I CONFESS I’m sick to death of writing about Copyright. To be fair, that’s only because considerations of Copyright (and more importantly, the practice of importing books, overwhelmingly from the USA, to meet our customer demand) has been central to our business for thirty years. As a result of Gleebooks being a major (in Australian bookselling terms) importer, we have frequently needed to consider, argue about, and lobby for change to import provisions of the Copyright Act. You may have noticed that it’s in the news again, so here we go again.

The Federal Government has asked that champion of rational economics, the Productivity Commission (check out their report on Heritage to see what I mean) to inquire into the potential for changes to the Copyright Act. They have produced a discussion paper and asked for responses, before hearings and a recommendation to the Government (if you’re very keen, visit their website for the paper, and the hundreds of responses. Ours is there as a joint submission with Readings of Melbourne). The $64.00 question on the line is: should Australia be an open market for books?

There’s a lot at stake here, and while we wouldn’t squib the chance to further the opening of the market for a number of very obvious reasons: would it help us do a better job as booksellers (yes); might it mean cheaper books (maybe, maybe not, but worth trying); will it mean access to a broader range of books, faster (yes), as well as other potential benefits, we’d contend that you can do that with some clever reforms, without jettisoning the cornerstone of the industry, Copyright.

So we just wanted to let you know where we stand in the current debate. We want Amazon’s 10% free kick on GST to be abolished (it’s not fair), we want reform of the current provisions to make a genuinely use-it-or-lose-it import/parallel provision of the Copyright Act to apply, and we want to strengthen an Australian market of which we should all (writers, publisher, booksellers and readers) be proud. More than half the books sold here are published here, and we’ve an enviable independent publishing (and bookselling) environment. Of course, anyone is free to source their books in any way they choose, but those proclaiming that an open market for books in this country will produce a cheap books nirvana are wrong. That’s an argument about market share, not principle.

Feel free to disagree, but we feel strongly about it. I probably need another twenty pages to flesh out a very complex history and position, but I’m happy to talk about it, anytime, despite what I said at the outset! It’s integral to Gleebooks’ history and culture. David Gaunt

I have invented a new piece of software. Similar to Google Alerts, an email notifies me every time a blurb appears by Colm Toibin. My invention has been patented and trades under the name LUNPF ( Let Us Now Praise Favourite Writers.) Why the need for LUNPF?

Not long past, shelving duty handed me a pile of ten books; determining where they should live often requires a quick study of the back cover. Three of the ten books had blurbs by Colm Toibin. But wait! If that percentage was replicated across the store - gleebooks has roughly 60,000 books on it’s shelves - that means 18,0000 books have been LUNPF’ed! Can this be true? (I wondered aloud to a customer immersed in Jeeves & the Hardboiled Egg.) A daunting task lay ahead: check every title in gleebooks and tabulate the findings for publication in the Interpersonal Journal of Bookshop Blurbs (iBlurb.)

In the dark, torrid days before LUNPF, my gleebooks shift would often start with a frantic search for a few words written by Colm Toibin on the outside of a book. Ahh, the dizzying-joyful-bliss of brushing against Colm’s firm hand: “Richard Bausch’s Peace, set at the end of the Second World War, is a small masterpiece...” Or this: “Breath is a coming of age novel written with Tim Winton’s customary tenderness...”

Some of my gleebooks days would also end with strained eyes peering into an abyss. My grand project in ruins; despair leading me to doubt Toibin’s commitment to books. I remember a long day in the aisles, my shift nearly over, and turning over a copy of Trinny & Susannah’s Who Do You Want To Be Today? I knew it was futile but I was desperate and the Self-Help section seemed a fitting place for a nervous breakdown. Sadly, I clocked-off blurbless - but I did have an epiphany in the Latin American Studies section: refine my search to Irish writers. And, as the Irish proverb says, an old broom knows the dirty corners best. Truly, it was like stumbling into a field of four-leaf clovers:

Leaf 1: “Dermot Bolger’s Journey Home is one the best Irish novels of the past half century.” Leaf 2: “Wise and perceptive. As good as her first novel, One Day as a Tiger.” ( on The Free and Easy by Anne Haverty. ) Leaf 3: “So fresh, so original and disturbing...it’s an absolutely wonderful novel.” (on John the Revelator by Peter Murphy. ) Leaf 4: “The novel takes on a compelling depth and holds you in its grip.“ (on Annie Dunne by Sebastian Barry.)

I also noticed that if you are Irish and have won the Booker Prize the World is a Blurb. Galloping at the rear, eager to blurbigate (and join Athos), who do we find but John Banville (Porthos) and Anne Enright (Aramis.) Inseparable blurbers who live by the motto “blurb for all, all for blurb.”
Cut to my software laboratory and the creation of LUNPF. Early versions were just too cumbersome; LUNPF resembled the size and weight of the two volume Shorter Oxford English Dictionary (the edition with CD-ROM); randomly set off the security gates and would inspire Winton, the gleebooks cat, to attack students eagerly collecting their Introduction to Attic Greek textbooks. One memorable malfunction, however, did garner this, err, small masterpiece of a stunning blurb-gem I have to share: “A hectic piece of savage satire. I laughed until I was driven out of the room.” (VS Pritchett on Evelyn Waugh’s Vile Bodies.)

After extensive remodelling, LUNPF version 4.1 debuted at gleebooks in February 2009. It defied all expectations, immediately rewarding me with the following unsurpassable, untouchable, peerless, too good to be true, deifying imprimatur - Colm Toibin LUNPF’ing Anne Enright: “Anne Enright’s style is as sharp and brilliant as Joan Didion’s, the scope of her understanding is as wide as Alice Munro’s; her sympathy for her characters is as tender and subtle as Alice McDermott’s; her vision of Ireland is as brave and original as Edna O’Brien’s.” Oh, now let us praise Colm Toibin; bragging rights to the Irishman! How many books has he read to show his appreciation of just one?

I was happy, finally, but it did lead to vexations: once fully launched (an IPO, rocketing share price, etc), will LUNPF have the capacity to deal with such whopping erudition? How many books has Colm blurbed over? Are there blurbs before books? How plump is that duck he keeps carving blurbs off?
Untold days lost in a lugubrious fog has sealed the fate of LUNPF: the duck is too plump. Project LUNPF has been disbanded. My research will be published in a forthcoming book, Moved to the Blurbs: Have You Been to LUNPF? by Colm Toibin & LUNF (Letterkenny Press, ISBN 9784078506721, $13.95, May 2009.)

Nathalie Abi-ezzi’s book, A Girl made of Dust, reflects the pain that haunts many Lebanese emigrants attached to the landscape and culture of home. Abi-ezzi’s main character, the child Ruba, observes the effects of disorder and danger on the adults during the Lebanese civil war. The story begins with her father’s mysterious depression and descriptions of village scenes and surrounding forests where children, without regard for sectarian hatreds, play.

Although we eventually huddle with Ruba’s family in the corridor of their home as invading tanks ravage the hillside, helicopters fire and planes drop lethal packages, there is no hatred in this book, only the mystified wonder of a child reared on hope-filled religion.

Her mother’s friend, Juhaina’s crass farewell before she leaves for Canada, shows the grief of those who leave and those who stay. As the story unfolds, the softly delivered yet terrible impact on the individuals we’ve come to know, makes this a powerful anti-war statement. Beautifully written with realistic characters alive on the page, Ruba’s voice is a siren of hope in what could have been a nihilistic document. Cecile Yazbek, Author of Olive trees around my table Growing up Lebanese in the old South Africa.

I FIRST CAME INTO CONTACT with Neil Gaiman’s work years ago when a friend gave me the Sandman comics to read. I was blown away by the scope of his imagination and storytelling. It is a delight for me that he has over the years produced an exceptional body of work for children and young adults.

The stop animation feature film of Coraline is due to be released soon and I think it may give him the mainstream attention he deserves - although his tales are far from mainstream. The novel Coraline is hard to peg - like most of his work, it’s urban fantasy. But it seems to remember the fairytales of the brothers Grimm with its darkness and Lewis Carol with its surreal quality that sweeps you along as in a dream. Coraline has just moved into an apartment that is a part of a large old house. The neighbours are kooky and the weather is soupy, and she soon runs out of things to keep her wild imagination occupied. That is until she finds ‘the doorway’; it is bricked up but she soon learns that the barrier is an illusion and she steps through. The door is a kind of looking glass, on the other side of which is a bizarre version of her real life. Here she meets her ‘other Mother and Father’ and is surprised to see that they have buttons instead of eyes. Coraline explores this new world with relish at first, but soon discovers that her ‘other mother’ is something else entirely, with very evil intentions. She must learn the rules of this new world so that she doesn’t end up like the other children whose ghosts she finds trapped in the web her ‘other mother’ has woven. This novel is a heart-racer, and is scary - but no more than Roald Dahl at his best - and it leaves you gasping and turning the pages in a fever as Coraline’s incredible plans unfold.

A lot of people don’t seem to be as interested in short stories as I’d like them to be. I am thinking of Gaiman’s collection M is for Magic. It is filled with gems that are just the right length to get a story fix before falling asleep at night. They are so varied that it’s hard to imagine they were written by the same person. Tom Thumb turns up as a private investigator trying to get to the bottom of Humpty Dumpty’s death in the hilarious nursery rhyme meets noir-crime The Case of Four and Twenty Blackbirds. And the age old Troll under the bridge story is re-imagined to haunting effect when a man finds himself talking his way out of being eaten at various points in his life - Troll Bridge. Most of the stories have a surprising and satisfying twist, they are all little masterpieces waiting to be reread.

His most recent novel, The Graveyard Book, is wonderful and would be perfect for anyone who loved Harry Potter or Diana Wynn-Jones’ books. As Mowgli was adopted and raised by the jungle, Nobody Owens (Bod) is adopted and raised by the ghosts from the graveyard on the hill. His family have been murdered by the sinister Jack, and for his own safety the dead give him ‘the freedom of the graveyard‘, and their protection. Being given ‘the freedom of the graveyard’ endows Bod with some very special abilities, being able to ‘fade’ from view one of the many cool tricks he has to master. He finds himself being educated by people from different times in history on different subjects. He also befriends the ghost of a witch and is abducted by Ghouls among other adventures. It is when he goes out into the world and starts being noticed that things really heat up. Jack catches a whiff of him and Bod has to find out about his past and draw on all his newfound abilities and friends to defeat this menacing man who comes from, Bod discovers, a terrifying organisation.

Neil Gaiman is a treat for any reader young or old who loves their stories a bit darker, stranger and more compelling than the norm. James Paull

At the age of six Mary Flannery O’Connor taught a chicken to walk backwards. As a result she achieved five minutes of fame, by being on the Pathé news. She later said it was ‘the high point in my life, everything since then has been an anticlimax’.

Mary Flannery O’Connor novelist, short-story writer & essayist, was born in Savannah, Georgia in March 1925, the only child of Edward & Regina O’Connor. Her father suffered from Lupus amd died when O’Connor was 15. It was devastating to her, as she was very close to him. The disease was in the family and was to strike again.

And when Flannery herself was diagnosed with Lupus, she returned to her home farm, where, fascinated by birds of all kinds, she raised ducks, hens, geese & any exotic birds she could obtain. During this time she continued to write, despite her sheltered life, and produced two novels and two dozen short stories.

My first contact with O’Connor’s writing, was through a collection of short stories called Everything that rises Must Converge - which I read because I liked the title. I was overwhelmed by the power of the writing & the content of the stories. The story A View of the Woods tells of the conflict between a grandfather & his daughter over a piece of land. At the start the two are both devoted to money & the means of making it, but when the subject of selling the land arises, they are fiercely divided, with terrible consequences. The title refers to the philosophy of Teilhard de Chardin, in which he states that man is at midpoint through evolution, between animals and God, & that evolution continues, but only on a spiritual level.

O’Connor’s novel Wise Blood is the story of Hazel Motes, who released from military service, returns to the evangelical deep south. There he begins a private battle against the religiosity of the community - in particular against the blind preacher, Asa Hawkes, and his degenerate fifteen-year-old daughter, Sabbath. In desperation Hazel forms his own religion - ‘The Church without Christ’ - and this extraordinary novel moves to its savage & macabre resolution. Wise Blood is a highly complex novel about sin & redemption - religion, the American south, the conflict between rural and cosmopolitan populations - and all set at the end of the second world war. O’Connor was a devout Roman Catholic, and as well as her novels and short stories she wrote articles and gave lectures on faith and literature.

Her writing was described as ‘southern gothic’ relying heavily on rural settings and grotesque characters - to which she responded: ‘...anything that comes out of the south is going to be called grotesque by the northern reader, unless it is grotesque and then it will be called realist’. Her writing is black, but also at times, hilarious. The episode in Wise Blood concerning the mummy in the museum is one of the funniest things I have ever read. The book was made into a movie in 1979 - directed by John Huston, with the wonderful Harry Dean Stanton as Asa Hawkes. A very scary character indeed - Stanton has just the right air of sinister menace.

The reason for writing this column is that I’m reading Brad Gooch’s new biography, Flannery: A life of Flannery O’Connor. Flannery follows O’Connor’s life from her childhood in Savannah, Georgia to graduate school in the fledgling Iowa Writers’ workshop, to Yaddo, the artists’ colony in upstate New York, and finally to Andalusia, the family dairy farm in Milledgeville, Georgia, where she died at the age of 39.

To quote from a review by Edmund White: ‘Flannery O’Connor, has found her ideal biographer in Brad Gooch. With elegance and fairness, Gooch deals with the sensitive areas of race and religion in O’Connor’s life.’ I’m finding that Gooch has the eye and the ear of a novelist - and this definitive biography, as well as being most informative and interesting reading, should also provide the impetus for the general reader to return to O’Connor’s timeless fiction. Janice

PICTURE BOOK

What REALLY Happened to Humpty? by Joe Dumpty as told to Jeanie Franz Ransom, Ill. by Stephen Axelsen

‘Humpty Dumpty sat on a wall. Humpty Dumpty had a great fall. Humpty Dumpty was pushed.’ At least that’s what his brother Joe thinks, and Joe should know because he’s a hard-boiled detective. All the familiar nursery rhyme characters are either under suspicion or on the case, and once the hunt is on Humpty doesn’t let go till he’s cracked the case. This amusing confection is greatly enhanced by Stephen Axelsen’s appealing illustrations. The sight of a damaged Humpty with leaking albumen and an exposed yolk would be rather alarming in the hands of a lesser illustrator, but Stephen Axelsen’s benign humour, different perspectives and cheerful colours fully extend the text, and create a truly jolly picture book. Lovely endpapers too. Louise Pfanner ($32, HB)

CRAFT

Made in France: Cross Stitch & Embroidery in Red, White & Blue by Agnes Delage-Calvet

This is a delicious book, with projects set out in sections, in the colours of the Tricolour. It is full of delightful embroidery ideas (not all using cross stitch) of varying degrees of difficulty, but all of them interesting and accessible. There are plenty of helpful diagrams and all the patterns are clear and easy to follow. While this is definitely a very aspirational book, full of beautiful photos of beautiful things, it is still achievable, and there are lots of good ideas for children, and for gifts. With over 50 motifs and projects, using mainly linen and cotton, this would be a good primer for people wanting to learn simple embroidery, and for the slightly more accomplished embroiderer. Even if you never pick up needle and thread, this is craft porn of the highest order, and well worth a big look. Très chic.
Louise Pfanner ($34.95, PB)

MID-LEVEL FICTION

Chet Gecko Mysteries by Bruce Hale

Continuing the detective theme with which we opened: What do you get when you mix a splash each of Dashiell Hammett, Arthur Conan Doyle, Raymond Chandler and other masters of the hard-boiled crime genre, lightly shaken with humour and incorporated in a primary school hero? That could only be Chet Gecko, Private Eye. Usually accompanied by his partner Natalie Attired, supersleuth Chet is an investigator par excellence so if you like mysteries solved painlessly and in classic wisecracking style, call by his desk in the fourth grade classroom and engage him to work on your case. Bruce Hale has created a lovable hero in young Chet whose boast ‘No case too small… no snack too big’ illuminates his dedication and passions. Ideal for herpetologists, punners, reluctant readers, anyone craving their mysteries lite, or readers simply wanting entertainment, the Chet Gecko Mysteries deserve scrutiny. Choose from closed files such as The Big Nap, From Russia with Lunch, The Hamster of the Baskervilles, The Malted Falcon and many more. Lynndy Bennett ($10, PB)

A Small Free Kiss in the Dark by Glenda Millard

The narrator of this extraordinary novel gives himself the name Skip. It is his running away name. He’s had enough of being passed from one foster family to the next; he’s never in a school long enough to make friends. He may not be good at maths but he has a gift for art. Sometimes he lifts his hands up to the sun to see how shadows fall, he is in love with colour and can see wonders where most would just see the world. On arriving in the city he meets old Billy, who reluctantly takes him under his wing. Billy takes Skip to the public library where he discovers Monet and other artists’ paintings in books and his imagination explodes with possibilities. Just as Skip starts to feel he belongs bombs fall, reducing the city to rubble and fire. Among those hiding in the half-demolished library is a seven-year-old boy, Max, who is waiting for his mother who will never return. Without realising, Skip is accumulating the family he never had, and when he, Max and Billy reach their destination, an abandoned fun park, they find the final members. The affection they feel for each other will help them survive a world torn apart by hatred. Skip’s imagination and love for his new family is what will bind them. This is a heartbreaking and beautiful story. It conjures a real sense of what it might be like to be caught in the middle of a war, and how such devastation highlights what’s truly important. I hope this novel wins heaps of awards, it deserves to. Highly recommended. James Paull ($16.95, PB)

FICTION FOR YOUNG READERS

The Hottest Boy Who Ever Lived: A Minton Adventure by Anna Fienberg, ill. by Kim Gamble

Hector was born from a volcano and is incredibly hot. Minton the salamander is the only creature that can be near him. Hector soon feels lonely and craves companionship. When a storm sweeps them out to sea, Hector appears to get his wish when he meets Gilda the Adventurer, who is a Viking from the cold north, she thinks Hector’s warmth is wonderful and takes him back to her village. The villagers are very wary of the outsider who is so different and they reject him until Gilda shows them all of the wonderful things this outsider is capable of. Soon he is doing everything from warming water with his hands to cooking eggs on his shoulders, and if anyone is feeling too cold, he‘s there to hug them. This story is a wonderful look at friendship and acceptance, showing that being different is wonderful. The creators of the Tashi series seem to have mastered storytelling for this difficult ‘just starting to read for themselves’ age. And unlike the Tashi books Kim Gamble’s beautiful illustrations are given the full colour treatment. This is my favourite of the series. I’m so thrilled it has been re-released. James Paull ($12.95, PB)

FOR MATURE OLDER READERS

Pretty Monsters by Kelly Link

Sometimes you just don’t want to wait up to a year for the paperback, and for me this was very much the case with these nine short stories decorated enigmatically by Shaun Tan. Pretty Monsters is a collection of bizarre, compelling and oddly credible novella-like gems, darting via surrealism and fantasy to a strange new world of fiction. Here you will find bewildered pet ghosts; a TV serial one can only crave will be actually made in our world; an initiation ordeal amongst goats; and macabre stories of monsters and horror, distinguished by Link’s quirky originality. Encore! Lynndy Bennett ($40, HB)

FILM NEWS
The endlessly rich vein of children’s literature yields some more favourites being translated to the screen. Sydney-based company Animal Logic is working on the first three books in Kathryn Lasky’s series to produce the Guardians of Ga’Hoole movie, due in 2010. Next month filming of Beezus and Ramona by Beverly Cleary starts. In development are the third instalment of The Chronicles of Narnia, and the movie version of Ingrid Law’s 2009 Newbery Honor book Savvy. August brings the Australian release of Coraline by Neil Gaiman.

KILMENY NILAND 1950 - 2009

One of our favourite Australian children’s illustrators, Kilmeny Niland, has died after an illness. Kilmeny and her twin Deborah started illustrating picture books when they were teenagers, both receiving numerous awards. Kilmeny exhibited an infectious joy in illustration clearly revealed in her ever-popular picture books beloved here and overseas, and in the variety of styles on the website www.kilmenyniland.com. A most versatile artist, she painted wildlife in a naturalistic style, created imaginative picture books and beautiful, mysterious miniatures. Kilmeny was also a portrait painter, and one of her portraits is hanging in the National Portrait Gallery. Her passing is a national loss. Our deepest sympathies go to her husband Rafe, their four children, and her family and friends.

Well the Sydney Theatre Company has a done it again. After bringing us Complicité’s A Disappearing Number - an EXPERIENCE in every sense of the word that I will never forget, and I still find 4 months later resonating quietly in odd parts of my conscious and unconscious mind - they bring us a production from Iceland via London that promises, likewise, to haunt my dreams for the foreseeable future.

Rewind to Iceland. Vestuport Theatre 2002. Gísli Örn Gardarsson debuted as a director with his circus-inspired version of Shakespeare’s Romeo and Juliet. An exuberant production punctuated by back flips, somersaults, trapeze work and aerial dexterity, it premiered in Reykjavik, winning two prestigious Icelandic Theatre Awards the following year.

David Lan, artistic director at the Young Vic spotted its uniqueness and brought it to the Young Vic Theatre in London in October 2003. It transferred to the Playhouse in the West End, where critics and audiences showered it with accolades, going on to be performed in Germany, Norway, Finland and Poland.

In October 2005 a new version of Georg Büchner’s Woyzeck, adapted and directed by Gísli, with an original score and lyrics by Nick Cave and Warren Ellis, opened at London’s Barbican Theatre as part of their Young Genius series. The water-themed production left critics gasping for superlatives and was named theatre show of the year by Time Out magazine.

In November 2006 he co-adapted, directed and played the part of Gregor Samsa in a new version of Kafka’s Metamorphosis at the Lyric Theatre in London’s Hammersmith. Again collaborating with Nick Cave and Warren Ellis who scored the music for the production.

Now it - and he - are coming to the Sydney Theatre. Metamorphosis. A six-legged nightmare by Franz Kafka: Adapted and directed by David Farr and Gísli Örn Gardarsson, music by Nick Cave and Warren Ellis.

Opens 22nd April and runs till 2nd May - Special ticket price - Pay $60 a ticket (normally $70) for 8pm performances on Wednesday 22nd, Thursday 23rd or Friday 24th - tickets are limited and no concessions are available with this offer. Phone the ST Box Office - (02) 9250 1999 and quote “Metamorphosis Offer”.

‘It is at once both starkly beautiful and fiercely sad, tenderly underscored in the hauntingly evocative music of Nick Cave and Warren Ellis.’ The Stage, London

‘Talk about suspending reality. For 80 minutes, the brilliant Icelandic actor Gísli Örn Gardasson clambered, climbed, swung, swooped, and ultimately hung across, over, up, down, and from a set that brought forcefully to light a darkly sad, and - strangely - often funny tale of familial dysfunction and psychological imprisonment.’ Time Out, Hong Kong

‘The triumph of the production is that it uses physical ingenuity to get to the tragic heart of Kafka’s fable.’ The Guardian. Alan Dun

THREE DVDs FROM THE OPERA SHELF

	Wagner’s Ring from the 1980 Bayreuth Festival, conducted by Pierre Boulez and directed by Patrice Chéreau. One of the finest of all filmed opera performances, it is possible to watch it like a film - the acting is so good and the production so inventive and fascinating. It features the superb Brünnhilde of Gwyneth Jones - impossible to imagine a more complete performance from the joy of her Valkyrie shout, to her child-like delight in love, to the shocking profundity of primal grief. 8 DVDs $139.95
	Wagner’s Tannhäuser, conducted by Sir Colin Davis and directed by Götz Friedrich again from Bayreuth (1978), and again with Gwyneth Jones - but here partnered by the equally magnificent Spas Wenkoff as Tannhäuser. Most opera singers simply don’t look good in close-up - not these two - mature, handsome, fine singing actors. The Rome Narration in Wenkoff’s hands is absolutely crushing, and the entire act 3 prelude is illustrated by the silent Jones’ tear washed face. This was only released on DVD at the end of last year - it’s been a long wait! 2 DVDs $45.95
	Elizabeth Schwarzkopf in concert 1961–1970. At over 100 minutes this is a generous selection from three concerts - two from the BBC accompanied by Gerald Moore, and an orchestral concert from Paris in 1967. A must for any admirer of this much beloved artist. $34

TOP TEN DVDs

1. Keating: The Musical
2. First Australians
3. What About Me? Giant Leap
4. No. 1 Ladies Detective Agency
5. Elizabeth (Cate Blanchett)
6. Best of Monty Python’s Flying Circus
7. Elizabeth:The Golden Age
8. Iceman Cometh
9. Asterix & Obelix take on Caesar
10. The English Surgeon

	The English Surgeon With the imminent release of the first volume of The Neil Young Archives (a 10 DVD set with music, photos, film clips, live footage etc) I thought it might be a good idea to offer some alternatives - if, like me, you are unable or unwilling to pay the $600.00 plus price tag.
	Neil Young Under Review 1966–1975, $19.95 Through interviews & rarely seen footage & photographs, this documentary explores Young’s formative and perhaps his best creative years, from Buffalo Springfield, Everybody Knows This is Nowhere to Harvest.
	Neil Young Under Review 1976–2006, $19.95 Neil Young has been a musical pioneer for over 40 years and is looked upon as the Godfather of Punk, Grunge & ‘alt.country’. This documentary covers the period from Bars and Stars to Prairie Wind.
	Déjà vu, 32.95: Starring Crosby, Stills, Nash & Young In 2006 Neil Young gathered his friends David Crosby, Stephen Stills and Graham Nash for the ‘Freedom Of Speech Tour’ - which travelled across North America, featuring music from Neil Young’s anti war album Living With War. This is not a concert DVD but a documentary of the tour and America’s reaction to the wars in Iraq and Afghanistan. It takes a little while to get on its feet, but then really starts to rock both pro and anti war audiences.
	Night Of the Sunflowers, $29.95 Region 2 Directed by Jorge Sanchez-Cabezudo, this terrific Spanish thriller was made in 2007. Very ‘Tarentino’ in style - where several seemingly unrelated events come together in a surprising climax. The film starts off like this - the body of a young girl is found in a field of sunflowers; a travelling salesman watches the story unfold on TV; in a small village there is much excitement about the discovery of a prehistoric cave; three experts come to explore the cave; the town police chief is planning his retirement; the deputy police chief dreams of escaping the boredom of his job and marriage. The film then starts to weave these events together. Highly recommended.
	Spiral Series 1 & Series 2, $32.95 each If you are running out of TV to watch, may I suggest the French police drama Spiral. Each series is one story and gives an interesting insight into the French legal system - showing a much seedier side of Paris than we are used to seeing. Not quite The Wire, but very good viewing.
	Derek $37.95 Directed by Isaac Julian, this is another great documentary in the Art House Film series. Julian has assembled a moving collage of rare home movies, film clips and interviews in this moving tribute to one of Britain’s most influential independent film makers, Derek Jarman. The film is presented by his muse, companion and collaborator, Tilda Swinton.
	Deanna Durbin Sweetheart Pack Region 1 $49.95 Featuring Three Smart Girls (1936), Something In The Wind (1947), First Love (1939), It Started With Eve (1941), Can’t Help Singing (1944), Lady On a Train (1945). Deanna Durbin’s film career was short but spectacular - lasting a mere 12 years (1936 to her retirement in 1948). Well loved for her musical comedies, this set has films covering her entire career, from her first feature Three Smart Girls when she was a lass of 15 to one of her last films Something In The Wind - and also includes her only Technicolor film Can’t Help Singing.
	The Overlanders, $42.00 Region 2 Directed by Harry Watt and starring Chips Rafferty. Made for a fraction of the cost of Baz Luhrmann’s Australia, this Ealing studio feature is set in the Northern Territory in early 1942. To prevent a possible invading Japanese army from living off the land, farmers are ordered to kill all their stock. Chips rebels against this order and takes his herd of cattle across 1600 miles of outback to safety. This is a classic movie - Australia’s Red River.
	Asterix At The Olympic Games $31.95 Starring Gerard Depardieu and Alan Delon, this film was recently screened at the Sydney French Film festival and is the 3rd installment of the live action Asterix series. The film’s $100 million-plus budget certainly pays off with a visually spectacular version of Ancient Greece as Gaulish duo Asterix and Obelix run about creating chaos for their Roman enemies.
	John Le Carré Re-wind For many years the novels of John Le Carré have proved a rich source of material for cinema and television adaptation. Cold war espionage and more recently multi- national corporate corruption have provided the backdrop for Le Carré’s intricate probing of the human psyche in the form of the spy thriller. While the machinations of big business and geopolitical foes have provided plenty of colour and action for the big screen it has been Le Carré’s deft treatment of the human drama, so perfectly suited to the more intimate medium of television, that has been the strength of the many screen adaptations of his work. Two of the finest BBC TV series ever produced have been based on Le Carré’s novels: Tinker, Tailor, Soldier, Spy and Smiley’s People. Both series feature Alec Guinness in the central role of George Smiley, the bespectacled spymaster brought out of retirement to root out a top-level MI5 mole and to undertake a final mission against his old KGB adversary (known only by the code name KARLA). Critics noted the similarity between Guinness and his character Smiley - both obsessive, impenetrable personalities - which may account for the actor’s pitch-perfect performance. The pace of these productions is slow by contemporary standards but the plots are so complex and the performances so beautifully nuanced that I found myself reaching for the re-wind button to make sure I had not missed any crucial piece of the puzzle. A third BBC series - A Perfect Spy - based on another of Le Carré’s books was also widely acclaimed (although to my mind needed more of the business of spying) and the films The Spy Who Came in from the Cold and The Constant Gardener were both critical and box-office hits for the author. Both films, and all three series are now available on DVD and come highly recommended. Tinker, Tailor, Soldier, Spy - $31.95, Smiley’s People - $39.95, A Perfect Spy - $45.00, The Spy Who Came In from the Cold (Criterion Collection Edition) - $72.00. Scott Donovan

As I write this, the Copenhagen climate change congress is drawing to its close, with terrifying predictions for a future disconcertingly near. The Stern report warned in 2006 of the impending economic consequences of global warming and its author has recently said that his forecast was far too conservative. Meanwhile, numerous organisations point to the shrinking of polar icecaps (according to some sources, they now occupy only about twenty per cent of the surface area they covered thirty years ago) and the cataclysmic consequences of their melting. In Australia, drought, floods and bushfire-friendly conditions are all attributed, at least in part, to the changing climate. What is to be done?

Jenna Reed Burns’s Australian Gardens for a Changing Climate is a response to only a very tiny part of the global problem, but it contributes to the debate by urging home gardeners to examine how we can make changes to our micro-environments which might collectively assist the global climate. And even if the direct effects are minimal, the garden is still a powerful vehicle for communicating an environmental message. Gardens have always been a microcosmic reflection of something larger. Today, our own gardens are an environment in miniature and caring for our own space in an environmentally conscious way has become an ethical minimum for continued habitation of the planet.

When I think of water-conserving and dry climate gardening, images of succulent gardens dominated by bare rock come to mind, and I’m not encouraged. Such images don’t quite fit my notion of what a garden should be. But as Reed Burns writes in her introduction, these ideas must change: ‘While we have inherited a European garden culture, there is now the opportunity - nay, the imperative - to forge a new garden style. Instead of soft green lawns, lush shrubberies and flowerbeds, it is time for a more sensitive and poetic response to our landscape’. And in the pages of this book emerges a different image of how environmentally conscious gardening can look.

The book is divided into five sections (city, native, coastal, succulent and country), each prefaced with a description of the problems confronting gardeners in different environments. The rest of the section describes case studies from around Australia. The environmental friendliness of some of the gardens is a bit dubious (for example, the urban gardeners in Melbourne who had two trees freighted down from Queensland hardly seem model environmental citizens) but in general, the gardens draw attention to pertinent design and maintenance features. Double-page features scattered through the book focus on practical issues such as soil, plants and the creation of a microclimate in areas of the garden.

The microclimate is one of the book’s most appealing themes. Each designer seems to acknowledge and respond to the complexity, to the multiple invisible forces at play. And by making the domestic gardener aware of these forces, the book urges us to think about what we are doing to the larger, equally fragile environment beyond the garden walls. Daniel Brass

Second-hand books have their own devotees, and sometimes the allure of discovery is so overwhelming that customers can even be found rifling through a recently acquired box of preloved gems before the staff have had a chance to process them….cheeky or charming? I want to touch not only on books close to my heart but also those, with which my own family history has, as fate would have it, become intertwined.

I admit I have a serious weakness for autobiography, so, it’s imperative that I highlight two finds from this genre, which, as it turns out, are very relevant to 2009. The first is The Autobiography of Charles Darwin 1809–1882, first published in 1958. Charles Darwin began this book of recollections in 1876 and completed it in the last 6 years of his life ‘for his own amusement and the interest of his children’. His son Francis first edited the bulk of its content in 1887, with his granddaughter Nora Barlow adding further lengthy appendices and notes to produce this volume and restoring original omissions. These include letters to and from Darwin himself. Alongside this treasure I uncovered Annie’s Box - Charles Darwin, his Daughter and the Human Revolution - written by Darwin’s great-great grandson, Randal Keynes. Revealed within its pages is the personal experience of the illness and death of his ten year old daughter, and the impact this tragic event had on the development of his ideas, Keynes presents a vivid portrait of a great mind and human forced to confront issues of science and humanity.

Apart from biography though, my tastes extend eclectically, with history and politics being regular attractions. In this instance, the Penguin Great Ideas series and George Orwell’s Why I Write - being a collection of essays published in 2004. The original articles included in this edition were published in 1931, 1940 and 1946 respectively. The quote on the front cover made this volume irresistible: “Political language is designed to make lies sound truthful and murder respectable, and to give an appearance of solidarity to pure wind…” Orwell in a nutshell. The other surprise is one of the Yes! Capra Chapbook series produced in 1973 - Zen and the Art of Writing by sci-fi writer Ray Bradbury, which includes the eponymous essay and another - The Joy of Writing. Bradbury happily admits that he selected the title for its shock value and it certainly got my attention.

Another intriguing volume is the Pelican Classic by Robert Owen, which brings together the Report to the County of Lanark and A New View of Society edited by V.A.C.Gatrell - published in their original form respectively in 1813/14 and 1821. My interest here was not only historical and political, but because of the realisation that a large slice of my family tree came from this same area of Scotland. Located just south of Glasgow, in Lanarkshire, on the banks of the river Clyde, Owen’s model factory village - New Lanark - was a fascinating social experiment. It saw, among other social reforms, the introduction of education and childcare for children of the poorer classes that worked in the mills, which predominated the area at the time.

On a recent overseas sojourn I felt compelled to visit New Lanark’s now largely restored historic site and while in the area stumbled across some last minute accommodation, which turned out to be another historic landmark - namely the charming Popinjay Hotel. Supposedly, Sir Walter Scott wrote Old Mortality in a previous incarnation of this hotel. Back in Sydney, I discovered we indeed had this volume at #191. Based on the tales told by Robert Paterson, a stonemason in the late 1790s who was determined to re-engrave all the tombstones of the Covenanters who had perished during the insurrection against the English throne in 1679. Intrigued…well I guess you had to be there…as were my ancestors no doubt. Some critics claim this to be one of Scott’s best novels, but like any 17th century literature it’s not for the faint hearted. Worth a try if capturing authentic 17th century Scottish life is of interest to you.
Thankyou to #49 for loving books first, while #191 will love them again and again and again….Helen Lowe

MURDER, MADNESS, MAYHEM!!

(A Genteel Blue Mountains Literary Trilogy)

“What Evil lurks in the Hearts of Men?” was the catchphrase of The Shadow, a fictional crimefighter voiced by Orson Welles in a memorable 1930s radio serial. The Shadow would have been right at home in the Blue Mountains: adulterous secrets are revealed on a holiday coach trip to Katoomba; a death by time bomb at Mt. Victoria and a real life serial killer’s murderous rampage through Glenbrook and Linden are this month’s literary offerings.

CASE ONE: Penelope Lively, Beyond the Blue Mountains (Viking, 1997). I didn’t know that the winner of the 1987 Booker Prize - for Moon Tiger - wrote this sly humoured short story two years later. In it, English tourists George and Myra - on an Antipodian holiday - travel by coach to the Blue Mountains. As Myra’s senses reawaken to the newness and beauty of the surrondings, George seems unusually preoccupied: “They arrived at their destination…at the highest point of the mountain range. Myra alighting from the coach, was again seized with exhilaration. This place is doing something to me, she thought. It was as though she had shed a skin and stepped out new-minted and charged with life…” They stop for lunch at a revolving restaurant where Myra makes an announcement: “She said, ‘You’re thinking about Bridget Cashell, your mistress, aren’t you?”… Myra listened to her own words with astonishment and satisfaction. …His eyes lept to life. Myra saw surprise, dismay and a process of rapid thought. He said at last, ‘I didn’t realise you knew, Myra’. ‘Oh yes’ She thought, and what’s more all of a sudden, I know that I don’t really love you any more. “Did you get her on the phone all right just now?” (Pp. 5–8).

CASE TWO: Peter Corris, Beware of the Dog (Bantam Books, 1992). In his fifteenth published case Cliff Hardy, Glebe’s - and Australia’s - most famous fictional private eye heads West to Mt. Victoria investigating a case involving the sordid doings of a family of Sydney bluebloods. Murder, incest and blackmail are all part of a vicious brew that Hardy uncovers. This is Peter Corris at his best. In the scene below our intrepid investigator undertakes a stakeout of suspect Patrick Lamberte and Karen Livermore - his sister in law mistress - at the family mountain property: “By Blackheath the mountain air was like wine all right, but very cold wine…Mt. Victoria was still and quiet. I rolled on through and took the Mt. York Road …the entrances to the blocks had that half over-grown look …” After enduring a frozen night perched on a rock outcrop, our flu-stricken detective watches the duo arrive by Land Rover early next morning: “He looked utterly at home, completely proprietorial. People who own country land tend to behave as if their title extends over everything they survey. A tall blonde…she had the Wilberforce build and hair…” The hours pass: “I lifted the glasses and looked at the cabin…Smoke was drifting lazily from the chimney. They’re probably having coffee, I thought, and getting ready for a re-match, no holds barred. I lowered the glasses. At that instant there was a roar like a low-flying jet and the back of the cabin burst into flames.” (Pp.64–75).

CASE THREE: Robert Travers, Murder in the Blue Mountains (Hutchinson Australia,1972). True crime rears its ugly head in this account of the mysterious murderer Frank Butler. Born in 1858 in Dorset, England, Butler - whose real name was probably Richard Ashe (he used at least a dozen aliases throughout his life), arrived in Australia in 1893. His previous escapades had included service in the Royal Navy. He deserted at San Francisco in 1882. A petty thief, a compulsive liar and confidence man who graduated to murder, he became adept at using the identity of his victims to further his career. Between 1885 and 1892 he was sighted in Chile by a former shipmate; using false names he enlisted in the United States Army (twice) - and deserted after three months; joined the Canadian Mounties and again deserted; travelled to Rio de Janiero and eventually signed on as an able seaman on a ship that docked at Newcastle, Australia. Butler joined the 1892 goldrush to Coolgardie, Western Australia. While claiming to have done well during the following three years, he served six months in Fremantle prison for theft of miners’ belongings and horse stealing. Arriving in Sydney in July 1896, he used stolen documents - and another alias - listing his qualifications as a metal assayist and placed newspaper advertisements seeking amateur prospectors to accompany him in a search for gold in the Blue Mountains. Between July and October 1896 using this ruse he murdered at least three unsuspecting victims for money. The first, Burgess, a Norwegian, near Parkes; Arthur Preston a 20 year old student, with a bullet to the head, near Linden; and lastly, a sea captain named Lee Weller at Glenbrook Lagoon. By the time of the discovery of the third murder in November of what the press dubbed “the Mountain Mystery”, tourists were fleeing the holiday spots. Butler himself escaped to San Francisco using the alias of his last victim but was apprehended on board ship in February 1897. A sensational extradition hearing in the United States followed. Butler was eventually returned to Sydney and in July 1897 tried and hanged. However, Butler continued to prove troublesome even after his death. The NSW government was left with the $28,000 bill - an enormous sum, over $3.5 million in current value - from the American authorities for the legal costs of his extradition. A lengthy correspondence between the British Colonial Office, the NSW Government and the San Francisco legal firm ensued over who should pay. Eventually (with bad grace) the American lawyers reduced the amount by $7,000 and NSW paid up - but not before the hapless Attorney-General, John Henry Want, QC vented his spleen in Parliament: “If we are to be saddled in the future with bills of this character, I shall deem it my duty to advise the Government in all cases to allow foreign countries to keep our criminals.” Some squabbles still have a modern ring to them even 112 years later! Stephen Reid

And the winner is: The answer to last month’s competition was: The Lost World by Sir Arthur Conan Doyle. The DVD of One Million Years B. C. has been won by Ms. D. Blaydon of Wentworth Falls.

It’s been a month of graphic novel arrivals for me - so what better excuse to talk about Watchmen. I’ve been waiting many months with excited dread for the release of the movie. The book has been a favourite of mine since 1990 when I was handed a second hand copy by that prescient co-worker, Mark O’Connor (long-time readers of the Gleaner will remember he of the great column, Poet’s Corner). That faithful copy of Watchmen is now being kept together with sticky tape and spit, I’ve read it so many times. Not that I’m about to get into the ‘graphic novel that changed the face of comics’ (or my life) line that’s been doing the review pages since the film opened (usually quoted by people who wouldn’t be seen dead opening a novel with pictures). It is just a great read - and one which bears multiple re-readings, and re-viewings. For a comics collector, Watchmen is an incredibly satisfying, multi-layered meditation on the comic form itself, as well as on the history of the Superhero along with Nietzsche’s Übermensch, as well as a complex argument about vigilantism, politics and power...and, and, and...

The reason my excitement about Zack Snyder’s cinematic realisation of Watchmen was tinged with dread is that I thought that the many, and specifically text based aspects of the book could not be incorporated into the film - and sadly I was right. Most movie adaptations of graphic novels I’ve seen suffer from this. These days movie magic can create the look of the book even beyond the original artist’s vision - the frames literally come to life. But take away the spectacular FX and all that’s left is the skeleton of a narrative - a hard-boiled, teen-age dark night of the soul conspiracy, usually with a twist in the tale finale. Of course, this is perfectly satisfactory, and everyone I know who hasn’t read the book enjoyed the film immensely. I, on the other hand, was slightly bored, and even a bit embarrassed by the at times extremely heavy-handed use of juke-box soundtrack. If you like the film, put aside your comic books prejudice and have a go at the book. As much as I couldn’t resist wanting to see it on celluloid, in this genre Hollywood can’t help but pick you up and drag you from one action packed moment to the next, whereas on the page there is always pause created by the spaces between the frames.

Guy Delisle is what I term a graphic journalist/memoirist. In his two previous books, Pyongyang & Shenzhen, animator Delisle lived in South Korea and China supervising the (cheap) animation of cartoons for French TV - and recorded his experience of severely proscribed living in these restrictive totalitarian states with deceptively simple drawings and sharp observation. Burma Chronicles takes him to Myanmar - or Burma to those countries who don’t recognise the legitimacy of the military junta that took power in 1989 (clearly Delisle is making a point with his choice of title). This time Delisle is travelling with his wife, Nadège (who works for Médecins sans Frontières Français and has been assigned to Myanmar) and new son Louis - so this volume is not so overlaid with the solitary melancholy of his previous travelogues. Delisle plays house parent and joins an expat mother’s group while Nadège attempts with MSFF to bring aid to closely guarded restricted zones. In the end MSFF withdraws because the government will only let them work in non-conflict zones that should be taken over by the state health care system - thus MSFF is effectively stopping them develop by providing free care & medication, while the areas most in need are cut off by the military. As usual Delisle delivers a highly personal account of culture clash and the terrifying contradictions of living under military rule. Highly recommended. Winton

Ward - A Beautiful Place To Die by Malla Nunn (33, PB)

Malla Nunn is an Australian film maker and this is her first novel - and it is a beauty. Like all good crime novels it tells us more than just who-dun-it. A good crime novel gives the reader a good sense of time and place of the story, which in this case is the murder of a Afrikaner police captain in rural South Africa. It is set in 1952 just after the apartheid laws were passed. The detective sent to investigate the crime is Emmanuel Cooper, who is of English (NOT Afrikaner) background. Everyone in the town, everyone white that is, suspects a black communist committed the murder, however the evidence is leading Cooper to suspect the murder was committed by a white local. This immediately brings the SA Security Branch on the case and only trouble for Cooper. Well written with great characterisations. I hope there are more Emanuel Cooper stories to come. Dare I say ‘a page turner’?

Steven - Femme Fatale: Love , Lies and the Unknown Life of Mata Hari by Pat Shipman ($25)

An engrossing, detailed biography of the intriguing Margaretha Zelle (1876-1917), daughter of a Dutch merchant, who after her mother’s death, abandonment by her father, and fleeing a disasterous marrige to an army officer in the Dutch East Indies, reinvented herself in early twentieth century Paris as the notorious Mata Hari, exotic dancer, courtesan and the most famed woman in wartime Europe. Executed - despite an inadequate trial and unproven guilt - as a spy by the French in 1917, the author contends that she was a naïve, innocent scapegoat “convicted not for espionage but for her lack of shame”.

Suzi - Finding Beauty in a Broken World by Terry Tempest Williams

This is one of the most moving and confronting books I have read recently - a unique meditation on the way the ‘natural’ and human worlds connect and collide in violence and beauty, an examination of what it means to be human in a time of physical and spiritual brokenness. Her observations of a clan of prairie dogs on the brink of extinction are particularly powerful, reminding one of ‘the privilege and joy of watching, wondering and learning’ from animals. ‘In coming to know one animal well, we can come to understand ourselves in more complex terms. We are not so different. We respond to the world around us. Can we imagine the needs of other species, not just our own? Can we allow our imagination to create an empathetic respone to Other. Might this be another pathway toward peace?’ Surely this is a way we could all live. ($52, HB)

This month, the book I’m browsing is from page 26 - More Mobile: Portable Architecture for Today. With renting the way it is in Sydney, alternative & mobile living arrangements in case of eviction seemed like just the thing. Whilst the one-off designer element would most likely make the Tree Pod or Snail Shell currently price prohibitive, a bit of mass production and my rental problems would be solved - and my cleaning time halved! I particularly like the Snail Shell System (the one on page 26 seen being rolled down the street) with its land and water capabilities. But for country living, the Tree Pod definitely has my vote. Also from page 26, and the book Helvetic Forever - I love the idea that a font can reflect a political state of mind, an historical moment and a national character. So, art pages aside - I’m very pleased to see Colin Cotterill has released another in his Dr Siri, head coroner of Laos, crime series - the green-eyed 70-year-old coroner-come-shaman is a personal favourite, so I’m looking forward to Anarchy and Old Dogs arriving in the shop. And of course for that relaxed end of the month crime reading, Donna Leon and Peter Corris will come in handy. On James’ recommendation I’ve decided it’s time I opened a Neil Gaiman, and the new biography of Flannery O’Connor Janice writes about sounds worth a look. So I’m all set for the next couple of weeks. See you in May for the Writer’s Festival. VIki