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Gold in the archives
The Obiter team has been digging into the database for shiny nuggets of nineteenth century fiction for our next title in the ‘To Be Continued’ series. With the bad puns you’ve probably guessed that this will be a collection of goldmining stories. We’ve been busy cutting and polishing stories about bad luck and good luck, temptation and greed, crime and redemption, mateship and romance.
These stories evince the way in which gold finds in Australia fired both economic and literary imaginations well into the late nineteenth century. ‘Gold,’ writes Tanya Dalziell in her introduction, ‘readily lent itself to imaginative speculations about life in the colonies and the proper ways in which it should be led.’ And stories about gold, such as these, ‘say less about the substance itself than the life and times in which it circulates.’
Tom Morison’s Golden Christmas will be available in December and you can pre-order online.
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Our award winning collaborator!
We’re very pleased that Associate Professor Tanya Dalziell from the University of Western Australia has curated Tom Morison’s Golden Christmas, the latest ‘To Be Continued’ collection, and written an introduction. Tanya’s interests are in twentieth-century, Australian, and postcolonial and transnational literature. Her most recent book, with Paul Genoni, Half the Perfect World: Writers, Dreamers and Drifters on Hydra, 1955–1964, tells the story of the post-war international artist community on the Greek island of Hydra, that famously included singer-songwriter Leonard Cohen as well as the Australian literary couple, Charmian Clift and George Johnston. It has just won the 2019 Prime Minister’s Literary Award for Non-fiction.
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Book club on the hill
Bruce Pascoe’s Dark Emu was selected last month as the first book to be read by our politicians for the inaugural Parliamentary Book Club. The Australian Publishers Association said that during a nation-wide call out for nominations, Pascoe’s award-winning non-fiction book was a clear favourite on social media. The first Parliamentary Book Club will be held in early 2020 and Bruce Pascoe and his publisher will travel to Canberra to join the discussion with the participating politicians. We can only hope that a better read parliament will make better decisions!
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What we’ve been reading
Karen was charmed by Amor Towles’ ‘mega-bestseller’ A Gentleman in Moscow (Viking, 2016) which critics damned with faint praise but GoodReads reviewers wept and cheered over. For Karen it was like encountering Chekov in Wes Anderson’s The Grand Budapest Hotel and its nearly 500 pages – sustained in a deliberate ‘accordion structure’ – wasn’t nearly long enough. It almost overshadowed another bestseller, Taffy Brodesser-Akner’s Fleishman is in Trouble (Wildfire, 2019). It is a familiar divorce story with an unexpected narrator and unsettling twist and Karen is still pondering it’s serious gender politics.
In lieu of time to read lately, Aidan has started listening to Schwartz Media’s 7am podcast. With daily 15 minute episodes providing in-depth journalism on a range of issues drawn from contributors to The Monthly and The Saturday Paper, it’s a great way get deep, informative insights with minimal time commitment.
Jane was recently very taken with Wayne Macauley’s The Cook (Text, 2011), a novel about the ambitions of a wannabe chef. It is a biting satire set in the world of the ultra-rich, while it could also, incidentally, serve as a ‘how to’ guide for butchering a lamb. On the Java Ridge (Text, 2018) is shocking for other reasons. Jock Serong’s thriller exposes the damning horror of ‘on-water matters’ in Australia’s asylum seeker policy and ends with a punch to the guts. As a little lighter reading, and research in preparation for voting in the 2019 Australian Bird of the Year poll, Jane pulled out Judith Wright’s poems Birds (Angus and Roberstons, 1962) to enjoy again.
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