HELLO BOOKCASE – exploring the shelves of people who love books

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Tuesday

31

December 2013

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COMMENTS

Happy New Year!

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We would like to wish all our book loving friends a Happy New Year! Thank you for embracing our project and we are looking forward to sharing with you in the New Year the bookcases of Gene Sherman, Bernard Zuel, Akira Isogawa, Paul Capsis and Alistair Trung.

We would also like to thank Stephen Collier, Emma Magenta, Jemma Birrell, Doug Purdie, Hilary Bell, Phillip Johnston, William Yang, Glen Barkley, Vanessa Berry, Christine Manfield and Benja Harney  for welcoming us into their world through their book cases.

We are looking forward to meeting new and exciting bookcases in 2014 and sharing them with you.

With love,

Leigh and Kathy

x

 

 

Saturday

12

October 2013

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Interview: Benja Harney

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Opening any book within the bookcase of paper engineer Benja Harney is an adventure as worlds pop up and amaze. His passion for paper is reflected in his impressive book collection. Rarities and oddities sit on the shelves along side his intricate paper creations as companions.  Benja’s collaborations have included Kylie Minogue, Google and Lego and on our visit he was creating a beautiful portrait series for the National Breast Cancer Foundation.

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The majority of the books that I have here in my studio are pop-ups and I always refer to them for inspiration. I have collected a lot over the years – my family and friends also pick them up for me when they come across them. I  also still have a few of my childhood pop-up books here. An early one we had and loved was the Space Shuttle Book. I have a copy of  The Castle Tournament by Voitech Kubasta, which was my mums book from her childhood – we loved playing with it. My mother, Susan Harney was a children’s book author and published books for the Bunyip series, so we had a lot of lot of books growing up.

We made a lot of models as kids – my brother and I lived our lives around books from Cornstalk which included  Advanced Paper Aircraft Construction. My favourite book was Make your own Pop-ups. Another of my  favourite books when I was younger was The Favershams by Roy Gerrad  – They  characters are quite posh  – I love the drawings, they fascinated me. 

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I love coming across anything that is old and rare. I wanted to own this one for years, The Royal Family Pop Up Book – I bought it in Tasmania. It’s funny and silly. Sometimes I have to go in and restore older books I find but this one is in good condition. 

 I just found some great books that were getting thrown out on the street the other week. They are old visual reference books – Voyages through the universe and Galaxies. They’re very outdated but they have some interesting imagery in there.

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My most extravagant book purchase is not here – it’s by my bedside at home. I bought an Andy Warhol pop-up book from LimArt Books – it is in the back streets of Ebisu in Tokyo. They deal in secondhand books and they love it when I come in – it is always full of amazing books and rare editions.When I first came across the book and  I couldn’t afford it and I came back a year later and it was still there – it was meant to be. don’t keep it here just in case the sprinklers go off but I documented the book on my websiteI thought it was important to document because it is so rare. 

I discovered LimArt Books  from Tokyo by Tokyo – by Claska, it’s a where to guide by Tokyoites. I take it with me everytime I go – I always find something new when I am there.

Whenever I travel I always buy pop-up books –  I was in Sweden recently and  picked up some good ones – they showed the power of pop-up and how it can be very basic and still quite effective. I think it’s interesting to have books in different languages. I recently bought in France a pop up book about Australia. It’s quite beautifully done. I tend to go to secondhand bookstores when I am overseas.

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My most treasured book is Paper Sculpture by Tadeusx Lipsnki. It’s just very beautiful. I found a lot of inspiration in this book when I first started. 

Another favourite is by German paper designer, Thomas Demand , given to me  from my brother. He does these incredible installations. It’s all about the image – he creates scenes and then destroys the sets afterwards.  I actually got to meet him at the Art Gallery of NSW where he giving a talk and he signed my copy. He is one of the original paper gurus.

Making Paper Models by Walter F Alton was also a gift from a friend. Its quite retro. There are some lovely projects and it is good to see the old approach of working with paper.

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This is my first project  – little pop-up books on Art Nouveau. It’s really simple but that’s where it all started. I still have the journals for all my original designs from design college. I do go back to them – this one in particular from my 3D class. It has old ideas that I like to go back to – they are still important to me. I started working in paper in 2004  when I was at design college and it grew from there. 

My bookshelf is also about collating work that I am in – magazines and books. I did a pop-up book for Google earlier this year. It can take me weeks to produce a book and can require up to 20 different models to get it right – this one took months to complete. These are the mock up for Kylie’s book – the original is on show in South Korea for the World Pop-Up Exhibition at the Seoul Arts Centre. It was a book based around her CD.benjaharney

Memphis has been my favourite design style for many years and Ettore Sottsass is its founding father. This book, Architect and Designer is a pictorial summary of some of his more iconic work including drawings, sculpture, furniture and architecture.

I recently reread the book by Japanese designer Kenya Hara  –  White. It is basically an essay on the meaning and power of white when used in visual communication. It’s a lovely little book that I come back to from time to time. I love the Japanese approach to colour and their cultural depth seems to allow a more considered application and appreciation beyond the surface. 

In Praise of Shadows by Junichiro Tanizaki  is also interesting to see how they appreciate shadows and the darkness in every day life and design. As Westerners we are quite fixated with lightness and brightness and in Japan – there is the idea of dark. 

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I have kept these blocks – they were used to create woven paper tapestries using no glue for my solo exhibition last year – New Platonic . It is an interesting process – the knife lines are supplied in vector form to the knife maker. A machine takes these lines and then routes out the design into a piece of thick plywood. Another machine then “prints” out sections of metal ribbon at the precise length for each cut. This metal ribbon is razor sharp along one edge. If a score or fold is required in the design, the machine folds the metal in half so an indent is made in the paper rather than a cut. Once the pieces have been printed out they are hammered into the wood with copper chisels that won’t damage the harder cutting metal. After all the  sections have been hammered in, small pieces of foam are stuck to the wood around the design to protect the paper in the punching process. The finished knife  is placed in the printing press and as the paper slides over it, the press pushed down onto the knife and punches out the final design. 

They are nice to have around. 

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About Benja

Benja Harney is a self-taught paper engineer based in Sydney. Through his passion for paper he has been dedicated to raising the profile of this medium both here in Australia and abroad. Over the past 8 years he has applied his skills across a wide range of creative fields. Notable recent collaborations include Google, Hermès, Kylie Minogue, Romance Was Born, Lego, Artbank and The QVB. Last year he was named 2012 Best Visual Artist at the FBI Sydney Music, Art and Culture Awards and his work is currently on show in South Korea as part of the World Pop-Up Exhibition at the Seoul Arts Centre.

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Leigh Russell and Kathy Luu chatted with Benja on the 24 June  2013. Images by Kathy Luu

© Hello Bookcase 2013. Unauthorized use and/or duplication of this material without express and written permission from this blog’s author and/or owner is strictly prohibited.  

 

 

Monday

2

September 2013

6

COMMENTS

Interview: Christine Manfield

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It was fortuitous timing that allowed us to catch up with Christine Manfield and meet her bookcase. She had just flown in from the Grand Canyon and was about to fly out to Tokyo in the next week. And then there is everything else in between – hosting trips to India and another book on the horizon. Christine’s bookcase reflects her life – extensive, vibrant and overflowing with adventures. Christine greeted us with a Himalayan black tea to lead us through her journey with books.

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Christine’s collection of cookbooks is overwhelming as they take over and encompass a full wall in her office. 
The other half of my cookbooks are downstairs in storage. I have so many go to cookbooks but at the moment but I am reading Naomi Duguid’s
Burma: Rivers of Flavour. She is a gorgeous Canadian writer and I am going to be in Burma next year.

For the last 12 years I have been reading Indian authors while putting together my book, Tasting India. My all time favourite is The Hungry Tide by Amitav Ghosh – it is a compelling contemporary story that seems part fable, part reality – the lines are blurred. Through his writing I discovered a region of India I had never heard of, the Sundarban Islands in the Bay of Bengal, off the coast of Kolkata and became so absorbed in the story, it sparked an interest in wanting to go there some day, despite the apparent hardships of survival in such an isolated part of the world. It’s a tightly woven story is packed with adventure, politics, environmentalist ideals and remarkable insights about India, as are all his books. 

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William Dalrymple is a Scottish writer based in Delhi for the last 20 years, he was here for the Sydney Writers’ Festival. I first met William years ago in India and then also at the Sri Lanka Literary Festival. We became friends with our India connection. His book, Return of the King: The Battle for Afghanistan is about the first English war in Afghanistan in the 1800s. He was just finishing the book when I was last in India and I got him to do a reading from the book around the campfire on one of my trips. It’s a fascinating story – the arguments are still the same and it is 250 years later.  I absolutely loved Nine Lives and City of Djinns -they are my other two favourites of his.

Katherine Boo’s Behind the Beautiful Forevers is heartbreaking. It’s about slum life in Mumbai – aspirational stories that come out of a meager existence. It’s like Slumdog Millionaire but on steroids. It’s a very compelling and riveting story and there is this a whole sense of hope but it is a different context how we think of it. In India you have let go of so much stuff when you are there and for the people who can’t get rid of the shit are the ones that don’t like it.

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I am halfway through The One Foot Journey  by Richard Morais– it is a culinary story about an Indian family in France.  A father and son pitted against a crabby old French woman in the French countryside. It is eloquent and beautifully written. 

And of course, Anne Summers The Misogyny Factor, the topic of the moment. The arguments have not shifted much and we are still fighting for the same basic rights and the understanding and principles of equality that she wrote about in Damned Whores and God’s Police. I studied her in college and now she is a friend. She also spoke recently at the Sydney Writers’ Festival – the argument is interesting around the way the language around Julia Gillard to use as an example –  like her or not but the way she has been vilified  is not on. The book is about overcoming a sexist and misogynist way of thinking –  what we have to do to get true equality – inclusion, participation and respect. 

I tend to give novels and fiction away because I don’t have the room and then there is a list of books to be read. I get quite a few books given to me. Julia, my publisher slides me books fairly regularly to read. Margie, my partner gives me books and if all else fails she will give me a book. The last book she gave me was Designing with Black, she also gave me Ben Shrewy Origin for Christmas, which is beautiful.  He is the hot chef of Australia at the moment and is at Melbourne restaurant, Attica.

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John Wood was an executive at Microsoft and went on holidays to Cambodia about 12 years ago and it’s the most inspiring story. He saw the desperate need for schools so he quit his job and started a program called Room to Read  – building schools and has now built 1800 in the Asia region educating girls. I have been a contributor and an ambassador for them the last three years. They do an annual fundraiser in Australia every February which, I have also been involved with. The book Creating Room to Read was about it how all came about. 

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I wasn’t a big reader as a child – I left school when I was 15 and then went back school to get HSC and then my teachers degree and then I was ready. It was good political time in Adelaide and there was great stuff coming out – women writers and that was what I focused on and got me interested. I studied literature and was teaching literary skills – the development of language using visual arts and alternative ways of learning. Travel then inspired me to become a chef. 

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If I am reading a book that I am not getting into I put it down and sometimes I don’t go back to it but I tend to be fairly tenacious – I’ll stick at it. I read mostly when I am travelling and when I’m here it’s mostly reference books for work and anything to do with writing or what I am producing. 

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At Universal we were always looking for innovative ways to have dinner. Last year we came up with the idea of  literary dinners – every month we would invite an author who has just published or about to and we would  invite them to talk and we created a menu or an evening around  whatever their was focus was. We had Charlotte Wood who did a food book from a suburban housewife’s perspective. We had Judith Lucy and Kaz Cooke together, which was hysterical. We also did Daryl Dellora, who is a screenwriter and he also wrote an authorized biography of Michael Kirby, I also asked Michael to come along. That was a fantastic one too. 

I met Michael after I was interviewed years ago and I was asked who would I like to sit next to on a plane – I chose Michael Kirby because there had been a lot of press at the time about gay rights and the legalities and I said the stories would go on for days. He was chuffed and got his secretary to contact me – we had lunch and it’s gone on from there.

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About Christine

Christine Manfield, a chef and former restaurateur (Universal and Paramount in Sydney, East @ West, London) is a perfectionist inspired by strong flavours, a creative spirit whose generosity and mentoring skills have inspired young chefs, an avid gastronomic traveller and a writer whose internationally awarded books have spiced up the lives of keen cooks from Melbourne to Mumbai and Manhattan.

To date she has published eight acclaimed and award- winning books with Lantern Penguin Books Australia: Stir, Spice, Christine Manfield Originals, Christine Manfield Desserts, Fire – A World of Flavour, Lantern Cookery Classics, Fire & Spice and Tasting India.

Christine hosts regular gastronomic luxury travel adventures to exotic destinations like India, North Africa and South East Asia.

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Leigh Russell and Kathy Luu chatted with Christine on the  11 June  2013.  Images by Kathy Luu

© Hello Bookcase 2013. Unauthorized use and/or duplication of this material without express and written permission from this blog’s author and/or owner is strictly prohibited.

 

Friday

23

August 2013

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COMMENTS

Welcome

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Welcome to our new visitors,

As we prepare the next Hello Bookcase for you to meet…

You can follow us on Twitter and Facebook or please feel free to browse through our interviews.

“You can never get a cup of tea large enough or a book long enough to suit me.”
― C.S. Lewis

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Sunday

21

July 2013

3

COMMENTS

Interview: Vanessa Berry

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With Eiffel tower views from her window in Sydney’s inner west and a house trained bear who likes to hang out with Proust we were not surprised that the bookcases of writer/artist Vanessa Berry were filled with endless discoveries – a labyrinth of shelves holding secrets from her youth, preloved oddities, typewriters playing hide and seek and wonderous worlds to get lost within.  

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This is the room where I do my writing. I have a lot of zines that I have collected and made in my shelves. I don’t have a favourite, they are all so different.  This one I made quite recently with one of my favourite zine creators – Katie Haegele. It is a split zine. I wrote the summer half and Katie who lives in Philadelphia wrote the winter side. We sent each other prompts in the mail – ideas for stories on postcards and then I made my half and laid it out and sent it to her. We normally write letters but we were emailing for a bit and we would often ask about the weather – thinking it would be a novelty for the other person. 

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The first zine I made was Psychobabble  – I was a bit embarrassed about this name later on but it fits the era I started making it, 1996. I had read zines for years before this but felt I wasn’t ready to make one but this changed when I was 17 and I’ve made zines consistently since that time. People still sometimes come up to me now and mention reading Psychobabble in the 1990s.

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In one of my zines I made a childhood history timeline of my reading from the ages five to ten. I still  have quite a few  books from my childhood – this was an exciting one and  I must be gentle with it as it still works reasonably well – a pop up book Lavinia’s Cottage. I loved this book and the way it goes through every room of the cottage and has doors and pop up sections for you to discover more details.

My favourite author as a child was the English writer Joan Aiken, especially her series of books about cockney heroine Dido Twite that begins with The Wolves of Willoughy Chase. They’re adventure stories, with a lot of plots and kidnappings and secrets, set in an alternate version of 19th century England. Rather than Queen Victoria, the monarch of England is James III – in the world of the book, rather than the Hanoverians taking over the British throne in the 18th century, the Stuart family remain in power. My favourite of the series was The Stolen Lake, which is set in a fictional British colony called New Cumbria in South America and features an evil vampire queen who Dido has to outsmart. They are wildly imaginative stories, and I liked that the hero of the books was a young girl, and the books were full of details and cockney slang so elaborate that sometimes it bordered on being an entirely new language, at least to me reading these books in suburban Sydney in the 1980s. They were a complete world that I could escape to and inhabit, and I re-read books in this series many times, as well as Joan Aiken’s other books of short stories.

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At the moment I am reading The Unsophisticated Arts by Barbara Jones who was a curator and an arts scholar. I went to London recently and their was a retrospective exhibition at the Whitechapel Gallery about an exhibition they had at the gallery in 1951 curated by Barbra Jones.  

Barbra Jones was interested in folk art and everyday forms of art, and her 1951 exhibition had all sorts of odd, funny objects in it. The 2013 retrospective had ephemera relating to the original exhibition and not the original objects apart from a fireplace shaped like an Airedale terrier. They used an image of a talking lemon to promote the retrospective – this piqued my interest. The Unsophisticated Arts is a beautiful book and it features assorted objects and practices such as fairground roundabouts, food decoration, taxidermy and houseboats. The text is accompanied by sketches of Barbra Jones’ travels around Britian in search of these everyday art.

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I was very excited to buy The Fern Garden by Shirley Hibberd. It’s quite old – written in 1850.  In the 19th century people were crazy for ferns, terrariums and glass houses.  It was in an antique store and wasn’t particular expensive. It’s quite funny because it is written in an over the top style and  is one of the classics in fern literature. 

I have a lot of 60s and 70s interior decorating – that I have amassed from op shops. I like looking at them – it terms of mood they are like settings for your imagination. What would go on there? They are books I  look at when I want to relax. 

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I also have a lot of fiction – Virginia Woolf, Elizabeth  Jolley, Janet Frame and Sylvia Plath. I wrote June Graveyard, in 2009 after visiting Sylvia Plath’s grave in Heptonstall in Yorkshire. I was in the neighbouring town, Hebden Bridge, with my mother, visiting as this was the town her father grew up in and neither of us had visited it before. Coincidentally, Sylvia’s grave was in the neighbouring town, on the hill above Hebden Bridge. We made a pilgrimage up the steep hill to the graveyard where she is buried, which seems a strangely lonely and obscure place for her to be buried. Many others had made pilgrimages before us, there were notes left on her grave, in various stages of being snail-eaten.

 I did a writing residency in Berlin, Germany five years ago and while I was there I collected a few German books.  I actually started my first blog there and have been blogging ever since.

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If I could only keep a few books I would choose books that I couldn’t find anywhere else – the ones that are older and more obscure. A lot of of my books are very special to me but I am fairly pragmatic – I could probably find them again. 

Roadside Japan by Kyoichi Tsuzuki  |  That’s a hard book to find.  It  started as a magazine article about strange things you encounter when you drive around in Japan, from abandoned theme parks to fruit shaped bus shelters and “undersea palaces”. Looking through it the places featured seem like the most eccentric places on earth.  I still have plenty of exploring to do with that book.

Man in our Modern World  |   It has these beautiful infographics and I had that next to my bed for years, I just liked looking at it. It was published in 1962, and is part of the Colourama: pictorial treasury of knowledge series. Whoever is responsible for those illustrations is a mystery! 

The Pictorial History of Sea Monsterby James B. Sweeney |  I  quite like mythology and oddities. 

Atlas of Remote Islands by Judith Schalansky | This book was reduced from full price because it had a stain on the front but it’s funny because it looks like another island. She grew up in East Germany and would look at the atlas and imagine going places she believed she could never travel to.  The book includes different, obscure islands from all around the globe and she has written texts to accompany them – rather than being factual texts she taken elements of each islands history and created poetic stories around them.

DSC_0513 I loved Douglas Coupland  when I was younger, especially his early novels Generation X and Life After God. He has written a lot of novels since then – his later novels have interesting ideas within them but I prefer the style of his early novels and non fiction writing. I met him at the Melbourne Writers’ Festival some years ago– he complimented me on the colour of my outfit. It was a brown 60s woollen twin set which he described as “baked bean” . I bought a copy of  Life After God in Dutch because it was at an opshop that I would go to regularly.  It was there for years and I felt sorry for it languishing there, I just ended up buying it.  

I also have a Proust shelf – we had a Paris party  for my birthday a few years ago and  we made an Eiffel tower around the washing line. “Ask Proust” was one of the games – you could ask him a question and then pull the tape out from his mouth and receive a quote from In Search of Lost Time. I am very lucky I have my own personal fabricator. (Vanessa’s partner is artist Simon Yates)

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Ruth Park’s Sydney is a good book. It was published in the 70s under the title  Companion Guide to Sydney –  it’s about her walks through different parts of Sydney city and suburbs – she writes about the history of the places and also how they were at the time she explored them. This has been an  inspiration for me, in terms of  writing about a place in the moment but also bringing in other elements.  It’s interesting  reading it now because it is  40 years later and Sydney has  changed a lot since then, and this adds another layer of history to the book.  

This one is another Sydney oddity – Walk Sydney Streets by Alan Waddell. When his wife died he was in his 80s and he started this project where he set out to  to walk every street in Sydney – he  also did it to raise awareness for heart disease. He walked every street in hundreds of suburbs and afterwards he would highlight all the streets he had done  in a street directory– he was very methodical. The book includes a lot of photos and often these are quite funny; he had a great sense of humour. I joke that he is my patron Saint.

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Vanessa pulls out a book that had the pages cut up with hand written text and drawings within it by an anonymous artist.  I found this book in Macquarie Fields Vinnies –  somebody had altered it all the way through. Tom Phillips is known as one of the landmark artists in altered books with A Humument.

Simon and I both have copies of  The Down Under T-shirt Thing by Jozef Vissel– there are not many books that we have doubles of.  We used one of the guys for the front of a zine we made together. The images were taken in the 70s  and this is what people walked around  wearing. We do have our favourites, then you flick through again and you find another one. 

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Simon has a lot of sci-fi , which was not a genre I knew about. I had a stereotypical idea of science fiction, which I think most people who havent read much of it do . The books Simon collects  are based on ideas rather than characters. My favourite author I discovered through Simon is  Rudy Rucker – an author also a mathematician. Simon is always curious when I come home with a book although he comes home with many more than I do.  We have to do culls every couple of years to keep our books down. We did one recently – we took seven boxes of books to the op shop.

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I have a big pile of my journals that I have kept since 1998.  They have details of my entire life for the last 15 years. I read back on them sometimes – they are useful for my writing  if I want to write about a particular time from my youth.

Ninety9, my new book, is in the Giramondo Shorts series – a series of short books in a variety of styles, mine is a memoir. It’s about being a teenage music fan in the 1990s, and growing up and developing an identity through music, alternative and underground culture. The book is roughly chronological and follows my trajectory from music fan to becoming involved in subcultures and scenes myself, and becoming known for making zines. I refer to some of my favourite books, or books that were influential at the time. Some of these were music related, such as Ten Imaginary Years a biography of The Cure and Gothic Rock, a book about goth by UK journalist Mick Mercer. Other books that influenced me during this period included –  The Outsider by Albert Camus and Lost Souls by Poppy Z. Brite, a story about goth vampires, set in the 90s, in which the vampires go on a road trip to New Orleans, speeding down the highway listening to Bauhaus. 

One of the chapters in Ninety9 is about zines, and so I spent a fair bit of time reading over zines from the 90s – music zines like Lemon and personal zines such as Rollerderby (a wild American personal zine by Lisa Crystal Carver) or Australian feminist zines like Ms.45. Writing the book gave me an excellent excuse to find time to read all these zines again! Though they are approaching 20 years old now, I could still feel some of the same excitement that I first felt when reading those zines as a teenager.

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About Vanessa

Vanessa Berry is a writer and artist and one of Australia’s best known zine makers. She has been making zines since the 1990s and is known for zines such as Psychobabble, Laughter and the Sound of Teacups, Vinnies and I am a Camera. A collection of stories from her zines was published in 2007 in the book  Strawberry Hills Forever. Her zines have been exhibited in galleries such as the MCA and NGA. She is the author of two blogs about Sydney, the library blog Biblioburbia and the Sydney exploration blog Mirror Sydney.

Ninety9, Vanessa’s illustrated memoir of being a teenage music fan in the 1990s, will be released in August, published by Giramondo. The launch is on Wednesday August 14th, at The Midnight Special, 44 Enmore Road Newtown and you can check out some of the photos and ephemera that inspired the book at Ninety9 Notes.

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Leigh Russell and Kathy Luu chatted with Vanessa on the 10th June 2013.   Images by Kathy Luu

© Hello Bookcase 2013. Unauthorized use and/or duplication of this material without express and written permission from this blog’s author and/or owner is strictly prohibited.

 

Tuesday

2

July 2013

1

COMMENTS

Interview: Glenn Barkley

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Before heading out to share stories on his zines and ephemera at the Museum at Contemporary Art Zine Fair  – MCA curator, Glenn Barkley introduced us to his wonderful, extensive book collection and we discovered his relentless passion for collecting. Under the watchful eye of his cat, Brian – our visit revealed boxes of zines, artwork lining the hallways, linen cupboards safe guarding much loved photography books, secondhand finds, shelves covered with beautiful patchwork blankets and books waiting patiently for a permanent home.

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I quite often get asked to talk about my zines but I gave a lot of the collection away. I started to cull my zines and spoke to the State Library of NSW about what they had and I just sent them the whole collection. There are bits left – boxed upstairs. I like dispersing things just as much as accumulating things – some collectors are like that. I come from a family of collectors. My father’s father was a collector of plants and probably collected other stuff too. 

I have been collecting zines and books forever. You can build an international world class zine collection with no money. I didn’t count them but I had at least 600 zines. People tend to give me zines –  I have made a couple of my own in small runs but have never sold them – I give them away. 

There a couple of artists whose work I really like – Raquel Ormella –  she is a Sydney artist and does a zine called Flaps, Leigh Rigozzi – a comic book artist and Vanessa Berry is amazing. 

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I have become more interested in vernacular photography and people using photography in an interesting way. I actually kept my photography zines. Quite often collecting coincides with my work – I have just worked with Laurence Aberhart, who is a fantastic New Zealand photographer and he sent me a whole lot of his books that were out of print. He works with a large format 8X10 camera that is about 120 years old and he only prints contact prints. It’s the only camera he has ever worked with.  So these images are about the size of the originals. Laurence rarely photographs people – 90% of his work is architecture.  It’s really beautiful work.

Also within Glenn’s collection is a beautiful 3 volume set by William Eggleston. Los Alamos Revisited is a 3 volume work that includes images from a road trip across America that Eggleston took with the legendary American curator Walter Hopps. What did Jack Keroauc say about Robert Frank’s book The Americans? ‘With one hand he sucked a sad poem right out of America’. This book is a bit like that – it’s easy to put Eggleston and Frank in the same sentence. I love American photography of the twentieth century – it feels perfect.

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This is my book – SOUTH of no NORTH from my recent exhibition. I am lucky that I have this job that I can make my own books. My books are my favourites and I love it when I find one of them in a secondhand store. I don’t buy them but I photograph them. It’s exciting to see them secondhand.

There is an amazing bookstore in New Zealand called Parsons and they used to do their catalogue every month that was photocopied and handwritten – it was almost like someones school project. I subscribed to their newsletter because I wanted to collect them because they were so great. I actually made into the catalogue. I thought – I’ve made it, I can stop now. Nicholas Pounder listed a book of mine into a catalogue, which was great too.

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Glenn opens up his linen cupboard to reveal books hidden amongst his towels and sheets. This is all the photography books. I want to look after them – I keep them here so they are not exposed to the light.

Martin Parr is a really great photographer and published this book in two volumes –  The Photobook: A History Vol 1 and Vol 2,which is now quite famous. This book has become influential in making every book within the book very expensive and sought after and has established a list and people are buying books according to the list. This is what happens with book buying – people are always after Booker prize and Miles Franklin first edition signed copies. This book has become the list for photography books.

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There is a funny story linked to The Photobook: A History. I was meeting Matthew Sleeth who is a great photographer in Melbourne. Tour of Duty was one of his books that I found in a sale for about $5 but it is a limited edition book featured in Volume two of  The Photobook: A History. When I gave my zines away to the State Library, they asked me to come in and talk to them about my zines. After I spoke to them I went down to the ground floor and their was a second handbook dealer in front of me and that book was literally sitting up. I was meeting with Mathew and took it in for him to sign. When Matthew went through my pile of books of signed he told me about producing a hardcopy version of the book but he was unable to sell it because everyone wanted the soft copy version featured in the book.  That book sells now online for between one – two thousand dollars. He signed it for me and inscribed  ‘Nice score’.  

I felt like it was karma because I had  given away all those zines. It was like a gift from the gods. It’s a great book.  

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This shelf is my archived books – no-one is going to archive you – apart from you. People don’t realise if can keep a collection as complete as you can there is some value to it. I may never sell it but I can give it to a museum. There is a big box that is full of every notebook that I have ever had. People don’t think to keep that. If I go somewhere  –  I’ll buy half a dozen of notebooks for my writing. 

All my zines are stored above in Kiki K boxes. I am trying to get through things but it keeps building up.

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I was collecting all of Noel Mckenna’s books. He is an artist I am interested in and I just started collecting everything. I have known Noel for a while now and comminised him to paint a picture for Lisa.  I just did a show with Noel and and he gave him his full collection of catalogues and it goes back to 1991. Everything has also now been signed.  

There are certain things I wouldn’t lend out and others I don’t mind. I actually don’t like borrowing books from people. But I have a very good friend George Hubbard, a New Zealand  curator. We swap books a lot – I see him twice a week – he is the only person I swap books with.

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Glenn shares his shelves with his wife  – Lisa Havilah (Carriageworks director).  Lisa and I went to art school together at the Uni of Wollongong – Lisa was in the year above me. We all thought she was the best painter in the school. We didn’t really know each other that well although we both grew up on the south coast . I gave her some books I thought she would like and somebody stole them from her studio space. To repay me Lisa gave me a copy of Robert Hughes’ Nothing if Not Critical – a book we still have.

We also have the early Charles Bukowski books from his first publisher Black Sparrow – they were reprinted with the same cover but with the new publishers name. These books, Lisa and I collected when we were first together.

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For my birthday last year the artist Helen Eager – who I have worked with at the Museum  and a friend of mine gave me this beautiful gift. This type of book is called a leporello – the art work folds up into this tiny form. It’s like an exhibition in a book.

I am about to do a show in Melbourne and this is my second copy of this book which I had found secondhand – A Package Deal.  I am showing this piece in Melbourne but my copy has the whole thing.  This is a great piece of Australian conceptualism – it is an assembly book. A hundred people would give you a hundred pages of the same thing and then you make a hundred copies of the book. People still make this type of book.  

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I read everything – I am a huge Stephen King fan and I am not ashamed to say it. I think I have read every Stephen King book about six times. I bought the iPad  and I tend not to buy novels anymore. People think that kindles and iPads are the end of reading but I think it is the beginning of reading. People will read more, not less. I am a real bibliophile and most people that I know who are bibliophile’s do both. 

I get up at 6 am at every day and I read for an hour. This is a record of everything I have read in the past year – I am now on my second book and I write something about each book. It’s almost like a reminder. Sometimes I will be reading a book and I know that I have read it before. When you have so many books its difficult to know what to read so you end up buying more books.

Glenn is also preparing for a trip to America for work. When I am at the airport tomorrow it’s going to be hard for me not to buy a book –  so I bought a Michael Crichton for the plane ride so I can just leave it on the plane  – a good read and throw.

On Glenn’s return from his trip we asked him what books followed him home.
I bought a lot and was given a lot to – I sent back five boxes and had to buy a new wheely carry-on bag to fill with books.

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About Glenn

Glenn Barkley is Curator at Museum of Contemporary Art (MCA), Sydney and was previously curator of the University of Wollongong Art collection from 1996 – 2007. He was founding co-Director with Lisa Havilah and Nathan Clark of Project Contemporary Artspace, Wollongong.

Major curatorial projects have included Almanac: The Gift of Ann Lewis AO, MCA (2009-10), Making it New: Focus on contemporary Australian art, MCA (2009) avoiding myth & message: Australian artist and the literary world, MCA (2009), Home Sweet Home- Works from the Peter Fay Collection NGA (co-curated with Dr Deborah Hart) (2003/2004 and touring), Multiplicity: Prints and Multiples from the Collection of the MCA and the University of Wollongong, MCA (2006 and touring), Without Borders: Outsider Art in an Antipodean Context (co-curated with Peter Fay), Monash University Museum of Art and Campbelltown Art Centre, Sydney (2008).

In 2011 he curated a survey of Berlin based New Zealand artist Michael Stevenson and a major exchange exhibition tell me tell me: Australian and Korean Contemporary Art 1976-2011, between the MCA and the National Museum of Contemporary Art, Seoul, Korea). In 2001 he curated the  initial hang of the MCA Collection, Volume One: MCA Collection for the MCA’s new collection galleries and  co-curated with Lesley Harding, Heide Museum of Modern Art, As If a retrospective of Australian artist Ken Whisson.

He is the curator of South of no North: Laurence Aberhart, William Eggleston and Noel McKenna and in August 2013 string theory: Focus on Australian contemporary art a survey of Australian indigenous textile and fibre art. In July he is also guest curator of the annual Octopus at Gertrude Contemporary Melbourne. This exhibition, titled on this day alone, looks at photography and transformation.

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Leigh Russell and Kathy Luu chatted to Glenn on Sunday 26 May 2013. Images by Kathy Luu.

© Hello Bookcase 2013. Unauthorized use and/or duplication of this material without express and written permission from this blog’s author and/or owner is strictly prohibited.

Thursday

13

June 2013

1

COMMENTS

Interview: William Yang

Written by , Posted in Interviews

 

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In the 1970s and ’80s William Yang captured Sydney’s emerging artistic, literary, theatrical and queer circles through his lens. Today William welcomed us into his home with a cup of green gun powder tea, shared with us stories from his past and present, read us poetry from Constantine P. Cavafy and took us on a  journey while he searched high and low for some of his most treasured books. 

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At the moment I am reading a book of short stories by Colim Tobin – The Empty Family. I like him very much and I am also reading a book from spiritual writer Eckhart Tolle. There are several writers I can always read. I pick them up and they speak to me as if they are there –  Edmund White, Helen Garner, and Christopher Isherwood. I do feel I have gotten lazier in what I am prepared to take on reading. Nothing too difficult, nothing too long.– there is so much other competition for your attention.

 I actually prefer non-fiction to fiction. I think that it’s got something to do with documentary photography. I found the real more powerful than the created and that is also a part of my philosophy as well – there is a fascination in the ordinary. I tend towards biographies and documentaries – those real issues. I find too much artifice in fiction. 

DSC_9973My favourite photographic book is by Diane Arbus called Monograph. She cut through and reached an inner psychology of the person that she was photographing. People always think I like Robert Mapplethorpe because of the gay association but I think he focuses too much on the exterior whereas Diana Arbus penetrates.

She converted me to photography after I saw some of her photographs in Artforum, which is an American art magazine. I thought they were incredible, although I wouldn’t call myself as good as a photographer as Diane Arbus. Brassai  is also a photographer I like – I have his book The Secret Paris of the 30’s. He would hang out in the streets and bars of Paris and photograph the nightlife, gays and lesbians and brothels.

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The book Up Close is a catalogue from an exhibition at Heidi Museum of Contemporary Art in Melbourne. It featured Carol Jerrems work with support acts by Nan Goldin, Larry Clark and me. Sydney Diary was my most successful book probably because it was a mixture of Sydney images of the beach, gay, diary, people and  celebrities but it is now out of print and is rare. My latest is a hand written zine Australian Asian Queer that was printed in Canada.  

Williams work is also featured in 25 Belvior Street– a book of essays and photographs celebrating 25 years of theatre at Belvoir. This is one of my photos of Neil Armfield and Geoffrey Rush after one of their performances of Exit the King but rare in that the actor that played the soldier was sick that day – so Neil played the part.  DSC_0032 I enjoy reading poetry  –  I like Robert Anderson and Robert Gray who are my friends. Absolutely my favourite poet is Constantine P. Cavafy – I have used some of his poems onto my photos. He was from Alexandria and he wrote in the early 20th Century.

Cavafy wrote poems where he imagined historical characters and events and he also wrote about his everyday life. He influenced me because there was a certain everyday tone in his work that I try to emulate in my pieces. It’s very matter of fact and yet it is highly contrived. I discovered him through the David Hockney etchings based on Cavafys poems.

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I do have a few books of my performance pieces but they are all out of print.Three years ago I received a fellowship from the Australia Council to make DVDs of my performance pieces. I think the DVD format gets closer to the performance than a book. You get an idea of my presence in the work which you don’t get in a book. I don’t take that many photographs now – I am trying to get my existing collection in order so it is consumable.

I directed with Annette Shun Wah, Stories Now and Then, a performance piece that has just finished at Carriageworks. I wasn’t performing in it, but we had six Asian Australians telling their stories using my method of talking with image projection. It was very successful. ‘William Yang: My Generation’ recently screened at the Sydney Film Festival to sold out audiences and will be rescreened on ABC1’s Sunday Arts Up Late.

I asked William about his early playwriting days. I have destroyed my early plays and I date my work from my performance pieces because that is when I found my voice. The performances are more me and my early work is more derivative. I never mention them on my CV!

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There is beautiful book by Edmund White called My Lives. I think it is a masterpiece of biography writing because I can identify with it being gay and having many different lives. I think he divided it up quite nicely with this book. The way he writes about his mother in the book is also incredible and I like to reread the story.  The Burning Library is book of essays from Edmund White. He has an essay on gay culture called Sexual Culturewritten in 1983 when I was very much into gay politics. I actually photocopied the story and sent it to my friends.

Within William’s shelves is the anthology of  Gay Australian Writing. This book features Robert Dessaix – I like his work a lot, Christos Tsiolkas and  also Peter Rose, he is a poet and also wrote The Rose Boys –  a memoir about his brother who had an accident and was confined to a wheel chair. David Marr is in there too- I admire David as an activist and in my day David was a spokesman for the left wing. His biography on Patrick White is fantastic.   

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I had heard about Patrick White – his reputation had preceded him. He knew about my work as he had purchased one of my images from my exhibition. Patrick had written plays in the 50’s and 60’s, which were produced but he wasn’t very happy with the productions. In the 80’s –  Jim Sharman started to resurrect some of his plays. The first one was The Season of Sarsaparilla which was a very successful production, which starred Kate Fitzpatrick, Robyn Nevin and Max Cullen. With this success, Patrick started to write new plays – he had written Big Toys for Kate, Max and Arthur Digman which was set in Sydney.

I first met Patrick in Kate Fitzpatrick’s dressing room on the opening performance of Big Toys. There is a story to this  — Brian Thomson, the set designer and been researching Patrick’s life and had come across a note that Patrick had written to Father Christmas when he was six years old.

Dear Father Christmas – we will please send me a butterfly net, a violin, Robison Crusoe, History of Australia, bag of marbles and a little mouse that runs across the room…..

Brian had bought all these presents and put them in a pillowslip and gave them to Patrick as an opening night present. He was delighted  – so the first photo I have ever taken of him was of him holding a photograph of  a little mouse – Brain had pushed me forward and said “Take this photo”  – I don’t think I even had said hello to him.

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There is another book I consider a treasure – it is unpublished. David Marr gave a talk about Patrick White called – A Life in his Face. I supplied David with many photographs for him to use and he gave me this transcript of the talk. It features all the people who have painted Patrick White and gives a history.  I was thrilled to receive it from David.

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I call myself Taoist. Lao Tze’s book Tao Te Ching is translated “the way, virtue, book” and in the West it is the text for the philosophy Taoism. It’s not a religion, more an instruction for living, being in cooperation with the course or trend of the natural world.

I have read many translations and books on Taoism. My favourite translation is by Ursula le Guin, the poet and science fiction writer. It’s bold and poetic. I have bought many copies of 365 Tao Daily Meditations by the San Francisan born Chinese, Deng Ming-Dao, to give away as many people have asked me about Taoism and it’s a good introduction to self-cultivation by a daily practice.

I like books on death and spirituality, two different subjects. Seize the Day – how the dying teach us to live, by Marie de Hennezel, I found uplifting. They are stories from a hospital for the dying in France. There’s one resonant line where she says that everyone needs to tell their story before they die as a kind of completion of their life.

My favourite sage at the moment is Eckhardt Tolle. He wrote The Power of Now and A New Earth, where he says that being spiritually conscious is a way of saving the world. One’s inner purpose is to awaken. For him his awakening happened spontaneously. Whereas many people I have read on this subject have spent years in monasteries, training by the book, Tolle gives hope that it can happen now, wherever you are. His writing is clear, he quotes Jesus Christ, Buddha and Lao Tze to reinforce his ideas. So he manages to have an overview which seems to embrace a world history of spirituality. I don’t hold it against him that he is popular, he’s been on Oprah.

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Another of my treasured books is My Life and Work by Taam Sze Pui. I only had photocopied sheets of the book but I had them bound into a book. It is an account of a life  of relative of mine through marriage who was a shop owner in Northern Queensland. The book was privately published and it was reprinted by one of his descendants – only about 60 copies but an extract is also in the Macquarie PEN  Anthology of Australian Literature.

It’s completely different from the Western view of the Chinese at the time. I treasure it because it is a rare account by a Chinese, perhaps the only one – it’s a true artefact.

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About William Yang

William Yang was born in North Queensland, Australia. He moved to Sydney in 1969 and worked as a freelance photographer documenting Sydney’s social life which included the glamorous, celebrity set and the hedonistic, sub-cultural, gay community.

In 1989 he integrated his skills as a writer and a visual artist. He began to perform monologues with slide projection in the theatre. These slide shows have become the main expression of his work.  They tell personal stories and explore issues of identity. He has done eleven full-length works and most of them have toured the world. “Sadness”, his most successful piece, was made into an award winning film by Tony Ayres in 1999.

William’s current work is photo based, doing performances in theatres and exhibitions in galleries.  He is converting some of his live performance pieces into video at the University of NSW. He also conducts workshops in story telling,  helping other people tell their story.

William Yang: My Generation will be broadcasted at 10:25pm on Sunday 16 June on ABC1’s Sunday Arts Up Late.

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Leigh Russell and Kathy Luu chatted with William on Monday 3 June 2013. Images by Kathy Luu.

© Hello Bookcase 2013. Unauthorized use and/or duplication of this material without express and written permission from this blog’s author and/or owner is strictly prohibited.

Monday

10

June 2013

1

COMMENTS

Interview: Hilary Bell, Phillip Johnston, Moss and Ivy

Written by , Posted in Interviews

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We caught up with the Bell/Johnston family to chat about books on their return from the Woollahra Library Book Sale and on their way out to have lunch with author, Claire Messud at the Sydney Writers’ Festival. Hilary and Phillip both have strong literary upbringings and this has come full circle with their own children – Moss (12) and Ivy (10) who also write their own poetry and plays. Their Bondi home is a bibliophile’s dream with overflowing bookcases (many that have been rescued from the street to join their family) from the living spaces, the hallway and to the bedrooms.  

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Phillip and Hilary walk us through their bookcases while Moss and Ivy read their comics in the sundrenched kitchen.

Phillip: Over here is our comics section and then we have larger comic books down the bottom. I am working on a piece with Art Spiegelman at the moment and I am a comic book freak. In my childhood I was really into DC comics – Superman and Batman, the Justice League of America, Adventure Comics. I also discovered Mad Magazine when I was very young through my aunts and uncles, and loved that. Some of the collections on our shelves are some of these, which Moss loves. But those aren’t the original comics, those are reprints. I don’t like the modern super hero comics, too angst-y and too expressionistic – I don’t like the art work or the stories. But of course I like other kinds of modern comix – a huge topic. Moss and Ivy like all different kinds – some the same as me, some totally different.

Hilary: I am not a comic book fan but I do appreciate them. I had never picked one up until I met Phillip and then we had kids and they would ask for Plastic Man as their bedtime story. I have been sucked into it. 

Hilary: I have a collection of research books up there – The Piltdown Man, The Worm in the BudThey all relate to different plays that I have worked on. I got Phillip to bring back this amazing book from New York for me – The Circus 1870s – 1950s. The cover was extraordinary and then when I looked inside I got even more excited. There are a few Noel Coward and Cole Porter – musical theatre books. 

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Hilary: A lot of our friends are writers too so our bookcase is filled with their books. My brother-in-law, James O’Loghlin has a few books out, Larry Buttrose is up there also, Claire Messud, Paul Auster and his wife Siri Hustvedt. Also artists who are friends that have made books – those coloured spine books up there are from our friend Nelly Reifler who made these zines with original artwork by Josh Dorman – a series called Aceldama. We also have artwork by Josh in our hallway.

Phillip: This whole shelf is for my PhD in music composition – my area of study is film music. So all these books relate to film music and silent films. I write original scores for silent films and my PhD project is called “The Polysynchronous Film Score: Contemporary Scores for Silent Film” and is being presented at the Newcastle Conservatorium. Prince Achmed is the ‘creative’ part of my project – I also have to do a written dissertation. The Adventures of Prince Achmed just premiered in Randwick and it will be performed again at Paramatta Riverside in September.

As an artist every book is a reference book because everything has ramifications that relate to everything you are doing even though I am a musician and composer a lot of my work is collaborative with writers, filmmakers and theatre writers. All things have waves that go out in different directions and come back again. To me having a library is such a valuable resource.

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HilaryThere is actually a logic to all our shelves. This bookcase is for plays and my theatre books and are organised in order of countries, musical theatre and opera. These books are all on writing; these are screenplays, and I also have a project-based bookcase. I am writing a musical about Cole’s Funny Picture Book which requires the delight of trawling through Cole’s Funny Picture Books 1-4 (though I’m missing #3) and the biography by Cole Turnley, Cole of the Book Arcade. We have a few very precious editions. The musical is called Do Good And You Will Be Happy. It’s a show for children and adults, that takes us into the world of the Funny Picture Book itself. The anthropomorphised animals (bespectacled pig, waistcoated stork, etc) are characters, as are Cole and his wife Eliza. The challenge has been taking a book that is a collection of poems, pictures, puzzles, political tracts, games and lists, and finding a dramatic form. We tried it early on as a kind of vaudeville variety show, but it needed a compelling story, progressing the action. We’ve got that now, and we’re doing a workshop with Merrigong Theatre in September.  

I’m writing a comedy called Piss Elegant for my dad, John Bell and I’ve been reading particular comedies – Gogol and commedia dell’arte in particular, to capture the tone. But the subject had me reading Ben Jonson’s Volpone, Moliere’s Tartuffe and Zuckmayer’s The Captain of Kopenick.

This book I really love – Notebooks by Australian writer, Murray Bail. It’s not a novel but little jottings out of his notebooks. As a writer I find it very inspiring – survival tips, things he notices sitting on the train. It’s a book you can dip into at any time without having to commit. Another book I have read a few times is The Information by Martin Amis, about a writer’s envy and self loathing ­– so that’s a healthy read!

Hilary’s stack of personal reading includes: Claire Messud’s The Woman Upstairs – I had to put it down for work-related reading, and can hardly wait to get back to it. Before that, I read Carson McCullers’ The Member of the Wedding, Anna Karenina, Mary Gaitskill’s short stories, Bad Behaviour, and Jennifer Egan’s A Visit From The Goon Squad. I can read again and again Pinter’s play Betrayal. And another that I read for pleasure is Caryl Churchill’s The Skriker. I also love La Bete, by David Hirson. 

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PhillipI have been spending maybe 25% of my time reading books I have read before. One – because I have forgotten them entirely or two – they are just the best book. Philip K. Dick is one of my favourite authors. I have been reading William Kotzwinkle, Martin Amis and Kurt Vonnegut and then I have been rereading stuff I had read when I was very young..like Catcher in the Rye.  I do read the same books again and again. I am also rereading books by Dutch detective writer Janwillem van de Wetering. He is a bit of weird writer – he was a member of the Dutch police but has also written books on Zen Buddhism. I went through a big Dr Fu Manchu kick for a while – these ones I have here are now all out of print.

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Phillip: My father was a novelist (William Johnston)– he was a hack writer – he published about 150 books and would write on demand. He wrote books from TV shows like Get Smart!, The Brady Bunch and The Flying Nun. The Marriage Cage and Barney are his only original novels. We also have a copy of an unpublished manuscript. After 20 years as a professional he quit writing and went to bartenders school – he couldn’t get a job as he was older so he bought his own bar and ran it successfully until he retired in Long Island. The books are now hard to find but we collect them whenever we see them.

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HilaryMy father started reading Dickens to my sister and me when we were very young – I would have been 7 or 8. I thrilled to the horror of the world described in these stories, and revelled in the grotesquery of the characters. I’m sure my passion for Victoriana was born here. He also read us Chesterton’s Father Brown, and I loved the wry humour that wove throughout the cracking stories, the crisply drawn characters, the surprises at every turn. The Hobbit, which he read to me when I was very small (perhaps four), made a very deep impression. I think when you are introduced to books at a young age, you feel a kind of ownership over them, and they entwine with your imagination and form the kinds of worlds you start to create in your head.

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Phillip: My parents had a big bookshelf like this and I discovered a lot books – that is one of the reasons why I wanted to make sure when we moved back here from New York that we had all our books. A bookcase is a great resource for kids as they reach different ages they can see things that were always there  all along but weren’t ready for and can discover incrementally as I did at my parents house. There were certain books that I was fascinated with but too young to understand.  There is a book I always talk about as an influence when I was a young adult —  Great American Plays and it had  The Glass Menagerie, The Man Who Came to Dinner and others. That book got me into the theatre. Another one that caught my eye was Catch 22 – I had looked at it for years but eventually picked it up when I was older.

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I was curious about what books they had introduced to each other. Phillip: Hilary introduced me to the work of Helen Garner – who I really like a lot. We discovered Dorothy Porter together. Hilary: I liked the one you were begging me for twelve years to read – The Third Policeman by Irish writer Flann O’Brien. I loved it. 

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Moss (12) and Ivy (10) have a bookcase of their own filled with their most treasured and well-loved books.

Moss: I am reading The Scripts of Black Adder and I have just started Coraline (Neil Gaiman). 
Ivy: I am reading that too. He always reads my books. A prominent series in Ivy’s collection is Ivy and Bean by Ann Burrows The Ivy and Bean books are really good. We know the illustrator (Sophie Blackall) and she is really nice. Ivy points to a brightly covered book… I also like The Candymakers (Wendy Mass) but I have read it only once.

Hilary: They have been devoted to Lemony Snicket for 11 years now. They have been listening to the audio version of the book and also reading it.  They of course love Roald Dahl, like every child and Anthony Browne.  Moss is into mythology, science and history – they were into Horrible Histories for a while – they get obsessed with a few things and then move on. The kids’ shelves get rejuvenated as they grow out of their infant books. We have hung onto two books that were given to us when the kids were born in New York. We pass on the books we don’t keep to family and we never feel we are completely giving them away.

We have started to share older classics with them – The Time Machine, Kidnapped, Dr Jekyll and Mr Hyde. When our friends write books for children we read them and the kids give their feedback. At the moment we are reading a young adult novel by Verity Laughton. She is a playwright but is branching out into another direction. 

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Phillip was flying off to New York that week to deliver a paper at the Music and the Moving Image conference at NYU. I haven’t started thinking about what book I will take with me. The Ellington bio is really heavy (that I bought at the Woollahra Library Book Sale) and I am going for week this time. I am not too sure what book  I will take – the attributes of a plane book are very specific and can not be too heavy.

Phillip contacted me when he arrived in New York: I ended up buying Illegal Harmonies by Andrew Ford at the Writers’ Festival. I thought his book on film music was really erudite and witty. That’s going to be my plane reading. The Ellington biography is really good, I’ve already started reading it, but I think it’s just too heavy (weight, not content) for the trip. I’m trying to travel light.

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About Hilary Bell

Hilary Bell is an award-winning playwright who has written for stage, radio, screen and music theatre. She is a graduate of the Juilliard Playwrights’ Studio, NIDA, and the Australian Film, Television and Radio School and has had her plays performed in Australia, Europe and the United States. Hilary has recently been awarded the Patrick White Playwriting Fellowship.

About Phillip Johnston

Phillip Johnston is a musician and a composer for stage, radio and screen. Phillip tours within Australia and New York with his bands – The Microscopic Septet, Joel Forrester & Phillip Johnston Duo, Fast ‘N’ Bullbous, The Spokes, Phillip Johnston & the Coolerators and SNAP. Phillip is currently studying for his PhD in Music Composition.

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Leigh Russell and Kathy Luu met with the Bell/Johnston family on Saturday 25 May 2013. Images by Kathy Luu.

© Hello Bookcase 2013. Unauthorized use and/or duplication of this material in this specific post without express and written permission from this blog’s author and/or owner is strictly prohibited.

Monday

27

May 2013

1

COMMENTS

Interview: Doug Purdie

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Doug Purdie’s East Sydney terrace holds many secrets. Downstairs, the walls are lined with crime novels spanning over four bookshelves in the darkness amongst the large tubs of honey. The honey has been produced by the many beehives that can be found on Sydney’s best restaurants rooftops. Upstairs – the light tumbles in through the arched windows onto a side reading room. The rooftop balcony reveals a family of bees working hard to produce honey amongst the hustle and bustle of the city. Doug is an urban apiarist (beekeeper) who has learnt everything he knows about his intriguing  profession through his love of books. 

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My knowledge has always come from reading books instead of  a classroom environment –  I left school very young.  I started  reading and researching about bees three – four years ago. Research led me to the issues that are affecting  bees around the world and it inspired me to let people know that bees are under threat. We are one of the only countries in the entire world without the issues others are dealing with but we need to be prepared. The Varroa mite has not managed to get to us because of our isolation but  eventually it will find its way here and then there will be major problems. Bees are incredibly important to our environment  and in life and without them we are be in trouble. Within the last year people are starting to get it.

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I have every bee book known to man – I have this classic collection upstairs and more downstairs. At the moment there are no other bee books I want to collect – I have really got the all ones I want for now. The Clemson was the hardest to get and my copy is irreplaceable. 

ABC and XYZ of Bee Culture by A.I.Root – The bible of beekeeping into its 41st edition now – although mine is the 31st and was published  in 1959.

Honey and Pollen Flora by Alan Clemson –This book is indispensible in checking the trees around prospective hive sites to see exactly what’s going to be in the honey.

Bee Keeping Naturally  by Michael Bush – A no nonsense book with many ideas that challenge the norm for beekeeping. A good book to refer to when looking for a balanced view when looking for a solution.

The Honey and Pollen Flora of NSW by  W.A. Good Acre (published 1938) – A very useful book showing tree species across NSW from beekeepers eyes of the day and include lost of anecdotal notes.

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I will read anything but I enjoy reading crime novels, history  and history based novels.  I enjoy cooking so  I collect a lot of cookbooks. Within Dougs cookbook collection is a dusty copy of  Patrica Cornwell’s  Food to die for: Secrets from Kay Scarpetta’s Kitchen.

We also discover  a copy of an airconditioning manual – Instead of taking it in to get fixed I actually just bought the manual and fixed it myself.  Revealing a stint in film –  American Cinematographer manual by Charles G Clarke makes an appearance.

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Even though I love  and read a lot of books I have crossed over to a kindle for my  crime novels.  I think it is more ecological sound to read novels that are basically throw aways on a e-reader. I have passed on hundreds of books and I will be giving away my collection downstairs to make room. 

Books I know I will re-read – I buy to keep. 

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Sitting within the vast crime and history  collection is a row of beautiful hard-covered books that have followed Doug from his childhood into adulthood. As a child I would read the World Encyclopedia in bed  from about the age of six. My mum would  always find me propped up in bed with my books.

The Three Commanders by W.H.G Kingston

The Air Patrol by Herbit Staring

Peter the Whaler by W.H.G. Kingston

Holiday at Sandy Bay by E.S. Beauties

Air Aces of Worth by Bracebridge Hemyng

William the Outlaw by Richmal Crompton

The Crimson Caterpillar by Sercombe Griffen  was one of my favourites as a child. I remember the story fondly along with a number of Famous Five books. I also read all the Biggles books. War seemed so exciting as a young boy.

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Also sitting amongst the shelves of books we find  jars of honey, bee wax candles, spare hives and  samples of honey. Books and bees are large part of Doug’s life. We supplied 14 kilos of honey for TedX Sydney a few weeks ago. We set up a beehive within Royal Botanic Garden under a giant fig tree to produce honey for the event. We are hoping this will be an ongoing hive.

A lot of people have a fear of bees but they are actually quite harmless if you respect them.  Each hive has its own personality and there is an old saying about beekeepers and it relates to how they are attached to their hives.  When the beekeeper dies – the partner of the beekeeper has to go out and  tell the bees.

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About Doug Purdie

Doug Purdie established The Urban Beehive with Victoria Brown where they focus on hive hosting. Hives are supplied to provide pollination services and local urban honey from your rooftop or backyard.  Doug is the president of the NSW Amateur Beekeepers Association.

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 Leigh Russell and Kathy Luu chatted with Doug on Friday 17 May 2013. Images by Kathy Luu.

© Hello Bookcase 2013. Unauthorized use and/or duplication of this material without express and written permission from this blog’s author and/or owner is strictly prohibited.

Saturday

11

May 2013

6

COMMENTS

Interview: Jemma Birrell

Written by , Posted in Interviews

DSC_3753For the last seven years, Jemma Birrell has been calling the  Parisian bookstore – Shakespeare and Company  home, where she was been  involved in inviting  and entertaining some of the worlds most prestigious and upcoming authors –  including Alain de Botton, Robert McLiam Wilson, Will Self and Jeanette Winterson.

Jemma’s books have  just arrived home in Bondi  from Paris. It’s been a  long journey – but well worth the wait crossing oceans to be with her where she is the Artistic Director for  the Sydney Writers’ Festival.

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There is an element of all my books in me. Having my books back from Paris is a  comfort and I know I am home when I have them with me. The first thing I do when I go to someone’s house is check out their collection, see what books they are interested in, get more an idea of the books that have shaped them.  Personally, I  love collecting books of various subjects and styles and  I got rather greedy working Shakespeare and Company – when all the rare editions and beautiful pulp classics would come in from various libraries around Paris. 

Away from the mountains of books, Swimming Studies by Leanne Shapton has comfortably taken the prime position on Jemma’s window sill overlooking the ocean.

I  first met Leanne after inviting her to Shakespeare and Company (Leanne is based in New York) where she spoke about her work and painted book blocks with stunning vintage-style covers.  She is an extraordinary artist and  writer.  One of her books Important Artifacts and Personal Property from the Collection of Lenore Doolan and Harold Morris, Including books, street fashion, and Jewelry  tells of the collapse of a relationship told through the objects and looks like an auction catalogue (Sheila Heti, an author coming to this years Sydney Writers’ Festival is the model and character in this book).  I also have and love her Native Trees of Canada book which is a collection of delectable paintings.  

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I particularly love old book design. The cover of  In the Castle of My Skin by George Lamming  is just extraordinary. It’s a forgotten classic and the cover says so much to me, it’s just beautifulAlso – Be My Knife by David Grossman.  The cover is such a  juxtaposition and while she has such a soft  exquisite face there is a violence to the title.   Justine by Lawrence Durell  is also one of my favourites – such poetic writing,  it was given to me from Sylvia at  Shakespeare and Company as a farewell gift.  

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At the moment, I am reading about a million things – mostly as much as I can for the festival.  I have asked different writers to write new pieces for the festival and I’ve delved into Pauline Nguyen‘s piece on authenticity. I am also reading The Woman Upstairs by Claire Messud – which I love – who is giving the closing address this year on Imaginary Homelands (the title coming from Salman Rushdie’s essay).  Have you read How Should  a Person Be? by Sheila Heti?  She is doing an intriguing event at the festival where she will involve the audience – asking them questions to work out what makes a person interesting.

I have been dying to read  The Desert by  Pierre Loti – a famous French travel writer which I will when I get a bit more time.

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Jemma opens another book that reveals an old French postcard, that was from the book’s original owner.

Every secondhand book has a past life and I love the traces you find when you open them – postcards, letters, photos.

I moved to Paris to write – I had been working in publishing and I thought it would be good to get into my own writing, but I only wrote bits and pieces and dabbled with restaurant reviews and other such things.  Instead, I got embroiled in the magic and madness of the bookshop, which was wonderful. I was around fascinating  people and found it creatively satisfying bringing audiences together with authors.  It was my creative outlet and my energy went into that. 

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At the moment because of all of the events I have been doing the past few years in Paris and now here- I read a lot of contemporary fiction which  I really enjoy.  I also love to re-read over the classics.  I actually gave away many of my books when I left Paris but have kept many I still want to read.

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Last year I rediscovered Peter Pan by J.M. Barrie – I read it to a close friend  who was having a down moment, to make her feel better. I am not sure if it helped but it made me realise as an adult how great Barrie’s writing is.  The book is outstanding and it was lovely to go back to one that I haven’t read since I was a child. The drawings in the book are also beautiful – in this edition it’s hard to tell if they have actually been hand coloured.

When I was a child my parents would read to me every night.  There was so many stories that I loved. I also used to love the ‘made-up’ stories my parents would tell me.  My mum would often tell me a story about ‘The Velvet Curtain’ – children would pull the curtain around themselves and they would enter a new world.  

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Jemma opens up a cupboard filled with broken books and discarded covers that needed a home.  I have a whole collection of book covers  – I wanted to turn them into cards.  I should not being showing you the chaos – old covers that I have collected, books that have fallen apart but I cannot throw away. I think they are beautiful and some of them are on my wall.

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I discover new books  from my friends and people I admire and respect. Their passion for what they are reading makes me eager to read them. Part of my previous job was recommending books, and authors in terms of events in Paris and I loved it  – that’s also what the festival is all about.  

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If I could only keep five  of my books with me I would want to keep a mixture of books that I love aesthetically and ones I want to re-read. I would have to keep one of my Paris Reviews and Under Milkwood by Dylan Thomas. 

The Waste Land and Other Poems by T.S. Elliot  | A precious first edition gift.

Tropic of Cancer by Henry Miller |  It’s a rare edition (with uncut pages).

In the Castle of My Skin by  George LammingI think it has one of the most beautiful covers.

Aunt Julia and the Scriptwriter  by Mario Vargos Llosa | One of my favourites.

I collect books both for their content and also their aesthetic.

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Were there any books that surprised you? Yes, many! Walks With Men by Ann Beattie  –  Ann has written since the 70s (often published in The New Yorker) and is an extraordinary writer. She was very big back in the day and then she lost currency. I only rediscovered her in the last few years and I was blown away by her writing. Similarly with James Salter, I loved his  selection of short stories Last Night.  When I read Iris Murdoch’s, The Sandcastle – I  found it had a timeless quality. John Updike’s – Couples – I found his writing on relationships interesting.   Erica Jong’s – Fear of Flying – the cover made it look like bad 70s porn, then I read it and loved it, she’s brilliant.

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About Jemma Birrell

Jemma Birrell is the Artistic Director of the Sydney Writers’ Festival which runs from 20 May until 26 May 2013.
She organised events for the legendary  Shakespeare and Company in Paris and has a background in publishing.

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Leigh Russell and Kathy Luu chatted with Jemma on Monday 6 May 2013. Images by Kathy Luu.

© Hello Bookcase 2013. Unauthorized use and/or duplication of this material without express and written permission from this blog’s author and/or owner is strictly prohibited.