altering attitudes about (e)books

I am participating in a group exhibition of site-specific work at the end of this month. It's called Material World, and we've all chosen a part of the ANCA gallery to play with.

I chose one of the girders in the ceiling, partly because I like the thought of making people look up away from the 'normal' eyeline of hung art and partly because they've always made me think of bookshelves. You can never have enough bookshelves in a space.

So I'm making an installation of altered books, literally altered to fit the space. I haven't planned all the details of the installation yet, because it's evolving as the date gets closer and I collect the materials.

This is the exciting thing about site-specific work for me. It's made, as the genre suggests, to fit that space only, and that space has very specific needs. For example, there are three girders in the main space, and they are all different lengths thanks to the shape of the gallery. They all have a lighting rack intersecting them about one metre in from each side. So what I put in one girder wouldn't fit in either of the other girders unless I change the work.

Today I drove (through the rain) to the Lifeline Book Fair Depot to meet up with Cedric Bear (best name ever!!!), a very nice man who is also a member of the Canberra Bookbinders. I had previously flagged with him the possibility of my needing over five metres of hardbacks that I could cut up, and he was happy to donate them, especially if they were books that they just can't shift at the twice-yearly fairs.

This is what I ended up with:



Boxes and boxes of hardback books by writers like Bryce Courtenay, Wilbur Smith, John Grisham, Stephen King, and myriad Reader's Digest volumes, both old and new.

Cedric didn't have to rummage around to find these particular boxes, and the volunteers packing my car offered me more, and said that I could go back & get more if I find I need them. What I took didn't make a dent in the depot's store of these books, and I've seen their shrink-wrapped pallets of the same hardbacks, in multiples of multiples.

THESE ARE THE BEST ADVERTISEMENT FOR E-BOOKS I HAVE EVER SEEN.


It's not that the writers are {ahem} bad, it's that people will buy themselves these huge, badly-produced, cheap-papered volumes, read them once, maybe lend them to a friend, and then throw them away. Or in this case, donate them to Lifeline. Who have gazillions of them. Go into any secondhand bookshop, they have shelves of the buggers. Who wants them? No-one, they've already read them. And these kinds of readers want them to be new/fresh/free of germs/whatever.

If this is a description of your nana/pop/dad/aunt/uncle/friend, BUY THEM A KINDLE. All these books are available as e-texts, and e-readers can be made into large print books. Think of the number of trees we will save!

I've always thought that e-books will not kill books in general, they will just winnow through the chaff and allow good books to be produced well and collected by those who love the form. These crappy books are not loveable, they are the equivalent of Happy Meals with Toys. Don't buy them.

I'm going to have fun with these books. I won't know what I'll do until I go through them and talk to them and think about what they want to, and how they will interact with each other.

So thank you, Lifeline peoples. You rock. I'll make sure you get an invitation to the opening and an acknowledgement for your donation to my work. I'm looking forward to everything about the exhibition except the bit where I have to climb a ladder to install my work. I hate climbing ladders!

Re rereading

There are readings--of the same text--that are dutiful, readings that map and dissect, readings that hear a rustling of unheard sounds, that count grey little pronouns for pleasure or instruction and for a time do not hear golden or apples. There are personal readings, that snatch for personal meanings...

Now and then there are readings which make the hairs on the neck, the non-existent pelt, stand on end and tremble, when every word burns and shines hard and clear and infinite and exact, like stones of fire, like points of stars in the dark--readings when the knowledge that we shall know the writing differently or better or satisfactorily, runs ahead of any capacity to say what we know, or how. In these readings, a sense that the text has appeared to be wholly new, never before seen, is followed, almost immediately, by the sense that it was always there, that we the readers, knew it was always there, and have always known it was as it was, though we have now for the first time recognised, become fully cognisant of, our knowledge.
A.S. Byatt: Possession, pp. 471-2 (1990, 7th impression, Chatto & Windus)

One of my great pleasures of getting older (those of you over 50 will scoff, but please bear with me) is re-reading.

There are many books that I read over and over. I've been keeping a formal reading list since 2000 (before that I just made diary entries if a book really impressed me), and now that it's been nine years of proper record-keeping, I've noticed a pattern. I seem to have a rotation of re-reading, so that if I read a new book and love it, I'll re-read it three years later, and then it gets in line with the other rotations, and they will emerge every five or so years amongst a lot of new reading. I might read a book that makes me think of Jane Eyre, and so I'll pull Jane Eyre off the shelf. If it's only been a year or so since I last reread it, I'll get a page or so in and feel that the re-reading is wrong, and put it back. There needs to be a decent interval, so that the book can feel familiar but still hold some small mysteries and pleasant surprises.

(This applies to other forms of entertainment as well: I can watch movies I like regularly but not constantly, and I can't watch a tv comedy again within at least six months of it first appearing, to BB's despair -- he is a Ricky Gervais addict, unfortunately, and many of my evenings on front of the computer are soundtracked by RG's insane and very annoying laugh.)

There are books on my shelves that aren't listed in my Reading List, which means that I should re-read them and decide if they still belong on my shelves. I decided, last week, to start with Possession, since I last read it as a student and I'd loved The Children's Story and many of her short stories so much.

And this is when I came to that conclusion about getting older. I've been thinking about this a bit, as you do when you roll over another year, as I do on Thursday. Thinking about fashions, how I scoffed at my mother grimacing at what I was wearing twenty years ago, and now I grimace daily as I walk through the art school wondering how that student over there managed to find the burgundy and gold acrylic Sussans jumper I chucked out when I finally grew a bit of dress sense.

A friend once told me that Proust is not worth even tackling until you'd had a bit of a life. I thoroughly enjoyed Possession as a 23-yo, but I wonder now how much I'd really understood of it. I must have talked about it in tutorials, maybe I even wrote something about it. But reading it on the other side of 40 made such a difference! Don't get me wrong, I'm not dissing the girl I was: it's just that I would have loved the fairy tale bits and not thought much of the academic parts and the abstinence parts (or the bits where you make space to understand who or what you are -- or who or what THEY are), which really are the guts of the book. So I'm looking forward to tackling a few more of the unlisted books on the shelf.*





It was the Lifeline Book Fair this weekend. I had to go to the Blue Mountains to celebrate a family birthday, so I popped in on Friday and found a few treasures, and then we dashed back today in time for the Sunday arvo trash. Lots of yummy poetry books, nice bindings to pull apart, and a couple of obscure things printed in letterpress that I need to do some research about.

I also found a gallery in Leura who are going to stock some books and prints of mine! huzzar!



*sorry, meant to write more here, but my train of thought has been shot to pieces by BB, who wants me to commit to coming to bed or not... NOT, but now that my concentration has gone, I might as well. Gah.

Nice things

This afternoon I was contacted by Megalo (the gallery where I'm showing my work) who wanted to know if I could drop everything and go on the radio. Apparently the local ABC had a bit of a cancellation and thought they'd fill it with some Local Art. Hooray!

So here I am in me working gear*, holding a couple of 'nice things made out of old books and recycled paper', just before I went into the studio to talk to the lovely Louise Maher. We had a great conversation, and they've promised to send it to me as an MP3 so that I can cringe along in the privacy of my own studio.

It was absolute gold putting the word 'recycled' into my title. I'm actually recycling papers I've created with my own printing work, but Louise was really more interested in my use of old books, and we talked at length about the Lifeline Bookfair and the way I plunder its treasures only after I've given people every chance to buy the books. I rattled on about how books aren't our primary source of information anymore, and therefore have even more become objects of desire, so extending the life of old books by transforming their initial design makes lots of sense. I also talked about books as primal symbols, and that when you use books in art, you're bringing the viewer halfway towards your art, because they understand what a book should be, and you can work with or against that. (In that line of thinking you can also substitute the word 'painting' and it works well too.) She also got interested in my letterpress work, and we talked a bit about the instant gratification of manual typewriters.

I don't know how those 'radio hosts' (don't think they're called DJs anymore) can concentrate with all the paraphenalia around them. When I was doing some community radio (way back when John Howard was in opposition), we just had a couple of CD decks, a turntable, ads on tape(!) spools and a few buttons and twinking lights. Now there's computers and banks of flashy things and multiple tvs running with the sound turned down. I'd be unable to think straight with all the distraction. I was very impressed.

Everything is ready. I've put the numbers on the works, had some more invites printed (I ran out of the meagre amount I printed in a vague attempt to keep things emailable, forgetting that people love hard copy souvenirs), and have bought a load of yummies for the opening. I didn't go the catering route -- just decided to bung on some cheeses and chips and fruit. I did take some time tonight to make some little savoury baked ricotta thingies, just because I had nothing else to do. Luxury!

Now I need my beauty sleep so that I can actually hear what people are saying to me at the opening. Ooh, bum, just remembered that I forgot to book the restaurant for afterwards. Oh well, I'll have to do it at the last minute and cross my fingers! Can't be totally organised, can one?





*Actually, the research chick told me they were going to take a photo for their blog, and I was dressed in my scraggiest flannie shirt, printing with red ink at the time (which makes me look like I've been gashed all up my arms, or like I've slashed someone else), so I dashed home on the way to the radio station and cleaned up and changed into what would ordinarily be my working clothes, anything BUT the flannie! I have standards, you know ;)

Weekend fun: Sunday

SUNDAY

I did go to the Lifeline Book Fair, and took my sewing frame and a few unsewn Transmigrations to sew. It was fun sitting there sewing, and the frame attracted a lot of interest, especially from the Book Fair volunteers themselves, who are all, of course, book nuts. Then I went into the final few hours for a greedy graze of the leftovers selling at $10 per stuffed green bag. I got a lot of light reading for my upcoming convalescence, and a lot of interesting yet unwanted bindings to cut up & renovate.

This is one I didn't buy, but just want to remember fondly. I love the gold sticker that heralds that it's an autographed copy, suggesting that the un-autographed copies might be worth collecting.

I also found a whole heap of sci-fi paperbacks that appealed to me as a collective read/snort/study. They're so appallingly trashy to look at and I shall take the time to list their blurbs, but will save the cover scanning for when I have lots of time and I've read them:

IMPLOSION (D.F. Jones, 1967)
When a foreign power puts a sterility drug in Britain's reservoirs, the result is all too predictable. The birth-rate plummets and the country's future looks bleak. There is only one way to save the nation; all women with a natural immunity to the drug must be placed in special camps where they can be bred from like prize cattle. They must be given special hormone treatment and artificial insemination so that they can produce triplets, quads, quins time after time until they die of exhaustion. they must become National Mums, the sole hope of a desperate people. They must be pampered and disciplined to accept their role. Even if one of them happens to be the wife of the Minister in charge of the whole affair...

Don't you love the fact that the absolutely worst thing pitched to the potential reader is that the MINISTER'S WIFE IS NOT EXEMPT? Ay yay yay.

FALSE FATHERHOOD (A. Bertram Chandler, 1968)
cover: what would a world be like if there were no women, generation after generation?
back cover, top: A world without women but not without love

Sparta [O PLEEZ] was a backwater planet in a forgotten corner of the galaxy. An isolated world where the majority of men had never seen a woman--and did not know what they were. Their history books and their literature made no mention of a second sex, and the custodians of the Birth Machine and of the laboratories where each new generation was created kept the secret with fanatic zeal.
This was the situation when John Grimes, Master of the Interstellar Federation ship Seeker III, arrived on the planet. But when the Spartans saw the strangey shaped 'men' among the ship's complement of officers, the results were catastrophic for their society.
Without any knowledge of women, these men were still attracted by them.
They did not understand why but they were determined to find out.

GAWD. Looking forward to discovering the secrets of heterosexuality in that one.

STAR MAIDENS: A NOVEL BY IAN EVANS BASED ON THE TELEVESION SERIES CREATED BY ERIC PACE (1977)
Cover: All men are subordinates on the planet of Medusa [GAH] for that is the planet ruled by the Star Maidens [catchy!]

On Medusa, the laws of nature had decreed that the female of the species should reign supreme--leaving the lesser able males to take care of domestic chores, nursery duties and other menial tasks.
For eons, the Medusan women ruled their world. But then Medusa entered the orbit of Earth, and rumour got out that here was a planet controlled almost entirely bymen... a paradise planet to which two of the most rebellious manservants managed to escape, so beginning the feud between Earth and the incredible STAR MAIDENS.

WHO NEEDS MEN? (Edmund Cooper, 1972)

Rura Alexandra, Madam Exterminator, had recently graduated into a 25th century world where men had become biologically less important, where women could reproduce as they wished by cloning and parthonogenesis.
Her task was simple -- in theory, if not in practice: to wipe out the last few thousand men who had taken refuge in the Highlands of Scotland.
But an ambush near Loch Lomond led to rape, and the killing of her fellow-exterminators. And Diarmid MacDiarmid, the last remaining rebel chieftain proved too much of a fascination.

Mills & Boon meets Braveheart in the future! Wacko!

and finally,

SEXMAX (Hughes Cooper, 1969)

cover: The most excitingly different original science fiction novel since Brave New World and 1984. [ahem]

EDMAX
JOBMAX
HEALTHMAX
SEXMAX

From cradle to grave, life was maximized by a benevolent State. War had been abolished long ago. So had most illnesses. Men who lived to be fifty were rewarded with a period of state-sponsored sexual licence -- Sexmax. Widows could comfort themselves with a service assignee -- a young man computer-matched on the basis of propensity and performance.
It was a fool-proof system as long as one didn't make a fool of oneself and fall in love. Fortyish Emma Beasley did just that -- fell in love with her 19 year old Sexmax partner, James. The computer wasn't prepared for this. Nor was it prepared for young Josie, who decided she wanted james for herself. And to hell with Sexmax!

SCRAGGGGG!!!!

My golly goodness, I'm looking forward to lying in bed reading these. My only fear is that I'll hurt myself laughing.

Please note that these were all written by men between 1967 and 1972. I found them on the very last day of the fair, with one swoop of the table, not looking too hard. How many others in this vein are out there? This may become a new obsession for me. Is it any wonder feminism gained strength around this time? Look at this manifestation of fear and excitement!

Gosh, time to rip myself away from the computer. Best Beloved has just left for Thursday Island until Thursday (heh) which means...

gasp


...I have three whole days to myself! Bliss!

I overheard my mother-in-law on the phone to BB yesterday fretting that I would be spending my birthday on my own. Oh my, she doesn't know me very well. I love being able to work / eat / sleep without constraints of family duty. Doesn't everyone? Maybe you just haven't had the chance. It's wonderful, but even so, I wouldn't get rid of the family...

Lifelining!

Sorry for the late notice, but if anyone local is heading out to the fabulous Sunday bargains of the Lifeline Book Fair, check the Rare Book Room between 12 and 2pm, as I'll be sitting there with the Canberra Craft Bookbinders' Guild stall, sewing some of my books. We have people on the stall all day, doing interesting booky things.

After 2pm, I'll be inside the Fair proper, stuffing my green bags full of assorted things to read and/or cut up. [salivates]

Happy birthday, Canberra

It feels like Monday today, because yesterday Canberra had a day off to celebrate its 95th birthday. I took some of the day off to have a bike ride with B and BB. We didn't join The Big Canberra Bike Ride, because we stayed in bed and had pancakes with yogurt and maple syrup. But we did a ride around the lake, popping in on the Albert Hall's birthday celebrations, cruising past the Navy Day activities, pausing to watch the dragon boat races, and gaze at the very weird Navy divers floating in a mobile tank (extra weird for me, having seen The Diving Bell and the Butterfly the day before), and having a major break at the budding Celebrate Canberra Concert in Commonwealth Park, alas too early for any good music.

It was a gorgeous day. I left the boys in the park haggling over carnival rides and rode over to the art school where I spent the afternoon batching book covers. Batching means that I don't go through the whole binding process; I'll cut 20 spines, 20 spine strips, 2 sets of boards, and do each stage 20 times. It's laborious, but eventually time-saving, as any time-and-motion study will tell you. The problem is that you have to concentrate at the beginning of any batching stage, because if you make a mistake then, you'll make it 20 times.

I've become a devotee of a digital radio station called Gimme Noise, with a tagline that says 'New and Classic Indie and Punk Rock'. It's like the hits and memories station for the 30- to 40-somethings who used to hang out in the uni bar next to the juke box, playing pool. You know who you are. I wasn't one of you, but I lived with a few of you, and I'm enjoying the chance to catch up on the music without having to be trashed. And you can make requests, which is a lot of fun. The only downside of the station is that it's American, and the only Australians I can find on their playlist are the Go-Betweens (not a bad thing), but that's their problem, and the rest of the music is excellent.

Damn, my whole week is going to be out now. I keep thinking my students should be showing right now, but instead I have a long quiet day of batching ahead of me. Not as sexy as printing, but all part of the book editioning process.

I didn't go nuts at Lifeline this time; I think my total expenditure was about $60, and only two bags of books all up. Probably a good thing for our poor overloaded house, which is groaning under the weight of book piles. One of my students did show up this morning, to show me the big bag of books he found at the Fair (his first, and by the gleam in his eye, not to be his last). He's working with fairy tales from a boy's perpective, and his desk is now groaning with old Boys' Own Annuals and other such lovely jolly tomes. O wot fun!

good grief, my eyes!

Picked up Bumblebee from school at 3.05 and within ten minutes we were trawling the stands at the Lifeline Book Fair. Bliss! Friday afternoon is really quiet, and a lovely time to browse and find things that you'd want to pay full price for (full price being, at most, $10), just in case it's gone by the bargain bin special time on Sunday.

I have a little routine, shamelessly deviated from if something catches the corner of my eye: I leave B at the children's books, cruise up past the collectibles, meander past Linguistics, Dictionaries & Printing (very little about printing), spend a bit of time in Literary Biography & Criticism on the way to Poetry. Then I go over to Australian Lit. (There are two Aust Lit sections, one near collectibles (1) and the other near General Fiction (2). This is the former.) I check on B, who by this time has an armful of revolting Bionicle -- ugh, I can't bring myself to say it. Be brave -- novels, and then I cruise past Art & Architecture, slow down and look carefully in Design, and head for the other Aust Lit, both hardback and paperback.

I've joked before about the plague of Bryce Courtenay books in the Australian Fiction section. Well, here's proof:













By that last shot my hands were shaking from laughing.

And that's just the hardback section!

You could construct a canon of Austlit from what is and isn't on those trestle tables. This year there are lots of copies of Roger McDonald's The Ballad of Desmond Kale, but no copies of Kate Grenville's The Secret River, a signifier if nothing else of what people hold on to and what they read and cast away. Support for this theory comes in the fact that I NEVER find Helen Garner novels there, apart from the odd tatty Monkey Grip, which has been studied at high schools for so many years I'd say every household in Australia has one.

Anyhoo, the haul today was modest but meaningful:

Janette Turner Hospital: Due Preparations for the Plague (NB! if you find a copy of something you like at the Fair, and see a duplicate copy nearby, always check both copies for the price. Pricing is NOT standard. The first copy I found of this was $7, and the one next to it (the one I bought!) was $5.) [found at Autlit2 section]

Anne Chisholm: Rumer Godden: A Storyteller's Life [Lit. Biography section]

Primo Levi: Selected Poems [Poetry section]

Anna Akhmatova: Selected Poems (translated by D.M. Thomas) [Poetry section]

William Morris: The Wood Beyond the World (facsimile copy) [Design section]

Stephen Spender: World Within World (1953 hardback with vgc dustjacket) [Lit. Biog Section]

Daisy & Angela Ashford: Love and Marriage (illustrated by Ralph Steadman) [Art section]

Roald Dahl: Boy (nice hardback version) [Lit. Biog section]

Ivor Brown: Say the Word [Linguistics & Dictionaries section]

Michael Twyman: The British Library Guide to Printing [very happy with this one, found in the Design section]

John R. Biggs: Basic Typography [Design section]

a Thames & Hudson catalogue: Art as Activist: Revolutionary Posters from Central and Eastern Europe [Art & Architecture section]

...and a little book abnout Scrimshaw and how to make it. [craft & sewing section]

Hooray! And I've sussed out the places I'll revisit with a big open green bag on Sunday. Huzzar!

Lifeline to the world

BOOKS!

BOOKS, I TELLS YA!

MORE BOOKS THAN YOU CAN POKE A STICK AT!


Old books, scrappy books, fun books, weird books, big books, small books, children's books, magazines, vinyl records, weird pamphlets... even rare books.


You name it, they've got it, as long as decent, book-loving Canberrans have chucked it their way in the last couple of years.




LIFELINE BOOK FAIR
7, 8, 9 MARCH 2008
EPIC PARK, CANBERRA
Friday 10am-6pm
Saturday 10am-5pm
Sunday 10am-4pm
GOLD COIN DONATION TO ENTER


More fun than just about anything else I know. If you love books.

A chilly hello

Hello good peoples

I am sitting at the laptop of sister-outlaw Naomi in the Blue Mountains, and it is the first day that I have seen the sun for AGES. It's been freezing, and classic me, I packed all the wrong clothes. Only two long-sleeved tops, and they have 3/4 sleeves. This happens every year, no matter where I go, mainly because I leave packing my bag until I've done everything else (including packing everyone else's bags) and then I fling stuff in in a mad rush, only to open the bag a few hours later to wonder who the hell stole the bag I thought I'd packed.

I'm still sick, with a cough that I'm surprised you can't hear from where you are. I'm also at least 5 kgs heavier, having had two full Christmas dinners in three days, including a huge serve of Naomi's fabulous pudding. But I'm happy, because it's cool (I'd normally be sweltering in Qld heat at Woodford right now) and I'm on holiday with people I love. Hooray!

Did you get good loot? I did! Including this, lucky duck me.

Naomi and I are taking our niece to the movies to see The Golden Compass today, so this is just a quick warm hello and goodbye. I'll be home on Friday, all of you who are dying for me to have a turn at scrabulous. Be patient.

Groan... can't move... too many books...

I feel like such a glutton.

This Lifeline fair was pretty lousy for kid's books, according to Bumblebee, who kept his eyes peeled for Time Team books, but didn't find none (sorry, Mouse!). He found a few things he liked, but not many.

I didn't bother with fiction this time; the pile beside my bed is too high. Plus I was too excited by the fact that the Canberra Public Library and the Canberra Museum and Gallery had both had huge chuck-outs over the last 6 months, and there was the most amazing quantity of the kinds of books I like to look at (and read, over time). Mostly hardback volumes of poetry, printed in the 40s, 50s and 60s by publishers like Edwards & Shaw, Jacaranda Press, ANU Press and Angus & Robertson. All, of course, stamped and stickered, but nearly all in mint condition thanks to the fact that very few people borrow poetry from libraries. I've been doing up them up a bit, removing the stickers carefully, and the library coverings (I have my own acid-free book plastic), and I'm very pleased with my efforts.

I find the best way to tackle the book fair is to go on Friday sometime, and then again on Sunday afternoon. I couldn't make it until friday afternoon this time (around 2.45), and was pleasantly surprised at the lack of crowds. That first visit is when I buy things that I know will be gone on Sunday. Anything I hesitate over gets left to chance. On Sunday afternoon they sell a green Woollies bag-full for $10, and I can fit a lot into one of those bags! And nearly everything I'd left was still there.

Including something I'd left for at least 3 fairs now:



Actually, I discover that I took that photo in April 2005! Finally, I plonked it in the bag. Only to get home and discover that the title poem has been ripped out! Heh. I now plan to take off the cover and make it into an altered book.

I think my best find (apart from one which I SWEAR I will blog in the next two weeks; it'll be a long post, and I'm a bit time poor, but god will strike me down if I don't share it with you) was a copy of Nan McDonald's The Lighthouse (poetry again), only because I'm trying to find everything I can of hers, and I found this at the very last minute, on a hastily-put-together poetry table that wasn't on the map and I found on the way out. Along with other beautiful volumes.

Seriously, I bought over 65 volumes of poetry, about 2/3 of it hardback and more than half of it via the green bags. Not all of it is stuff that I'll read closely; many of them I got for their design and cover production. One volume is a small-press letterpress production with beautiful deckled paper edges and a really natty cover by an Australian press I'd not heard of, but I'll do some research on now. There's something about those very formal hardcover volumes that I love, especially the uniformity of them on the shelf. And their covers are quite often very simple but very elegant printing, and looking at the real thing is always so much better than seeing reproductions in bibliographical studies. Most of these will be boxed up until I can set up my studio, where they will be looked at regularly. It's the print-nerd equivalent of loving 1940s fashions, and collecting vintage things to wear.

I also bought some old hardbacks and children's encyclopaedias to rip and tear and alter, as part of the Sturt Summer School I'm teaching in January. How could I resist an old novel called The Maker of Heavenly Trousers?

Bumblebee just startled me by appearing at the door of my study wearing an old purple slip of mine with two plastic Pokemon balls in the chest area as breasts (if you do not have boys, Pokemon balls are quite spherical, but the have a flat rim on one bit so they can sit flat on a shelf, and they sit well on a flat chest!). With his shaggy hair he looked amazingly female, like a 1960s actress playing in Streetcar Named Desire or something. He posed, put on what he thought was a feminine voice, and I caught a flash of the daughter I've never had, but twenty years down the track. It was a very weird experience. And then we cacked ourselves. He's such a little monkey.

Groan! We can't move for all the books. It was a good fair for 'preserving' books too, so BB has piles of cookbooks everywhere as well. We'll have to get compactors built into the shed...

Yes, Mindy, there is a Book Fair

Yes! The rumour is true, Mindy!

This weekend is the Lifeline Book Fair, at Exhibition Park, Canberra!



Be there or be as square as that nice lady's pink behind!

Hooray!

The Haul (breathe, breathe)

I have a bloated feeling from the Lifeline Book Fair, and I only spent a few hours there. It's because I went on Saturday and bought what for me is a moderate amount of books, and then I went back on Sunday for the last half hour when they charge $10 for all you can fit into a green bag, and I gorged myself, mostly on poetry books that no-one else seemed to want except me.

Blimey, if I thought I had no room for my books before, now the situation is utterly ridiculous. But I can justify each purchase, truly! Well, I can justify it to myself, anyway. But now the piles of books teetering around my home office are even higher...

Here's the list.

Fiction
-- Angela Carter (ed), Wayward Girls & Wicked Women, (replacing a copy I once lent and never got back)
-- Angela Carter, Fireworks: nine stories in various disguises
-- Dymphna Cusack, The Half-Burnt Tree
-- Dymphna Cusack, Black Lightning (no, Bernice, I didn't have it. But I do now)
-- Dymphna Cusack, Say No to Death (I already have a copy of this, but this one has a pristine dustjacket)
-- Harold Bell Wright, That Printer of Udell's (1903, seems to be a novel about a letterpress-printing family in the American mid-west)
-- William Morris, A Dream of John Ball
-- The Complete Works of William Shakespeare (1 volume, always wanted one of these, and it's a nice old one with glossaries of characters, etc. Happy Birthday, Bill)
-- Roger McDonald, 1915
-- David Whish-Wilson, The Summons
-- James Bailey, Man, Interrupted
-- Emma Tennant, The Bad Sister
-- Charmian Clift/George Johnson, Strong-man from Pireaus and other stories (hardback)
-- Lionel Shriver, The Female of the Species
-- Zoe Fairbairns, Benefits (dystopian feminist novel, highly recommended, and I've got a copy, but this one has a better cover)
-- Peter Draffin, Pop: A Novelty, with illustrations (everywhere!) by Martin Sharp
-- Kerryn Goldsworthy (ed), Australian Short Stories (not only a good selection, but a killer photo on the back :) )

Non-fiction
-- Style Manual for authors, editor & printers, 3rd Edition. (I seem to have a collection of editions now)
-- J.G. Cone, Cone's Book of Handicrafts (1961, with sone fabulous low-tech fun, including how to make the panoramic drawing frame featured in last week's Collectors)
-- Esther Hautzig, Let's Make Presents: 100 Inexpensive Gifts (1964, packed with good blogposts)
-- J. Hagan, Printers and Politics: A History of the Australian Printing Unions 1850-1950)
-- Charmian Clift, Images in Aspic (1st edition paperback)
-- Laurence Whistler, Rex Whistler, his life and drawings (This book is a definite blogpost in itself)

Poetry
-- Denise Levertov, The Freeing of the Dust
-- Catherine Reilly (ed), Scars Upon My Heart (a collection of WWI poetry & verse by women. Really happy about this one.)
-- Penguin Modern Poets 8: Edwin Brock, Geoffrey Hill, Stevie Smith (LOVE Stevie Smith)
-- Vivian Smith, Selected Poems
-- Jon Foulcher, Convertible
-- Jon Foulcher, New and Selected poems
-- David Holbrook (ed), Iron Honey Gold, 4 vols of anthology.
-- Lily Brett, In her Strapless Dresses
-- Lily Brett, Mud in my Tears
-- Stephen Spender, Poems
-- Martin Johnston, Selected Poems and Prose
-- ANU Staff Centre Poet's Luncheon Menu, 29 November 1977, with poems by Rosemary Dobson, David Campbell, Geoff Page, Roger McDonald, RF Brissinden, and AD Hope, SIGNED BY ALL and was only 50c in the pamphlet section. Bonus!
-- Les Murray, New Selected Poems
-- Derek Walcott, The Bounty
-- e.e. cummings, selected poems 1923-1958 (lost my other copy)
-- Deborah Westbury, Flying Blind
-- Robert Graves, Love Respelt (I actually bought this as one of my design 'warning' books, as it is a dreadful one-section, machine-stitched binding, which ruins the careful layout of the text. Such a shame.)

Comics
-- Larry Pickering, A decade of Pickering (now I can let my individual copies for each year lie fallow)
-- Stan Lee, The Amazing Spiderman (1979 anthology)
-- The Completely MAD Don Martin (one of the only things I like in MAD comics)
-- Northbourne and Glory Bound (a Canberra comic anthology from 2000. This is an ex-library copy that I can read and keep my other copy nice)

Reference
-- Roget's Thesaurus (a copy for the Book Stud, because I'm always wishing I had one)
-- Collin's Australian Pocket English Dictionary (ditto)
-- Collin's Authors' and Printers' Dictionary (I think this is my 3rd copy now, but this one has a FABULOUS bookplate, so I'll cast off one of my other copies. Anyone want one?

As far as the weirdest one I saw, I think this takes the cake:



When I saw it, my first thought was a polemic about drier types of white wine (it's a nice bit of typesetting), or maybe even alcoholism, or maybe growing a cactus garden. But no, it's "a commonsense approach to the problem of Urinary Incontinence". Heh.

No, I didn't buy it. I don't need THAT many books.

Book time's a-coming!

Reading Laura's latest post (highly-anticipated and excellent) reminded me to check up on Joel Veitch, something I forget to do on a regular basis. And I found this, which is too good not to share:



But that's not what I posted for. TJ reminded me to tell you that it's LIFELINE BOOK FAIR this weekend! And yes, the challenge is on for young and old (in Canberra) (or for those who want to make a trip for the occasion) to find the most bloggable book... weird, wacky or just downright revolting. Go nuts.*

Details: Canberra Exhibition Park (EPIC), starts Friday morning with the usual long queue waiting for war history books, and goes through to sunday:

Friday 10am-6pm
Saturday 10am-5pm
Sunday 10am-4pm

There's also a dedicated Rare Books Room that has its own opening times.

HOORAY!




*And because I've been unable to roam very widely around blogosphere thanks to work commitments, drop me a line if you do blog about Lifeline finds. I'd like to see them!

A day at the fair

There's no way I could sit at home today and work, knowing that less than a km from my desk was a hall full of books going cheep! cheep! cheep!

Mama Duck answered the call.

I give generously to Lifeline twice a year because it's such a good idea. You give money to the charity, and take home books! I'd give money to ANY charity who can do this as well as Lifeline do, but I also think their service is an essential one. Onya Lifeline.

There's a ritual to the Lifeline Fair that has to be maintained:



1. Thou must line up before it starts. If you turn up later in the day, you can just stroll in and all sense of TEH HUNT is lost. You may show that you are seasoned veteran by bringing a stool, a hat, and a thermos of hot beverage. [The arrows above indicate, by their size, the direction of the queue winding its way around the EPIC carpark. I've also indicated a seasoned person, who hasn't yet become a true veteran for she forgot her hat. I am usually in the middle of the queue, but thanks to a few prior commitments had to join the end of it, ten minutes before the doors opened. Phew.]



Eventually you get within view of Xanadu.

2. Thou must bring a book-carrying receptacle. This can be a trolley, a rolling suitcase, or, dear god, a pram carrying a child who is happy to be squashed.



Sorry for the awful quality of the shot. I just pointed and clicked, not wanting to waste good book-scouting time. This next one is clearer but smaller, taken last year on the 2nd or 3rd day:



3. Thou must not run into the hall screeching and drooling. This is very uncool and must be left to the Military History nuts.

4. Thou must fully interact with power games. These include: finding out who of two people on the same side of the table but moving in different directions has to go around whom; who gets to pick up that book if you both reach for it; who can be closest to the person laying out a fresh batch of books.

HIGHLIGHTS

Some years I notice themes. One year (and I think every year) the place was overrun by Bryce Courtaney. This year, in the Biog section, anyway, there was a plague of Frank McCourt. Look:



and again, further down on the same table:



There are three types of FMcC books in that second photo. It's like an easy version of Where's Wally.


In the Australian fiction section (there's a few, you have to be canny to find all the good books) I ran into a Friend of the Duck who is an academic at one of Canberra's unis and has a shared love of odd books. Snaps to him for giving me the hardback first edition of The Vivisector on the spot when I drooled at it (my paperback copy has fallen to bits with this rereading). Together we found an entire shelf's worth of hardback Nevil Shute, not first edition, but all with the most glorious dustjackets, $5 each. If he hadn't wanted them I would have taken two or three, but I'm glad he did because it would have been heartbreaking to separate such a beautiful collection:



Five of the piles on this trolley are Nevils. Sigh.

Speaking of collections, there was a new section of ephemera, and look what I saw:



They were selling someone's entire matchbox collection for $100. And, I suspect, the same person's beer coaster collection:




THE HAUL

So, this is what I got today.

Children's
-- various Star Wars teen novels, comics and a puzzle book for Bumblebee
-- various other comics for BB, like Mad and Casper, etc.
-- various puzzle/novel books (where you have to work out stuff to get to the next chapter)
-- The photographic storybook of the movie Return to Oz, something I just can't find anymore even on ex-rental video.
-- Winnie in Winter by Korky Paul & Valerie Thomas (love that witch)
-- The Two Old Bachelors by Edward Lear, illustrated by Paul Galdone
-- Witch Week by Diana Wynne-Jones (already had it, but this can be my lending copy)

Art
-- Prints from Blocks, Riva Castleman
-- Japanese Prints, Celia Whitford
-- Charles Blackman, Ray Mathew

Books on Books
-- The Gutenberg Revolution, John Man
-- Pocket Pal, associated pulp & paper mills (this one intrigued me, because it was produced in Melbourne for an American company but all the photos are of Canberra)

Australian
This was a goldmine today. These are all hardback unless specified.
-- Southern Steel, Dymphna Cusack
-- Heatwave in Berlin, Dymphna Cusack (already have, but this has gorgeous dustjacket)
-- Grand Days, Frank Moorehouse
-- The Eye of the Storm, Patrick White (1st edn with dustjacket $8)
-- The Vivisector, Patrick White (1st edn, $9)
-- Shantaram, Gregory David Roberts
-- Model Wife: My Life with Norman Lindsay, Rose Lindsay
-- Come in Spinner, Dymphna Cusack & Florence James (original, edited version)
-- The Battlers, Kylie Tennant
-- Tell Morning This, Kylie Tennant
-- I can Jump Puddles, Alan Marshall
-- Larger than Life, Xavier Herbert (1st edn with dustjacket, VERY good nick, $7!)
-- Daphne & Chloe, trans & illus. by Jack Lindsay

Poetry
Very thin selection this time. Bit disappointing. And no sign of She Vomits Like a Lady.
-- Collectd Poems, CP Cavafy
-- woops, forgot to add Australian Poetry 1948, edited by Judith Wright

Other
-- The Penguin Dictionary of Historical Slang
-- One-Upmanship by Stephen Potter

and two dying hardback Georgette Heyers in need of makeovers: Devil's Cub and Spring Muslin. I might start a shelf series!

Enough already. Teej has suggested a competition to see who can buy the weirdest book, but I didn't get the challenge until I'd come home with this lot. So I shall go back on Sunday, when everything is further discounted (!) and all the tasteful books have been kindly removed and taken to good homes by caring people and see what wonders remain. Maybe we should have a Sunday arvo blogmeet at the fair?

Lifeline Book Fair goodies

I didn't manage to get to the Lifeline Book fair until about 4.30 yesterday, so it was lean pickings, and I probably won't get another chance to go again, unfortunately. Still, I found enough to keep me going until the next one. A couple of finds I'll leave until my camera arrives, so that I can do justice to them.

I bought a lot of books that I've been meaning to read/own for ages, the sort of collection-fillers that only a cheap sale can provide. Such as Solzhenitsyn's August 1914 and Dostoyevsky's The Idiot, both under $2. I also found a copy of Helen Garner's The First Stone, which I originally borrowed from the local library and so now I own my own copy. It's funny how few Garner books appear at the Fair. I'd say most Australian authors are there in triplicate, at least in paperback, but the only Garner book I've seen in multiple is Cosmo Cosmolino. Does this mean people hold on to their copies? Is she well loved? Or have the generation who have bought her not ready to spring-clean their libraries yet? Hmm.

Anyway, other buys:

Old hardcovers: Nevil Shute, No Highway; Elisabeth Dored, I loved Tiberius; Georgette Heyer, The Spanish Bride.

A few interesting reads: Eugenia Ginzberg, Into the Whirlwind; Paulo Coelho, The Alchemist; Georges Perec, Things: A Story of the Sixties; Kate Grenville, The Idea of Perfection.

Poetry: David Campbell's Collected Poems and Margaret Atwood, The Journals of Susanna Moodie (among others to be divulged later)

Biog: Pamela Stephenson, Bravemouth, and William Cook, Tragically I was an Only Twin: the Complete Peter Cook.

The only art book I bought was an old Sotheby's sale catalogue featuring Old Master drawings. Great images, and probably better than an exhibition catalogue because most of the images go to private buyers, and are rarely seen in public.

Still plenty out there, and they do replenish the shelves every few hours, so if you get the chance, it's a good cause as well as a great bookfest.

Open 10-6 today, and 10-4 tomorrow (plus there's a coffee shop so you can sit and sip while you decide what to take and what to leave behind).

Lifeline Book Fair goodies

Half the size it was yesterday... and a fraction of the loonies, originally uploaded by Ampersand Duck.

Best Beloved and I went to the Lifeline Book Fair yesterday. I'm giving you a photo, but it's an 'after' shot, on Saturday, after the Friday hordes have descended.

BB always takes the day off work on the Friday and queues up to get in early. He usually rides down on his bike at about 8.30am and finds a queue of about thirty people ahead of him. Many get there at Dawn's crack, and set themselves up with chairs and hot coffee. I take the boy to school, and drive the car, arriving at about 9.45 (opens at ten) with my wheelie trolley and some green Woolies bags. Not very cool, I know, but I am gazed upon with envy by all and sundry later on as they stagger around with armfuls of heavy books.

So, why get there early? It's not so much for the early start on the books as to watch the book loonies go mad. The doors open at 10 sharp, and I really enjoy watching these people run towards the trestle tables and wrest armfuls of books from each other. It reminds me of my teenage Xmas job at the Sydney Elizabeth St David Jones, in the women's shoe department. There would be a distant rumble, then a pack of desperate women would charge up the wooden escalators towards the shoes, grabbing whole armfuls and sitting in corners to try them on. In this case they charge for the Military History table, and wage war on each other.

I have a game I play as I look at the books. I walk up to a category, put my hand down on the books, look all around the area, and then lift my hand to look underneath. I'm always hoping something really cool will be under my hand. So far, nothing. Most of the time the things I'm interested in are over the way a bit, but one day I'll lift my hand and feel a thrill. So far I've only laid my hands on Rod McKuen poetry and frigging Nanushka. Erk!

There's always one outstanding buy, and this time for me it was Oliver Simon's Introduction to Typography (1947). Only $2.50! Ha, a collectable design classic, and they shoved it in with the dictionaries. I'm so happy.

Here's some of the other things I picked up:

ART
-- 293 Renaissance Woodcuts for Artists and Illustrators, Jost Amman
-- The Collected Drawings of Aubrey Beardsley, Arthur Symons
-- Modern Boy, Modern Girl: Modernity in Japanese Art 1910-1935, AGNSW catalogue (this is an absolute ripper of a catalogue)
-- Michael and Me and the Sun, Barbara Hanrahan (already have a copy, but this is to lend to friends -- should be mandatory reading for all printmakers)
-- Francesco Conz and the Intermedia Avante-Garde, Qld AG catalogue

COMICS
-- Buffy the Vampire Slayer: the Dust Waltz
-- Tank Girl 4: the Apocalypse

POETRY
-- John Betjeman's Collected Poems (1958), hardback
-- Penguin Modern Poets 9: Denise Levertov, Kenneth Rexroth, William Carlos Williams
-- Philip Larkin, The Whitsun Weddings
-- Sylvia Plath, Crossing the Water (1979)
-- Joseph Brodsky, Selected Poems
-- Australian Poetry 1973
-- Instructions for Honey Ants & Other Poems, ed by Paul Kavanagh (1983)

-- Libby Hathorn, Heard Singing, 1998 (this was bought more for the production, beautifully presented and bound, with papercut artwork by Brigette Stoddard. I'm hoping the poems match the beauty of the illustrations.)

OTHER
-- No Go the Bogeyman, Marina Warner, 1998. (been wanting this since I read bits in the Uni library once)

I didn't buy much fiction this year, only

-- This is the Grass, Alan Marshall (hardback, first edition)
-- The Tortilla Curtain, T. Coraghessan Boyle
-- The Tasmania Babe Fiasco, John Birmingham

Add into that some Star Wars and Superman comics for Bumblebee, and I'm pretty happy with that lot! BB bought his own stash, but it was mostly books on breadmaking and travel in India. He did find a couple of Ardizzone books he didn't already have, so I guess he's happy too.

Only six months until the next one!

Threadbare and booked

Has anyone seen this? (I know you have, Laura, thanks for the link!) Faaarrrkkking hilarious, and we all need a good laugh. Up there with the Fugly Girls.

Oh, for Canberra people: the Lifeline Book Fair is on 23, 24, 25 September. Mark it in your diaries. Save your pennies. Hooray!