Lisa > Recent Status Updates

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.

You know, Goodreads, the way you could 'improve my reading experience' would be to remove that annoying advert at the top of the home page, the one that loads itself a millisecond after I click on the top update from people I follow, so that I click on it instead of what I actually want to see. Oh, (like everyone else, I guess) and I do not give a continental about your new logo...

So relevant to academia right now ; Address to the Pure Scholars, by Evan Jones
Gentlemen scholars in an age of violence,
Clear readers of the insensate and the past,
You are betrayed by your unbalanced calm
To the indifferent voices of destruction:
Scrupulous indeed has been your learning,
Inadequate indeed has been your vision. (p.57)

Scholars can't tell the difference between freedom fighters and terrorists.

RA Simpson is a bit gloomy, but Bruce Dawe's 'Enter without so much as knocking' is wonderful, as his poetry always is.

Oh, what a marvellous book this is!

This is a handbag book, so progress will be slow.

This is the last of the 2025 Women's Prize longlist for me to read. (I've abandoned two).

Two poems by Frances Webb, and I didn't understand either of them, which must be my fault because Wikipedia says he was compared to major European and American poets such as Pasternak, Lowell, Rilke and Eliot. But I liked the three poems by Grace Perry, and three by Bruce Beaver, especially Letters to Live Poets 1. And I really liked Winter Matins by RF Brissenden, 'morning can be the best time of day.'

This week two more by Dorothy Hewitt, two by Vincent Buckley, the beautiful 'Small Elegy for My Father' one by Laurence Collinson and two by J R Rowland, which included my favourite of them all so far 'For a Wedding Anniversary'

I'm trying to read one poem a day.
So far, Jack Davis, Anne Elder (my favourite), Gwen Harwood, Alexander Craig and Dorothy Hewett.