bookstackproject

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I am pretty sure that at least half the people born since the 90s would have a Harry Potter book in their bookstack. I am of an older vintage myself but I’ve definitely got some Harry in mine. I’m thinking maybe the Order of the Phoenix, probably because of Dumbledore’s Army - both the one in the book and the real life one it inspired in the Trump Resistance movement. Harry Potter is one the great myths that can help us learn how to live and be in the world, and what to do when confronted by Dementors and Death Eaters. I have an ongoing fantasy about having a Time-turner and Toothflossing stringmints and now, the aforementioned Gryffindor pyjamas as well. Anyway, here’s to 20 years of the wisdom of J.K.Rowling who, like Harry in the Room of Requirement, is one of the great teachers of our age. Read this lovely article to see what Harry Potter means to so many others with kindred bookstacks and spirits. 

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Some great insights here into why your bookstack is the way it is. Have I said how much I love the School of Life? A lot. 

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So, this is a lovely piece of film that warms the cockles and reminds us of the deep and lasting value of living in a house of many books. 

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In a recent appearance at the Sydney Opera House, writer Jeanette Winterson talked about the true, deep, serious value of reading and you can listen to the whole blow-you-away brilliant thing on the link.

She’s on about the shock of reading that forces us out of the safe spaces that feel comfortable and known and urge us forward into the difficult territory. She talks about how books for her are something like the Greek theory of marking out a temenos - a sacred space for working stuff out, for challenge and possibility and forgiveness and understanding. A book or poem you go back to is a conscious kind of breathing space. Books are places we go to work out how to be in the world and to learn how to live by our own rules.

Anyone who thinks reading is a luxury has somehow missed this point – that reading is what helps us to be here and human. I’m thanking J D Salinger and Thoreau and Tim Winton and Jane Austen and John Irving and I’m thanking Jeanette Winterson too, who I once ran into in the ladies loos at the Mitchell Library, which I mention for no good reason whatsoever. 

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One of the many advantages of bookstacking. The right book at the right time can challenge your beliefs and prompt us to audit our values. The right book can hold a mirror up to you, or the world, or that mythical beast, society. It's the best way we know to have a proper rethink.

What books have you read lately that have given you a sense of perspective? 

BTW we flogged this image from an amusing blog called I waste so much time. Have a squiz. 

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Happy birthday to us

Today the bookstack project celebrates its second birthday (so I hope we are not in for the terrible twos in 2014.) It's been a lean year for bookstackings for a bunch of reasons, but I want to say to all bookstackers who have been a part of the project so far, thank you. Your efforts and support are hugely appreciated. 

Yours in bookish love, Manda

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Ok. I'm pretty excited about this. Just in on the ABC News site, they reckon there are five new books in the wings. I know there's a film coming out in September too, which should shed some light on old JD's life since he became a recluse, just like Holden Caulfield threatened to. Rumour always was, he was writing all the time, when he wasn't getting stroppy with reporters and other people who bothered him. 

I am truly fascinated to see what sort of a guy he was. Gentle and angry and compassionate and playful, I expect. Demanding and exacting and, I always imagined, kind to dogs. I always thought he'd be a bit of a cross between Seymour and Buddy and Zooey Glass. I guess the Glass family, who he wrote about in a number of short stories and novellas, were a sort of composite of himself.

My own bookstack would be incomplete without Franny and Zooey. I always thought I was quite a lot Franny when I was a lass, clutching my pea green book about the Russian pilgrim, headed for a breakdown on the family couch...) 

Anyway, if you are a Salinger fan you'll know what I mean. If you are not yet, I can't recommend him highly enough. Follow the link and then grab the books. The Catcher in the Rye is his best known, but I think a great place to start is Nine Stories (sometimes published as For Esme with Love and Squalor). 

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A timely reminder for me. More reading, less pfaffing. Thank you William James, Air and of course, Literary Jukebox. 

We forget that every good that is worth possessing must be paid for in strokes of daily effort. We postpone and postpone, until those smiling possibilities are dead. Whereas ten minutes a day of poetry, of spiritual reading or meditation, and an hour or two a week at music, pictures, or philosophy, provided we began now and suffered no remission, would infallibly give us in due time the fulness of all we desire. By neglecting the necessary concrete labor, by sparing ourselves the little daily tax, we are positively digging the graves of our higher possibilities.

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It's late on a quiet sunny morning and I'm at home surrounded by books, listening to birdsong outside my window. I am feeling privileged to be here in all this calm when there is so much chaos and suffering elsewhere. Richard Glover reminds us of the way books give us access to the lives of others so we can experience empathy for people whose circumstances differ so greatly from ours. This photoessay posted on Aljazeera shows how silent reading can be an act of protest. Reading breaks down barriers, makes us all human, focusses on our core values and shapes our characters. The readers in Taksim Square publicly read books chosen to express anything from a connection to broader humanity to sharp political commentary. It's all pretty sobering from the calm of my study, sobering, but beautiful to think that in the midst of such chaos and trauma, the citizens of Istanbul can do this mute, wonderful thing that communicates so much. 

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This is such a smart, thoughtful talk by ABC radio host Richard Glover, champion of reading and the many benefits thereof. He explains here how reading is a gymnasium of empathy (I'm liking that metaphor) and how P.G.Wodehouse helped Richard in his Canberra schoolyard in the seventies. It's lovely stuff, beautifully expressed. I think he's a bookstacker at heart. 

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I wish one of these Penguin trolley kiosk thingies was roaming the streets in my neighbourhood. I have a fantasy that there are books and ice cream, but I think it's just books. Just as well really - you don't have to feel guilty about indulging in too many books. 

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It is a truth universally acknowledged that on the occasion of the 200th anniversary of Pride and Prejudice, we should watch this clip of the very sexy dance between Elizabeth and Darcy at the Netherfield Ball. Just to remind ourselves. Thank you BBC. Thank you very much indeed. 

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What a great article in Saturday's Herald. Helen Garner on re-reading Pride and Prejudice, reminding us of the thrill of revisiting something you thought you knew. We love you Helen, even if you are a wee bit confused about where where Darcy and Elizabeth first meet. 

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Erla, who thinks Heathcliff is a spunk

As I began to search my bookcases for my ultimate stack I realised many of my favourite books had been lent to friends and family or were actually titles I had borrowed from other friends and family. Although it concerned me that I could not show off my ‘real’ book stack at our little gathering, I realised the books I had lent, and borrowed, over the years had brought me closer to those I loved.

Whilst growing up on a wheat and sheep property in north western NSW I escaped the isolation through the world of fiction. The moors in the north of England were a far cry from the flies and dust of the Goolhi district but it was Heathcliff and Catherine’s relationship in Emily Bronte’s Wuthering Heights which kept me mesmerised as a 16 year old. The passion, the longing, and the hurt, were unsurmountable as the relationship continued posthumously in mad Heathcliff’s mind. The fact that he was an absolute spunk kept me entranced as well. Would anyone ever love me with such passion? 

Once at university, D.H. Lawrence became a firm favourite and studying The Rainbow in English 101 taught me how writers use words to arouse feelings and conjure emotion in their audience. The fact that Lawrence spent a great deal of time in Australia supported my belief that such passion could exist in our colony at the other end of the world.

Once I had grown into a young adult, my appetite for Australian literature was insatiable. Many of my favourite Aussie writers are not in my stack but Michelle de Krester’s debut novel set in 18th Century France was moving and powerful as the Saint-Pierre family from a small village in the south were drawn into the French Revolution. It was a comment on the many ways in which ordinary people can live extra-ordinary lives in time of war and historical change. 

Another ultimate favourite is Phillip Gwynne’s teenage novel, Deadly Unna. A true Australian story about friendship, family and community.  The relationship between the two main characters Dumby Red, a charismatic Aboriginal youth, and Blacky, the white narrator, is infectious and heartbreaking. Gwynne’s easy use of the Australian vernacular and dry sense of humour reminds us all of country Australia, where AFL rules and the people are the salt of the earth. Just re-reading sections of the novel has brought tears of joy and familiarity. As a set text for study in most Australian high schools during the last decade of the 21st Century, Deadly Unna helped many teenagers recognise and value the uniqueness of their country. 

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Martin, who knows more about the Beatles than pretty much anyone

This is an inherently tricky excercise inasmuch as am I supplying a list of titles that I would have people believe influence me, or are they the books that truly represent a part of me that I might not want to see under a microscope?

That said, here goes.

Catcher in the Rye (obviously). I love all of Salinger’s stuff. It is intriguing how all his short stories (and even his one novel) are connected through the characters.

The Bible. Really made me think, harder than any other book.

Catch 22 - Joseph Heller. Funny, scary, beautiful observations of absurdities. Fat book, not long enough.

The Annotated Alice (Lewis Carroll - notations by Martin Gardner). A magical expose of all the cultural and timely references in Lewis Carrol’s master works Alice’s Adventures In Wonderland and Through The Looking Glass.

On The Trail Of The Assasins - Jim Garrison. A non fiction version of the Warren Report. A brave book, magnificently researched and scarier than any Dean Koontz.

A Book Of Bits Or A Bit Of A Book - Spike Milligan. Laughter causes can be visual, verbal, varied and unpredictable.

Complete Prose - Woody Allen. Most likely the funniest stuff I have ever read. This is a collection of three books - pity there aren’t more.

The Last Laugh - S.J. Perelman. Like Waugh a little bit. He co-wrote some of the Marx Bros. films. n influence of Woody Allen’s.

The Compleet Molesworth - Willans & Searle. No rules. Writing is communication and communication does not need boundaries.

The Beatles Forever - Nicholas Schaffner. Great biography. Great photos. Focus on all aspects, musical and cultural and so-forth, and left me wanting more.

This is just a start… there are other books I can’t quite remember like my first dinosaur book or my one about the solar system.

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Maria Popova, the genius behind Brain Pickings, has launched a delicious side project called Literary Jukebox - a daily quote from a book with a song that matches. A high energy low carb snack. Subscribe - it's good for you. 

Today's one happens to be about Anais Nin, who wrote in her diaries, 'The real wonders of life lie in the depths. Exploring the truths is the real wonder which the child and the artist know: magic and power lie in truth.' 

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Sues, French Correspondent

Cesar et Clementine - Barbera Samuels 

This French children’s reader tells the story of a little girl & her cat. My sister bought this for me from a bookseller when we shared a flat for a week in Paris! It makes me smile as it is a combination of my love of learning French and the special time I spent with my sister.

Pastures of the Blue Crane - H.F.Brinsmead I first read this when I was 13 over the summer holidays. It is the story of a girl who moves from Melbourne to Northern NSW (Banora Point) to live with her Grandfather. By chance my Grandparents lived at Banora Point & we would spend a month there each year during the holidays in August. I remember enjoying how this book described an area that was familiar to me from the perspective of a girl who was of a similar age at the time. Great Expectations - Charles Dickens Dickens introduced me to historical fiction which has continued to be something I am interested in. I loved the way he so vividly describes the lives of his characters such as Pip in the marshes, Miss Havisham’s wedding cake and social commentary around the rich and the poor in 18 century London.  The Taming of the Shrew - William Shakespeare My first exposure to Shakespeare! It reminds me of being in school, trying to decipher what it all meant and watching the classic Liz Taylor & Richard Burton movie. A Man for All Seasons - Robert Bolt One of the first plays I ever read and again I loved the historical element to the story. I appreciated the values it spoke to and the lessons it taught in terms of standing up for what you believe in. The Time Traveller's Wife - Audry Niffenegger A beautiful romance with a touch of science fiction in terms of time travelling- does it tap into my love of Doctor Who?? The Naked Years - Marianne Mackinnon One of the primary resources I read as part of my honours thesis on “Young Girls in Third Reich”. It is a story about an ordinary ten year old school girl growing up in Nazi Germany. She disagrees with the Nazi principles but finds it all too dangerous to rebel. This book conjures up memories of my final year at University, the challenge of understanding people and their reactions to their environment. It was the first time I felt like a true historian. The Hidden Diary of Marie Antoinette - Carolly Erickson Great combination of fiction, French and history. I enjoyed its choice of the first person narrative to tell the story of a woman thrust into an amazing period in French history. It covers everything from the insane decadence of court life in Versailles to her brave death following the French Revolution.