Birds!

Cor­ner of Barkly and McDougall Streets, Brunswick, Mel­bourne, Australia.

Syd­ney is a fun city for a week­end. Beyond that I can make no informed com­ment about the place. Here are the funnest of the funs from the week­end in the ‘arbour city with my trav­el­ing part­ner Sean #3 (I knew two Seans before him).

I.

Gatz

What an amaz­ing piece of theatre/experience-that-wasn’t-really-like-theatre-at-all. You’ve never been so emo­tion­ally invested in a show like you are if you sit through those final ten minutes/few pages of Gatz/The Great Gatsby hav­ing been there for the pre­ced­ing 7 hours. There’s a nice recent review of Gatz from the SMH here. That’s Sean #3 above check­ing out the bald head of Gatz himself.

II.

Me find­ing a copy of Ursula Dubosarsky’s out-of-print Bruno and the Crumhorn in that mega-stock book shop Kinoku­niya.

III.

Me buy­ing Tintin fig­urines for only $13 each from said Kinoku­niya store. How could I not for that price? I was just going to get Had­dock but I thought I’d be a lot fun­nier if he could be star­ing down an obliv­i­ous Castafiore.

IV.

The Syd­ney Writ­ers’ Fes­ti­val was pretty nice too — in par­tic­u­lar the panel that dis­cussed the ques­tion ‘Are some teenage nov­els too ‘hard’/literary for teenagers’. Obvi­ously, they’re not, der, was the con­clu­sion Margo Lana­gan, Mal Peet and M.T. Ander­son all came to. I’m about half-way through M.T. Anderson’s first Octa­vian Noth­ing novel The Pox Party and it really is as good as every­one keeps say­ing. Hard and lit­er­ary and appro­pri­ate read­ing for teens too.

V.

T’was wet’n’windy. As Sean #3 demonstrated.

Tomor­row morn­ing I leave for four days in Syd­ney which, at the moment, can only be described as ‘the future’. To be less with­hold­ing, I am head­ing up for the Syd­ney Writ­ers’ Fes­ti­val. It should be a good week­end. In par­tic­u­lar I’m look­ing for­ward to the Don’t Tell the Teenagers: Young Adult Fic­tion That’s “Too Hard” for Young Adults ses­sion with M.T. Ander­son, Mal Peet and Margo Lanagan.

I’m also see­ing Gatz at the Opera House. It’s not a per­for­mance of The Great Gatsby but a per­for­mance that fea­tures char­ac­ters who read The Great Gatsby out loud from front to back. Every­thing I hear about it makes me buzz. Here’s a lit­tle snippet:

Throw in a Zine Fair at the end of the week­end (who can resist a lil Zine Fair? Not I) and it should be a few good days in a row. If so, I’ll be sure to blog about it. If not, I’ll delete this post and we can for­get I ever men­tioned any­thing about it.

It’s a pretty weird feel­ing receiv­ing your own book in the mail. I just rode home from work to find two pack­ages in the let­ter­box — one of which was my book, fresh from the print­ers. It was a totally fan­tas­tic moment and there­fore a slightly ego­tis­ti­cal one (ego­tas­ti­cal?).  It reminded me of the time as a teenager when I bought myself a Christ­mas present and put it under tree, labelled ‘To Andrew’,  until Christ­mas Day when I opened it up and was thrilled to receive a present that I actu­ally wanted.

That’s me with the book there. The other pack­age in the mail today was my Dinosaur Comics T-shirt titled Let’s Say You’ve Gone Back In Time which I am also proudly sport­ing above.

It’s weird to dis­till a year and a half’s worth of work (and not just my own work but the work of the excel­lent Hardie Grant Egmont peo­ple too) into one moment when every­thing becomes  some­thing to hold between your fin­gers. But I should prob­a­bly try to curb such grossly sen­ti­men­tal guff until the book launch.

And now, I’m off to show the book to every­one I know. Oh and read my Time Travel T-shirt in a make-up mir­ror in the bath­room mirror.

A recent week­end spent down at Point Lons­dale and Queen­scliff yielded four new, second-hand books pur­chased from Bar­won Book­sellers — a tidy, slightly expensy second-hand book­shop found within what used to be a small church. Quaint, indeed.

I now look for­ward to read­ing for the first time ever The Choco­late War and Har­riet the Spy. The two Philip Pull­man books I just had to buy because of their pretty, under­stated and not-fantasyesque cov­ers. Now to find The Amber Spy­glass ver­sion to com­plete the series.