all short forms of reading.

Greek Alphabet by Peter Bowers Elliott

Greek Alphabet by Peter Bowers Elliott

I have struggled with choosing long form reading in Greek. Even though my local library at one stage had the largest Greek collection in the Southern Hemisphere the Greek librarians were a tad intimidating. 2 were literary in their selections and the 3rd had been my Greek school teacher when I was 13 and is only one of two teachers who gave me the cane (another story altogether). With this in mind, I was self led in my selections. Initially I chose romances that were translated from English, reasoning with myself that at least I would understand the context of what I had chosen as well as enjoying romance. Instead, I found stilted, clumsy translations that made me cringe (is this how non-romance readers feel when they attempt to read a romance?). This led me to consider that perhaps it was the nature of translated works that did not appeal so I tried books by Greek authors such as Γιώργος Χειμωνάς and Μάρο Δούκα but they didn’t stick either. I mostly gave up though occasionally I would try a book out.

Last week, I finally completed one of those occasional tries. It was a YA book that was suggested to me by my twitter contact/colleague/friend @ArgyrisK Argyris Kastaniotis. Άλφα is about a group of troubled youths taking part in the 1973 Athens Polytechnic protests. The main character was a young man called Alexis with a difficult home life that often found him sleeping on park benches or at friend’s homes. While he is part of the polytechnic occupation and takes part in it’s destruction, burning and trashing the buildings, for respite he takes shelter and rests in one of the art studios. One of the sculptures comes to life and takes him soaring over Athens to show him her beauty. This happens several times in the book and consequently changes his outlook from a pessimistic nihilist to an optimistic teen. Had I read this book in English I think I would have been annoyed at the trite insights to the protagonist’s self. It was quite easy to see the story’s moral (δίδαγμα) message but I think it aided my understanding of the whole book.

This is not a book that I would have chosen for myself and perhaps that is why I was able to read it through. It is unlike most of my reading but I felt the weight of the story. A big impact this book has given me is the way it informed me of how I physically read.

In English, I am a fast reader. I am one who needs to race to a book’s end and only if I enjoyed it will I then reread it, savouring every word. In Greek, I found that by sheer inexperience I have to be a slower, more deliberate reader. Where in English I skim ahead as I read my text, in Greek this was impossible. Through force of habit my eyes kept trying to glance down the page as I read but this made me lose focus on the paragraph I was on. In actual fact, I found it very difficult to connect one paragraph to another as I was focusing on understanding each on its own. At no stage did I feel my reading become subconscious and fluid. As I was reading in this fashion I questioned whether the the book would make sense as a whole when I have to think so hard to understand a full paragraph? I kept questioning my comprehension skills when I shouldn’t have doubted my Greek language skills.

I found myself delighted recalling that Greek punctuation is quite different to English. Quotation marks are only used in speech in the middle of a paragraph and not with “αβγ” but <<αβγ>>. I love the ανοτελεία (anoteleia) – the top dot in a colon which signifies a pause that is between a comma and a full stop in length. Questions are signified not with a ? but with a ; (semi-colon). This makes so much sense. What is a question but part of a sentence that can be read on its own.

I became aware of the physicality of my reading – the bend of my head, my eyes shifting across the page, my mouth needing to move as I read some of the more difficult passages yet stilling when I would hit a flow. This mouthing of words reminding me of both the modern connotations of moving one’s lips as they read being that of someone with low literacy, someone who needs the auditory experience to understand the written word. And that of reading during ancient times where the norm was to read aloud. My thoughts went to St Augustine who was perplexed by St Ambrose who would read to himself, lips moving but no sound escaping his mouth. Augustine reasoned that Ambrose could only be doing this in order to preserve his voice. So as I found difficult passages my mouth was moving and I found that my chin was pulling into my chest. I flipped my tablet to read in landscape as this gave me shorter lines and shorter pages thus turning pages more often so mentally I felt that I was reading quicker than I actually was doing – something that I rarely do when I read in English. I had control over the format. I was able to control the font (I chose to not change it from the default) and the font size (I chose the second largest size mostly due to starting to read while on a train when all it was dark), I knew how many pages I had to the end of the chapter, I could change the direction of my reading.

Before I chose to read Άλφα I went through the many books I had uploaded on my tablet. I tried several of them (all in English) but none appealed so I would not attribute the format to having completed the book. The format certainly helped however I think I finally conquered my first Greek novel in 28 years because of the clarity of Papatheodorou’s writing and that Alpha is a gripping good read.

Alpha is a free download from Ekdoseis Kastaniotis http://www.kastaniotis.com/book/978-960-03-5558-1

I am late to the Pride and Prejudice party or A long love letter to The Lizzie Bennet Diaries

shallowreader 8 Comments

I’ve never understood the squeeeeing or heart-fluttering fangirling over Pride and Prejudice. This is not to say that I didn’t like the novel. I really enjoyed it. I love Jane Austen. I have sat at her grave at Winchester Cathedral. I have visited the Jane Austen Centre in Bath. I have read her books. I haz done the Jane Austen pilgrimage as a bookish nerd is wont to do. However, I have never understood the obsessive collectors and viewers of all things Pride and Prejudice.

In fact, I didn’t considered Pride and Prejudice to be a romance. To me it was a snarky novel about social classes, relationships, women’s status, their lack of autonomy and the requirement to make a good marital match. Oh, I know that it is romantic but its subtle romance was lost on me as a 17 year old who had already spent the previous 5 years reading intense and focused romance in the form of category series romances. As an adult, I have read the many epistles and scholarly criticisms and journals dedicated to Pride and Prejudice and all that other cerebral stuff but deep down inside – there was nuthin.

I tried to understand the hero status that Mr Darcy inspires. Colin Firth, in the BBC series, looked like he had swallowed a bad oyster throughout every episode until that last scene when he deems it worthy a moment to crack a smile. He’s all muttering and mumbling. Jennifer Ehle’s portrayal of Lizzie Bennet is good but I never feel the connection between her and Mr Darcy – even in the wet shirt scene (and really?! What is the whole kerfuffle about that wet shirt? It isn’t that impressive. All I could think of was the squelching of wet socks in boots and the chafing of wet trousers when walking).

I tried again to watch Bridget Jones’ Diary but once again I was left cold. A ridiculous heroine misjudges Mark Darcy. Once again, Colin Firth has had a plate full of bad oysters until, once again, the last scene where, I will concede, he is a tad sexy with his “Nice boys don’t kiss that way” retort of “Oh yes they fucking do”. I came around a bit with the Knightley/McFadyen version of Pride and Prejudice which seems to be anathema to most fans and I’ve also watched the Laurence Olivier/Greer Garson version which was also ho hum. So you get it. Not a fan.

It took until the 200th anniversary to finally get it, to finally see how wonderfully romantic the book actually is. And not only do I get it but I also am surprised at my score long obtuseness.

How did I not see that Mr Darcy is one of my all time favourite romance hero types – the suited up, billionaire CEO sitting on his high horse, lording it over his minions just to be brought to his knees by an unassuming, often much poorer and plainer but ever so sharp heroine that he initially barely deigns worthy of his time. Elizabeth Bennet, too, is my favourite romance heroine. She is not glitzy, glamorous, ditzy or quirky. She is smart, observant, quick to take offense at perceived slights and really funny. These two are fabulous together and I have finally seen the beauty and the romance of Pride and Prejudice due to The Lizzie Bennet Diaries.

To many of you who also follow me on Twitter this is not a surprise revelation. I have already blogged about The LBD elsewhere. I decided to wait until the last episode before posting my total adoration for this series but I couldn’t bear to post straight away – it has taken me a whole month to deal with my loss. Yes dammit. I have turned into one of those viewers who is grieving the loss of a favourite show. Go ahead. Judge me. Then judge me some more when I tell you that I have struggled writing this post for this month as it is difficult to pull together the many different ways this show has left an impression on me which is why the rest of this post will be a list of why I think this series is teh awesomesauce:

    Secondary Characters

Where in every other adaptation the secondary characters remained unexplained, their motivations left unknown or unrealised this adaptation fleshed out previously disliked characters giving them depth and humanity. From compliant Bing Lee, beautiful calm Jane, practical and insightful Charlotte, conniving Caroline, sweet Gigi, Fitz (my sons’ favourite character “Fitzie”) to the shallow, selfish party girl with hidden depths Lydia! Just a few quick words on Lydia – I honestly don’t think that there can be any subsequent production of Pride and Prejudice that doesn’t take into consideration this brilliant interpretation of a previously two-dimensional grating character. She very nearly stole the whole show. She finally made us understand the appeal of the fun, thoughtless sister. I’m possibly the only person who would have liked to see Lydia end up with George Wickham. I get that the moral to the story is that you don’t need to settle and in this day and age you certainly don’t need to stay in a dysfunctional relationship but – well, call me warped but Lydia became too subdued for my liking and the moralising of the consequences of sleeping around seemed stronger than Austen’s own writing expressed 200 years earlier.

    Lizzie Bennet/Ashley Clements

I have a girl crush on Ashley Clements. I don’t know where to start in praising her interpretation of Lizzie Bennet. She is the Lizzie Bennet that I wish all the other adaptations delivered. Her Lizzie just hands down trumps every other wimpy, soft-spoken, pursed lipped, ditzy dumbass version that I have seen. Clements slams you with snark and lampoons from Episode 1. She delivers a character that is observant and funny and sharp and someone you want as your friend. Her face is beautifully expressive whether she is recounting an event, taking the piss, yearning, crying or happy.

Lizzie’s depictions of family, friends and acquaintances are as caricatures. For the sake of a great story she overdraws the people she comes across in her life. She knows that she is not being truthful to her viewers about the people she is depicting. She admits to being 80% truthful…no make that 50% truthful. As a viewer you know that Lizzie is not an accurate narrator but as a narrator even she knows that she is not an accurate narrator. Hyperbole is her ruler but, just like her sister Lydia, she has a vulnerable side that you get a glimpse of in Episode 7 when she is retelling “The Most Awkward Dance Ever”. It takes 3 episodes for Lizzie to even bring up this event – a whole 10 days after the Gibson wedding. As a viewer you see that Lizzie Bennet was embarrassed and slighted publicly by William Darcy. A public that is a tangible one. One in the physical world of family, friends, neighbours and the whole community watching her being rejected. Lizzie Bennet then goes on to publicly embarrass and slight William Darcy in a virtual space – a space which she doesn’t perceive has the impact that reality does until Episode 61 where we see her hesitance to even meet William Darcy’s eyes.

For a while I have been exploring this idea of the spaces we consider our reality. My interpretation of Lizzie Bennet at the beginning of the series is that Lizzie is detached from this virtual space. Particularly as a communications student her understanding of this medium as a virtual space unlike real life seems to make it OK to speak freely about family and friends once you have altered them, fictionalised them and you the viewer need to work out what aspects of the other characters are truthful. It is after Darcy’s first love declaration and subsequent argument about real events that Lizzie realises that Darcy is a man she has wronged. (And I love the strained look on her face when his objections to her mother and Lydia are also her objections to them). Thankfully for Lizzie, (and perhaps because he is a media communication CEO) he seems to have a similar understanding to her of the reality of the web as an unreal virtual space with somewhat unreal depictions and is able to dismiss her online comments about him. From Episode 60 Ashley Clements slowly turns Lizzie Bennet around from a seemingly oversharing, laughing storyteller to a more reserved person selective in her choice of words for the screen.

    William Darcy/Daniel Vincent Gordh

As you have read above, I have never been a fan of grumble bum Darcy. But for the first time ever, here was a Darcy that appealed. He is a snob. He is realistic that there are class differences in our world. Just as Lizzie portrays her worse self in Episode 60, Darcy too shows us his absolute worse. The beauty is that neither of them are reticent in their exchange. These two are equals who leave their exchange rethinking their approach to each other. From that episode onwards we get to see a softer, more considerate Darcy. One that starts thinking through his attitudes to people outside his usual sphere until the penultimate episode where he is a relaxed, happy man (well – he had spent a week getting it on). For what it is worth, I am not a subscriber to the Darcy has Aspergers theory. I do not like the need to medicinalise behaviour that society has decided is not the norm. Darcy starts the story as a total snob but he is also shy and this combination is the fab reason why it takes nearly a year and 3 minutes to get the girl. And can I say, Daniel V Gordh has the most beautiful sprinkling of silver in his hair. Be still my beating heart! Just what all distinguished, billionaire CEOs should have. And 16 year old me would be pulling apart my Tiger Beat mag and putting up posters of DVG.

To add to this, I loved all the Darcy and Lizzie episodes. There are minor niggling lines that I wish could have been refined. Lizzie is fine calling Darcy a “prick” but shies away from saying that she doesn’t want to be the girl that is sleeping with the boss (c’mon already – who says “dating”?) and Lizzie not acknowledging Darcy in the last episode (a phrase would have sufficed). This doesn’t detract from the fact that these two sparked off each other. They had tension, those deep gazes gave me flutters and it was wonderful to watch the online squeeeeeing from all the other fans and viewers.

    The Writers

How could I even think of writing such a love letter to this wonderful show without acknowledging the wonderful writers who adapted this 200 year old story. These writers went well beyond any movie or any TV series has previously managed. They wrote flawed, real characters. They understood Austen’s characters and that people change due to the people they know and meet in their life. The writers show us all the necessity for forgiveness and that it is possible to overcome our prejudices and change our perception of others. The transmedia fiction, the use of Twitter and Tumblr and Pinterest gave us a deeper understanding of the main characters and allowed us to view them off-screen but still online partaking in a life that is the norm for all of us in this internet connected world. Understandably, production quality – great for a low budget series – did have its own challenges. There are sound quality fluctuations, Mr Microphone peaks at us in a later episode, beltless Bing, Darcy is not that crash hot a dresser for someone who is supposed to be in the 1% (seriously – a buttoned down shirt that isn’t buttoned down). These points though are inconsequential because the storytelling ruled.

The last episode was subdued and though at first I was disappointed with it, I now see it as the quiet farewell it needed to be. This was a journey for Lizzie and Charlotte. Two women finding their professional way in this modern world, each of them with different values and needs yet dedicated to their friendship. Thankfully, the writers were not constrained to only the videos and the transmedia fiction element delivered a wonderful epilogue on Twitter, at once funny, romantic and hopeful for the future. I truly hope we get to see the tweets in the DVD edition as I really feel they were key to the whole story. The writing, and the writers, are the absolute champions of this wonderful web series.

In the end, I invested countless hours in these wonderful characters. Gee they were fabulous! I have invested in the Kickstarter and I am so happy they have brought me to a new love and appreciation for Jane Austen’s wonderful Pride and Prejudice.

What!? You want more! Should my overly long letter not be enough here are a couple of links to read:

Goodby Lizzie Bennet, it has been… so good to see you

http://astillandquietconscience.blogspot.com.au/2013/03/goodbye-lizzie-bennet-it-has-been-so.html

Asian Americans in Jane Austen’s White Sanctum

http://rudegirlmag.wordpress.com/2013/02/18/asian-americans-in-jane-austens-white-sanctum/

Things fluttered appropriately – an interview with Sandra Antonelli

shallowreader 6 Comments
A Basic Renovation is available from Escape Publishing, the Itunes Bookstore, and Amazon.

A Basic Renovation by Sandra Antonelli

Two years ago, I met Sandra Antonelli through her writing on Twitter. Here was an author who I thought was funny, smart, relished earworms, rat terriers and spider scares, and could tell great stories all in 140 characters. Following her twitter feed was a given for me and she followed me back resulting in many interesting exchanges. Last week I ventured into reading her first published book with Escape Publishing.

Property renovator Lesley thinks she can combine a little business with her annual visit to her parents in Los Alamos, but that’s before she runs into Dominic. Single father Dominic, quantum physicist turned hardware store owner believes Lesley is A) poison; B) a lesbian who ruined his little brother’s life; and C) the detonator to a 50 megaton secret. What starts as cold fury turns into nuclear attraction, and naturally, they fall for each other, but can their love survive the fallout when Dominic’s little atomic bomb goes off?

This is a contemporary romance set in New Mexico, USA. I already liked Sandra’s writing style (why else would I have followed her on Twitter for so long) but would that style extend to reading a 314 page novel? I was nervous! Well, by page twenty, to quote her character Lesley, “things fluttered appropriately”. I fell in love with this story. And just a teeny weeny bit more in love with Sandra, who was kind enough to agree to being my first ever Shallowreader interview.

Shallowreader: Hello Sandra! Thank you for agreeing to be interviewed by me today. You are popping my interviewer cherry so please be gentle.

Sandra: ‪I’ll use coffee as a lubricant.

Shallowreader: ‪Oooh! Now you are even more appealing 😉

Sandra: ‪Coffee fixes everything.

Shallowreader: ‪Let’s get straight into your book – there were no cherries popped in this book. Tell me why you chose to write a romance with older characters than you find in traditional romances?

Sandra: A variety of reasons really. First, why not? I’ve always appreciated characters who had interesting life experiences. When I was thirteen I was reading about Jane Eyre and the second Mrs DeWinter (from Rebecca) and they were older than me. When I was seventeen I was reading about women who were older than me. Then in my twenties I was reading about women who were roughly the same age—and they bored the crap out of me because they were so inexperienced. By the time I was thirty I found it harder and harder to relate to the heroines in romance because they were younger with very little life experience under their feet. The harder I looked for a more mature-aged heroine, the more I was led to Women’s Fiction—which to me, is not romance. That annoyed me. Chronological age becomes irrelevant if the story engages you or the reader—if you connect to something. I wanted to read romance not Women’s Fiction ‘relationship’ novels about best friends and cheatin’ husbands. Writers are often told to ‘write what you know’ or to ‘write the book you want to read.’ So that’s what I started doing. I took that life experience and life baggage and jumped on the romance train.

‪Shallowreader: I’m so glad you jumped on that train! As a reader, women’s fiction and finding-one’s-true-self-due-to-broken-relationships books have never appealed to me either yet so few romances depict older women. Do you think cultural expectations (and by default publishers predicting readers expectations) still relate back to the juvenile attitude of “Ewwww! It’s like knowing that your mum and dad still do it“?

Sandra: ‪To some extent yes, there is that ick factor inherent for some. For others it’s a matter of ‘romance is fantasy and I don’t want an ageing body in MY fantasy’ or ‘I want to picture pretty, not as I am, I don’t want a reminder I’m getting older’. Then there are readers (like me) who are fine with more realism in the fantasy, fine with getting older and would like to see that translated into romance fiction. The heroine’s beauty/allure is in the eye of the hero; he finds her crow’s feet sexy or her big ass sexy. People over forty fall in love and have sex like demented bunnies. Why not have that fantasy in romance?

Shallowreader: ‪I agree. I have owned demented bunnies. I loved the part in the book where Dominic points to a hair that Lesley thought she had removed and their ensuing aging body banter. I swooned!

Sandra: ‪I think some people think, as one editor did, that forty plus sex scenes are gong to include long descriptions of sagging boobs and flaccid penises—which of course would spoil any romantic fantasy. As a side note here: One of my favourite romance novels has two romances running simultaneously. Jenny Crusie’s Trust Me On This—to me the more engaging romance was between Harry and Victoria and they were sixty somethings. Harry was so turned on by the sight of Victoria’s skin. It was fantastic! They deserved the entire BOOK!

Shallowreader: I was still in my twenties when I read Jenny Crusie’s Anyone But You. Her female character was in her forties and this was a non-issue for me as a reader as the story was wonderful. I feel the same way about Lesley and Dominic in A Basic Renovation. They are in their forties and this just makes the romance stronger.

‪Sandra: As I said earlier, chronological age becomes irrelevant if the story engages the reader. I have read a few twenty-something heroines who, because of their circumstances have more experience than most women their age, and those stories have enthralled me. In fact, unless it’s specified or it constantly hammers me in the face—which happens more than I like—I forget about the heroine’s age as I read. It’s, as you said, a non-issue because I’ve engaged with the story and the heroine’s age becomes irrelevant. Her age is not driving the plot; the romance is driving the plot. That being said, if I were to read a romance with a mature-aged heroine who was all wrapped up in her age and worried about ageing (and I’ve read two) I would feel hammered in the face. I don’t want to read about someone ageing, I want to read about someone falling in love and getting a happily ever after despite their age because that is what happens in life.

 

Shallowreader: Is Crusie a big influence on your writing? Who else has influenced you?

Sandra: I really love Elmore Leonard. He writes crime and Westerns. Some readers may know him. Movie lovers will know his work like Get Shorty, Out of Sight (and the oh-so-sexy boot/trunk scene with George Clooney and Jennifer Lopez) and Jackie Brown. He has the most fantastic characters and THE most sublime dialogue. Right now his work is on TV with the show Justified. I adore his character Jackie Brown from Rum Punch—she’s an over forty flight attendant/smuggler who beats the mob. Jackie’s awesome and I can only pretend my romance emulates Leonard. I admire Suzanne Brockmann, Rachel Gibson and Susan Elizabeth Phillips and Jo Goodman because they write such multilayered and engaging stories, so I supposed they influenced me though osmosis. Or I like to think they have.

‪Shallowreader: I certainly see the Elmore Leonard influence – particularly your dialogue. I love that she nicknames Dominic “Walks-with-hard-on” and the verbal slamming was great. Your use of “fuck” and flipping the bird just made me want to read more books by you. I saw, not only Leonard, but a touch of Tarantino too but without the blood and gore, just with all the juicy language and wit. And I found your book really funny. I struggle to find books that are funny. I think writing humour is the most difficult of all writing crafts as timing and intonation is key. The act of reading internally differs so greatly from dramatisations or audio books where the actors or readers help convey the humour. I was snorting and laughing out loud as I read through this book. Did you find the humour writing difficult?

‪Sandra: You’re being very nice to me. I’d like to see a Leonard-esqueness in my writing. My sense of humour is that of a 12 or 13 year old boy, but I have a rule when I write: Sort of. I try not to do fart jokes or poop humour because, while I appreciate them, I know they’re not, uh, everyone’s cup of tea. I laugh like hell when I write the comedy scenes, but I never know if someone else if going to find the scene funny. I can only hope the readers do. Your snorting and laughing out loud is a good sign!

‪ Shallowreader: Farts can even be romantic in the right context

Sandra: Yes, farts can be romantic if the situation is right–say like in a car…

‪Hang on….Tarantino? Me? Oh, if you could only hear MY soundtrack for A Basic Renovation…

Shallowreader: ‪That IS my next question! Music and food are a big part of your book. What would be your soundtrack to your book and what do you recommend your readers to eat while they read it. For the record, I ate lots of cashews and salt and vinegar chips while drinking rosé – I’m a classy shallowreader.

Sandra: ‪Salt and vinegar with rosé? Coffee. Coffee and cookies. Or Cherry Limes from Sonic. Or apple pies from McDonald’s (if only Oz MCDonald’s had the cherry pies!). Music…well, I had to edit out the references to the songs Lesley listens to because not everyone would care or know the music but I have a playlist. It’s a little long…

Shallowreader: Do share it!

Sandra: ‪Here are a few of the songs. Any more and we’d be here for a week.

  • ‪In-A-Gadda-Da-Vida Iron Butterfly–very important
  • ‪From My Head to My Heart Evan & Jaron Evan and Jaron
  • ‪Glory Days Bruce Springsteen
  • ‪Goodbye Girl Squeeze
  • ‪New Shoes Paolo Nutini
  • ‪Phantom Limb The Shins
  • ‪Buy a Dog LUCE
  • ‪Red Dragon Tattoo Fountains of Wayne
  • ‪Seven Nation Army The White Stripes
  • ‪Supernova Liz Phair
  • ‪Worn Me Down Rachael Yamagata
  • ‪Wounded Nik Kershaw
  • ‪You Can Bring Me Flowers Ray LaMontagne
  • ‪That’s Just What You Are Aimee Mann
  • ‪Trust Me To Open My Mouth Squeeze
  • ‪Fought the Law Bobby Fuller Four
  • ‪No I In Threesome Interpol

Shallowreader: Can I say that I started reading your book with a bit of trepidation. We have known each other for a while as we met on Twitter as romance reading and studying followers so reviewing a tweep’s book could have gone belly up for both of us, and you used my least favourite romance trope in that Lesley was married to Dominic’s brother over 16 years earlier. This always creeps me out yet in your book you address this relationship and it is an issue and it isn’t all resolved despite getting past Regis‘s point of ritual death and the betrothal. I was interested to see that you added one of her optional elements “The Scapegoat exiled”. You took this disliked trope and turned it around for me. You also left a couple of unresolved issues which I liked because life is not nice and tidy yet so many books end with a “life will be perfect from here on” view.

Sandra: They were married but not really married and not divorced….I liked playing with that. I like when an author can turn a trope on its ear. I hate Secret babies in Contemporary romance. I mean I really, really hate them, but Susan Donovan took the secret baby (Girl Most Likely To) and make it work for me, and like you, I was shocked that she reeled me in! I’m glad I did that to you!

Hitchcock said you don’t need to give every little detail, you simply have to reel the movie-goer in. It’s a MacGuffin of a sort, to have a few devices or hooks that keep the reader reading… And did you notice that Lesley thought Dominic was having an issue about her past with his brother/her ex Terry before she realised what the REAL issue was?

A very lovely, well-established author was kind enough to look at this book when I stated writing it. She told me she thought readers would have an issue with the two brothers thing—which made me all the more determined to keep it in! Even a character in the book, Fabian, Dominic’s buddy mentions this too.

Shallowreader: Do you kill fairies?

Sandra: ‪Nope. I like to be surprised. And it bugs me if there’s a ‘baby epilogue.’ Come on leave something to my imagination.

Shallowreader: ‪Baby epilogues don’t bother me – and I love a secret baby plot too .

I’ll finish with saying: Your book oozes romance on many levels, from Dominic’s son Kyle on his first dates, Lesley’s still in-love parents and her sharp-tongued grandfather with ‘tude courting a woman for the first time in thirty years, as well as the wonderful primary romance between Lesley and Dominic. Thank you so much for writing this book and for being gentle with my first time interview. I’d like to say that I lay back and did it for my blog.

Sandra: Thank you for reading it and thank you more for enjoying it, for laughing out loud, and thank you for letting me get there before anyone else! I used protection.

A Basic Renovation is available from EscapePublishing, the iTunes Bookstore, and Amazon.

You can find Sandra on twitter @SandrAntonelli

and Facebook http://facebook.com/AuthorSandraAntonelli

Doing justice to Desire

shallowreader 6 Comments

The other week I guest posted a Five Word Review on Charlotte Lamb’s Desire. The review reads “Drunk Fuck Pregnancy Equals Luurve”. I stand by this review. It relays the exact premise of the book. But what it doesn’t relay is the love I have for this book.

The heroine, Natasha, gets drunk after breaking up with her fiance. She goes out with friends and becomes uninhibited after drinking champagne and takes off with a hottie called Lee Farrell with whom she has a one-night stand. When she wakes up the next morning she is mortified and he drives her home upset that it was the alcohol and not her desire for him. She falls pregnant and doesn’t keep the baby secret. Inevitably they marry for convenience but are stand offish and suspect of each other until the grand grovel and love reveal at the end. It is a fab read that very much reflects the mores of the early eighties.

I have reread Desire at least once a year for the past 25 years and I still love it. Published in 1981, the year that Charles and Diana married (why is this relevant), the protaganists have a 16 year age gap (Charles and Diana had a 13 year gap so it is relevant to set it in context) which I find irksome when the heroine is 17 but seeing that 20 is my tipping point into acceptability these two characters are fine by my measure as she is 21 to his 37.

The standout for me is that Natasha has been brought up conservatively and to believe that love is soft and gentle. After breaking up with her fiance “Natasha had always played the submissive, female role…” it is through alcohol that she feel uninhibited. She feels desire and she matches Lee’s desire as an equal.

She had been conditioned to see herself in that yielding female role, to accept the qualities which society expected in a woman, to be soft and gentle and pliant, to submit and give what was demanded. She had not been taught to demand in her turn, to be strong and self-sufficient, to claim her right as a woman, to match the male on her own terms

It is paragraphs like these that I feel are lacking from many romances today. As a 12 year old the sex flew over my head. However the concept of not being subservient, not being shy and reticent, stating my terms and refusing to compromise those values is what stays with me. It is finding a partner who matches you, not a partner who subsumes you that clicked in my reading.

They start conditioning you when you [are] in your cradle

                                                                                        Natasha

My belief is that many romances (particularly from the 70s and 80s) may write what at face value is an unbalanced relationship but it is the reading between the lines that I am interested in. The relationship may fade but the knowledge that with this man, Lee Farrell, Natasha feels strong and self-sufficient yet with others she was submissive. Natasha recognises society’s expectations of her and chooses to not adhere to them but it takes courage to do so.

The book is pretty much angsty from beginning to end. Angsty in that good, melodramatic way with fainting, fisticuffs, jealous fits over beaux and belles, alphabrute chest beating and other ridiculous misunderstandings that drive the story.

You have some crazy notion that love and sex are separate issues

                                                                                                           Lee

This book is about sexual love. Not a love of companionship which no doubt will eventuate in years to come but a love of physical desires firing the soul and Charlotte Lamb’s aim is to allow Natasha to not feel shame and guilt for her sexuality. The book also gives a passing nod to Jane Austen’s Pride and Prejudice for that is really what drives their inability to communicate. Natasha is prejudiced against Lee believing in his public image rather than the man she was attracted to. Lee’s pride takes a battering every time Natasha claims she loved Mike, her ex-fiance, and she was ashamed of her actions with Lee and, as is expected in a Mills and Boon, these issues are resolved at the end of the book in their declaration of love for each other. But not before Lamb uses Natasha as a vehicle to remind the reader

Men have organised the world for their own convenience for years. They made the laws, moral and otherwise, and it was men who sold women the idea that sexual desire is okay for a man but shameful for a woman

I believe that Lamb uses romance to subliminally embed ideas of feminism in her reader’s mind (remember its 1981 publication date). But even more importantly, she uses Lee to remind the reader it is love in its many variations that drives us

Love is what we want it to be, what we need. It doesn’t have any rules. There’s no such thing as law or morals where love is concerned. It’s just a question of feeling, of real emotion, of caring for one person rather than another, of needing one person rather than another.

The reader, social media, exosomatic stores of knowledge and a brand new made up word

shallowreader 8 Comments

I have been thinking about social reading, the move from an information society to a communication society and the impact that this shift has on our understanding of the exosomatic stores of knowledge. Karl Popper’s third world, his “Objective Knowledge” explains that exosomatic stores of knowledge have an existence independent of those who created them. I’m going to go all “My Big Fat Greek Wedding” here and point out that exo comes from the Greek word meaning out and somatic comes from the Greek word for body thus exosomatic being knowledge no longer contained within the body. In the mid 20th century Karl Popper conceptualised objective knowledge as the knowledge that is held in books, libraries, galleries, museums, archives and records. Once these creations were independent of their creator they could not be controlled by their creator and the user could interact with objective knowledge anyway they chose.

So a book would get published and sent into the bookshops, libraries and homes of readers and potential readers. As soon as that author signed off on their final manuscript they no longer had any control over their book and its use. If groups of people wanted to meet up at their local library to talk about the book, unless the author lived in the next town or was on tour and invited to attend, the discussion was purely about the users relationship with the author’s exosomatic brain (the object that he/she conceptualised and produced). Even a published correspondence between an author/artist/creator and a critic became a part of the exosomatic knowledge store.

However, with digital media exosomatic stores are much more vulnerable. Creators can make changes through the removal or editing of information through DRM (which ends up being an even bigger topic but for the purpose of this blog piece, only a tangent) but they can also influence changes that cannot be tracked. That is, the creator blurs the exosomatic knowledge stores. Last week, @Liz_Mc2 posted about authors misusing their influence to get readers and reviewers to change their negative reviews and that she doesn’t feel it is good customer service to contact the reader/reviewer. Read her post “Hey Author, I don’t want to be your ‘Customer'” As I have been known to do, I start a comment on Liz’s blog that ends up as a slightly related blog piece over here. Thankfully, most authors have the good sense (and possibly their publisher’s advice) to never comment on reviews or reader discussions. However, a small minority of authors view approaching readers and reviewers on third party social and commercial aggregators such as Amazon and goodreads as “good customer service”, others take the simplistic view of “If you don’t agree with me you must be simple so I will explain it to you a gazillion times – as an author I can intervene in any conversation about my work” without realising that it curtails dialogue. In the example that Liz disucsses the author in question feels that through approaching the writers of negative reviews and coercing them through dialogue to give her books a higher rating she is performing a “good customer service”. This is loaded with problems. The first of which I will illustrate with a hypothetical question I posed to my 14 year old son and his friend:

You create a Facebook group to discuss your favourite TV show. You post discussions about the show and one discussion has you bringing up some lines that you both hated. The writer of the show joins in and explains why he wrote those lines. How do you feel?

BOY 1: Flattered!
BOY 2: That would be really cool!

The writer has very politely told you why you are wrong for disliking those lines he wrote.

BOY 1: That’s cool too. You can defend your work.

The writer has told you that as he has explained why you are wrong that you should delete your comments (on your FB group not the TV show’s). How do you feel?

BOY 1: I’d consider him a dick.

Would you do it?

BOY 2: No. And I would probably stop watching his show.

I love teens. They understand the implications quicker than most adults (though they might not be able to articulate them without the use of genital expressions).

The implication is that a creator can try, and in many instances succeed, to control his/her product when it is no longer somatic. And the more concerning problem is not whether readers, reviewers, recommenders, bloggers or commenters choose to change their opinions due to undue pressure from the creator but the lack of being able to follow the thread that led this decision to be made. In most cases the original work is being altered rather than a postscript stating the changing view. I have no issue with people changing their mind about a piece of work. Hell – my Goodreads profile states that I reserve my right to make changes at a whim. But then I put my Information Science cap on and I start grappling with the implications of these unrecorded changes. Whether they are due to a whim, a genuine change of mind or due to intimidatory practices that vary from passive aggressive to outright stalker behaviour from a creator there is no way that a dissenting voice can be researched by future historians. The only record they will see is the last one that was edited. Digital records may be preserved such as through the Pandora project but emails on individual creator’s computers are not likely to be attached to digitally preserved sites. The process of thought, the growth of knowledge and understanding, dissenting views, open dialogue and even the pivotal moment where a view has been changed is no longer traceable.

In an age where we are shifting from an information to a communication society, I believe we have transcended the exosomatic stores and we have shifted to a metasomatic (and yes – I made up this word for the purpose of my blog) stage where we need to question the pathways that led to digital information and opinions on social media and commercial review sites and their veracity. Metasomatic stores, in my mind’s definition is where the knowledge has exited the creator but the creator, through digital interactions can still manipulate it’s use but without hard evidence. Can this behaviour be halted? I don’t believe it can be halted. But it can be acknowledged and understood. Unless it is published by a source independent of the creator and third party aggregator, such as digital publishers, due to the poor behaviour of the few intimidatory creators, reviews from unknown persons will always be read with cynicism and doubt. Let’s just hope that future historians will be aware of these issues and will take the same stance.

 

*Added a day later*

I realise that I have muddled up my exosomatic brains and knowledge and stores. My only excuse is that I wrote the comment-turned-into-blog at midnight. At this stage, I am not inclined to change anything as I was playing with an idea and not writing a factual essay.

 

When a romance has you reflecting on past events….

shallowreader 6 Comments

Occasionally, when I read a romance, its storyline sends me on a remembrance of times that have past me. Liz Fielding‘s A Suitable Groom did that for me today.

A Suitable Groom is a sweet romance about a woman who orchestrates a meeting with a man that she feels will be a great deflector from her single status at a family wedding. I do enjoy a “Fake relationship becomes Real” plot line even though I know of only one real life relationship that had this as a start. (A green card marriage which eventuated in love, a child and now 25 years together). But there was something in the retelling of this tale that had me remembering the awkwardness of receiving invites for “Vassiliki and friend” for formal dinners, birthdays and weddings. When these events were held close to my home, I was more than happy to turn up on my own, but when venues were over an hour away by car I preferred to take a friend along. This was in the days of no mobile phones and I found driving through National Parks in my old, unreliable car at midnight on my own to be particularly distasteful.

I had a trusty partner in an old school friend who was always happy to come along to snooty parties, eat great food, dance the night away and then laugh while I drove the two of us home. This was a dear friend whom I had known since I was in primary school but I had no romantic inclinations towards him, and I believed that he had none towards me.

One night, as I was dropping him off from one of my many parties, he asked me to park the car. This startled me. He was my friend. I did not want him confusing our platonic relationship but I parked in his dark, quiet street.

He turned to me and told me “I know why I am on this earth”.

I internally cringed and thought “Why can’t guys just stay friends. Why do they have to misread romance into every friendship”.

He took my hand in his, gazed into my eyes and said “I have been put on this earth to kill the anti-Christ”.

As he said these words, my thoughts turned to “Why can’t guys just crack onto me”.

My next thought was “Fuck! What if he thinks I am the anti-Christ and he wants to kill me and I’m on his dark, quiet street”.

Suffice to say, I wasn’t who he was searching for but he did give me a long description of how this revelation came to him. I gently pulled my hand away from his, made my excuses that I was running late and had to head home and left him with his ramblings. Sadly, this did hamper our friendship as I never asked him to partner me again. To my knowledge, he never killed an anti-Christ but he did become a heroin addict from which he has been recovering with methodone for many years.

Which brings me back to Liz Fielding’s A Suitable Groom. Such a lovely read. Filled with funny family dynamics and a spark between the hero and heroine from the first moment that they spoke. I especially liked the accidental marriage plans as this is how my own husband and I accidentally married (I kid you not). If only there were more “fake relationship, stand in escort to a wedding turns into romantic love” stories in real life. *sigh*

The Passionate Winter – with free 5 years later epilogue by Moi channelling Jackie

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The Passionate WinterThe Passionate Winter by Carole Mortimer

This book is full of WTF situations yet it is trainwreck readable. It was published in 1978 and the book has not stood the test of time.

The hero, 37 year old Piers, is the father of the 18 year old heroine, Leigh’s boyfriend (also 18). They meet when the son, Gavin, is trying to trick her into bed with him and the dad diffuses the situation. She continues going out with the son as a “special friend” despite hot pashing sessions with the stalker dad who is freaked out by their age gap of a comfortable 19 years. Her parents are relaxed about him (go figure!) and have no issue with the age gap. Yet she continues to politely refer to him as ‘Mr Sinclair’ even 20 pages from the ending. He keeps refering to her as an adolescent, kid, young lady etc. The age gap was irksome but I kept reminding myself of pairings such as Celine Dion and Rene Angelil (26 years) and Catherine Zeta Jones with Michael Douglas (25 years) and that it isn’t unknown for such a large age difference. Also, it was the major issue for the two protagonists in this book and it was not lightly dismissed. The heroine keeps being told that she deserves a beating from both the hero and her father and she keeps slapping people. Horridness abounds and love is only realised by sexual attraction.

I did love the description of clothes throughout this book. Her dresses were superb (except her nurse’s smock), her velvet trousers and cream smocks, purple slacks and black turtle necks. Hero Piers alternates between formal dress clothes, black trousers with a white dress jacket,  to brilliant outfits

“He was dressed in close fitting black trousers and a black silk shirt unbuttoned almost to the low waistband of his trousers….Over these he wore a thick sheepskin jacket…”

Hawtness! There’s even a frilled neck shirt in one scene!

There is the usual Mills and Boon HEA but I kept imagining what life would be like for these two in 5 years time. Not pretty. So ‘not pretty’ that I couldn’t help myself and I wrote my own response to how I think life treated Piers and Leigh ….and Gavin (cue wobbly dream sequence waves)….

MOI

Leigh is 23 years old and feeling very much like her youthful age. However, she grimaced when she thought about her 42 year old husband who still wore his shirts open to the waist, he still tried to keep up with trends – he’d even started sporting Michael Jackson styled jackets. When it came down to it their age difference was abysmal. Lately, he had been hinting that they should have a child but all that she can think of is that he grated on her nerves.

She had finished studying two years earlier and she looked back at her decision to marry a man nearly as old as her father who was temperamental, a bully and occasionally still thought it was fine to threaten her with a beating. Her own friends had partied through their studying years and even though they tried to include her and pops-hubby neither of them really had fit in with each others group. Looking back at her decision to marry him she realised that she had only done so because she had been too scared to just go to bed with him. The lust would have been over and then she could have moved on. But innocent that she was at the time, life had been rose-coloured glasses.

And now she had to deal with the fact that last night she and Gavin had more than made out. Her stepson! Her stepson who had been the guy that she had been going out with when she had been blindsided by hunkahunka burning love. Uggh! What could he have been thinking. She was dumb and 18 but if at 23 she realised his pursuit of her was creepy weird why couldn’t he who had been 37 at the time just backed off. Whereas Gavin now was gorgeous, so much more mature that he had been 5 years ago and their interests were much the same. If anything, Piers, washed up racing car driver that he was, spent his nights tinkering with his car, had been fine for his young wife to go to discos with his son and her friends. “I trust you darling! You chose me over him.”

So much for trust, Leigh thought. Going the full way with Gavin had been stupid and risky but the two of them had been burning for each other for years. She would have to divorce Piers, she thought. But this time she was not going to marry his son. She knew the desire would go away and she would be left with an awful, awkward mess on her hands. She’ll have her affair and move on to someone else, eventually. She just hoped that she had not fallen pregnant last night with Gavin….or the night before when she had been with Piers….

Yep, I think I’m channeling Jackie Collins 😀

Fugly Built Environment: Reading Photo Essays – Books 15-20

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Tim Winton and Mick Mischkulnig’s Smalltown is a photo essay of the ugly characterisitcs of far flung Australian towns.

There is nothing so bleak and forbidding in country Australia as the places humans have built here.

Reading through Tim Winton’s essay in Smalltown I was struck by his insight on Australian’s militant unfusiness and I’m in some way annoyed with myself for not having come across this essay before my home renovation. We had nice builders. They weren’t patronising, they listened to our needs – though they didn’t necessarily deliver what we asked for. But it is this quote about Australian tradespeople that stood out for me:

Tradespeople are not immune to this spirit of untouchable carelessness, for when it comes to a service rendered to others, rough enough is often still good enough. Robin Boyd died before ‘she’ll do, mate” made way for ‘fuck you, mate’ and worse. Militant unfussiness can seem amusing or even charming at a distance, but when you’re on the receiving end, paying for rubbish, getting it late and having to say thank you for the privelege, it’s ugly and deeply unfunny, a form of moronic bullying. Sometimes only the bravest amongst us dare to be fussy.

It was when our builders were putting up out ceilings and walls that I asked them why they had only bothered pulling out half the electricals. They laughed and said “Can’t make the electricians life to easy”. Well that was a big “fuck you” to me. Not only did they make the electrician’s work harder, therefore making his work longer therefore helping him earn more but under more stressful conditions but it also left me with disgust for a group of builders who I had started out thinking were lovely people. In future, I will keep Winton’s essay in mind when I am choosing tradespeople. Getting back to the book, Mischkulnig’s photography perfectly illustrates the sparseness, the impermanence of construction that Winton discusses.

Having completed Smalltown I went to my bookshelves to revisit old favourite books Meat, Metal and Fire and Blokes and sheds both by Mark Thomson. I wanted to look at them, not in the joyful celebration of man spaces that they were intended and in which I have always regarded them but as a reflection of Winton’s essay of celebrating this “good enough” culture. Instead of seeing the ingenuity of creating sheds, barbeques and the like, I chose to see them from the eyes of not needing to build things to last, denying permanance because this was not a space to stay in. This lends a tinge of unexpected sadness to these favourite books.

To add to this list, I also read Shack: in praise of an Australian icon By Simon Griffiths (yes, all these books in the same day. It helped that they were all pictorial essays). Shack celebrates the rough and tumble shack. Some as holiday homes, others as workplaces and others as permanent homes. And though beautifully appointed, I couldn’t help but reflect back to Winton’s stark essay. It is not that Winton’s essay changed any of my perceptions. I would say he validated opinions that I have held for a very long time.

Late at night, I decided to cap off my fugly built environment reading day with a touch of irony by reading Dorothea McKellar’s poem My Country. As it is not this brown, plague-ridden, drought-stricken, flooded land that is at fault. Our land is wonderous. It is what we build on it that needs to be rethought.