What to read this week: Paul McCartney uncovers never-before-seen Beatles pics
A new release from Paul McCartney and a glorious new book celebrating the 60-year career of a talented designer are among this week’s notable reads.
A new release from Paul McCartney and a glorious new book celebrating the 60-year career of a talented designer are among this week’s notable reads.
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The Shot
Look at this cover. Isn’t it gorgeous? It gets high marks from me. The author, Naima Brown, has an impressive CV: she holds degrees in Middle Eastern studies, anthropology and religious studies. She’s written for Vogue, and made documentaries, and appeared on reality TV. She wrote a book with Mel Doyle last year, but The Shot is her first novel, and it’s inspired by reality TV, with a producer, Mara Bolt, who is “ambitious to the point of ruthlessness … she will do anything for ratings.” Sounds like the book for the age in which we live.
Love? In A Cottage
I received a nice letter last week from Ann Clouder (that’s her pen name.) She enclosed a copy of her book, Love? in a Cottage, which she wrote many years ago, but has just recently had published. It was hidden in a drawer, she says, until Covid came, and she had time to work on it. Clouder is in her 80s and had to get her computer skills up to date. The book is set in rural Hereforeshire in the 1960s, and it is “intended to be humorous, as I feel people have forgotten how to laugh.” Sounds lovely doesn’t it? Yes, there is a question mark in the title.
Bold & Lucky: Australian Colonial Navy 1824 – 1831
This is the last published work of Alan Powell, who was an eminent historian (and a keen sailor) based in the Northern Territory. Powell, who died in 2020, was particularly interested in maritime history, and the early British military settlements. In the foreword, his longtime friend, David Carment AM of the Charles Darwin University says the ships in this book – brigs, schooners, cutters and sloops – were Australia’s first navy, pressed into service as “seagoing maids of all work.” Their courageous crews faced many risks, of being attacked or wrecked. If you like seafaring tales of derring-do, this book is perhaps for you.
Alone
Greg Currie is a former Navy Reserve psychologist officer, who suffered depression after deployment to Banda Aceh after the 2004 Boxing Day tsunami. According to this book, he tried to “outrun his problems” by setting out on a 22-foot yacht, Bekka, to sail solo from Australia to South Africa. His journey across the Indian Ocean was “beset with problems and near disasters” and thank goodness he survived because otherwise, we wouldn’t have this book, would we?
Connecting the Dots
This is sumptuous. I mean, just look at it? It’s a triumph, and it’s the work of graphic designer Garry Emery, who is now in his 80s, and reflecting on a life in graphic design and architecture. Emery is considered a world leader in the use of graphic design in urban planning and architecture. It includes what he calls “ramblings … meditations, opinions, ambiguities, dogmas, observations, ideas, remnants, contradictions, realities, episodes, moments, fantasies, threads, traces, snapshots, ruminations, not so many facts, no certainties.”
1964: Eyes of the Storm
Another absolutely beautiful book, stuffed with photographs by the famous Beatle. According to the publisher, he found “an extraordinary trove of nearly a thousand photographs taken on a 35mm camera” in his archive, in the pandemic year. He took them just as “Beatlemania” erupted and “they became the most famous people on the planet. The book presents 275 images of the band’s experiences with pandemonium in six cities: Liverpool, London, Paris, New York, Washington, DC, and Miami. There are never-before-seen portraits of John, George and Ringo, too.
Bunny
This book is being billed as one for fans of Stephen King and Stranger Things. It features Silas, who “didn’t have a happy childhood. Aunt Bunny made sure of that.” There are unnerving twists, dark forests, spooky corners … it’s a psychological and a supernatural thriller. S.E. Tolsen is the pseudonym of a husband and wife writing team, Emma Olsen and Vere Tindale. Bunny is their first novel.
Drink Driving: A Collection of Edible Poems
Nelson Bours left Sydney in search of meaning. He was in his late teens, feeling empty, and drinking to feel full. He made it as far as WA before his old car broke down. He decided to stay until he could afford repairs. He grew a mullet, and a moustache. He worked in the bottle-O. He made friends with locals. He fell in love with the landscape. He wrote this collection of poetry, and you should get one, because if that’s not the kind of thing we oldies should be encouraging - hitting the road, thinking about beauty and language - I don’t know what is.
Admit it, big predictions are rarely a good idea
The best antidote to our prediction addiction is to start holding wayward pundits to account. Perhaps it’s time we all started keeping score.
Think you’ve got a book in you? Keep it in there
When I was asked by a state writers’ centre to give a talk, I declined, saying the only thing I could honestly tell prospective writers is: don’t bother. These are my reasons.