Book Chat Issue #99

Sounds good to me

Hello reading friends!

I hope you survived the holidays and have come out the other side intact.

Everyone seems to be talking about their reading resolutions for the new year, so I will share mine. My number one goal is to attack the towering pile of books that people have lent me, or gifted to me over the years. My stack is a tiny bit out of control and there are books in there that I actually want to read.

(True confession - this is only one of my piles, there are two others).

A lot of people have said they want to read less books, but choose their reading more intentionally. They want to stop rushing through books, slow down and savour them more.

Do you have a reading resolution for 2025?

What I’ve been listening to

People are always debating whether listening to an audiobook ‘counts’ as reading.

My answer is of course it does!

The reading experience is intrinsically different, but one is not inherently better than the other. Listening to an audiobook gives you less control over the speed at which you consume the content (I sometimes find this frustrating because I’m quite a fast reader), but audiobooks bring in elements of theatre and performance that can make the whole experience infinitely more pleasurable.

I have a strong preference for English, Irish, and Scottish accents, and I especially love listening to books read by actors who can pull off a range of regional dialects. Caledonian Road by Andrew O’Hagan is a good example. I’m currently about halfway through listening to it. It makes doing boring household tasks infinitely more bearable.

Read by the Scottish actor Michael Abubakar, it tells the story of Campbell Flynn, a middle-aged writer who tries to find his way out of financial difficulty by publishing a book called Why Men Weep in Their Cars, an undisguised attempt to cash in on the lucrative self-help market.

To protect his reputation, he enlists the help of a young actor who pretends to be the author. Things do not go well.

Around the same time, Flynn becomes enmeshed with a young student called Milo, the son of an Ethiopian activist. Milo is a talented hacker (and radical) and Flynn quickly becomes out of his depth, but he only seems to have a vaguest sense of this, despite evidence to the contrary.

Flynn is not a wholly unsympathetic character but listening to this book is rather like watching a pantomime. You frequently feel like shouting ‘look behind you’ as you watch the edifice of his privileged life crumbling around him.

On a broader scale, the books covers issues such as corruption, inequality and racism. It’s confronting in places, but Abubakar is a very skilled actor and convincingly portrays all the characters in the book, so it’s easy to get drawn in. It’s very impressive and I will definitely finish it, even though I’m sure it will probably end in disaster.

Other audiobooks I’ve enjoyed include:

In Memoriam by Alice Winn, read by Christian Coulson.

Lessons in Chemistry by Bonnie Garmus, read by Miranda Raison.

A Terrible Kindness by Jo Browning Wroe, read by David Dawson.

The Historian by Elizabeth Kostova, read by Justine Eyre.

What I’ve been eating - Christmas report

Everyone in the family contributed to this year’s Christmas feast and it was outstanding. We started with some fancy hors d’oeuvres and then feasted on delicious glazed ham and lamb with tzatziki. Sides included excellent roasted carrots and a green bean salad.

I posted a picture of a beautiful pavlova this time last year, but I thought you might like to admire this year’s effort, again made by my lovely daughter-in-law, Emma.

A Christmas feast

After Christmas, hubby and I celebrated our fortieth wedding anniversary. Like many people, we were married in the lull between Christmas and New Year, mainly because our families were in town.

The original ceremony took place on our bush block, miles from anywhere and we had ham sandwiches and fruit salad for our wedding breakfast.

We had the same thing at our anniversary party, complete with a replica wedding cake made by Emma and a delicious broccoli tabbouleh made by Jennifer. (Recipe to follow).

Before and after

Broccoli Tabbouleh

I’ve never had this salad before, although I’ve seen it on Instagram many times. It’s absolutely delicious and I have made it twice in the past week. Both times I made enough for two servings and then ate the whole lot. The recipe is by the famous Australian cook and restauranteur, Maggie Beer.

International Book Club

We are reading You Are Here by David Nicholls and our next meeting is on March 7th in Australia, which is Thursday March 6 in the USA and Canada. A few people have reported they are enjoying the book, and I can’t wait to read it and compare notes.

If you’re new around here, International Book Club is free for subscribers. If you’d like to join in and haven’t attended before (it’s online), please hit reply and let me know and I will add you to the invitation list.

That’s all for this edition. You’ll hear from me in two weeks with Issue #100!

Marg xxx

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