Hello reading friends and a big welcome to new subscribers. I’m glad you’re here.
This newsletter is about books and eating, my two favourite things. I usually post about what I’m currently reading, but at the moment I’m working my way through a potted history of my reading life. This newsletter features part 5 and begins in the mid-seventies.
If you missed the previous entries, you can find them here:
Part one | Part two | Part three | Part four
My reading life - part five
I’m 19 and enjoying my London life when I discover I am expecting a baby. The father isn’t terribly interested in being involved, so I decide to proceed on my own.
My sister and her husband arrive from Australia and we try hard to find accommodation for the three of us, but it’s impossible to find somewhere suitable, so at seven months pregnant, I pack up all my stuff and return to Australia. I figure if I’m going to be short of money, I might as well live somewhere sunny - at least I’ll be able to get the nappies dry. I move in with my parents and my two younger brothers bunk in together so I can have the third bedroom. They don’t seem to mind.
My stepfather is happy to let bygones be bygones (more or less) and when Katie arrives, he dotes on his new grand-daughter. She is beautiful and fills a hole in my life I didn’t know was there.
The Whitlam Government is dismissed, but not before they introduce a single parent benefit which keeps the wolf from the door. Bob is transferred to a new job in Melbourne, so I move into a small flat and try to subsist on the $15 a week that’s left after I pay the rent. My mother has the telephone installed so we can keep in touch and I get a part time job as a waitress to help make ends meet.
Being a single mother is both hard and easy. I’m lonely and struggle to make ends meet, but all the parenting decisions are mine. We muddle through. It’s not until I have my second child that I find out you are supposed to cut up fruit for a toddler, and not just hand them an apple.
My luck changes when my friend Helena gets me a job at Australian Broadcasting Corporation and I start work as an assistant sound editor. I meet my future husband and we set up home together.
We decide we aren’t the types to be tied down to a mortgage and buy a bush block, about two hours from Sydney.
The block has no house and no running water, but we spend many happy weekends there, trying to grow various plants and dreaming about becoming goat farmers and building a mud-brick house.
I get into literary fiction. Big books with big themes. I read Zen and the Art of Motorcycle Maintenance, by Robert Pirsig, and The World According to Garp, by John Irving.
I don’t really remember much about Zen and the Art of Motorcycle Maintenance except that it’s about a father and son who go on a road trip (on motorbikes, naturally). These days the book is variously described as a classic, or as a pretentious pseudo-philosophical work, depending on who you ask.
A famous quote from the book is:
The place to improve the world is first in one's own heart and head and hands, and then work outward from there.
That’s quite good advice, but I don’t think I would read this book if it was published today.
Is Zen and the Art of Motorcycle Maintenance part of your reading history, or do you have other examples of “important” books you thought you should read when you were young and impressionable?
By contrast, The World According to Garp is a quirky novel by John Irving about a young man born out-of-wedlock to a feminist mother. He grows up to be a wrestler and then a writer. From memory, it’s a very weird book, but I remember loving it. It won the National Book Award in 1979.
I was interested to learn that John Irving's mother, Frances Winslow, was unmarried at the time of his conception, and Irving never met his biological father. As a child, he was not told anything about his father, and he told his mother that unless she gave him some information about his biological father, he would invent the father and the circumstances of how she got pregnant. Winslow replied "Go ahead, dear."
The book was made into a movie in 1982 and starred a young Robin Williams, with Glenn Close as his mother, and John Lithgow as Roberta Muldoon, a transgender ex-football player.
What I’ve been eating
I came home from Japan with a desire to eat more asian style food, so I’ve been experimenting with various versions of what are commonly called ‘Buddha bowls’.
They are easy to make and can be enhanced with a sprinkling furikake, Japanese rice seasoning. Furikake is usually made with sesame seeds and shredded nori, and gives your food a lovely authentic flavour. You can buy it from Asian grocers or make your own.
Book Club report
The long-awaited International Book Club meeting has been and gone. Thank you to everyone who attended. I love talking to fellow readers about books and life.
We discussed You are Here by David Nicholls, which got the thumbs up from everyone. To be honest, it would be hard not to like this book which is a feel-good novel about second chances. It’s a very funny book and several people said they had especially enjoyed the audiobook version. If you are feeling a bit flat, I strongly recommend you give this a try. It will make you laugh and feel a bit better about life.
Want to join our book club? It’s free for subscribers and we meet approximately four times a year. Just hit reply and let me know you are interested, and I’ll add you to the invitation list.
Our next book will be The God of the Woods, a literary thriller by Liz Moore. We’ll be meeting in late May or early June.
That’s all for this edition,
Until next time, happy reading and keep safe.
Marg xx
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Wonderful, Marg! I'm sorry I missed this one when you first published it. I think I was traveling (I seem to be always doing that these days--not to complain). Anyway, your story of your life in chapters is enchanting. Your reading life seems to parallel mine, though not the personal one. I waited until well into my 30s to have a babe, and then I only had one. (Some regrets about that!) The pictures of your and your daughter, then with your husband are lovely.
I read Zen and the Art of Motorcycle Maintenance and remember almost nothing of it, except how much everyone else liked it. I liked the World According to Garp a whole lot better--and the movie too, perhaps more than the book. What else I read, it's kind of hard to remember. William Styron's Sophie's Choice was one--and later there was a movie starring Meryl Streep. I keep thinking I ought to go back and read them all again to see what I'd think now...
We have Zen in our bookcase but honestly, I'm probably not going to read it. I bought it for the bike rider and he won't read it either. It was a library discard so cost about 50cents.