#MWF14 Mothers Grimm

This post was written by Lisa from Kew Library. 

This session with Cassandra Golds and Danielle Wood looked at the power and role of fairytales and how they tell us about love but also reveal the dark side of life - hatred, jealousy, poverty and betrayal thus using the language of fairytales to talk about the profound. Cassandra's latest book Pureheart is about what it means to love and is inspired by Rapunzel and the Arthurian legends. Danielle's latest is Mothers Grimm in which she refashions four traditional tales and transforms them into black comedies in the present.

 

#MWF14 Nick Earls

Nick is a prolific Australian writer having produced around 19 books across a wide range of genres and age ranges. I first read his work when I was a Youth Services librarian trying to read teen fiction. It was After January and it made me see that teen fiction wasn't just for teens, I loved it.

His latest is an adult book Analogue men which has been described as the existential crisis of a man approaching fifty. It encompasses some of the big themes of family, middle age, technology and of course running {Nick runs daily}. Andrew Van Fleet is downscaling his career by taking a job managing a struggling Brisbane radio station in an effort to reconnect with his family: his wife Robyn a busy GP, his two teenagers and his father who is grappling with a serious illness. Nick is a warm and engaging speaker with some great one-liners and Analogue men is a humorous and tender book which reminds me quite a bit of a recent favourite The Full ridiculous by Australian author Mark Lamprell.

Check out Nick Earls' books here.

 

What I learned about love from reading #MWF

Meg Wolitzer and Emily Bitto chatted to Bethanie Blanchard about the themes of love and friendship in their novels.  Emily's debut novel The Strays is about the intense friendship between two young girls in Melbourne 1930s.  Meg's novel The interestings is about a group of teenagers in the 1970s and how their relationships progress into middle age.  

The strays' main character is Lily who is an outsider befriended by Eva, the daughter of an avant-garde artist.  Lily desperately wants to be part of this bohemian circle.  She cannot see how damaged Eva is by this family.  Lily's desire to be extraordinary blinds her to everything else.  But when it comes to love Lily settles for an ordinary man. Romanticising the life of the artists doesn't necessary mean you have to choose a romantic life for yourself.  

Meg's book is about a group of teenagers who meet on Summer Camp in the 1970s.  They call themselves The Interestings and believe they are superior to everyone else due to their talent and ambition.  But it is love that keeps them together.  Meg wanted to explore platonic love in her book.  It's a theme that doesn't get explored much in literature.  The relationship between Jules and Ethan is a deep friendship that never turns romantic.  

Both books deal with specialness and the deep burning desire to be extraordinary.  The relentlessnes of specialness becomes a burden for the characters  In the end of The Interestings one character declares that they are not all that interesting at all.

Meg has also written an excellent article titled The Second Shelf about the difference between how the world sees books about love that are written by men and women.  

Emily will talk at Ashburton Library as part of our Emerging Writers series on 13 October.  Book here.

Molly Oldfield on Secret History #MWF14

Molly Ofield chatted with David Astle about her book The Secret Museum.  Molly is an QI elfette and has been involved in researching for the show for 12 years.  David started by anaylsing her name - Molly means trivia and Oldfield seems historical so David thinks that she is the perfect person for her job.  This is called an aptonym.

The moved on to talk about Molly undertaking the research and discovery for her book.  She travelled the world finding curiosities from museums and talking to curators about all kinds of exciting and interesting objects.  

Molly starts with the curators of fish.  In their museum there are hundreds of specimens in bottles - some of them too large to put on public display.  She has seen the shark suits that were designed for swimmers but are so good they are now illegal to use.  But the suits have been kept by the museum just in case.

She saw inside the space museums where space suits are kept in storage and studied so that NASA can make improvements to their design.  She was there are the opening of a book for the first time.  She has seen Charles Dickens' letter opener which was made for him after his cat Bob died.  His sister wanted to make him something special so used Bob's paw to craft a letter opener that Dickens used everyday.

There are some things that are too big to fit in museums.  Things such as Piccard's gondola which was the first object powered into the stratosphere.  Piccard used to take his family in the gondola and his aunt would take the tour with her pet tortoise!

Molly had to omit some stories - Dead Duck Day never made it into the book.  Kees Moeliker witnessed a duck flying into his window one day and then another day demonstrated an inclination for necrophilia.  Kees recorded the incident, keeping the duck and created the day to celebrate ludicrious research.  He received an Ig Noble prize for his efforts but Molly decided it might be best to leave it out of her book.

Boroondara Librarians at the Melbourne Writers Festival #MWF14

Some of our fabulous librarians are going to the Melbourne Writer's Festival this and next weekend.  We will be blogging our adventures in reading, listening to writers, meeting authors, buying books.  There are a fantastic selection of authors coming this year and we can't wait to meet them!

Keep in touch here at the blog or on twitter @BoroondaraLib 

Some of the authors we are going to see include Salman Rushdie, Hannah Kent, Gerald Murnane, Ruth Reichl, Nick Earlys, Sonia Hartnett, Dave Eggers, Clare Wright.

We hope to see you there!  Follow the Writer's Festival on twitter, facebook or intagram.

Melbourne Writer’s festival -revisited

On Friday 21^st August I attended a great session at the MWF “Love & Truth” with authors Howard Goldenberg and Rupert Isaacson.

Howard has written the critically acclaimed book “My father’s compass” about his father’s life and more recently “Raft” which deals with his work with indigenous communities.

Rupert’s second book “Horse boy” is about his son Rowan who is autistic and the family’s trip to Mongolia to investigate horse therapy for Rowan’s condition.

Robert Hillman chaired the discussion and elicited some very moving and humorous anecdotes from the two writers around the theme of love and truth and whether the two can be balanced when writing about those you love.

A wonderful session.

Lisa,
Kew Library