This week:

• The Day of Creation by J.G. Ballard
• High-Rise by J.G. Ballard
• Hollywood Ending by Kathy Charles [review here]
• Strong Motion by Jonathan Franzen
• Utopian Man by Lisa Lang
• The Guerilla Art Kit: Everything You Need to Put Your Message Out Into the World by Keri Smith
• How to Be An Explorer of the World by Keri Smith

At the Melbourne Writer’s Festival today I was lucky enough to get the lovely Ms. Charles to sign my copy of Hollywood Ending in her signature almost matching the cover pink pen. She should be congratulated for very admirably tolerating my awkward self!

I’m excited to read Lisa Lang’s Utopian Man, her fictional take on the life of Edward William Cole, a historical figure from 1880s Melbourne who owned a massive (two city blocks!) book arcade. She also wrote a biography on Cole a few years back and I reviewed it in January. The Keri Smith’s were found in an op shop, and were such an unexpected op shop find that I had to snap them up. Some of it is a bit too artsy-cutesy-hipstery but I think there are some really postive ideas in her work as well.

Reviews posted on Start Narrative Here this week:

• Monday Mini-Reviews: short reviews of The League of Extraordinary Gentlemen: Century: 1910 by Alan Moore & Kevin O’Neill, Books Do Furnish a Room by Leslie Geddes-Brown and A Certain Je Ne Sais Quoi by Chloe Rhodes.
• How to Be Alone: Essays by Jonathan Franzen: a collection of essays that appear more relevant to today’s culture than the time they were written in: on technology, the decay of the distinction between public and private, on the act of reading.
• The Dirt: Confessions of the World’s Most Notorious Rock Band by Tommy Lee, Mick Mars, Vince Neil and Nikki Sixx with Neil Strauss: sex, drugs, rock and roll – and that’s just the beginning of this sordid tale of rock debauchery.

Sadly, there’s no debauchery at my house tonight and the only pills I’m popping are antihistamines. Yes, a cup of tea and an early night are definitely in order tonight.

Only one new acquisition this week:

• In the Beginning: My Life With the Manic Street Preachers by Jenny Watkins-Isnardi

The book is written by a former girlfriend of one of the band members from before they were famous and it looks completely trashy. Rather than an actual memoir it appears that it might be better to read it as fiction. I mean, really, who memorizes entire conversations verbatim? However, given the number of Manics related coincidences that I’ve been noticing lately, I just couldn’t help myself. I found it during an impromptu trip to an op shop and was really unimpressed with the book selection but saw this. It was priced at $4 which I was a bit unsure of, I just felt really guilty about spending that much money – even second hand! – on something that is so obviously a cash in on a brief relationship with someone who went on to become quite famous. When I, reluctantly, took it to the counter the woman only charged me $2 for it, which didn’t feel as bad. I’m a little ashamed that I actually now own this, but for the sake of complete disclosure here it is on this week’s loot. This is an issue, such as it is, I’m sure to confront again when I read the fictionalized account of Richey Edwards in Ben Myers’ Richard, released in October.

About the postcard pictured above, isn’t it sweet?! It arrived in my September copy of Good Reading magazine. A lovely new mantra, one that should prove valuable as the nation deals with political limbo. Keep calm and keep reading, keep calm and keep reading.

Reviews posted on Start Narrative Here this week:

• Everything: A Book About Manic Street Preachers by Simon Price: a culturally and critically aware music biography of one of my favourite bands.
• Exchange by Paul Magrs: appeals to the bibliophilic tendencies but then, sadly, rallies against that love by the end of the novel.
• The Slap by Christos Tsiolkas: the novel that has sparked debate and conversation among so many Australians, now reaching out to a wider audience thanks to be longlisted for the Man Booker Prize.

I hope all of you caught my guest post over at Desert Book Chick this week. I wrote some, hopefully, useful questions to consider when reading a classic book, or anything that you’re feeling a bit apprehensive about reading. Many thanks to Amanda for having me, and a warm welcome to any new readers who have dropped by via her blog. While you’re reading my post over there, I recommend you listen to her podcast Books & Blogging and check out her recent post about the problems with giveaways which has incited something of a furore! Some advice: make sure you read her post before unleashing your fury. In questioning the ubiquitous young adult fiction book giveaway, she seems to have touched a very raw nerve of readers of young adult fiction. Hop on over and see what you think.

• A brief post on female characters in graphic novels over at the Vertigo blog from comics author Chris Roberson who specializes in writing strong female characters. I appreciate the sentiment, but does he have to do it while infantilizing himself, and therefore female interests, ie. “interests of an eight year old girl”?
• The always fascinating Listverse provides a list of the top ten theatre superstitions and their origins.
• And finally, a depressing sign of the times: The Millions has a look at authors featured on the cover of Time magazine over the decades. Do you think the dwindling number of authors featured represents a similar depreciation of literature as a major force in our culture?

Keep calm and keep reading!

I’d resigned myself to not buying any books this week, I wasn’t expecting any parcels to arrive and had no intention of going book shopping. Then my Dad roped me in to spending a day exploring op shops and second hand bookstores. It took a lot of convincing, but I happily tagged along:

• All the President’s Men by Carl Bernstein and Bob Woodward
• Howards End by E. M. Forster
• My Brilliant Career by Miles Franklin
• Where You Find It by Janice Galloway
• Island by Aldous Huxley
• Setting Free the Bears by John Irving
• The Armies of the Night by Norman Mailer
• Chickenhawk by Robert Mason
• Harold Pinter: Plays Volume Three by Harold Pinter
• Tortilla Flat by John Steinbeck
• The Pearl by John Steinbeck

Over the past year or so I’ve become more inclined to buy new/remaindered books, mainly thanks to a.) working in a remainder bookstore, b.) working in a “normal” bookstore and c.) The Book Depository. When I was younger, and even sometimes now, I bought a lot of second hand books. What I love about them is thinking about the journey they’ve taken to end up in a particular store. How did a Vintage Classics copy of Aldous Huxley’s Island bought in Indonesia for 40 000 RP end up for sale for $2 in a suburban Salvation Army store? Why did someone buy Volume 3 of Harold Pinter’s plays from Monash University bookstore and how did it end up unread in a second hand bookstore by the train station? What was originally in the envelope in All the President’s Men that was then used as a bookmark, forgotten about at page 42? I like to think about these stories, in addition to those contained within the text.

This week I was also suffering from what I not so fondly refer to as perma-headache. Not quite as intense as a migraine, but painful enough to be constantly aware of the throbbing pain in my head. Very annoying. And in my birthday week as well! There were some exciting things happening despite perma-headache. My favourite band, Manic Street Preachers, who I’ve loved since my early teens, announced their first Australian tour in ELEVEN YEARS! This means I’m currently planning another trip to Sydney to see them play in two capital cities in November. I’d been looking for an excuse to visit Sydney again after going there (again, for a band) in March, and this is the perfect reason. There’ll be more about this band in tomorrow’s review, as the tour was not only announced on my birthday but while I was reading a biography about them. Pretty amazing coincidence.

This week Bret Easton Ellis was in town, and I went and saw him interviewed at the Athenaeum Theatre on Friday night. It was such a great night, Ellis was in top form, funny and irreverent. I met him briefly afterwards, he signed a couple of my books (including the battered copy of Less Than Zero I’ve been reading and rereading since I was sixteen) and posed for a few photos with me. I look insanely happy. He was very lovely, chatty and warm. When my sister accidentally took a photo of us while he was looking away he insisted that she retake it as he wanted to be looking at the camera. While I don’t really get the whole book signing thing, I’m very happy that I got to meet him.

I read Imperial Bedrooms this week, and I’m not going to review it for the blog. It was difficult to get out of review mindset and just read for pleasure, to really immerse myself in the book and enjoy it – that’s not to say that I don’t enjoy the books I do review but it’s a completely different approach to read without that critical distance. Does that make sense? I’m sure that I’ll be rereading it in the future and then I will write up my thoughts on it, but for now I was really pleased to just read the latest book from one of my favourite authors. Heh, maybe some time in the future someone will pick up my signed copy of Imperial Bedrooms and wonder who Jess was and why the book ended up in a second hand bookstore.

This week:

• The Signet Classic Book of Southern Short Stories edited by Dorothy Abbott and Susan Koppelman
• The Notebooks of F. Scott Fitzgerald edited by Matthew J. Bruccoli
• Everything: A Book About Manic Street Preachers by Simon Price
• The Magnificent Ambersons by Booth Tarkington

A few months after purchasing it on ebay, The Notebooks of F. Scott Fitzgerald finally arrived. I’d accepted that it had probably been lost in the post, and emailed the seller who was on holiday at the time. When they returned from their trip they told me that the book had been sent back to them as my address had been rubbed off the package! Very pleased that it wasn’t the victim of some sort of postal conspiracy.

This is the 52nd Book Loot post, which means that Start Narrative Here has been around for almost a year! (And I don’t even want to think about just how many books have been amassed in that time.) My first review was posted on a wordpress hosted site on the 11th of August, 2009 – and I decided that I wanted my own space and bought the domain a week later on the 18th of August, 2009. Starting a book blog was a project aimed at learning to express myself again after a really horrible year, and it has quickly become much more than just a nerdy recovery method. It has reinvigorated and reaffirmed my love of the written word. To anyone that has commented, read, recommended, emailed or even lurked over the past year, thank you so much.

Image from tumblr.

My postwoman was kept very busy this week, here are the bookish delights she dumped on my doorstep.

• Lilian’s Story by Kate Grenville
• A Single Man by Christopher Isherwood
• One Day by David Nicholls
• Expiration Date by Duane Swierczynski
• Generation of Swine: The Gonzo Papers Volume 2 by Hunter S. Thompson
• The Great Shark Hunt: The Gonzo Papers Volume 1 by Hunter S. Thompson
• Hey Rube: Blood Sport, the Bush Doctrine and the Downward Spiral of Dumbness by Hunter S. Thompson
• The Invisible Man by H.G. Wells

Two of these (Lilian’s Story and One Day) were won from various online competitions. I’ve been having such good luck in book related competitions, I wonder whether that luck would translate should I buy a lottery ticket? After watching Gonzo: The Life and Work of Dr. Hunter S. Thompson the other week I was inspired to fill in the gaps in my Thompson library, and the Simon & Schuster editions are so much more pleasant looking than the unbearably ugly MacMillan reissues.

The unstoppable Amanda from Desert Book Chick sent me Expiration Date, and it looks like a mind-meltingly awesome read, you can read her review of it here. August is Classics month over on her blog, and when I stop running my hands lovingly over my Penguin Classics and Modern Library editions and I’ll be writing a guest post for her about reading the classics. It’ll be my first guest post and I’m pretty excited about it.

This week I had to press the “MARK ALL AS READ” button on my book news folder as it got way too unmanageable in the time I spent away from the computer, so this Book Loot is sadly lacking the usual list of fascinating tidbits from the literary world. I’ve been busy with Melbourne International Film Festival screenings, but the past week looks mild compared to the crazy schedule I’ve prepared for myself this week. I’m most looking forward to The Killer Inside Me (I have the book on hold, and would have read it by now too if only some dastardly creature hadn’t kept it for three weeks past the due date.), Taqwacore: The Birth of Punk Islam (and I have the book that inspired this documentary on hold as well) and the newest film from one of my favourites, Harmony Korine, Trash Humpers – and yes, it is what it sounds like.

I’ve also (finally) decided to put up the Google Friend Connect widget, and although my loner tendencies like that it’s just me there at the moment, if any of you would care to join me over there, it is sure to be one hell of a party!

Image: a very young Hunter S. Thompson, via tumblr.

This week:

• Beautiful Creatures by Kami Garcia & Margaret Stohl

This one was a freebie that I received for signing up to Penguin’s Young Adult newsletter Between the Lines. Pretty rad eh? You can still sign up and receive a free book, but it is open to Australian residents only. Now, there’s a phrase you don’t see very often on book blogs!

This week at the very last minute I decided to buy a minipass for the Melbourne International Film Festival. I was a cinema studies student for five long years after all! Originally I had only planned to go to a couple of sessions, but that very quickly turned into a few more sessions and in the end it was cheaper to buy the pass. I’m going to see lots of documentaries, a couple of new films from old favourites and some films picked at random. It’s a great time of year to be in Melbourne, after the film festival ends it’s not long until the Bret Easton Ellis event, and then after that, the Melbourne Writer’s Festival begins! City of Literature? City of Awesome.

• William Kostakis takes on Alexandra Adornetto‘s recent “wah real boys pale in comparison to Edward Cullen wah” article. You must read this.
• I like this list of Books Behind Bars: The Best Prison Literature from AbeBooks.
• I am coveting the new collection of Jack Kerouac & Allen Ginsberg’s correspondence (I’m thinking it will be my birthday present to myself!) and Janet Maslin gives us a nice summary of the letters and another book about the Beats due out soon.
• People have been sending in pictures of their piles of books to be read and reviewed.
• You probably saw this during the week, but it deserves another mention: One star Amazon reviews of Time’s 100 Best Novels from 1923.
• Marisa Meltzer asks: Where are the Darias in contemporary pop culture?
• The Definitive Mad Men Summer Reading List. Anyone who spoils the upcoming season four of the series for me will be on the receiving end of some very stern looks.
• Eight Literary Works That Deserve a Graphic Novel Treatment – is this the new film adaptation?
• Continuing with the previous item and the Beats, Ginsberg’s Howl has been adapted into a graphic novel version just in time for the release of the movie.

Image Credit: Good Friends (Berta and Capi) by Albert Edelfelt, 1882.

The loot of the week:

• To the Lighthouse by Virginia Woolf

I won To the Lighthouse through a twitter competition Penguin Australia ran to promote their new range of Popular Penguins. It doesn’t get any more exciting than free books, does it?

Think again friends. Do you remember the three hundred times I raved about the Bob in Space bookmark from the Book Depository bookmark competition winners? And how I constantly lamented the fact that I never seemed to receive it? Well, guess what bookmark arrived with my July 2010-December 2011 Moleskine planner?

You’re damn right it was the Bob in Space bookmark.

While I sit here content that my life can be made that much brighter by a simple bookmark and planning jam packed days at the Melbourne Writer’s Festival, here are some links to peruse:

• This one is from a few years back but it’s still a good one: A mix tape of songs about books.
• Allen Ginsberg’s Howl adapted for the online hipster generation: “I saw the best minds of my generation destroyed by brevity, over-connectedness, emotionally starving for attention, dragging themselves through virtual communities at 3am, surrounded by stale pizza and neglected dreams”
• How about taking a Tintin themed holiday?
• Janet Fitch, author of White Oleander (my high school favourite) and Paint It Black offers her ten rules for writers.
• On the rise of the literary night out.
• Speaking of literary nights out, this week I went and saw Gonzo: The Life and Work of Dr. Hunter S. Thompson at the State Library of Victoria and when doing some research afterward, came across Gonzo: A Graphic Biography of Hunter S. Thompson which is due out in October. Could be worth a look.
• The Book Inscriptions Project collects, well, inscriptions found  in books: the personal, the mundane, the heartfelt.
• And finally, inspired by the Eat Pray Love film tie in perfumes The New Yorker‘s Book Bench comes up with a list of perfumes based on novels.

Look what arrived for me this week:

• Imperial Bedrooms by Bret Easton Ellis

Despite months and months of lead up, I keep putting off reading it. Who knows why. I’m sure I’ll read it before August when Ellis comes to town, but I’m avoiding it for now. Perhaps because I am in the middle of a major graphic novel binge, thanks to the League of Extraordinary Gentlemen and Transmetropolitan. The stack of graphic novels by my bedside is both awesome and intimidating.

If you’re intrigued by Transmetropolitan, which I am sure to be raving about quite a bit as I work my way through all ten volumes of the series, Vertigo has the first issue available as a free download. Through them I also found this awesome reference guide to comics “after Watchmen” which showcases graphic novels for older readers with complex, challenging storylines. Well worth a look if you are interested.

I’ve a few housekeeping issues to make a note of as well. I was cleaning out my wallet this week and I realized that I have about eight different library cards. If there was ever any doubt about how much I love libraries, I’ve just started organizing my non-fiction reviews in the nerdiest way possible. That’s right, you can now browse through my non-fiction reviews sorted by Dewey Decimal Classification. Ahem.

This week I also registered Start Narrative Here for consideration in September’s Book Blogger Appreciation Week 2010 Awards. Trust me, I had serious anxiety dreams the night after I submitted my registration. Here’s a small taste of some Book Blogger appreciation right now!:

• Amanda from Desert Book Chick has written the latest post in her brilliant series on How to Write a Killer Book Review.
• Steph at My Girl Friday compiled another of her amazing Polyvore sets, this time bringing the Babysitters Club into the 21st Century.

I have to apologize for what is going to be a very brief and image-less post, our broadband bandwidth has run out until Wednesday and trying to do anything without it is tear-inducing. I don’t remember dial-up being this slow. Just another reason to move to Finland, where this week they announced that access to a high speed broadband service is a basic right. Damn right Finland. Hopefully Book Depository still do free shipping there? (I’d check myself, but it would take about three hours to load the page!)

Thankfully I have these new books to keep me company:

• Cocaine Nights by J.G. Ballard
• Concrete Island by J.G. Ballard
• The Drowned World by J.G. Ballard
• Millenium People by J.G. Ballard
• Super-Cannes by J.G. Ballard
• If I Loved You, I Would Tell You This by Robin Black
• Homage to Catalonia by George Orwell

In lieu of an array of fantastically interesting links, though I do recommend reading Flavorwire’s list of the 20th Century’s most reclusive authors, I’m going to tell you a story!

I had an interesting encounter with some young readers yesterday. Tired after a long day, I was listening to my ipod but the battery ran out, so I pulled a book out of my bag and started reading that instead. Soon after I did the conversation of the group of teenagers moved toward what they’d been reading. I really loved secretly listening to them talking about books, and convinced myself that it was me that caused the change of topic. Who knows.

So what are teens (male and female) in the North-West of Melbourne reading on their school holidays? A few of the titles that I caught were Thirteen Reasons Why by Jay Asher (and they were very insistent about how great it is, reading up on it now it sounds like something I’d be interested in. Anyone read it?), Gone by Michael Grant, Inkheart by Cornelia Funke and The Outsiders by S.E. Hinton. I couldn’t help but grin to myself when I heard them talking about The Outsiders. No vampires!

My orders from The Book Depository have been arriving really quickly lately. Not bad for free shipping.

• The Orchard Keeper by Cormac McCarthy
• Keep the Aspidistra Flying by George Orwell

Keep the Aspidistra Flying – man takes a job in a bookshop but his poverty ends up destroying his creativity and his spirit – sounds like it has the potential to hit a little too close to home. Just kidding, I’m pretty sure my creativity & spirit were broken long before I started working in bookstores. Ah, don’t mind me, it’s just been one of those weeks.

Speaking of bookstores, every single store that sends me an email newsletter seems to be having big end of financial year sales over the next couple of weeks. Lots of very tempting emails about 50%/20% off all stock which are very difficult to ignore. There should be some sort of way to filter such emails, preferably according to my bank balance!

• A positive take on how the combination of technology and reading may be beneficial to culture and society from Steven Johnson’s article “Yes, People Still Read, but Now It’s Social” at The New York Times.
• Jacinda Woodhead considers the cultural significance of the library over at the Meanland blog.
• A brilliant rebuttal to the tired claim that fiction is dead.
• Listverse‘s Top 10 Fictional Male Charmers, a majority of them literary.
• The 15 Coolest Bookends. The Sandman and Star Wars cantina bookends would make great conversation pieces.
• The appeal of book blogs – with the very conservative estimate of the number of book blogs: just 300?!