Mindy Kaling - Is Everyone Hanging Out Without Me? (And Other Concerns)

I love Mindy Kaling. I loved her before reading this book and now, having read it, I love her even more. I actually feel like she's one of my girlfriends and we hang out all the time. I love her TV show, The Mindy Project, and I loved The Office (before it jumped the shark. But even after that I watched every episode). So it's no surprise that I would also enjoy this book.

I guess I'm new to the comedian-memoir genre. I read Tina Fey's Bossy Pants a couple of years ago and really enjoyed it but haven't read any thing else since that I would classify in this way. I know Chelsea Handler has a book out right now but I don't find her funny (sorry Chelsea).

Anyway, Bibliohubby and I share a love of comedy and so I think I have more of this kind of reading in my future.

But this book - I think one of the reasons I liked it so much and read it so quickly, in spite of everything happening around me right now, is that it feels like a best-friendship unfolding on the page. I really wish MK was my best friend. Not even kidding. She talks a lot about her friendships in this book and I love that she describes her friends as more likely to tell ghost stories in the dark than tell raunchy stories about guys - not just when they were teenagers, now. In a chapter about best friends (it's that kind of book), she writes that 'it is super weird for us not to share a bed' if boyfriends are away or she is on a trip with a friend. 'How else will we talk until we fall asleep?' This made me miss my besties on the other side of the world. I have yet to make that kind of friend here in Canada.

MK loves Will Ferrell and hero-worships Amy Poehler and wishes married people would realize they are the happy ending to the fairy tale and act that way instead of complaining all the time about what hard work it is. She is frenemies with Rainn Wilson. She has an architecturally decorated study but does her writing in bed. And she probably won't lose weight and get all skinny because even though she might fantasize about getting super fit and fighting baddies, there are other things more important to her.

What a great read. I'm worried that it will take me a few days to come down from this and realize MK and I are not besties in real life. Now all I have left is The Mindy Project. If The Mindy Project gets cancelled I will be very, very upset.

Overall rating: I am giving this three stars because I enjoyed it so much, but it's not great literature - it doesn't have to be. Go and read it though. I'm serious.

Note: In case you're interested, these are some other comedians whose books I would read (not an exhaustive list): Arj Barker, Louis C. K., Nick Offerman (I am about to borrow his book from Bibliohubby and will post about it when I do), Amy Poehler, Will Ferrell, Stephen Colbert, Steve Carrell, Megan McCarthy.

A precious gift

As a parting gift, the girls in my Sydney book club the Bibliofillies (from whence this blog got its name) arranged for this to be made for me:

A book stamp with a filly on it - my very own Bibliofilly Ex Libris book stamp. A most excellent and thoughtful gift indeed.

Merry Christmas!

Ok, I have been HORRIBLE at blogging since we left Australia. Strangely it seems that raising two young kids, traveling the world and moving to a new country are not factors conducive to regular writing (or reading, for that matter). But here we are, in Toronto, and if any of you are still out there, for what it's worth, I am back. I plan to be back, is what I'm saying, for more regular posts.

But before we get to those, I just wanted to wish you all a very happy holiday season. We have had snow, a proper white Christmas, which is just wonderful. The kids have loved it (Iggy has, anyway; Lulu's a bit young still), and it has made us feel like we are really properly living in Canada. I mean look at this, for heaven's sakes!

Coming soon: a few brief reviews of books I've read whilst on hiatus, a list of books I currently have on my (new) shelves, best books of 2013, aspirational reads for 2014, and more. Hope to see you back here with me.

Bibliofilly x

Travel update

So we are traveling. And I wasn't able to upload a review before we left. Apologies. In a weak attempt at compensation, here are a couple of book-related photos from our trip. The first, above, needs no gloss. The second (below) is me at the Southbank book market in London. I love stumbling across this kind of thing. The beautiful blanket hides Lulu, who has been my constant companion on such wanderings. No special literary finds yet, but I will keep you posted.

What have I been doing?

So posts have slowed, to less than a trickle. Why? You might well ask. For a host of reasons, all of which are in one way or another tied to the following fact: this coming Sunday, we are leaving Australia, not just for a holiday, but for several years. We are taking the kids on a whirlwind month of travel (to places as varied at Malaysia, the UK, a Mediterranean island in Croatia, Munich for Oktoberfest and glorious Tuscany), and at the very end of September we will land in Toronto, Canada. The move is exciting but - Oh Goodness! - it has also kept us EXTREMELY busy, particularly as all of our organising has had to fit around the demanding needs of our three month old Lulu and 22 month old Iggy. So I'm afraid Bibliofilly has taken a bit of a back seat.

However: here I am, less than two days from getting on that plane, and everything seems to be more or less in place for our departure. So in the hope and expectation that I will be posting a review before we leave, here is a delectable fragment from a book I read earlier in the month:

"...When you read a book, what you see are black squiggles on pulped wood, or, increasingly, dark pixels on a pale screen. To transform these icons into characters and events, you must imagine. And when you imagine, you create. It's in being read that a book becomes a book, and in each of a million different readings a book becomes one of a million different books, just as an egg becomes one of potentially a million different people when it's approached by a hard-swimming and frisky school of sperm. Readers don't work for writers. They work for themselves. Therein, if you'll excuse the admittedly biased tone, lies the richness of reading."

Who wrote this? If you can guess I will announce your name on the next blog post. Oh, what a prize! What riches! What fame!

Meet you back here soon.

Richard Beasley - Me and Rory MacBeath

It seems fitting, somehow, that I will have read more Australian novels this year than in any previous year. It is, after all, the year I am departing Australia. Call it a farewell salute. This one, by Richard Beasley, is set in 1970s Adelaide. The last book I read by Richard Beasley was Hell Has Harbour Views, and whilst I enjoyed both that and Me and Rory MacBeath immensely, they could not be more different. Hell Has Harbour Views is a cynical, satirical look at big city law firms and the nasty practices and people that are to be found therein. Me and Rory MacBeath is a hugely moving coming-of-age story about a boy who lives in the wealthy suburbs of Adelaide with his barrister mother, Harry, and whose friendship with a boy called Rory changes him forever. In my opinion, it is the better book, and marks Beasley as an Australian writer for our times, one who will be remembered.

Jake is a sweet twelve year old boy whose life thus far has been reasonably sheltered and defined by his privileged suburban neighbourhood - running through sprinklers, playing backyard cricket with his best mate Robbie who lives just a few houses away. He lives with his mum, Harry, who is single and who teaches Jake to argue persuasively and to use words, not fists, when he's angry. Jake and Robbie know everyone in their neighbourhood, from Mr Nixon, who strictly guards his wife's precious garden against encroachment by footballs, cricket balls and the like, to the Williams, whose daughter is Jake's young crush. Jake's biggest worries are the balls he loses over the Nixons' fence and the embarrassment caused by his having once seen Mrs Williams ironing without a top on. That is until Rory moves in to the neighbourhood.

All of a sudden backyard cricket takes on a new dimension - it is England against Australia against Scotland, which everyone knows doesn't work, three being a crowd in backyard or front-yard cricket. At first Jake doesn't understand what Rory is good for, but when he sees Rory string a fishing line, gut a fish, and fight a bully he suddenly realises there is room in his life after all for one more friend. Before long Rory, Robbie and Jake are inseparable and life seems to be one long summer. Robbie's dad takes them away on fishing trips, they camp overnight in Robbie's backyard, they listen to Harry's lawyer mates getting drunk during parties at Jake's house.

But it is a formative period in their lives and before long they are exposed to things that have them growing up quickly. Jake is sent to a new school, and slowly sees less of both Robbie and Rory, and when Rory's life undergoes a shocking change Jake finds himself having to navigate through the murky waters of adult morality to decide where his own values lie.

Beasley writes beautifully here, capturing the essence of boyish youth perfectly. Much of the humour in the book arises from Jake's quoting of his mother's sardonic quips, not understanding that they were meant in jest - it comes across as entirely real and believable. I found myself particularly drawn to the characters of Jake and Harry, who is brilliantly portrayed as a chain-smoking, wine-swilling single mum who is a force against evil in the courtroom, and who "smokes her cigarettes differently after court than the way she did before court".

The courtroom drama which occupies a third of the book is fascinating and richly illustrated, and the story as a whole is true to the time in which it is set. A judge who is faced by a woman driven to extreme action after years of violent abuse at the hands of her husband comments that "her marriage was an unfortunate one", capturing at once the stilted language of a judicial figure and the rampant chauvinism of the 1970s.

Jake's endless summer comes to an end in a touching and believable way when he realises his life will never be the same as it once was, and that whilst he wasn't yet a man, he "didn't feel like a boy either." I was moved by this story and am pleased to have found an Australian novel which reflects and immortalises a particular kind of suburban upbringing, one to which I can relate.

Overall assessment: 4.5 out of 5.

Favourite passages: Beasley's use of language is highly evocative for much of the novel, such as when he describes a boy at Jake's school as one with "small footprints, their impact slight, almost nothing, amid a school where other boys stomped around." He gets the tone of a boy on the brink of adulthood just right, infusing Jake's narration with a kind of innocent wisdom that is highly endearing. For example, describing his mother in action in the coutroom, Jake says:

"Harry put her hand on her head then and straightened her wig. It was one of the things she did a lot. Whenever she finished a point, an important one, she often adjusted her wig. But in reality, she unstraightened it. She seemed to like it to be ever so slightly on an angle, not quite comically so, but just enough to give the impression, if you did make assumptions, that she thought wearing a barrister's wig was just a bit funny, or odd. It was like a wink to the jury."

This one is really worth a read.

Madeleine St John - The Women in Black

Not to be confused with the West-End-play-turned-Daniel-Radcliffe-film The WomAn in Black, this is a charming little book about women working in a department store in Sydney during the late 1950s. Madeleine St John was a graduate of the University of Sydney with contemporaries such as Clive James and Bruce Beresford, and she wrote four books late in life, one of which was short-listed for the Booker. The Women in Black is a delightful story which deftly and lightly depicts the lives of women in Sydney at a particular time.

F. G. Goodes is an elegant department store, much like I imagine David Jones was in its day, an icon in the Sydney CBD, where the best of the best is sold. The women who work there wear a smart black uniform and come to know much about one another. St John depicts their lives with sardonic humour, yet she clearly empathises with the characters and sympathises with their subjection to the times and traditions in which they live.

The story focuses on four women who staff the ladies' cocktail dress department. Patty is a childless woman whose dull life becomes unsettled when she is enchanted by a glamorous black nightie in the lingerie section one lunchtime. She buys it and takes it home, and when her blue collar husband discovers her in the act of trying it on, an unexpected and unprecedented night of passion ensues, after which her discombobulated husband disappears for a time. Patty is left properly jolted for the first time, and wondering what her future might hold, realising the status quo is no longer. Faye is a single girl on the verge of being a matron. She realises her behaviour is in danger of giving her a reputation as a 'good-times girl' and has given up on parties, certain she will never find a husband, until she is one day introduced to one of those strange, 'continental' types, who changes everything for her. Magda is the wise European glamour-puss who runs the exclusive 'Model Gowns' section of the cocktail dress department. St John uses her to illustrate the attitude in 1950s Australia towards all things foreign - Magda is regarded with suspicion and yet admired as the most sophisticated of the staff, just as the model gowns themselves are different yet sought-after. Magda's dress-sense and character alienate her from the other staff, but she appears to prefer it this way and, when a young work experience girl is hired to work in cocktail dress, Magda takes her under her wing with expansive warmth, playing Henry Higgins to her Eliza Doolittle. Lesley, the work experience girl, a young slip of a thing, takes the opportunity to change her name to 'Lisa' as she has always wanted to, and blossoms under Magda's knowledgeable supervision. She represents a new generation, having completed her leaving certificate and hoping to attend 'The University', in spite of her father's derision. Lisa welcomes the refined input Magda gives to her life and passes it on, introducing her mother to new delights - such as salami. Through her we see that Sydney, too, will ultimately benefit from increased foreign influence.

St John paints a marvellous, light-hearted picture of a society that is changing rapidly. This is not an earth-shattering book but it is hugely enjoyable and will resonate particularly for women who experienced 1950s Australia themselves, or whose mothers can recall this period.

Overall assessment: 3.5 out of 5

Pros: St John's writing is quite novel, for its time - there is a passage where she described a New Year's Eve party, and she does so entirely in little snippets of dialogue. Brilliant, and thoroughly unexpected, particularly as a highly anticipated romantic encounter takes place during the night and is thus glossed over.

Cons: Not sure this will continue to carry such resonance as time moves on. However, I do hope this little treasure of a book is retained as a portrait of the time.