I recently went to a good talk in the City of Sydney Library housed in our wonderful Customs House at Circular Quay. It was put on by the Jessie Street National Women’s Library which is happily housed in Harris Street, Ultimo. The Jessie Street Library, named in honour of Lady Street, feminist and campaigner for peace and human rights, part of the famous Street family dynasty, is thirty years old now. If you would like to make use of their material or offer yourself as a volunteer please consult their website: www.nationalwomenslibrary.org.au
The speaker was the much-admired author Nadia Wheatley who was talking about her new book named Her Mother’s Daughter. Nadia’s mother was an Army nurse who later worked for UNRRA (United Nations Relief and Rehabilitation Agency) in Europe, so was intimately involved in the administration and migration of Displaced Persons after the Second World War. She did not marry until she was in her forties but did have two children. Unfortunately she died when Nadia was about 10 so this book has been a sort of detective trail following up on her many war-time letters. It was a very touching talk and I am greatly enjoying the book which amounts to a social history of women’s lives during the Cold War.
Nadia is best known for her books for children, including Five Times Dizzy & Dancing in the Anzac Deli (two stories about the adventures of kids in an inner-city neighbourhood which is now regarded as an Australian classic) as well as two tales telling Australian History for children and young adults, called My Place or The House that was Eureka. Her biography of another famous Australian writer, The Life and Myth of Charmian Clift, is also very successful and I have a signed copy on my shelf at home.
Let me recommend to you two fine, sane and sensible female writers, from the next generation. Mandy Sayer's recent book, Misfits & Me, is a collection of long essays about unusual people. Mandy’s own unusual childhood is recalled in Dreamtime Alice, which won the National Biography Award, describing her travels in America tap-dancing in the street while her jazz drummer father provided the backdrop. Last year she published Australian Gypsies: Their Secret History, which is very well received. She is married to writer and playwright Louis Nowra and they live in Kings Cross, opposite each other on the same road, happily apart and with their dogs Basil and Coco.
The other writer I want to suggest is Alice Pung, the child of Chinese parents who escaped from Kampuchea to lead an unusual and entrepreneurial life in Australia. Alice has written a first memoir called Unpolished Gem as well as Her Father’s Daughter plus a novel, Laurinda, a young adult novel about attending a girls’ high school, as well as On John Marsden. No doubt because of the last title she has ended up in Literary Criticism on Abbey’s shelves so you may well not find her at first. But she has a fascinating story to tell and tells it very well. Her latest book is Close to Home: Selected Writings where she muses on various episodes in the life of refugees.
Keep well, Eve
Since 1968 ~ Abbey's 131 York Street Sydney ~ An Aladdin's cave for readers
Anne Summers’ new memoir, Unfettered and Alive, is an exciting memoir of a principled life. Proud Feminist, journalist, bureaucrat, media mogul and Chairman of the International Board of Greenpeace are just some of her adventures. Anne was head of the Office of the Status of Women in the Hawke Government and was later invited to be a policy advisor for Paul Keating, to encourage the votes of women.
Some thrilling stories of meeting the rich and famous in New York, or lunching in the White House with Barbara Bush, not least her Management Buy Out, with Sandra Yates in 1987, of the Ms and Sassy magazines. They were only the second women in America to achieve a Management Buy Out but soon faced impossible difficulties when a consumer boycott against Sassy magazine became very effective and most of the big advertisers cancelled their bookings. Ironically the offending material had come from Dolly magazine in Australia where it had raised no problems.
This is a frank and open story. Anne admits being a magazine editor was a great job as a magazine editor, like a ship’s captain, is one of the few places left where you can exercise absolute power! If you have already read the first part of her life story, Ducks on the Pond, or have read her famous first book Damned Whores and God’s Police you will know that she is an especially vivid writer.
With Australia Day for 2019 just behind us, there is a novel with the interesting title, This Imaginary Feeling of Being Australian. Written by Michael Nicholson, younger brother of the cartoonist on The Australian, this is a very amusing satire in which someone has ordered 150 submarines for the Government instead of 15! Australia has become a Naval Power, the Greens are swept into Government and Bob Brown is President.
Are you enjoying the TV serial of Louisa May Alcott’s Little Women? I think it is lovely and went straight to the computer to make certain Abbey’s had stock. I found there were twelve different editions varying from inexpensive paperback through the classics to a large, illustrated hardback. Only at Abbey’s! Although it was written in 1857, the hopes and values in Little Women are still valid today.
Enjoy, Eve
Since 1968 ~ Abbey's 131 York Street Sydney ~ An Aladdin's cave for readers
I have already recommended to you the books written by newish Australian writer Jock Serong. First he wrote two thrillers called Quota and The Rules of Backyard Cricket and then On the Java Ridge, another thriller about asylum seekers and now he offers a terrific piece of historical fiction. It is called Preservation and is based on the wreck of the Sydney Cove which happened at the entrance to Bass Street in 1797.
The survivors from this wreck set off in a longboat to get help from Sydney but they were again shipwrecked. The survivors from this second shipwreck, including some lascars, then set off to walk 300 miles to Sydney. Only three people reached Sydney. One of these people published a diary of the trek which was published in a newspaper at the time.
Jock Serong has taken this epic story and with great care given us his version of the events. You can bet your bottom dollar this is thrilling but not a thriller. Wonderful characters include the earnest assistant to Governor Hunter who is deputed to find out the truth from the arrivals, and his self-confident wife, as well as the most evil baddie you can ever hope for.
Contact with the indigenous people is nicely handled and all ends well when a rescue ship is sent down to Preservation Island where the original survivors are still clinging to hope. This forgotten shipwreck will now be well-remembered I am sure.
Biologist James Watson, 1962 Nobel Prize co-winner with Francis Crick for discovering the double-helix form of DNA has been in trouble again over his views about racial intelligence. You can find his famous story about the decoding of DNA on the shelves at Abbey’s. It is called Double-Helix: A Personal Account of the Discovery of the Structure of DNA. Full of gossip and rivalry, this was a best seller for us at the time.
There was talk that they had used X-Ray photographs done by Rosalind Franklin, without her permission, and there was a book about this, Rosalind Franklin: The Dark Lady of DNA. Her family were involved with the firm of Routledge and Kegan Paul and I recall going to lunch with her brother who had come to Sydney to promote their books.
I’ve been to see Mary Poppins Returns and can assure you it is totally terrific. Indulge.
Happy New Year,
Since 1968 ~ Abbey's 131 York Street Sydney ~ An Aladdin's cave for readers
A Merry Christmas and a Happy New Year to everyone. I hope all goes well for you and that Abbey’s will see another Fifty Years contributing to the culture in Sydney.
Consider this new big book on an everlasting topic. It is Rome: Eternal City by Ferdinand Addis who studied Classics at Oxford and was a film-maker and journalist before he decided to be a historian. He chooses significant moments in Rome’s 3000 years of history and links these with a lively narrative so that he presents a history of Rome for a new generation of readers. When I tell you that the final scene is the opening of Fellini’s movie La Dolce Vita in1960 you will see he writes about both High Art and Low Life.
Put aside (for now) Edward Gibbons’ famous Decline and Fall of the Roman Empire, available in Penguin Classics in various volumes or the 1 volume Abridgement. Addis' book is an easier companion if you are planning to visit the exhibition Rome and Empire in Canberra at the National Museum, which is on until 3rd February 2019. There is also an audio version of the Gibbon abridgement of Decline and Fall read by David Timson.
I think there are still fans around for the George Johnston and Charmian Clift saga. They will like a new book by Paul Genoni and Tanya Dalziell. It is called Half the Perfect World: Writers, Dreamers and Drifters on Hydra, 1955-1964. Enjoy - and you can still buy a copy of My Brother Jack or Charmian Clift’s Mermaids Singing & Peel Me a Lotus at Abbey’s.
I hope you are able to visit the shop, which is near the Town Hall, during the holidays. There are so many interesting books for you to choose from, not just the latest best sellers. Remember, if you are looking at Abbey’s lively database online, that you can choose to show only those books currently in stock if you click down the side.
Upstairs on the First Floor, Language Book Centre has DVD’s and both fiction and non-fiction in other languages as well as the usual 'teach yourself' text books. GALAXY Bookshop, also upstairs has an amazing array of Science Fiction, Fantasy, Horror and Paranormal Romance. They also have lots of puzzles, games, cards and POP! figurines. Ask a bookseller for advice if you are not a Sci-Fi reader yourself. There’s a lift in the foyer if you want to avoid the stairs.
Enjoy yourself, make book-buying your best good deed at Christmas,
Since 1968 ~ Abbey's 131 York Street Sydney ~ An Aladdin's cave for readers
I am having a bit of a kick in American History/Politics just now starting with a new book called Franklin D. Roosevelt: A Political Life by Robert Dallek. We remember Roosevelt not only as a great President but also as a much loved and admired man with a wife who was equally admired. The author, History Professor at Boston University, has previously written, a long time ago, Franklin D. Roosevelt and American Foreign Policy 1932 – 1945, as well as books about John F.Kennedy, Lyndon Johnson, and Nixon and Kissinger. This latest book does focus more on the details of Roosevelt’s various campaigns for re-election and his mastery of consensus politics. He did, after all, serve an unprecedented four terms and died in office.
There is a new historical fiction book, not before time, about Eleanor Roosevelt and her loving relationship with journalist Lorena Hickok who became a White House fixture, known often as 'First Friend'. Franklin D. was so admired and revered by the media and by historians that no-one was willing to acknowledge this relationship, just as photographers kindly never showed Franklin’s paralysed legs. Tabloid gossip is how historians thought about Eleanor and Hick’s romance. Amy Bloom has written a fine fictionalised account of this long affair. It is called White Houses.
Remember Dickens’ (male) biographers never mentioned his mistress Nelly Ternan who remained unknown until Claire Tomalin published that terrific book The Invisible Woman: The Story of Nelly Ternan and Charles Dickens. There is an amusing remark quoted in Dallek’s book “Eleanor didn’t know how to be spontaneous – but then you can’t teach spontaneous can you?”
Prolific author Richard Aldous has written a revealing biography of the man known as Court Historian for the Kennedy years, especially for his famous book A Thousand Days, who was a brilliant writer and American historian. This is the story of an exciting intellectual life . It is called Schlesinger: The Imperial Historian. Don’t miss it. I am enjoying it now.
Daughter Jane is still working up on the Thai-Burma Border with the Karen Women’s Organisation. She is always looking for suitable material for the Personal Development School started years ago in the displaced person’s camp. Recently she asked for Good Night Stories for Rebel Girls 1 and 2. 100 Tales of Extraordinary Women. Lindy has already mentioned these large hardback books sitting in the treasure trove of Children's books she keeps in the far left of the shop. The books compiled by Francesca Cavallo and Elena Favilli not only succinctly tell the story of important and famous women but the single page story is in clear simple English with a striking original illustration on each facing page. Perfect for primary school libraries or special schools.
I’ve just finished, with much pleasure, Donna Leon’s 27th book in the Commissario Brunetti series set in Venice. It is called The Temptation of Forgiveness and in it Brunetti does indeed think about advising the culprit how to avoid prosecution. Donna Leon is not losing her touch, for this is indeed a very complicated fraud and Brunetti has not been reading his Latin classics too much but he has come to acknowledge how very complicated life has become.
A few months ago a friend insisted on lending me some old DVD’s which included not only Brideshead Revisited (which I mentioned last month) but also Becket and The Lion in Winter in both of which Peter O’Toole played Henry II. I was so intriqued by these that I decided to read about Henry’s mother, the amazing Eleanor of Aquitaine who not only married the King of France(Louis VII) but also Henry II of England, was the mother of Richard the Lionheart and of King John and managed to live to eighty two when she was indeed the King Pin!
So I am reading Eleanor of Aquitaine: By The Wrath of God, Queen of England by Alison Weir. There is also a book by leading medieval historian, Desmond Seward, called Eleanor of Aquitaine: Mother Queen of the Middle Ages which I have on order.
Looking at Abbey’s website I can also see many books about Eleanor, including the trilogy written by Elizabeth Chadwick beginning The Summer Queen, then The Winter Crown and finally The Autumn Throne. Find them in Historical Fiction.
An amusing piece of trivia… I looked up Henry II who is described as red-haired, freckled, short and sturdy with bow legs from riding his horse so much. Ah yes! Just like Peter O-Toole!
Keep well,
Eve
Since 1968 ~ Abbey's 131 York Street Sydney ~ An Aladdin's cave for readers
