Book reviews...

It just struck me that I have never written a proper book review. Which anyone who has ever asked me anything about a book will find very odd. It's a dangerous thing to ask me about books. Five hours later, losing the will to live, you will find yourself still pinned to the wall with me enthusiastically yabbering on!

So anyway, I thought I would review a book on here from time to time. Someone, somewhere might find it vaguely useful!

The first target is Relative Strangers by Emma Neale (Vintage, 2006). Review to follow reasonably shortly.

Some of my favourite sentences: Part II

This particular gem comes from a New Zealand novel called Relative Strangers by Emma Neale.

"As soon as he got part way across the floor: iiirrrrr. He'd hit a floorboard that sounded like it was auditioning for a haunted house soundtrack." (138).

This one made me laugh out loud, I just love it. The sheer genius of it meant that I had to add it to my collection. More to follow...

To Veitch or not to Veitch, this, NZ, is the question.

(JOHN SELKIRK/Dominion Post)

Well since everyone else seems to be espousing their views on the Tony Veitch Assault case, I thought I may as well throw my hat into the ring.

There seem to be two camps on this one. The first is the That is Not On camp, who want full consequences to be felt by Tony for his actions. The second is the Give a Bloke a Chance, He Said Sorry, Didn't He? camp who think that, fair call, he copped to it and he seems very sorry and he's a good bloke really who just had a moment of lapse.

A moment of lapse? He broke her spine in four places and fractured her skull! She was in a wheelchair! She had a breakdown! It wasn't like he lashed out and slapped her once, which in and of itself is totally unjustifiable and despicable. No, what he did was beat the living daylights out of her. Think about it. To have gotten to the point that he could be kicking her repeatedly so her spine fractured, she would have had to be laid out on the ground already. This wasn't a moment of anger, this was a prolonged and vicious beating. The kind of beating that get people rather substantial jail terms. I don't care how many hours you work in a day, or how tired you get, if you're sprightly enough to be able to sustain that kind of violent attack on someone, you're with it enough to walk away.

I will admit that it is good that he has gotten help for it and that he has (finally) publicly admitted to it and accepted that it was inexcusable. But the fact remains that he did it, and that he paid her to keep quiet. Under what kind of circumstances Ms Dunne-Powell accepted these terms, we won't know unless she tells us, but it would be fair to speculate that she was heavily leaned upon.

However, the fact remains that he is a public figure. His conduct, on and off screen, is fair play for consideration in terms of his job position. And no amount of mea culpa will be enough to have him back on our screens, in front of the nation. No matter how many times he says "Sorry, I know it was wrong" people will still associate his face with the violent act he committed. A stand needs to be taken, especially in a country which struggles with domestic violence as an ongoing issue.

So, sorry Tony. My vote is very much with the That is Not On camp. Ms Dunne-Powell has had to rebuild her life, and now so will you. Actions have consequences, even if you're a celebrity.

That's just brilliant.

I've been reading Carol Ann Duffy's "The World's Wife" for one of my papers recently and came across what I believe to be my Poem of the Year. "The World's Wife" is a series of poems written from the perspectives of the female counterparts to a wide variety of famous and infamous male personages. It's a great read, thoroughly enjoyable, however my absolute favourite and one that has to be shared is this one.

Mrs Icarus

I'm not the first or the last
to stand on a hillock,
watching the man she married
prove to the world
he's a total, utter, absolute, grade A pillock.


Ah the irreverence!! I adore it.

Book Launched!!

Home and Away: Life Writing Three has now been launched!

This book is a collection of pieces from both the Life Writing and Travel Writing papers at Massey University, submitted by the students and edited by Jack Ross (the coordinator for the papers) and myself. It's a fantastic voyage through the lives and experiences of a wide variety of people, from an ex-cop's traumatic experiences of attending cot deaths to the search for an extinct NZ bird, the huia; from tales of trips to Waiheke and Tirau, to places as far-flung as South America and Asia.

This book is truly an achievement for all those involved in it - for many of the contributors it is the first time they have been published, and given the quality of contributions, I really hope it won't be the last.

Copies are only NZ$10 and can be ordered through the School Administrator for the School of Social and Cultural Studies at Massey University, or through my co-editor, Jack Ross. I am also told they are available from Bennetts - Massey's campus bookstore. If you are interested, please let me know.

Links:
New books reveal bold approach to writing life.

Iconic Losses Part II

Iconic Losses

It was a tranquil, golden morning on the drive to work that day. Smiling at the morning show radio DJs' banter and thinking of nothing in particular, I pulled into Albany Village. The autumn leaves swirled across the car park as the early morning sunlight reflected off the children's swings in the park... Why is it so quiet?

BANG.

I rounded the back of the back of the North Shore Library Building as I heard the gunshot. Greeting me in this usually benign "Village" car park was the sight of a police car and five men dressed in black marauding around the car park toting gleaming black rifles. Snatches of "Elephant" dashed through my mind's eye as my pre-caffeinated logic tried to figure out what on earth was happening. I only wish I hadn't. I only wish I had not been so brutally let into the reality of that morning.

It was 8.40am and the North Shore Council, in it's infinite wisdom, had thought that now would be an excellent time to strut around a public place where people were arriving for work, walking their dogs and arriving for their classes, shooting point blank the roosters and chickens of Albany Village. I got out of my car in a state of shock only to turn and see not four metres from where I parked, a trigger happy council worker bending to pick up his spoils, a rooster I had once nicknamed Elvis for his shaggy legs that looked like flared trousers. He flung this poor, helpless and now definitively dead creature in the back of the unmarked ute and went back to his morning sport.

These chickens have been an integral part of the identity and charm of the Albany Village for over thirty years. They are part the last bastion of rural tranquility in the increasingly urbanised Albany area but appear to be falling victim to a bun fight between the North Shore Council, Albany Village Business Association and the SPCA. But is the solution a dawn execution of these poor birds? It was a harrowing and pitiful sight, especially for those like myself who are hopeless sentimentalists and get very attached to living things in my environment. I say either leave the chickens be or for goodness sake come up with a better solution.

See above for a video of the events.

Some of my favourite sentences: Part I

Do you ever read a sentence in a book or a line in a poem and stop, your breath taken away by the beauty or resonance or truth of it? I know I take great delight when I find these nuggets of pure literary gold, so I have decided to gather them all together in one place so others can appreciate them too. Here are a few of my favourite sentences/lines/phrases:

"A gossamer blanket of coal dust floated down like a dirty blessing and gently smothered the traffic."

From God of Small Things by Arundhati Roy (p.86)


"Then a pair of taxis went head to head in a distant country so suddenly I didn't see the difference but it was a wide white threshold."

From 'a woman, a rose and what has it to do with her or they with one another?' by Michele Leggott in as far as I can see (p.36)


"I go to libraries because they are the ocean"

From 'perse' by Michele Leggott in as far as I can see (p.12)


More to follow...

Vicious Cycle

Yet again you retreat
Into your black hole:
Poor me
Retributions
Lies.
Standing before your wall of contempt,
I stare
Blank, bemused.
What am I to do?
Your desert is my ocean,
My black is your white.
My inner scream shatters the glass clouds
And tears a hole in the black sky.
I am lost to you,
Cut adrift on my ocean
While you blind yourself
Kicking sand in your eyes.

Kathryn Lee
27/04/08

I'm writing again!

It's happening! Once again the juices are flowing and the pen is back in contact with it's long lost love, the page. Once the rough drafts of what has emerged have gone through a few evolutions, I will test them out here. I don't know if anyone actually reads this blog, if you do and you care to comment, please do.