Books for the year

As one of my new year resolutions was to review my reading trends I got this bookmark form the library last week, a list of ten top Victorian Books, so decided to start there. slv.vic.gov.au/summer-read  

The pic might be hard to read so here is the listing 

2013 Summer Read titles

1. Currawalli Street by Christopher Morgan 
2. Deranged marriage by Sushi Das 
3. Horrible man: sinister secrets and truths untold: the Portland hair salon murders by Leonie Wallace 
4. In her blood by Annie Hauxwell 
5. Lola Bensky by Lily Brett 
6. Speechless: a year in my father's business by James Button 
7. The happiness show: a novel by Catherine Deveny 
8. The longing by Candice Bruce 
9. The memory of salt by Alice Melike Ulgezer
10. True north: the story of Mary and Elizabeth Durack by Brenda Niall 

Well it seems everyone in Footscray is doing the same, as none of the books were available despite multiple copies. However I have The Memory of Salt coming from West Footscray So that will  be number 1.
Ali’s father is a Turkish circus musician performing in Kabul when Ali’s mother, a young doctor from Melbourne, who has trained in Australia’s outback regions, meets him outside the circus tent. Their courtship takes them from Afghanistan across Iran to Turkey and London, where Ali is born, and then to Melbourne. Baba plays the trumpet, the saz, the flute, hears voices that urge him to violence, sees angels in the skies and jinns in the street, and inscribes lines from the Qur’an on the walls of his room, and across the suburb. Ülgezer offers a remarkable portrait of this tormented visionary, intoxicated with hashish and Sufism, who wrecks the family, but is also, for Ali, an enchanted being.

On the State Library website was a link to a Poetry Reading. I like some poetry but do not read anthologies of it,  rather there is poetry I like and re read it.

The masterpiece I read is the Prologue to The Canterbury Tales, have a battered and annotated copy form school!

The Link was to Rubaiyat of Omar Khayyam 

This reading is part of a series of excerpts from the romantic stories and lyrical verse written or inspired by some of the great Persian poets of the past, as showcased in the Love and devotion: from Persia and beyond exhibition. Actor Helen Morse reads from the Rubaiyat of Omar Khayyam, translated by Edward FitzGerald. It was only 2 minutes but lovely to listen. 

For those who don't know it

Here with a loaf of bread beneath the bough, 

A flask of wine, a book of Verse, and Thou 

beside me, singing in the wilderness, 

and the wilderness is Paradise, enow.

Not sure where I first came across it, but I have a copy from 30 years ago in pseudo red leather in a black box, Lovely!