Abundance by Peter Diamandis and Steven Kotler

It took me ages to read this book because I wanted to remember all the detail, which of course I haven’t. It is too chock a block full! Abundance is a great antidote to the pessimism that grips my world. Its subtitle is ‘The future is better than you think’. His chief premise is that if you fix basic needs like water and food and health, then you fix problems like overpopulation and scarcity. And this can all be done through technology and technophilanthropists. The book begins with a fascinating discussion of perspective, which challenges our default position of negativity. I loved this part because it told me to wake up and get a grip. There follows a lot of fascinating detail about the problems facing the world and the technological solutions that are available and becoming available to resolve them, cheaply, simply, quickly. I loved the philosophical bent of this book too – it’s almost like a self help book on the power of positive thinking but with good reason: it’s the young and brave who solve the problems because they have unfailing belief in themselves and their ability to do it. I bought this book for several friends at Christmas. Enough said.

All That I Am by Anna Funder

Wow. I loved Stasiland and I loved this book too. I love the way Funder gets underneath a story and although it is based on truth manages to make it mysterious and compelling reading. This is the story of a cohort of largely Jewish playwrights, journalists and political activists who were exiled to Britain and France before the war and worked against Hitler’s regime from there. It is told by Ruth, who was a member of the upper class Jewish elite and Toller, a writer and activist. Central to both their lives is Dora, their cousin and lover respectively, a star around which the story revolves. It is obvious from the moment you open the book that Dora is dead, but what takes a while to unfold is that the story is told in two different time frames: during the thirties leading up to the second world war, and the present, when Ruth lives in Australia. What was really moving about this book is the enduring presence of Dora in Ruth’s life, some seventy years into the future.

The Monkeys Mask by Dorothy Porter

An astonishing book really, a thriller starring a gritty, vulnerable, tough lesbian detective, and written in compelling verse. It reminded me of the old Beowulf type epic tales, originally told and retold in ancient halls and finally written down.

The Other Hand by Chris Cleave

I had a lot of trouble with this book which is about a Nigerian refugee who escapes from detention and tracks down the English couple who witnessed the incident that led to her flight. This would be a good book to read if you had little understanding of the refugee situation. But I found the book quite depressing. The reviewers on the cover described it as profound and provocative, and one even said it was seriously funny, but I found it grim, predictable and exhausting.

Crossing to Safety by Wallace Stegner

Everybody I know has been recommending Crossing to Safety, after it appeared on the bookclub show on TV I think. This is a fine, mature, understated book about the relationship between friends and between partners. There was a lot to love about it: It’s beautifully written, with elegant and accurate language. Stegner knows exactly what word to use. There’s not a lot of drama to it, so it’s a quiet novel about the day to day detail of a lifelong relationship and it’s all the more authentic for that. The characters are utterly believable. I kept finding shadows of myself in the domineering Charity, which was uncomfortable. Yet in a way I could understand why she was as she was: immensely capable, motivated only by the wish to help others, yet trapped by her gender, her five children and by the age in which she lived. These days she’d be a corporate lawyer working in social justice or something. Not that any of this is even hinted at in the novel. She’s happy with her life, sees no other choices lost, but organizes the people in her world because it is simply better that way. Stegner was quite old when he wrote this book and you can see his maturity and the wisdom that comes with it. He understands about relationships, so partners can be overwhelmed and exhausted by each other yet still be utterly dependent on one another like old vines that have intertwined. Mmmm, wonderful.

The Joy of Sin by Simon Laham

We heard this writer speak at the Festival of Dangerous Ideas in Sydney a few weeks ago and I was so fascinated I bought the book. He’s an experimental psychologist in the field of human behaviour and his book is a collection of really interesting research that looks a few of what could loosely be categorized as ‘sins’. That’s a conceit really: a device on which to hang his information. It’s not really about sin at all but that doesn’t matter at all. It’s a great book to read but of course because it’s a collection of experiments it’s unlikely that I’ll remember any of it in a fortnight’s time.

The Magus by John Fowles

This is the third time I've read The Magus, and I do admit I'm losing patience with it as I get older. It's the story of a schoolteacher, a fairly unpleasant selfish young character, who goes to Greece to escape a love affair and to teach on an island school. He meets a local man, Conchis, and becomes involved in a series of mysterious, theatrical events that utterly confuse him about what is truth and what is fiction. Through it all he begins to learn about himself and about his life and finally comes out of it all a changed man. He finally understands that with free will comes responsibility. The book was originally called The Godgame and the premise is really very silly: that a wealthy man on a remote Greek island could play god and invent and carry off these masques is ridiculous. And it is pretentious. But it's still a compelling narrative and I did find myself utterly absorbed by it all over again.

The Salterton Trilogy by Robertson Davies

I really, really liked these novels. The trilogy was published in 1980, and set sometime earlier than that I think, so it’s dated –contemporary but, as somebody once described it, deals with the ‘universal now’. That’s such a great term to describe the continuing relevance of character and theme. The first tells the story of an amateur theatre group in the small Canadian town of Salterton who are putting on their annual performance. It’s the lightest of the three and focuses primarily on the characters and their relationships as they struggle to produce The Tempest. Some of these characters reappear in the other two novels. The second begins with the publication of an engagement notice pertaining to two of the characters, and then explores the ripples, including law suits and family feuds, that this causes. The main character in this book is the newspaper editor, an absolute delight of a character, who abhors the pomposity and wordiness of his colleagues and all the guff and politicking that goes on in small communities. The third begins with the death of one of the characters and the subsequent establishment of a trust to support a young artist and then follows her development, a break away from Salterton really and indeed from most of the characters we knew earlier. Robertson Davies writes that sort of social satire that I love so much, but with a generosity of spirit that you don’t find in some other harsher critics. There are some truly awful people in Salterton, and he doesn’t shy away from that, but there are also people who are a real-life mix of good and really quite bad whom he treats with compassion for the human condition. While his books approach the soap opera intensity of small town gossip and intrigue, he also talks about much bigger things, touching on the spirit and art and philosophy. What might sometimes tip over into didacticism is counterbalanced by wit and and an enjoyment of the outrageous (by the standards of the 1980s of course.) So while the trilogy is long – about 800 Penguin pages – it’s a page turner as well as being thoughtful and educated, and beautifully written to book.

The Sense of an Ending by Julian Barnes

My friend Kathy, who lent me this book, suggested that it was a book to be read carefully and slowly. And she was right. Every word, and every idea, counts. The narrative is about Tony, who has a half baked affair with a girl Veronica when they are at university. After they’ve broken up she takes up with his friend Adrian. The second half of the novel takes place forty years later as Tony looks back on the relationship. I’m not going to write all the detail here because if anyone happens to read it, it will spoil it. While there are a couple of truly arresting moments in the plot, the book is not as much about the detail of the story (indeed anyone reading it for the narrative alone would struggle to maintain their commitment) but more about our perceptions of the past. Early in the novel the four friends at school, smart-arsed would be intellectuals, discuss history with their teacher. Adrian describes history as ‘that certainty produced at the point where the imperfections of memory meet the inadequacies of documentation.’ And that’s what I think this book is about – Tony’s flawed memories, which inform his attitudes towards other people and his subsequent interpretations of their actions, and the inadequacy of the documentation that he spends the whole second part of the novel seeking in Adrian’s diary. It is a novel about the loss of Tony’s certainty. And what a novel. Finely crafted, sparsely populated with almost Alan Bennett-esque characters, in an almost anonymous setting. Indeed I don’t think I’ve read a novel where setting mattered less any time recently. And the language – wow. Every word matters, and every word is carefully chosen even down to the title where ‘sense’ I am sure means ‘meaning.’ You must think and you must read every sentence. Now that’s brilliant writing.

The Citadel by AJ Cronin

This is of course a very dated book (published in 1937) and reminds me a lot of the Delderfield genre – British countryside, middle class professional, small town life, gossip and intrigue. I have a sentimental spot for books of that period though and so read this through this morning at 3.30am when I couldn’t sleep courtesy of too much rich French food last night. It’s a quick and easy bit of entertainment. The story is about a young doctor from a poor background struggling to make his way in the world, his marriage to a young schoolteacher and how he loses his ideals as he is absorbed into a medical world obsessed by wealth and status. It’s sentimental, at times almost melodramatic, but needs to be read as a period piece ie you have to suspend judgment of the sexism and other norms of that time. The BBC made a mini series out of it apparently, which probably says it all. Read it when you can’t sleep!

Sophie’s World by Jostein Gaarder

I think I’ll chuck this book out. It has won all these literary awards but I must be a philistine, because I struggled for weeks and weeks to get through it. It was ostensibly written for teenagers and is an introduction to all the different schools of philosophy through history. From my point of view it was almost like a textbook – an old bloke giving summaries of each of the different schools of thought to a kid who listens and asks obvious questions like ’ Can you give me an example’ or makes comments like ‘I’m beginning to see what you mean.’ Well I didn’t. It’s all strung together with a sort of mystery about the lead characters, Sophie and Alberto, and the solution is a strange philosophical trick involving existentialism (I think). It was lost on me, but I did persevere and hats off to those who did enjoy it and appreciate its content.

Why Be Happy When You Could Be Normal by Jeanette Winterson

This is a deeply personal book and I was not surprised when I read at the end that it had been written in real time. Winterson’s emotions are so raw and so uncompromising that it couldn’t have been any other way. At times I felt voyeuristic, looking into the torment of feelings that she goes through, but I came away admiring her enormously for the honesty of her struggle, her clear sighted view of herself (through all the doubt and confusion that every human being suffers) and her absolute almost bloody minded determination to survive. So it’s not an easy book to read: a book of self searching and self analysis interspersed with illustrative narrative about her life with the dreadful Mrs Winterson. Mrs Winterson reminds me very much of one of my aunts with slight hints of my own mother, so for me she is a very believable person. And despite the horror of her, all through the story you can see that both the young Jeanette and the older one still love her and are desperate to be loved back. Reflections again of family relationships I know well.

The Hare With Amber Eyes by Edmund de Waal

This is the sort of book you might want to read a couple of times over. I am surprised it is so popular because it is not a quick and easy read: it’s a book that requires attention and thought. Edmund de Waal is tracing his family history, using the collection and passing on of Japanese netsuke as the thread. The Ephrussi family began in Poland, moved to Odessa and as grain merchants then became bankers and then moved to Paris and Vienna. The netsuke were collected by art connoisseur and bon vivant Charles Ephrussi, passed on to his cousin as a wedding gift, saved during the holocaust by the family maid, passed on to the writer’s great grandmother and from her to his great uncle Iggie and finally inherited by him. It’s a fascinating story of the family, of the times they lived in – for example Charles was friends with Renoir, with Proust, his circle contains every important name of the period – and the people who were in Viktor’s circle in Vienna were similarly famous. I’ve read a few holocaust accounts as well, but this one was very moving because it was so deeply personal and painful. The story also underscored the long-standing nature of anti-Semitism: this didn’t start with Hitler and that’s something we tend to forget I think. But the anti-Semitism part of it was only part, and there’s a lot more to this history than that. I liked this book a lot. I struggled to concentrate on it for some of the time, especially at the beginning (not helped by reading it on a kindle while travelling, hateful mechanism) but the effort was worthwhile.

Queen Lucia by EF Benson

This is an utterly delightful satire of middle class pretension written in the 1920s. It’s of the same ilk as Crome Yellow but on a more domestic and perhaps I should say more bitchy scale. It deals with Lucia, who is the ‘queen’ of her small village out of London and her devoted friend Georgie and the circle of other middle class village dwellers who she has revolving around her every whim. Lucia is the one that sets the standard, the one who everybody wants to impress, the one who arrives last at every event to make then wait. She’s a little like Hyacinth Bucket. In this story another lady moves into the area and the trouble begins as Lucia is unwittingly outclassed and outmanoeuvred by the new arrival. It made me laugh out loud in so many places – EF Benson has a deft hand and understated witty style that I just adored.

The Happiness Advantage by Shawn Anchor

Lidija lent me this book and it is a motivational type exercise written by a psychologist/corporate trainer about the power of positive psychology. Here’s the thing though: it’s great. A lot of the things he talks about actually work because I use them and I know they work.

So he talks about things like writing down three good things that happened to you each day. If you do this for as little as a week it can affect your view of the world for up to three months. Alternatively write about positive experiences three times a week for twenty minutes. Same result.

We all take the path of least resistance so it is very easy not to do the things we know make us feel good. So you put the desired behaviour right in your path – lay your gym clothes out and get into them the moment you get up. Then it’s too much trouble to take them off again so you go to the gym. Get healthy snacks prepared in the fridge so it’s easy to get them. Etc.

Conversely apply the twenty second rule: put temptation twenty seconds out of reach. Put the TV remote batteries away, put the chocolates in a cupboard downstairs. Etc.

Think about something happy right before a stressful or difficult situation: your performance will improve markedly.

Proven ways to elevate happiness:

1 Meditation, 5 minutes a day is enough
2 Find something to look forward to and give yourself bursts of pleasure by thinking about it
3 Do conscious acts of kindness: go out of the house determined to do five kind things before coming home
4 Infuse positivity into your surroundings: 20 minutes outside on a lovely day; watch less TV; beautify your physical environment
5 Exercise
6 Spend money on activities like concerts, meals with friends, instead of things
7 Exercise your signature strengths (www.viasurvey.org)

Change your mindset: find a positive way of describing whatever you do, especially things you find tedious eg look at the task, its purpose, its results and keep doing that until you find a result that is meaningful to you.

So much of this is common sense, but do we always apply common sense to the things we do?

The Lost of Art of Gratitude by Alexander McCall Smith

Isabel and Jamie continue in their life together. You know, not much happens in these books. I might give up on them. In this one, she gets taken for a ride by Minty Aucherlochtie who uses her as a go between to frighten some men who are giving her a hard time. For the rest of it, it’s philosophical musings.

The Comfort of Saturdays by Alexander McCall Smith

Isabel’s life continues, as she dithers around about her relationship with Jamie and is stitched up by her perceived ethical responsibilities in terms of having a relationship with a much younger man. She tries to help a doctor who has been unethical in his conduct in reporting test results for a new drug, but the real focus of this story is more on Isabel and her musings than anything else. I am enjoying her books though.

The Call by Yannick Murphy

This is a charming book that I read between 11pm and 2.30am yesterday when I couldn’t sleep. It’s a sort of diary made by a country vet on the east coast of America, a record of his thoughts as he deals with calls out, his wife and family, and then a couple of major problems that beset him with his twelve year old son and another man – called the Spaceman – from his past. It’s a delightful book and a very quick and easy read.