quicko: WALDO done properly!! (australians, take note!)

review: tomorrow when the war began

Tomorrow When the War Began is a famous Australian book written by John Marsden* for a roughly teenage demographic.  This much I knew before I watched the movie.  The fact that it's the first of a series of seven I did not, and was thus shocked to reach the end at what I presumed was the middle.

I watched it because I knew it was a bit of a cultural icon in Australia, and I was vaguely curious, but not curious enough to read the book.  Also I was given a choice between it or Casablanca, and, well, in hindsight I should have gone with Casablanca.

Initially I had assumed the "war" of the title was a metaphorical, coming-of-age/societal sort of "war."  Nope, it was literal.

Now I still haven't read the book, so my comments are drawn entirely from the movie and the rest of what I can work out from wikipedia (not planning on reading the series, so was really rather curious what was to happen next), but all in all I thought it was a bit blunt.  You could chalk it up to being a teen novel, but having spent considerable time in the Calvin College English department, I don't think that's much of an excuse for stereotypical characters, overt metaphors and a general clumsiness of content.  I think a lot of that had to do with trying to cram three or so books into one movie, and the books are almost certainly better, but I didn't like the movie.  It scared me.

It doesn't really take much to scare me (as probably anyone else who's seen the movie can now testify), but it came as one highly visual representation of a whole bunch of other real-life issues late at night one evening and the combined effect kept me up quite late.

The plot centers around a group of teenagers who've gone camping for a weekend and come back to find their families kidnapped and made prisoners of a real, literal war that's just broken out.  I guess that was my major frustration with the plot in general:  it just felt all too bizarre to be believable.  If it were science fiction or something, sure.  But this was meant to be taken reasonably real-life-like, from what I could tell.  It just suspended reality a bit further than I was willing to.

From there on out, the teens wage a sort of guerrilla war against "the enemy" (unspecified) and ... keep fighting until the end of the movie, at which point nothing gets resolved in the slightest.

The end.

*Oops.  To be perfectly honest, I thought they were written by Bryce Courtenay.  Turns out he writes ... something else.

quicko: the gift of who?

So I have actually mentioned this before, but it's come up again (in the third edition of New Headway Elementary this time ...) that Australians don't know the story of "The Gift of the Magi."  Now I recognize that many Americans also don't know of it (though a fair few who don't know the title I suspect would recognize the story), but the thing is it's the literary Australians (such as other ESL teachers) who I would have expected to have been versed in such classics who aren't familiar with it.  Go figure!

quicko: read-y or not ...

It's a general cliche not (NOT!) particularly shared by the Australian readers of this blog, but it seems that the average Australian you grab off the street is significantly less likely to have read a book from cover to cover in the last year than the average American you grab off the street.

quicko: waltzing matilda

"Waltzing Matilda," while not Australia's official national anthem (that would be "Advance Australia Fair," which it seems no one knows nor likes), is the one that every Australian knows and loves.  It is, I was told, the type that makes everyone just a little bit teary and the sort any Australian would join in and sing wholeheartedly in a pub overseas.

It was written by the famous Australian bush poet Banjo Paterson, who's known for funny rhyming poems as well as "The Man from Snowy River" about, we think, an expensive horse that got away.

"Matilda" is even more ambiguous.  It's definitely about a homeless man and a sheep and his run-in with some cops that results in his suicide, but what precisely a "matilda" is is a bit unclear.  What is certain is that it is not, as I had woefully assume for the first 27 years of life, a woman, much less a dancing one.  The first Australian I discussed this with assured me it was like a knapsack of sorts, while the second Australian answered "a kangaroo!" without a moment of hesitation, though later amended the answer to "possibly a sheep."

I'm now highly intrigued to see what other possibilities Australians have in mind as to the nature of the beloved Matilda.  I'll be sure to let you know when I find out.

And one more thing while we're on the subject of Australian bush poets:  Henry Lawson is another.  No clue what he wrote though.  Sorry.

review: my place

I didn't expect to like My Place.

I got it for my birthday and didn't like the cover.  If you'd told me it was non-fiction, I probably still wouldn't have got to it yet.

But I read it.  And, what's more, within the first chapter I was actually into the book.

I'm not sure what I expected -- boredom, presumably -- but I didn't get it.  It's a book I think you could accurately term "beautiful," which also generally sends me scurrying the opposite direction, but was really well written, and enjoyable to read.

I think it's possible I wouldn't have liked it in high school (I think it's one of those books that gets put on recommended reading lists for Australian high schoolers, along the lines of a To Kill a Mockingbird), but, gosh, I'm really actually nearly a decade removed from high school now.  I was going to say perhaps my tastes are maturing, but I read Pilgrim's Progress as a fifth-grader, so I'm not sure they had too terribly far to go.  Not that I got much out of it, but I also despise re-reading, so whatever I did manage to glean is probably all I'm going to get.

But My Place is a beautiful book.  It is the first person narration of Sally, a little Australian girl of, to her, unknown origins.  It is her quest to discover her roots, which sounds terribly pretentious, but is actually extremely down-to-earth.

There's a blurb on the back of the book from Alice Walker of The Color Purple fame, and there are definite similarities between the plight of African Americans and the struggle Sally's family had.  It's a monumental journey, but not in a tiresome sense.  It's very real, very grounded and very much worth reading.

I think the thing that worried me was that there wouldn't be any plot, any momentum or any forward pull -- any of the "but-what's-going-to-happen-next?!" variety of anticipation.  I, however, found myself finishing the last hundred pages or so in one fell swoop, wanting desperately to know the mysteries Sally herself was so desperately seeking.

I can't tell, though.  Now it's your turn.

quicko: australian authors

A few big names I saw at Dymock's (major bookstore):

Bryce Courtenany
Tim Winton
Peter Carey

review: the book thief

As I neared the end of The Book Thief, I was afraid it could be one of those books that is perfect right up to the end, at which point the author jerks it precariously around, causing it to lose its footing entirely and crash into a frustrating heap of an ending.

I am happy to report it is not.

That's not to say I wouldn't have been bawling my eyes out had I not been reading in public.  As it was, I still couldn't stop a handful of tears escaping.

Don't worry, I'm not spoiling it for you -- the narrator does that halfway through, anyway.

And frankly, any book set in Nazi Germany that doesn't make you cry really doesn't deserve to be read.

This one does.

I only read The Book Thief because it was a present.  I'd never have picked it up on my own accord.  I expected to tolerate it, but not necessary like it.

Sometimes I love being wrong.

I won't say it's my new favorite -- it's not -- but it deserves to be read.

Written by Australian author Markus Zusak, it's a relatively recent title that was getting all the press a little while back.  It's the story of Liesel, a young German girl, as seen through the eyes of Death.

I could rave to you about the character development and the writing style -- both are truly exceptional -- but I'd rather you read The Book Thief yourself, without too much pomp and circumstance.

Like I said, it deserves to be read.

And I don't give that compliment lightly.