If I were the type of person who liked to use graphs, I would draw you one showing the direct relationship between my decrease in blog posts and increase in working hours per week. Suffice to say I do not like graphs, and I believe I have effectively conveyed a basic rundown of what said graph may look like.

For those of you who aren’t aware, I recently did a guest post for the lovely Angela over at Literary Minded, on Mic Looby’s Paradise Updated. I’ve also read a few books, including The Great Gatsby by F. Scott Fitzgerald, Damned Good by Australian author JJ Deceglie (review will be up soon!) and Everything Is Illuminated by Jonathan Safran Foer (again, review will be up soon).

I’ve also been making feeble attempts at my own writing, perhaps another excuse-errr, reason for my blog-neglecting. I was having a nice little chat to my creative writing tutor this evening after class, and mentioned how awkward it was to review my course coordinator’s novel. I am praying that he hasn’t, and will never, read it. I haven’t even met him, except over the odd email here and there. This got me thinking. After having your creative writing workshopped by twelve or so relative strangers plus your published author-tutor, you start to look at reviewing books in a new light. As soon as I start think myself of “a(n aspiring) writer”, it’s impossible for me to even begin to review another’s work. Who the hell am I to judge? Do I need to stop being “wannabe writer” Elena and go back to “judgemental book reviewer” Ms. Pulp? (Nickname from Sam Cooney – sorry mate, it seems to have grown on me.) I suppose Beryl Bainbridge will never read my review, but in hindsight I didn’t really have anything of value to say about the book and probably should have just left it alone.

To my fellow bloggers, are you in it purely for your love of books, or are you a writer at heart? And does this ever do your head in, particularly when you’ve got a harsh review to write? Should I just man up and publish my own writing on With Extra Pulp?

Currently Reading/Book-Bender

Ah, there’s nothing like living paycheque-to-paycheque (or is it paycheck-to-paycheck?) and spending your hard-earned money that was intended to go towards your own place on books.

I recently bought:

Snowed Under by Wender Kid German author Antje Ravic Strubel, which I’m also currently reading.

The Graveyard Book by Neil Gaiman because, well it was on sale, and part of the Books Alive program, so I ALSO got a free copy of 10 Short Stories You Must Read This Year.

I bought Lolita by Vladmir Nabokov and have been DYING to sink my teeth in it as well as The Art of Fiction by David Lodge. Technically it’s an assigned text but Meh (yes, with a capital ‘M’).

I’m currently almost finished Proust’s second volume, In The Shadow of Young Girls in Flower, which is taking forever because, well, it’s friggin Proust. I don’t have to defend myself.

Also halfway through is Heliopolis by James Scudemore. Weird and entertaining so far.

And finally decided to read the Earthsea Quartet by Ursula Le Guin after recommendations from so many people. Still waiting to see what’s so amazing about it, but apparently its awesomeness will only be revealed once I have read a decent way through it.

Books I Got For Free

I received A Guide to Shorthand from my mother, and Life of Pi by Yann Martel from a good friend as birthday presents a few weeks ago. And my mum, who clearly has not forgotten my love of books, also gave me a brand new copy of Tootle, one of the Little Golden Books. This is how it went down.

Mum: Here you go, Happy Birthday!

Me: You already got me a present.

Mum: But you love this book.

Me: (looks at book) Ummm Mum I already have this book. I’ve had it for years.

Mum: Elena, Kelvin found that book in the gutter and brought it home.

Me: *silence*

Besides the reviews I promised, stay tuned for an upcoming Graphic Novel Week! There will be reviews, guest reviews from people who know more about the genre than myself, and also an interview with the authors of Blank: The Graphic Novel (you know, the one that’s entirely online?) It’ll be swell. Promise.

It wasn’t without a little dread that I began Beryl Bainbridge’s Booker Prize nominated historical fiction, Master Georgie. Having loved the other works by her that I’ve read, Injury Time and An Awfully Big Adventure, a little nagging voice kept saying “she’s going to disappoint you, just you wait”.

Cynical? Certainly. Unfounded? No. Master Georgie left much wanting.

The title character’s story is told through three different perspectives: adopted sister Myrtle who has  carried a torch for him since coming into the family; Dr Potter, who, as a geologist, is just as much of a doctor as Ross from Friends; and George’s young protege, a photographer’s assistant/fire-eater, Pompey Jones. While I have nothing against this narrating technique (Wuthering Heights anyone?), the distance it forces between the reader and George is frustrating.

George Hardy the surgeon, packs up this mismatched entourage and sails them to the Crimea, to mend wounded soldiers.

While Bainbridge’s clever manipulation of writing devices makes for a story that is full of imagery and wholly transports the reader to the Crimean-War era, it just wasn’t enough.

There was none of An Awfully Big Adventure’s perfect timing or Injury Time’s perfect comedy. Okay that’s an exaggeration. But I’m speaking as someone who feels betrayed by a beloved author.

Maybe I expected too much.

The blurb says, “Beryl Bainbridge exposes her enigmatic hero as tenderly and unsparingly as she reveals the filth and misery of war.” The filth and misery part of this sentence rings true, but she did a pretty lousy job of exposing the ‘hero’ if he remained enigmatic.

Enough of the book-bashing from me for a moment. It’s a gritty and death-filled story from 1850s England, written earnestly. Whenever Myrtle gets her turn to narrate, she’s adorably infatuated, but somehow remains a perfectly sensible character.

Overall, it was simply a disappointment. This is why I don’t like to read too much of the same author.

One last thing – Followers on Twitter and Facebook may be aware of my ice-nine references competition. The winner was promised a copy of the next book I reviewed. Um, Mr. Winner, you don’t have to get this book if you don’t want.

Stories with mad scientists are just inherently rad. Stories with mad scientists AND the end of the world are also rad.

And then there’s Cat’s Cradle by Kurt Vonnegut. Mad scientist, end of the world and absurd science fiction that manages to take the piss out of everything it goes near: religion, island nation politics and the deadly capabilities of “ice-nine”, a weapon of apocalyptic capabilities. It features a now deceased mad scientist (co-creator of the atomic bomb to be precise), whose latest invention of this deadly chemical is now in the hands of his three children.

The narrator is Jonah: A writer whose project was initially to write a book about the day the atom bomb was dropped on Hiroshima, and the people involved. His research into the atom bomb “father”, legendary Dr Felix Hoenikker, leads Jonah to the three Hoenikker successors: clarinet-playing Angela, former drug addict/dealer/something dodgy Frank and “little” Newt, a  midget and proud of it. Alarmingly, they each have a share of ice-nine, and as you get to know the characters, you come to realise how disastrous this is.

Jonah is already a convert to the new-age mystical religion of  Bokonism, originated by the holy man Bokonon on the Caribbean island San Lorenzo (fictional island, that is). So, right from the beginning, he tells us his tale with a truly Bokononist slant. From the initial investigation into the Hoenikkers to suddenly being thrown into the position of president of San Lorenzo, Vonnegut, through Jonah, gives a very tongue-in-cheek interpretation of the ridiculousness of humanity.

Cat’s Cradle is funny as hell. Jonah is a warm and endearing narrator, who is cynical when he needs to be, but ultimately, ust as ridiculous as his fellow Bokononists.

But the cake for most idiotic and therefore most entertaining character goes to Franklin Hoenikker. Not dead, as his family was led to believe, but in fact the Minister of Science and Progress in the Republic of San Lorenzo. He puts Jonah on an impossibly high pedestal and blatantly butters him up in the process. Described as the “pinch-faced child [who] spoke with the timbre and conviction of a kazoo”, Frank tells Jonah “‘I like the cut of your jib!’ and ‘I want to talk cold turkey to you, man to man!’” in order to persuade him into presidency.

I don’t know about you, but anyone who says things like “I like the cut of your jib” is an instant favourite.

The book may fall into the science-fiction genre, technically, but probably reads more like a twisted philosophy that is meant to be prodded at, pulled apart and scrutinised from every possible angle. So it leaves you wanting more ice-nine sooner, and less Bokononist dribble. And it is dribble, in case you were wondering.

A fantasimically entertaining read, Cat’s Cradle is black humour at its prime. BUT. If you find yourself wanting to convert to Bokononist, I suggest a visit to a psychologist.

Oh no. Another vampire story. Oh wait. This one has a paedophile in it. Not your typical vampire story then, perhaps?

Thirteen-year-old Oskar lives in the snowy Stockholm suburb Blackeberg with his mother. He gets picked on by the class bullies a fair bit. But when he’s not cornered in the toilet, forced to squeal like a pig for his cruel classmates, Oskar is cutting out gory newspaper clippings of murders for his scrapbook, or shoplifting hunting knives to act out vengeful scenarios against his tormentors in the surrounding forests.

So when the slightly disturbed young boy meets his next door neighbour, the strange little girl Eli, who sometimes smells a little funny and can sit outside in sub-zero weather in just a singlet, the two children begin to form a friendship.

The thing with Let The Right One In is that while it’s about vampires the crux of the narrative: the development of this seemingly innocent friendship and romance between Eli and Oskar, is what really drives it.

Sure, there are interwoven stories: Tommy, the neighbour, Hakan, Eli’s…guardian…who brings her sustenance, in return for the promise of something more (he’s the paedophile I mentioned in the first paragraph), and middle-aged Virginia, whose frustrations with her partner, the non-committal Lacke, becomes the least of her problems when a small girl drops onto her back from a tree and doesn’t let go (it’s Eli, if you were wondering). But none of the other characters have the same charm as Oskar. Even Eli, with her strange cat-like black eyes and simple matter-of-fact manner, pales in comparison to Oskar.

As endearing as Oskar is (despite his slightly disturbing murderous aspirations), there just aren’t enough likable characters in this story to make it worth investing emotionally in. What others have described as cinematic falls flat in the absence of real characters.

Its violence is sporadic, and infrequent enough for me to almost question the placing of this in the horror genre. For anyone who has seen the film adaptation, you may feel the director had similar thoughts. But the imagery in the novel is vivid and delicious as well; one of those things that sometimes gets lost in film:

“The sun threw itself over him like a hungry lion, biting into his back. [He] almost lost his balance as he was thrown forward by the sun’s howling force. Nature vomited its disgust at his transgression; to show himself in sunlight for even one second.” (432)

It’s unfair to dismiss this book altogether. It explores its themes bravely, even though this can sometimes be a little disjointing. And, of course, completely disturbing in an entirely understated way, perhaps something that other ‘horror’ writers might want to notice. Perhaps not for those already on vampire overload, but a nice distraction from the trashy books out there and a surprisingly twisted vampire “romance”.

Deepest apologies to all of you who gave me such lovely awards. I fell behind. Far behind. And then I went back up to Brisbane for the weekend to celebrate my belated 21st birthday. Fell even MORE behind. I’ve received a few awards, but I’m going to space them out over the next week. First one:

The Lemonade Award

This award came from J.T. Oldfield at Bibliofreak Blog which I adore and always love reading.

The Lemonade Award is a feel good award that shows great attitude or gratitude. Here are the rules for accepting this award:

• Put the Lemonade Award logo on your blog or post.
• Nominate at least 10 blogs that show great attitude or gratitude.
• Link your nominees within your post.
• Let the nominees know they have received this award by commenting on their blog.
• Share the love and link to the person from whom you received the award.

1. My Friend Amy – Amy not only ran Book Blogger Appreciation Week, with the help of a devoted team of bloggers, she still manages to keep her own blog topical and full of great reviews and fosters such a great reading community.

2. Maw Books – Natasha’s reviews just rock. And her love of reading is contagious even to already enthusiastic book lovers.

3. The Lit Connection – T.Y. has called dibs on Claudia from Baby-Sitters Club. Asians rock!

4. Musings of a Bookish Kitty – I heart this blog. And I also heart Literary Feline’s bio: Genius!

5. Just One More Page – Rebecca is just so lovely, and as I’ve recently discovered, spends a lot of time on Twitter. (As we all should do!)

6. Life in the Thumb – Staci’s blog just rocks. My TBR pile grows exponentially thanks to this one.

7. Books I Done Read – I would’ve awarded this blog from the awesome title alone. But lucky for me (and you) it’s actually a fantastic read and full of snappy reviews. Yay.

8. Should Be Reading – MizB is the essence of community spirit. :)

9. Lost in Books – Rebecca’s blog is excellent. And she’s in India right now. Soo jealous.

10. Books Like Breathing – Another blog that has helped quadruple my TBR pile. Not that I’m complaining… :P

Thank you to everyone who has also given me a award recently (or not so recently), and I will not forget you! Promise. xx.

After recent reading experiences, I have come to the conclusion that journalists make excellent authors. Before the journo-hating mob comes after me with flaming pitchforks shouting “BLASPHEMY!”, hear me out. I can’t speak too much about the books that inspired this (Sideways by Melbourne journalist Patrick O’Neil and You or Someone Like You by NY Times perfume critic Chandler Burr), because I’m reviewing them for other sites. But more on that later.

I may have been a circle trying to wedge myself into the octagon that is the journalism industry, but the bitterness of this has passed, and turned into a twisted sort of reverence for the keepers of the fourth estate that the world hates so much.

Anyway.

1. Journalists tend to start out on the path to authordom: Many Journalists didn’t study Journalism at university, rather, they are Arts graduates, and if they didn’t major in Political Science, they majored (or minored) in some sort of literature studies. Good grasp of literature = a basis for good story writing. You could even go as far as to say Journalism is story-telling.
2. They know stuff about things: In the course of their work, Journalists tend to have a wide, albeit somewhat flimsy grasp of general knowledge. (See point 3)
3. Masters of Google: Not just Google, in fact, that’s barely scratching the surface. Journalists are great researchers. Usually. The good ones at least.
4. Journos are itchin’ for it: These men and women in the noble trade of Journalism have simplicity drummed into them. Imagine being given 20, 000 words to say what you want, rather than a measly 2000! Mmmm adjectives *drools*
5. BUT, they’re trained in the succinct: i.e., years of having words culled from their work will help cushion the ego blows involved in the editing process.
6. They know how to write for an audience: Pretty self-explanatory, that one is.
7. All in the line of duty: Journos have done lots of crazy things for the sake of their jobs. Remember the opening scene of the movie 24-hour Party People where Tony Wilson goes parachuting on assignment? Hrm. And he’s not even a foreign correspondent. Okay so he’s not an author. I just wanted to bring up Tony Wilson. The point here is their lives are filled with the strange, weird, and wonderful: perfect inspiration for a novel. Moving on…
8. Contacts make the world go round: Half the job of the publicist/marketing guru is already done, thanks to an extensive little black book of who’s who, courtesy of the Journalist. And it’s a sad but true fact that when most books cross a publisher’s desk, the first question is ultimately about the marketing potential.
9. The thick skin wins: Yep. Alongside lawyers, parking inspectors, and insurance company employees, Journos are used to copping it from the world. Now, this isn’t a license to trash their work unashamedly, but I daresay they’ve had worse things thrown -and said – to them.
10.  They can write, duh: The most obvious reason. Journalists ARE writers, even though writers aren’t necessarily Journalists. Now I recall the occasional story from lecturers telling us about world-famous Journos whose work had to be scrubbed clean from spelling and grammatical errors by slaving sub-editors. This, reader, is a rare occurrence. For the most part, they can write.

Other Journalists who have written great novels, aside from ones mentioned above:

John Birmingham (author of He Died With A Felafel in His Hand and The Tasmanian Babes Fiasco) has been a journalist many years, and currently hosts a couple of blogs on the Brisbane Times website.

Lauren Weisberger’s The Devil Wears Prada was famously based on a certain unnamed Vogue editor.

And there’s also a little Rolling Stone Journalist, not sure if you’ve heard of him, he’s only Hunter S. Thompson. I rest my case.

Can you think of any other authors you’ve loved that were once, or still are, Journalists? (Yes, I deliberately capitalised the word, to express my awe with them.)

Or do you find that you don’t like the way Journalists write novels?

I almost didn’t review this magazine. It’s American. Not a criticism, just an observation. And the first article, Death of A Car Salesman by Rich Cohen was soo American, it just went over my head. Also, I don’t really give a shit about car salesmen. Or that “The history of America is the history of the automobile industry”

But then, there was Sara Gran and Megan Abbott’s article on the enigmatic V.C. Andrews and her dark tales of sexuality and violence and young girls, which immediately resurrected memories of secretly borrowing her books from the library when I was younger, and hiding them under my bed, along with the receipts. Considering Andrews only ever took part in 2 interviews in her lifetime, Gran and Abbott dig up a lot on her. And it’s fascinating.

The graphic breakdown of shaggy-dog jokes must only be relevant to a certain group of people. I’m not in this group. but the description of the series of jokes that “elicits more groans (or punches) than laughs” is certainly believable.

Now, if I were actually writing for The Believer, I wouldn’t have a word limit and would go on and on about the fascinating,  intellectual feast that is this monthly magazine. Their website brags an absence of word limits, particularly in book reviews. As this is a weblog entry, there is an invisible, somewhat loose but tangible word limit.

The interview with Nick Cave didn’t really do the rock god justice, but this is coming from a transparently biased person. And this is instantly forgivable thanks to incredible, shocking and deeply fascinating interview with Philip Zimbardo (the psychologist who conducted the infamous Stanford Prison Experiment). In it, Zimbardo draws parallels with the alleviation of responsibility and the Bush Administration’s justification for waging war on a noun. YES, a noun. I’ve been saying this to people for years! And finally someone smarter than me has published it in a much more articulate manner.
Overall, it wasn’t a regrettable purchase (albeit a little above my usual magazine spending limit). It belongs to that different breed of magazine: One that doesn’t follow trends but sets them. True editorial leadership in its genre. Timeliness is no factor.

The good news: Instead of no jobs, I now have two! Okay so I work my arse off plus go to uni and actually ended up missing out on the second half of BBAW, and I earn barely enough to support myself.

“Get on with it!”

Okay. So the final day of BBAW asked us to evaluate our blog (50 words), and talk about where we want our blog to be in the future (50 words).

While I quite like what my blog has become, (especially the latest edition: Pablo the blue-twitterbird!) I must say I’m still trying to find my “voice”, and reading so many other successful and entertaining blogs is extremely intimidating. Hang on this is supposed to be the positive bit. DAMMIT. Okay, well, I suppose I like the choice of books I review. There we go, that wasn’t so hard.

Where I want my blog to be, I could certainly answer this in more than 50 words. I want more comments! There. I said it. *sigh* that felt good. Sort of. No, I want my blog to be what I envisioned it to be when I first began: I know I need to work more on participating in the community, and I need to provide more useful content aside from my own rambling thoughts (which, less face it, nobody really wants to hear :P) in other words more newsworthy.

So, I’m going to risk sounding like an insecure little girl and ask my few but loyal readers out there, what are your thoughts? What is lacking for you in With Extra Pulp? Does Pablo just rub you the wrong way? (If so, tough luck, he’s staying)

Maybe it was the new job I started this week which was non-stop crazy go-go work, or maybe having the house to myself for two weeks has finally gotten to me, but this book made my cry like a little baby and I don’t care who knows it.

I forgot I’d read the 1943 children’s book-slash-philosophical wonderment by Saint-Exupéry when I was a lot younger. Reading it many years later gives it a whole new meaning. For those who aren’t familiar with it, a pilot who has crashed his plane in the Sahara Desert meets The Little Prince, (Le Petit Prince, if your version is the original French) who tells him about his home planet, the importance of taming foxes and the strangeness of counting stars.

In his tale, The Little Prince leaves his own small planet and meets the kings and rulers of many other planets, before finding his way to Earth. Along the way, there is a businessman who is very rich and has the very important job of counting all the stars he owns, and the geographer who has no idea how many rivers are on his planet because he has no explorers to tell him.

As someone who has recently been swept up in the rat race of frantic Gen Y career progression (I have this need to prove to the rest of the world that we don’t have short attention spans), it was with a sharp pain in my gut that I read  about The Little Prince’s simple bewilderment at grown-ups, and what they place importance on.

Sure, when we’re kids, these books are great fun to read: we can laugh along at the silly grown-ups, who simply don’t get it. The beauty in life, the simple pleasure of taming your own fox, or flower. But when you read it, realising with a sense of horror that you have actually become a grown-up yourself, the pleasure of reading is accompanied by a bitter taste of something that’s not quite regret.

If you’re wondering why this children’s book reduced me to tears, you probably haven’t read it yet. And you must. It’s deep but not too cerebral, and just so adorable in every way.

‘Goodbye,’ said the fox. ‘Now here is my secret. It is very simple. It is only with one’s heart that one can see clearly. What is essential is invisible to the eye.’

‘What is essential is invisible to the eye,’ the little prince repeated, so as to be sure to remember.

Now when I was at the cinemas a couple of weeks ago, I could have SWORN I saw the trailer for a new movie adaptation of The Little Prince. This has gone awol on the interwebs, so here’s a video of the trailer for the 1974 versio. Just ’cause.

Crime novels don’t usually find their way into my reading list. But I picked this book up from Ariel Bookstore in Paddington for a number of reasons:

1. The front cover is rad

2. The author has a very cool name (and shares his name with my Twitterbird)

3. ‘Paris’ was a word in the title

4. It was TEN bucks

We have a winner.

Turns out what we also have is a clever and mesmerising murder mystery with a philosophical and romanticised world of detectives during the late 1800s.

The narrator is Argentine Sigmundo Salvatorio, who manages to score himself the impossible position of acoloyte to the legendary Detective Craig, of the “Twelve Detectives”. When Detective Craig lands in hospital, Sigmundo is whisked to the Paris World Fair of 1889 where the now reunited Twelve Detectives from around the world have come together to show off their best work. It is in this setting, full of the world’s sharpest detectives, that an odd series of murders manages to baffle everyone.

What makes the story so involving is the way  Salvatorio narrates. He’s such a great character: objective and earnest, he truly wants to be a detective, despite the main rule that the acoloytes or assistants generally remain so for life. But as much as he loves the elitist and highly cerebral world of the crime solvers, he manages to be a discerning observer:

For a second I saw things from a distance. The detectives, the rules, the hierarchies, murder itself. It was all just a game. And I was like a stamp collector who comprehends, in a flash, that he has been playing with worthless slips of paper. (p139)

Detectives such as the Polish hard-arse Azarky, or Magrelli, known as The Eye of Rome, almost become a caricature of themselves, especially when they start arguing over the different schools of thought (Platonic vs Aristotelian being the two rivals).

Translated from Spanish by Mara Lethem, The Paris Enigma doesn’t have the feeling of disconnectedness or fragmented writing that sometimes occurs in translated fiction. I’m learning to appreciate the fine craft of translating novels, and this one just felt right, to put it simply.

The actual solving of the crime kind of falls flat in the midst of the glamourous yet incredibly real world that de Santis has created, but the book itself is such a pleasure to read that it hardly matters. Does it fail as a crime novel? I think so, because you need readers to care who the murderer is. But its parallel narrative, a young boy embarking on a personal and professional journey, has a commanding presence that dominates the “traditional murder mystery” narrative. Overall, a fantastical tale about detectives, egos and the clashes of great minds.