A snapshot of those spines might shed some light on the true character of the premier who rarely smiled. Mao’sLittle Red Book, perhaps.How to Smoke Pot (Properly):A Highbrow Guide to Getting High? Perhaps not.
I have two tsundoku teetering by my side of the bed and a horizontal tsundoku jammed into a bookshelf. (My partner has Steve Waugh by his side,801 pages of him.) This isn’t a show-off thing. It’s more an indication of how much I want to read before my eyes pack up and my body goes to god.
On top of this – well,to the side – is a growing pile of the magazines I’ve subscribed to. I wonder if the Japanese have a word for “pile of magazines you know you will never read but hang on to for a year and then place lovingly in the recycle bin (or op shop)”.
The point is there’s so much to read and so little time.
At any time-poor age,you must make a choice if you’re going to get through your literary lot. I run a finger across the spines in my book piles. Old classics or modern? Books I think I should read but don’t want to (A Tale of Two Cities),books I want to read but know I won’t understand (Ulysses),books that will fill me with wanderlust (Lonely Planet’sEgypt) or just plain lust (Gorbachev’sMemoirs – ooh,that birthmark),books that will make me feel dumb (How Proust Can Change Your Life) or spooked (The Shining) or titillated (Portnoy’s Complaint).
This last one is a lie. I read it years ago when I found it on my father’s bookshelf wedged betweenThe Geneva Conventions andThe Innocence of Father Brown. It alarmed me no end. I was 12 at the time.
An old school friend has already made his choice. He told me last week:“I don’t read books anymore. I read three newspapers every day. I have to choose between the world and books,and I choose the world.” (Maybe two newspapers are enough,I say to my friend.)
So what will Dan Andrews choose? We may never know what already sits in histsundoku but I think it behoves us to offer some suggestions. He was,after all,Victoria’s longest-serving Labor premier. A mix of fiction and non-fiction is good,preferably read to some background music such asBridge Over Troubled Waters orHeartbreak Hotel.
As a nod to Dan’s role during the pandemic and the need for some tender loving self-care,I’m thinking a good start would be García Márquez’sLove in the Time of Cholera. Either that orOne Hundred Years of Solitudeby the same author. These could be followed by a grittier read that former Victorian health minister Jenny Mikakos might have favoured following her oft-questioned resignation:Did She Kill Him? A Victorian Tale of Deception,Adultery and Arsenic. Andrews was in a few scrapes during his tenure – the accident,the. Let’s go with Annie Proulx’sBrokeback Mountain,Anne Tyler’sA Slipping Down Lifeand Lance Armstrong’s It’s Not About The Bike,preferably read simultaneously in one sitting.
The $1.1 billion contract that Andrews ripped up for the East West Link doesn’t have to be wasted. That paper can now be put to good use withOrigami:Step By Step. And for all the memory problems at inquiries by the state anti-corruption agency,IBAC,I recommendThe Man Who Mistook His Wife for a Hat by Oliver Sacks,not that Dan Andrews would ever mistake his,especially when she’s driving.
My choice? I pluckWuthering Heights from mytsundoku.It falls into the “should have read by now – can’t believe you haven’t” category.It smells of old paper and dust and its typeface must be in seven-point. It seems like the perfect time to read the thing.
I’m in for a shock. I know that Heathcliff’s tall,dark and handsome,but he also kills puppies. I honestly tried to like him until he did that. He and Catherine are a gruesome twosome and the entire story is dedicated to their rottenness. How did this become a classic,I wonder (of course,the writing’s superb).
Wuthering Heights has laid me low. The and have laid Dan Andrews low. We both need a dig-in-your-guts belly laugh to raise the spirits.
Michael McIntyre’s memoirLife&Laughingpops up on Audible. English-born McIntyre specialises in situational comedy. He’s also the narrator of his book and does delicious impersonations of family members – but not,repeat,not politicians. The chapters on his teenage years are excruciatingly good.
Two minutes in,Dan Andrews,and you’ll be writhing on your couch in hysterics.
Jo Stubbings is a freelance writer and reviewer.