Lisa > Recent Status Updates

4 cantos to go!

https://anzlitlovers.com/2025/12/18/2...

https://anzlitlovers.com/2025/12/13/t...

Oh my, I don't know if I'm up for this. I love reading Stead, but there are five (5) pages in her list of characters and one and a half in her list of firms, and all the characters I've come across so far have long, unpronounceable names to keep track of.

I have never before read an autobiography that conveyed such dislike for the subject. There is a complete lack of empathy for a teenage girl being shunted about by a father's career, and for her desire to be somewhere more interesting than 1950s Australia and New Zealand.

Nice to see Antigone Kefala has two poems included. I read some of her writing before and she seemed to resent being sidelined as an 'ethnic' writer. But in this collection (from 1981), she is just one of the poets.

https://anzlitlovers.com/tag/dantes-i...

Coming to the end of the Inferno! https://anzlitlovers.com/category/boo...

Starting Ch 6 The Longaevi

Up to end of Canto 17.
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I hope Purgatorio and Paradiso arrive from Abebooks by the time I need them!

I've had a break from this because of reading The Divine Comedy. Back now, and enjoying David Malouf. I've read his novels before, but not his poetry. I liked Vivian Smith's 'At an Exhibition of Historical Paintings, Hobart too:
'But how some gazes cling. Around the hall/the pathos of the past, the human creature'. I like Thomas Shapcott's grandmother—a relaxed summer holiday in contrast to parents!

Up to chapter 4. Very annoying that this Kindle edition doesn't have page or location numbers

Anna Ticho, Israeli artistamous for drawings of Jerusalem hills
Poets
Rachel Bluwstein-Sela, a Hebrew-language poet who immigrated to Ottoman Palestine, in 1909
Zelda Schneurson-Mishovsky, prize winning Israeli poet
Else Lasker-Schuler, German poet and playwright, expressionist
Leah Goldberg, poet, author, playwright, literary translator, illustrator and painter
Nelly Sachs -1966 Nobel Prize, with Shmuel Yosef Agnon

Have read Intro and Canto 1

The first story 'Bride Immaculate' set in 1948 and 2000 is about a young French nun sent to care for sisters in a Jerusalem convent. She falls in love with an Arab man who enchants her with his music...

I really have to be in the mood to digest this kind of writing:
"Yet terms such as indigenisation, as well as being problematic when applied to settler contexts, remain reactive." (p.26)

I've been distracted by #ShortStorySeptember, but oh! 'Transfiguration and Death' on page 59 is just heartbreaking: this is the 1st verse:
'Small, birdlike, brisk, industrious and mean,
towards the end she couldn't keep things clean:
thirsty, we couldn't bring ourselves to drink
without first washing glasses, but the sink
itself was covered with a film of grease,
the tea-towels smeary, everything of a piece.'

Strange things happen here at GR. Yesterday I was tidying up David Malouf's books which were in an unholy mess with many editions of his books not kept together with other editions... when I came across a zillion editions of Jane Eyre under his name, a problem beyond my pay grade to fix. (Joke, GR 'Librarians' are all volunteers here). A quick request to the 'superlibrarians' and today it is fixed. Well done!

Ch 3

Getting through it but it seems a bit wordy, maybe I'm just out of practice at reading the classics.