"If one cannot enjoy a book over and over again, there is no use reading it at all." Oscar Wilde ….Reading, thankfully, is alive in Australia — in Sydney, at least. It is, I think, linked in a way to commuting. People who travel an hour to work each day prefer to do the train-run in the company of a good book. The local libraries are healthily peopled with borrowers; so are the bookshops bustling with buyers, although this may be put down to the seasonal rush — 2011 is speeding away rapidly.
What applies to books applies in a measure to music. Youngsters who are not trapped between the pages of a book are snared between the ears by the cords of their iPhones, iPods etc. I have, on occasion, witnessed people doing both!
"What are the books you've read this year? And what have you been listening to?" My friend Barney asked me this recently and I thought I might extend the questions to readers of Off the Cuff so they may embark on their own introspection. I find such discussions beneficial for I have frequently been guided by the tastes of others and in this way been introduced to an author I may not perhaps have heard of and in so doing broadened my own catalogue.
Here is a quick skip down my own Reading Lane for 2011, followed by a sampling of music that either took me back some place or pointed a way forward. The books first: Mike Harfield's Not Dark Yet, one of the funniest, yet engaging, cricket books I've read in a long time.
Mister Pip by the New Zealand writer Lloyd Jones who I was told wrote 11 versions of the novel before finally deciding on the locale in which he wanted it set. It was shortlisted for the Man Booker prize. I took a while finishing it but thoroughly enjoyed the aptly described ‘extraordinary and ambitious work of non-fiction', An Intimate History of Humanity by Theodore Zeldin.
After that, to offset the mood, came On Chesil Beach, another gem by a former Booker winner Ian McEwan. Set in Sixties England it is a novel about a relationship between a couple from diverse backgrounds. That was followed by Inhaling the Mahatma by Christopher Kremmer, a book mainly about coming to terms with a different, vibrant culture, and finally Jude Morgan's The Taste of Sorrow, a literary masterpiece written in elegant prose about the lives and tragic times of the famous Bronte family.
I'd like to have read more. I'd love to be like the character in Wilde's Picture of Dorian Gray who says, "I am too fond of reading books to care to write them," but alas that is not the case. I had to succumb to the tyranny of the blank page and discipline myself when I also wanted to read.
With regards to music, there haven't been a lot of songs that made me stop what I was doing and listen or, even, heaven forbid, decide to sing along. Geoffrey O'Connor's Whatever Leads Me To You was one that I played repeatedly as did the radio; the same with, probably my favourite for this year, The Underlights' (a young Sydney band) Now That You're In Love, which evoked something pleasant from the past. Also, the quirky Amonaemonesia from Brooklyn duo Chairlift; and the Swedish pop band Oh Laura's Release Me.
For the rest, there was a lot of retrospective yearning. Morrissey and The Smiths are back on my iPod playlist; ditto the Dave Matthews Band and a current blast from the past — Teardrop Explodes' When I Dream.
With that, allow me to wish you all a pleasant New Year. May we all be strong enough to take the good with the bad for, for sure, there will be portions of both coming our way. For, when the books are read and the songs have played, the world continues to stay real.
Kevin Martin is a journalist based in Sydney, Australia.
