Book club choices – please help me.

Our book club started about seven years ago. Members have come and gone. We now have eight members – a good number for lively comment, but small enough that we are coming to know each other well, in the special way that book club members do.

From day one we have had few rules. It doesn’t matter if you didn’t want to read the book or haven’t had time – come along anyway. Catering is to be simple – though for a while we indulged in amazing pot luck meals. We are back to a cup of tea or coffee with something to accompany it. The idea is that hosting book club should not be onerous.

The challenge is to recommend a book a few months ahead of when it is your turn to host. This is where the rules come in – the book should be light enough to read easily in bed (talking actual weight here – not literary merit) and the font big enough to read without eye strain. Getting the idea about how old most of us are now?

Mary’s choice for our meeting this week was unexpected – Kevin Powers’ “The Yellow Birds” which reads like a first-hand account of the Iraq war; what war does to its own soldiers, let alone the enemy. The writing style is often lyrical and poetic – a counterpoise to the graphic, punchy and challenging content and raw symbolism. A book to enjoy? I don’t think so. An important book. Definitely. Powers won the Guardian First Book Award for “The Yellow Birds”.

Kindles and Kobos have slightly changed the way we work. Usually two or three members could lay their hands on hard copies of the book. These books would do the circuit. This has become a bit more challenging since members have started downloading the book. Buying hard copies has become much easier with Trade Me and The Book Depository providing the titles we are after in excellent condition and well below the shop price. Sorry book shops – I try to support you, but you usually have to order in the title I want, which means an extra trip down the road, and your prices are prohibitive compared to online options, delivered right to the door.

I blithely suggested we might read anything by Isabel Allende for my turn at hosting, coming up in a couple of months. I suggested this because I have a pile of her books that I have acquired over the years that are waiting to be read. However, great titles have been popping up all over and, given there has been nothing – absolutely nothing – worth watching on TV, I have indulged in a reading binge.

A hard choice. Which of these shall I choose for others to read and discuss for my book club night?

This is where I need your help. I started “Life After Life” by Kate Atkinson – it’s huge and I’m told that the plot jumps around all over the show, but this was recommended by the book sellers at the Readers and Writers Festival. I’ve only read the first couple of chapters and I’m not sure so far.

I devoured “The Rosie Project” an Australian book where I recognised people who have been close to me who have the Aspergers personality, drawn here in the lead character with humour, compassion and admiration.

“The Writing Class” by local writer Stephanie Johnson riffled across the top of the characters who want the world to read their masterpieces, Merle’s relationship with her students and her husband, with a sprinkling of current issues and  literary references running through the story. The book purported to be a novel about students learning to write a novel, while doubling as a class for any reader who aspires to write and be published. Perhaps Joan Rosier-Jones’ classes and Stephen King’s book have already done too good a job with me, as I didn’t glean anything new about the art or craft of writing novels in the book. So please help me here – please register your vote. Which of these books should I recommend for book club?

Auckland Writers and Readers Festival and Three Remarkable Women.

Bookworms were spoilt for choice at the  Auckland Writers and Readers Festival last weekend. So many seminars, panel discussions, events and lectures – so little time (and a tight budget).

I wished I had booked earlier, as I missed out on Eleanor Catton’s three-hour workshop on Character and Plot. As an aspiring novelist, I was keen to learn more about “strategies for creating compelling characters and surprising plots, and examining the relationship between character and plot in our own work”. It is an area I have become interested in since reading Stephen King’s “On Writing” which makes a convincing argument for creating a couple of magnificent characters who will take ownership of the plot with the author acting as a disciplined and solitary scribe.

If I lived in Auckland, I would have gone to the NZ Listener Gala Night True Stories told live. There I was the next morning, waiting to meet up with friends, with a total stranger regaling me with her enjoyment of the hilarious  seven-minute stories of a number of the festival’s most famous guest writers. It was 16 hours too late to tell me that the event was “not to be missed”.

I did make it to “Remarkable Women” chaired by the remarkable, informed and gracious Jolisa Gracewood.  She had a formidable task, as “arts and café society queen” Meme Churton warmed to her topic (herself), leaving little space for artist and autobiographer Jacqueline Fahey and academic Aorewa McLeod to enter the discussion. I would have liked to have known more about quirky Jacqueline’s thoughts on managing  creativity, hard artistic work, child-rearing and her marriage to renowned psychiatrist Fraser MacDonald.

Aorewa McLeod, through no fault of her own (there was so little air space left) offered up rare, articulate and erudite gems. Hers is the autobiography I am most keen to read. She managed to position herself in an historical period of social change. She described some of the challenges of being lesbian (not “gay”, she was quick to point out) during more judgmental periods of our history. While some of the issues she faced were directly related to her sexual orientation, some of the family relationship issues she touched on were universal. Gay or not, it seems that most of us cope with some level of dysfunction in our families. Aorewa’s humility and warmth, paradoxically, put her literary talent into brilliant focus.

All three writers had unusual – and remarkable – lives. (Isn’t every woman’s life unusual and remarkable, though, if you dig just a little?)  All three had spent time as university lecturers.  All three seemed to agree that the person who had the courage to point out the source of the family’s dysfunction generally found themselves on the wrong side of the entire family forever more. All three revealed to a packed auditorium what I considered to be quite private moments and reflections on intimate relationships.  Perhaps that was what was most remarkable – the willingness to put in print experiences that most of us share only with close friends.

Unity Books and Women’s Bookshop had massive displays of books for sale. I was unable to pick up a copy of Gerald Hensley’s latest book for Iggy, but went away with a purchase for myself – Kate Atkinson’s “Life after Life”, recommended by one of the bookshop staff as having good book club potential. But first I must finish “Eva Luna”, a book I have had for years, by Chilean writer Isabel Allende.

Downtown Taupo

First up was breakfast at Lavarock Cafe. It was busy there while others were pretty empty – a good advertisement for a start. As you can see, Iggy was in a hurry for me to take this photo so he could start on his pancakes and cooked banana.

Now this may look to you like – an omelette. This was not just any old omelette. It was an omelette cooked to tender perfection, not dry, not oily, filled with succulent vegetables. Also,  notice the high quality bread, warm and toasty.

After breakfast we took a stroll through the shopping centre. This promotion for Taupo adventure activities caught my eye. While we were on the main street, we spent ages in Prices Bookshop. Wonderfully selected stock  – real delve between the covers bookclub-type books. Support this book shop treasure before the mass market swallows it whole. If you are going past Taupo, skip the bypass, park in the mainstreet outside Prices and have a bookshop indulgence.

We spent some time gazing at the kinetic sculpture by the Lake’s edge. As the breeze goes over the red paddles, each paddle rocks or turns in a different direction. It made me think of having a quiet kayak on the Lake. Or perhaps poppy petals?

 

 

 

Hatupatu’s Rock

Every time we drive to Taupo, Iggy says “There’s Hatupatu’s rock.” So this time we stopped to take a photo of it and I looked up the Maori legend on the internet.

Hatupatu must have been quite slight to have concealed himself in here.

Here is a carving of the Hatupatu legend. It was done by Iggy’s godmother as a gift to him. Can you identify the different characters from the story below?

The Legend of Hatupatu and the Birdwoman

A summarized version of the Maori legend as it is told on the National Library of New Zealand website.

Hatupatu was hunting for birds in the forest one day. He met a woman who was spearing birds for herself. The woman had wings on her arms, and claws instead of fingers. Her lips were long and hard and pointed, like a bird’s beak, and she was using them as a spear.

Just as the woman speared a bird with her lips, Hatupatu threw his spear at the bird. The spear  stuck in the woman’s lips instead. Terrified, Hatupatu ran away, but the bird-woman soon caught him. As she had wings she could travel faster than Hatupatu.

Then the woman, whose name was Kurangaituku, took Hatupatu home to her cave, and kept him prisoner there. Kurangiatuku gave Hatupatu only raw birds to eat. He pretended to eat them, but hid them instead. When Kurangaituku left each day at dawn to spear birds, Hatupatu stayed back and roasted the birds. He also admired all the treasures in the woman’s cave – pet birds, lizards, a taiaha, and piles of precious cloaks made of flax, dogs’ fur or red feathers. Hatupatu wished he could escape and take the treasures with him.

One morning Hatupatu suggested to Kurangaituku that she should travel over a thousand hills to do her hunting. Kurungaituku agreed to this and off she went. When Hatupatu thought that she was far enough away, he began to gather up the treasures. He killed the lizards and all the pet birds except one. That little bird escaped, and flew away to fetch back Kurangaituku. And as the little bird flew along he sang, ‘Kurangaituku, our home is ruined, our things are all destroyed’; he kept singing this and flew on and on.

At last Kurangaituku heard him, and said, ‘By whom is all this done?’

And the little bird answered. ‘By Hatupatu—everything is gone.’

Kurangaituku hurried back to her home. The little bird showed her where Hatupatu had gone, and she ran on, calling out, “Hatupatu, you are not far from me now.”

Hatupatu heard her behind him, and he thought, ‘I’m done for now.’ So he repeated a magic charm he knew; ‘O rock, open for me, open.’

Then the rock opened, and he hid inside it.

Kurangaituku came running past the rock, but she could not see him, and she ran on, still calling out, “Hatupatu, you are not far from me now.”

After her voice had died away in the distance, Hatupatu came out of the rock and ran on again. When he came to Rotorua, Kurangaituku saw him once more and pursued him, throwing stones at him as she went. But then Hatupatu came to the boiling springs at Whakarewarewa. He jumped over the springs, but Kurungaituku tried to wade through them, and so she was burnt to death.

Then Hatupatu came to the shores of Lake Rotorua. His home was on Mokoia Island in the middle of the lake. He dived in and swam under the water to the island, and there he was united with his parents, who had thought for a long time that he was dead.

Meeting Jeffrey Eugenides

In one of those quirks of timing, my first blog takes me out of Hamilton to place in Auckland, with a visit to Words Down Under, the Auckland Writers and Readers Festival. Surrounded by other Hamiltonians, I attended An Hour with Jeffrey Eugenides. Our book club recently discussed Eugenides’ most recent novel, The Marriage Plot. Kate de Goldi (author of The Ten O’Clock Question) was a well-researched and relaxed interviewer, making more sense out of the novel than I had succeeded in doing with a casual read. (There’s enough complexity for the novel to be a good book club book.)

Despite the gaps in my understanding of some of the novel’s themes, there was one line that especially resonated with me and which I quote to anyone who’ll listen – “English was what people who didn’t know what to major in majored in.”

Kim Hill’s interview with Jeffrey Eugenides on her Saturday morning programme covered some of the same content as the festival session and provides a rich backgrounder for enthusiastic Eugenides readers.

Click here.

Eugenides is a modest and disarming interviewee – and then there was the pleasure of being on the receiving end of the gorgeous Eugenides smile as he signed my copy of The Marriage Plot.

Jeffrey Eugenides signing The Marriage Plot.