Finding books to read

As I was saying before I was so pleasantly interrupted by Christmas, New Year et. al....isn't it fascinating how readers find the next book they want to read? I find good reads mainly through bookish magazines and newspapers and by talking to friends. Sometimes a new book gets a buzz in the zeitgeist.

'The Slap' by Christos Tsiolkas has achieved that this summer around Melbourne with lots of people reading it and talking about it. I tried to borrow a copy from my local library but other keen readers were onto it before me so I'll have to wait my turn. (I did read one chapter when I was babysitting the other night and I can't wait to read the rest.) With 'The Slap' unavailable, I decided to read Tsiolkas's first novel instead and I'm very glad I did.

'Loaded' proceeds at a furious pace through the eyes of a substance-fuelled,young, Greek, bisexual,music-loving, lover, brother, son, friend who rushes around Melbourne in a long, speed-driven, orgy. Naturally I loved it. I can't believe it's taken me so long to getting around to reading this book - 'Loaded' was first published in 1995. A really wonderful, poetic, first novel. Now 'The Slap' promises a lot of interesting reflections about modern life in Melbourne coming from its potent central event of an adult slapping another couple's kid at a backyard barbecue. Child protection/abuse and all their moral accoutrements are indeed contested subjects in our society - think Bill Henson.

Another good read was 'The Ferocious Summer:Palmer's Penguins and the Warming of Antarctica' by Australian writer Meredith Hooper. (Published 2007) This book is an account of the author's days spent on the Antarctic Peninsula over the summer of 2001-2002. She especially recounts the work of the 'birders' who have studied the habits of the Adelie penguins in the Peninsula area since the 1970s. The book gives a marvellous insight into how science is done and the build up of evidence about climate change from the sharp end in Antarctica. I found a recommendation for it in a 'best reads' column in the 'Australian Book Review'.

My third read was also clearly in the zeitgeist. I finally got a fix on it when I read the last Quarterly Essay, 'American Revolution: The Fall of Wall Street and the Rise of Barrack Obama', also by an Australian author, Kate Jennings. Sometime along in the essay, when Jennings is chasing the daily story of Obama's campaign and the simultaneous machinations on Wall Street, she writes this:

'The VIX reaches its highest point ever: 81.7. I turn off the television and read 'The Girl with the Dragon Tatoo', a mystery by Swedish writer Steig Larsson. Timely as hell because it has a financial scandal as part of the plot. The Swedes know a thing or two about financial implosions because they had to nationalise their banks back in 1992 when the housing bubble burst. When the banks had stabilised they were privatised again: taxpayers got their money back.'

What interested me was the 'mystery' book that Jennings was reading; it sounded exciting given the fascination of the political and financial dramas she was tracking. I wasn't disappointed, 'The Girl with the Dragon Tatoo' turned out to be a good old page-turner mystery with a sufficiently sex-crazed denouement to satisfy the weirdest imagination (pretty funny stuff!) Plus a nice addition of anger about financial rip-off artists and their weak-kneed apologists in the media and some great characters.

'The Girl with the Dragon Tatoo' is the first book in the Millennium series (second part just published in English in Jan. 2009). Steig Larsson was an investigative journalist who specialised in stories about neo- Nazis. He was also fascinated by the crime genre in writing and he delivered his 'Millennium Series' to his publisher just before he died. He did not live to see the worldwide success of his novel.

I've moved on with my reading now since early summer. Nobody gave me a book for Christmas this year but I've fallen on a pile of stuff about Benazir Bhutto and what's going on in Pakistan.

Good on Bendigo library. All the books I've mentioned are available in their collection and I can order them from home over the net and then have them delivered to the nearest branch library.