Food, Glorious Food

Last night I ate dinner at Red Chili, one of the best Chinese Sichuan restaurants in Sydney. It is slightly tucked away, so doesn't have the headline factor and queues out the door, but it is always packed. All I have been able to think about since we left is how delicious it was.

I've been thinking a lot about Chinese food lately, in large part due to my new cookbook, Every Grain of Rice by Fuchsia Dunlop. I've been pouring over this book even more than I normally would with a new cookbook; it seems to hold the answers to secrets and riddles that I feel will change my life if I can just figure them out. I have had so much fun choosing a recipe, heading off to Chinatown and sourcing strange new ingredients. Upon returning home with the loot, the process of cooking is super-easy and sizzlingly fast and exciting, and the result has been Food Heaven every single time.

Dunlop's name on the cover of a magazine in a bookshop window thus caught my eye, and I am mighty glad it did. Lucky Peach; The China Town Issue is a great read. It is published by McSweeneys and other contributors include Harold McGee and Anthony Bourdain. It's just lovely to read about people's food memories, recipes, experiments and musings in such a fresh and smug-less way.

I am slowly chipping away at a few other things, most of which are food related. Increasingly, reading about food makes me happy and content with life. Perhaps it's the interactive potential, perhaps it's my greedy appetite, or perhaps it's linked to how food is a soother and comforter in times of uncertainty and distress.

I have just made myself quite hungry looking at google images of "Red Chili Haymarket" to add to this post, but nothing quite fits the bill. Instead, here are some words with which you may create your own image of what we ate last night: Pumpkin deep fried in duck yolk and salt, sizzling chicken stirfry with mixed mushrooms and vegetables, pork ribbons and leek in chili oil.

The Misinterpretation of Tara Jupp

A few years ago, I read a purely delightful book called The Lost Art of Keeping Secrets. It floated about in the back of my mind from time to time after I had read it, until one day I decided that I really, really wanted to read it again. I almost never re-read books, but I loved it just as much the second time. Any possible consideration of reading it a third time was indefinitely put on hold when I discovered that the author, Eva Rice, has written a new book: The Misinterpretation Of Tara Jupp. I am not ashamed to tell you that I squealed when I found this out!

This is not a book that anyone would expect to win great literary prizes, it doesn't set out to teach you things about life or the world or human nature, and you won't swoon at any beautiful turns of phrase, but I loved pretty much every page. If I were to be picky I'd say Rice's first book has a slice more magic to it, but that could well be because it is set in the 1950s which I'm a bit of a sucker for. ... Tara Jupp is the kind of book I wish there was more of: intelligently written, interesting and non-formulaic yet easy reading and fun. It's a very difficult balance to strike so I am always pleased when I find a book that does the job. It's the perfect holiday read when you don't want your brain to turn to complete mush, and you want to read a plot line than is complex and unexpected while still being an utter confection of a book.

Read this: If you want to take a break from predictable chit lit where the characters' shoe brands are mentioned on every second page OR if you want to take a break from heavy-going mid twentieth century French philosophy.

Quite A Good Book

A Visit From The Goon Squad was a book I quite enjoyed reading, but I'm afraid I can't get excited about it. When something wins a prize it's difficult, if not impossible, not to place a heavy weight of expectation on what it will deliver. I suppose it is inevitable that sometimes that expectation leads to disappointment. A Visit From The Goon Squad won the Pulitzer for fiction in 2011, and the 2010 winner (Tinkers)was a book so shivery and delicate and poignant that I still sigh dreamily when I think about it. Another past Pulitzer winner, The Namesake, is one of my favourite books of all time so I was expecting nothing less than to be astounded by The Goon Squad. I was disappointed.

I liked the writing style, the characters, the observations, and most of all the twist that was the final chapter. I am glad that I read A Visit From The Goon Squad but if I am perfectly honest I was hoping for a transcendent reading experience and I got an enjoyable one instead.

Bon Apetit

My first ever post on one of the 52 books I have pledged to read as part of The Classics Club is a bit of a cheat. I couldn't resist; ever since I baked a cake and handed it in to my tutor instead of writing an essay, I have delighted in breaking rules. So the first book is not exactly what I would consider a classic, but I have a really good reason for letting it slip through the Classic Definer Net of Criteria, which I will explain. But first: what is the book?

My Life in France by Julia Child. The book is a memoir of a time in Child's life when she was creating what I do consider a classic: Mastering The Art of French Cooking, and that is why I have let it slip through. I have dipped into Mastering while reading My Life in France and quite enjoyed the added context the biography gives the cookbook.

What I have loved so much about My Life in France is that it is a joyful, inspiring and exciting read. Child's enthusiasm for her discoveries is palpable and invigorating. My Life in France is a story about a mind awakening, horizons expanding, and passions and direction in life being discovered. It is utterly heartwarming and reassuring to know that it really can happen to a person at any age.

It ramped up my own enthusiasim for food, cooking and eating (always fairly high to begin with). I have slowed my reading pace in order to peruse more deeply than normal several books on my groaning recipe book shelves, including Jamie's Great Britain (Jamie Oliver) and Four Seasons Cookery Book (Margaret Costa). This has been a wonderfully pleasurable and informative experience, and I wouldn't have thought to do it if I hadn't been reading My Life in France.

So, if one chooses to define a classic as a book that can make you think deeply about a topic, and open you mind to new ideas and possibilities then My Life in France most assuredly counts as a classic. And if if one chooses to see a classic as a book that has been engaged with multiple times and in multiple ways, you could equally use this definition to include My Life in France in a list of classics. I whole heartedly give this book five sticks of butter out of five.

Let's Play 52 Pick Up

I humbly submit my application to join The Classics Club

Like the time I moved to Hobart in Tasmania because it was as close to wilderness as I could bear, I have taken up a mildly difficult and hugely exciting and fun challenge that in no way impares my access to tea or chocolate: I have taken up the challenge to read 52 classics in five years. They are my own selection, and the method I used to choose which classics would make the cut was mixed, but was heavily influenced by several walks around my apartment peering at the bookshelves. Fans of useless trivia will be delighted to discover that I already own 36 of the books on this list.

Here is my list, with a few things marked out for those of you who like added detail:

* = re-reads, because I want to see if an older version of me has a different take on the book in question.
@ = As most of the people taking part in this blog challenge seem to be American, I have marked out all the Australian classics.
# = non fiction

I have chosen to read some short stories, but they are all in published collections. Since I plan to read the whole volume I have listed the volumes in question as one single book. I also feel compelled to point out that, according to the rules, The Significance of the Frontier in American History might be considered too short to count as one book. But I beg you to allow me to take a couple of hundred pages off my Anna Karenina entry and tack them on to The Frontier essay quota. I'll only do it the once, I promise!


1. Lolita - Vladimi Nabokov *
2. Eleven Kinds of Lonliness - Richard Yates
3. Disturbing the Peace - Richard Yates
4. The Moonstone - Wilkie Collins
5. Bleak House - Charles Dickens
6. Great Expectaions - Charles Dickens
7. Hard Times - Charles Dickens
8. The Scarlet Letter - Nathaniel Hawthorn
9. The Muddle Headed Wombat - Ruth Park * @
10. Missus - Ruth Park @
11. Harp in the South - Ruth Park @
12. Poor Man's Orange - Ruth Park @
13. My Life in France - Julia Child
14. The Australian Ugliness - Robin Boyd @#
15. Vanity Fair - William Makepeace Thackery
16. Northanger Abbey - Jane Austen
17. Pride and Prejudice - Jane Austen
18. Mansfield Park - Jane Austen
19. Persuasion - Jane Austen
20. Voltaire in Love - Nancy Mitford #
21. Madame du Pompadour - Nancy Mitford #
22. The French Lieutenant's Woman - John Fowles
23. Portrait of a Lady - Henry James
24. Careful, He Might Hear You -Sumner Locke Elliot @
25. The Glass Canoe - David Ireland @
26. Little Women - Louisa May Alcott
27. Cranford - Elizabeth Gaskell
28. The Glass Bead Game - Herman Hesse
29. I Capture The Castle - Dodie Smith
30. The Curious Case of Benjamin Button and Six Other Stories - F Scott Fitzgerald
31. Tender is the Night - F Scott Fitzgerald
32. The Beautiful and the Damned - F Scott Fitzgerald
33. The Significance of the Frontier in American History - Frederick Jackson Turner #
34. Friday's Child - Georgette Heyer *
35. The Art and Craft of Approaching Your Head of Department to Submit a Request for a Raise - Georges Perec
36. A Void - Georges Perec
37. Things: A Story of the Sixties with A Man Asleep - Georges Perec *
38. The End of the Affair - Graham Greene
39. Twilight Sleep - Edith Wharton
40. The Glimpses of the Moon - Edith Wharton
41. The Secret Garden - Frances Hodgson Burnett *
42. The George's Wife - Elizabeth Jolley
43. The Picture of Dorian Gray - Oscar Wilde
44. 1984 Orwell - George Orwell
45. Down and Out in Paris and London - George Orwell #
46. Short Stories - Somerset Maugham
47. Theatre - Somerset Maugham
48. Alice in Wonderland - Lewis Carroll *
49. Through The Looking Glass - Lewis Carroll *
50. Dracula - Bram Stoker
51. The Wizard of Oz - Frank L Baum
52. Anna Karenina - Leo Tolstoy

Expected finish date: 12th September 2017

All reviews I post of books from this list can be found by searching for the label Classics Club

Edit: below is the list-in-progress of any classic I read not from the original list:

1. Starlight - Stella Gibbons

Stuck in the Middle With Me

I am in the middle of two things at the moment: a book and a list.

The book is Triburbia by Karl Taro Greenfeld. I reckon that if Jay Mcinerney ever decided to write one of the Tales of the City books by Amistad Maupin, this is what you would get. The chilled, artistic, hip neighbourhood of Tribeca is populated by faintly hopeless almost-failed artists and irritating pricks. When I was a popular music wannabe-academic snob, I was surrounded by faintly hopeless almost-failed artists and irritating pricks, so perhaps that is why these characters feel so lifelike to me.

Each chapter is narrated by a different character, and Taro Greenfeld is so good at giving each one a distinct voice that I initially thought it was a disparate collection of short stories. Although I am yet to finish the book, I am loving the way the plot is developing almost by stealth; tiny drips of clues from previous chapters are scattered through subsequent ones. The bigger picture is emerging inch by inch.

I have read some pleasant things in the last few weeks, but this is the first book in a while that I have been able to really sink my teeth into. The characters and the plot are, as the back cover says, "darkly funny". The social commentary is sharp and biting. The book is readable as hell and I can't wait to finish it.

The List I am compiling is for something these guys have scared/dared/cheered/willed me into doing. I am going to attempt at least fifty Classics in five years or less. Five years sounds like a long time, but ten classics a year sounds hard, especially since some of my (so far half baked) list are - like Anna Karenina - thicker than a body builder's torso.

I have realised that I love making lists about as much as I love reading, so when I am done with this one I might make a list of Lists I Should Compile. When I have finished my classics list I will be duly posting it here, and fulfilling all other requirements that membership of The Classics Club entails. These include (but are not limited to) drinking sherry from a stemmed glass while discussing pre-post-modern plot development styles, and pledging to use at least one of the following words once a day: scullery, ratafia, furbelow, bosky.

Ceci n'est pas un livre

This is a post about a book that is not yet a book; something I have just read that I can't really tell you anything about. But it is set in Iceland.

In an earlier post, I mentioned that I have swapped the bookshop for the publishing house, and that I wasn't sure if, or how, this would change my blog. Well yesterday I finished reading a truly amazing manuscript. It has only belonged to the company I work for since Thursday. It happens to have been at the centre of the most hotly contested bidding war seen in publishing for many months, and it started in a office on the other side of the lift bank from my desk.

I feel especially lucky to have come onboard at a time when I was able to see the excruciating anticipation, followed by champagne-y elation that marked the bidding war to acquire Burial Rites by Hannah Kent. I get all shivery and goosebumpy when I think about it, especially after having read the manuscript which was so incredible and assured and moving in a wonderfully human, un-schmaltzy way. If this book were food it would probably be fennel fried in black pepper and sugar, served with soft goats cheese and pine nuts.

What I want to do is talk about my emotional journey with the book, but I think that would give away too many details of the story's structure. Damn! I also want to quote some heartbreakingly beautiful sentences from it, but I am sure that is utterly verboten at this stage. Double damn! As you can see, I am utterly bursting with the knowledge of this work and I have to keep mum for months to come.


As a bookseller, I am used to seeing reading copies of books that have the publishers gushing for a page or two about the wonderousness that is the book within. To be honest, that gets a little tired after a while, and you tend to ignore it. This will be a book beyond all that, and I desperately hope that the people who will love it and be enriched for having read it will allow themselves the privilege of letting it into their lives. The more I think about it, the more excited I am that Kent will be writing more books in the future that I will be able to read. In a mere three days, I have become a huge fan. And I can't wait until others have the chance to become fans too.