Scumble, Punkel, Swiggle

... a brush with paint on it can ... tip, touch, mark, float, flick, slope, slide, plunge, swirl, swish, smash, streak, hint, damage, swipe, scumble, hurt, rupture, gash, sweep, push, sliver, punkel, quicken, quiver, rip, burrow, stab, splat, block, shorten, bang, expand, alter, caress, hit, split, hide, destroy, point, cuff, tremble, tickle, spit, encourage, nudge, aim, tug, glaze, soak, heighten, lighten, sponge, swiggle, wipe, doodle, darken, arrange, wreck, shift, alter, shine, change, cut, thicken, renew, turn ,clean, explode, widen, whip, complete, open, finish, preclude, overlook, deny, sparkle, fatten, polish, tighten, sharpen, exact, thin, blur, veil, cease, stop, fidget, clears, bombard, repeat, strike, shiver, hurry, stagger, set, replace, make, pull, grip, join, break, soften, stroke, part, push, gash, hurry, jolt, jibe, rush, wash, allow, score ... Small wonder that not too many paint!
Brett Whiteley, 1983

Reproduced from Brett Whiteley Studio (Art Gallery of New South Wales, 2007).

Nothing online captures the beauty of this book - full of gorgeous images of Whiteley at work and details of his studio (piles of artbooks, collections of Japanese paint brushes, postcards and scribbles stuck on white walls). But you can enjoy a virtual visit to the studio and see if it challenges you to create.

Reading Lists

I was going to write today about swimming lessons and washing machines breaking down and having to be replaced. Then I discovered this meme on both Ampersand Duck and Pavlov's Cat. I just couldn't resist putting myself to the test. Here are the rules of the meme as provided by Ampersand Duck:

Apparently these are the 106 books most often listed as 'unfinished' on LibraryThing. The rules are that you bold the ones you've read all the way to the end, underline the ones you read for "school" [I presume uni is included in this], and asterisk the ones you started but didn't finish.

I'm adding italic for those I've re-read.

I have followed Ampersand Duck's directions and here is my list. The bolding is a bit hard to read on screen so I've made my 'read all the way to the end' books a bit bigger.

Jonathan Strange & Mr Norrell
Anna Karenina
Crime and Punishment
Catch-22
One Hundred Years of Solitude
Wuthering Heights
The Silmarillion
Life of Pi : a novel
The Name of the Rose*
Don Quixote
Moby Dick
Ulysses*
Madame Bovary
The Odyssey*
Pride and Prejudice
Jane Eyre
The [A] Tale of Two Cities
The Brothers Karamazov
Guns, Germs, and Steel
War and Peace
Vanity Fair
The Time Traveler’s Wife
The Iliad*
Emma
The Blind Assassin
The Kite Runner
Mrs. Dalloway*
Great Expectations*
American Gods
A Heartbreaking Work of Staggering Genius
Atlas Shrugged
Reading Lolita in Tehran : a memoir in books
Memoirs of a Geisha
Middlesex
Quicksilver
Wicked : the life and times of the wicked witch of the West
The Canterbury Tales
The Historian : a novel
A Portrait of the Artist as a Young Man
Love in the Time of Cholera
Brave New World
The Fountainhead
Foucault’s Pendulum
Middlemarch
Frankenstein
The Count of Monte Cristo
Dracula
A Clockwork Orange
Anansi Boys
The Once and Future King*
The Grapes of Wrath
The Poisonwood Bible*
1984
Angels & Demons
Inferno
The Satanic Verses
Sense and Sensibility*
The Picture of Dorian Gray
Mansfield Park
One Flew Over the Cuckoo’s Nest
To the Lighthouse
Tess of the D’Urbervilles
Oliver Twist*
Gulliver’s Travels
Les Misérables
The Amazing Adventures of Kavalier and Clay
The Curious Incident of the Dog in the Night-Time
Dune
The Prince
The Sound and the Fury
Angela’s Ashes : a memoir
The God of Small Things
A People’s History of the United States : 1492-present
Cryptonomicon
Neverwhere
A Confederacy of Dunces
A Short History of Nearly Everything
Dubliners
The Unbearable Lightness of Being
Beloved
Slaughterhouse-five
The Scarlet Letter
Eats, Shoots & Leaves*
The Mists of Avalon
Oryx and Crake
Collapse : how societies choose to fail or succeed
Cloud Atlas
The Confusion
Lolita
Persuasion
Northanger Abbey
The Catcher in the Rye
On the Road
The Hunchback of Notre Dame
Freakonomics : a rogue economist explores the hidden side of everything
Zen and the Art of Motorcycle Maintenance : an inquiry into values
The Aeneid
Watership Down
Gravity’s Rainbow
The Hobbit
In Cold Blood : a true account of a multiple murder and its consequences
White Teeth*
Treasure Island
David Copperfield

Apart from being great fun to do, a list such as this raises some interesting questions. What is it about these books that makes us buy them and then not finish reading them? Why is Jane Austen so prevalent in the list? Where is D.H. Lawrence? I read quite a bit of him at uni under sufferance and never want to read him again. I've tried to read Kangaroo a couple of times since, on the basis that it is probably the one Lawrence I should read, but have failed miserably. Why the top 106 and not the top 100? And why do we keep books that we haven't been able to finish reading? Why not donate them to the next Lifeline Bookfair?

Once upon a time I finished every book I began (with the exception of Charles Dickins - I've tried to read Great Expectations and Oliver Twist so many times). These days I am far more ruthless. I do try to give every book a good chance but if the reading is an effort, instead of a joy ... well, life's too short and there are too many books waiting to be read.

Now, with Mr M asleep, I'm going to go and read a book that isn't about Spot, Thomas, Bob or the Wiggles.

Catching Up

I worked all weekend. Which isn't as bad as it sounds. We ran a marvellous conference about memoir and autobiography and it was exciting watching the panel sessions that we'd imagined take shape. I don't think there was a single poor paper and there were many outstanding ones. Nevertheless, I am now exhausted. I didn't think I was but the weariness has crept up on me. Last night I was asleep early with Mr M and tonight I'm already in my pjs and contemplating bed.

The prospect of bed is very tempting as, although I'd read a great deal in preparation for the conference, I added to the book pile beside the bed with some new purchases:

• A Certain Maritime Incident: The Sinking of SIEV X by Tony Kevin (because I really should know more about this horrific incident in recent history)
• The Little Red Writing Book by Mark Tredinnick (because I'm a sucker for writing books)
• Australia's Quarter Acre by Peter Timms (I can think of at least two family members who would be interested in this one), and
• Living Politics by Margaret Reynolds (she spoke so inspirationally about the need to get women involved in public life).

It will be a while before I read these though. I'm going to indulge in some non-work reading. A feast of chick lit. I prepared for it last week when I discovered two novels by Katie Fforde in a second-hand shop we visit semi-regularly. The shop is tucked down an alleyway in Fyshwick, opposite a building supplies storehouse that specialises in recycled materials. The books are light entertainment, romantic comedies set amongst English hedgerows and canals. All the kitchens have Agas (my dream stove) and all the women are fiercely independent. I'm going to indulge in the reader's equivalent of Days of Our Lives for a while. Relaxation for the mind.

TV's Night of Nights

It's Logies night. Both boys are asleep so I've snuck out to the loungeroom to watch a little bit of the Logies. This is a fairly meaningless thing to do because these days I watch very little television. True, I was a committed viewer of Robin Hood (which ended last Sunday night - and how dare they kill off Marion?). But I gave up on East of Everything after episode 2 and I'm hoping that Underbelly will soon be available from the dvd shop otherwise I'll never see it. As for all those soapie regulars - Neighbours, Home and Away, Macleod's Daughters, Sea Patrol - some I've never seen and some I haven't watched for years and years and years.

I have discovered, however, that it's the fiftieth year of the Logies and they are doing quite a bit of 'memory lane' stuff. This at least means that there are some faces I recognise. And John Clarke is being inducted into the Hall of Fame as I type. A worthy recipient. Hamish and Andy are doing the green room interviews. And Adam Hills has made me smile. But who is Lincoln Lewis?

Once upon a time, I would have known most of the nominees in all the categories, except the ones about sport and maybe current affairs. I wouldn't have missed the Logies anymore than I'd have missed the Oscars and I'd watch it from beginning to end. This would be despite the fact that there wouldn't have been a single Australian actor staring down from my bedroom walls. That space was reserved for the 'teen idol' stars of The Hardy Boys, Eight is Enough and the like. I'd probably have bought TV Week the morning after to look again at the frocks and read the behind-the-scenes stories.

Now, though, I'm old, or older. I've become a serious viewer of the ABC. I don't have time in my hectic life to make the kind of commitment series television requires. I have never watched an episode of Grey's Anatomy. I saw part episodes of Ugly Betty but couldn't keep up. And not having access to satellite television, I have a sneaking suspicion that the really interesting Australian programming is happening elsewhere.

Still, love them or hate them, the Logies has provided some memorable moments. Will Susie Eleman ever live down the bald head? And who will ever forget Bert Newton calling Mohammed Ali 'nigger'? Even if we only saw it replayed twenty years later.

I'm Late, I'm Late

I think I have well and truly missed this week's deadline. And the only thing I can blame is 'Winter'. Since Sunday evening it has been bitterly cold at night in Canberra. We have finally turned on the heater. The hot water bottles have been taken out of the cupboard and are being used consistently. The car windscreen has been covered in a thin film of ice in the morning. Now, when Mr M asks 'Is it winter?', I have begun to say 'yes', instead of trying to explain what autumn is. And the result of all this is that I have been far more tempted to stay in bed with Mr M when I lie down with him to help him go to sleep (and probably that is something all the books tell you not to do - but it works), than I have been to get up again and spend a chilly hour in front of the computer.

Tonight, though, I have decided to put my middle-of-the-night wakefulness to use. Instead of lying in bed in the warmth, I'm up and at it. I have written my to-do list for tomorrow's/today's working day. I have folded the washing (the thing I really hate about winter is how difficult it can be to get the washing dry but I'm not going to give in and buy a clothes dryer. Not having one is the small thing I do to help the environment). I have sent an email I meant to send at 8pm. And I'm finally sitting down to blog. When I do go back to bed, which should be soon, I'll be doing so with a terrific sense of achievement.

Isn't it amazing what you can get done when the household sleeps?

PS If you are interested in the experience of the 2020 Summit, Alison Croggan has written a terrific piece about being a member of the 'Creatives' and posted it on Sarsaparilla. It's a great insider's view of the day. I'm sure the 2020 Summit was an event full of faults and a huge question remains as to what will happen to all the ideas, but I do think the summit was a very bold, very big idea itself and at the least it has signposted that the times are changing. (Maybe that's 2am optimism creeping in. Perhaps the times aren't changing, they are simply being dressed up in new clothes. I'm still hoping, though, that the Emperor won't be discovered wandering around in 'his all-together'.)