MotherReader

Sorry I’m late. I slept in this morning. Man, I love summer.

Actually, it’s quite appropriate that I’d be on the late end of posting since I was late to the One Shot World Tour itself. I saw that Chasing Ray was covering Australian authors and I had recently read an awesome book that came to my library from Down Under. I asked if pretty please I might be included in the blogging extravaganza, and here I am. Many of the blogs are posting the whole list of participants with the links, but (1) since so many are doing it, you probably don’t need it here, and (2) frankly, I don’t know how to capture the text with all the links intact. Instead, I will link back to the originator of the tour, and the full list of participating bloggers, at Chasing Ray.

On to Am I Right or Am I Right? by Barry Jonsberg.

If you like your teen angst with a little humor, or a lot of humor, have I got the book for you. This may be one of my new favorites, and I’m only two years late in finding it. Though granted, since it’s an Australian import, those books take time to reach my library. You’d think we were making the author swim them to us.

Calma Harrison has an uncalm life. Her absent father turns up after five years, her mother is keeping a secret from her, and her new best friend is hiding something terrible. Calma tries to solve everything, but it doesn’t always work the way she plans or thinks. The book has hilarious situations and great lines throughout, but it’s not all madcap romp. There are serious undertones of trust and friendship and relationships. But the funny sections are super-sharp funny. Like going to get her hair done fancy for her date, and then... well you should read it, but I’ll give you a quote:

After much screwing up of the eyes and facial contortions, I managed to end up looking relatively normal — a considerable improvement on my usual efforts, where I wouldn’t be out of place in a Picasso painting.

When Calma goes to get a job, I cracked up at the long description of the slow-moving, couldn’t-care-less employee at the wrongly-named customer service desk. Boy, did that strike a chord. Or when Calma gets the job...

I nearly choked when he told me the pay rate. I was under the impression that child slavery had been abolished. A sudden vision came to me — a muscled manager in a loincloth whipping cowering employees for not keeping up with the rhythm of beating drums. I didn’t say anything, though. I even tried to manufacture an expression of unbridled joy at the prospect of working for an hourly sum you’d expect to find down the back of a sofa.

I love how she calls her mom The Fridge, since they primarily exchange notes on the refrigerator due to her mom’s busy work schedule. I love that she invents a Fast Forward and Rewind button for within her book so she can move the story along. I love that she writes poems — after trying to get away with writing poetry badly — for different parts of her life. Really, I love everything about this book, and I can’t recommend it strongly enough.

Am I Right or Am I Right? is actually the second book about Calma Harrison. I read the first book, The Crimes and Punishments of Miss Payne, yesterday morning when I woke up ridiculously early and couldn’t get back to sleep (now I’ve explained a bit of today’s sleeping in, so you won’t think I’m lazy). The center of this book is the horrible teacher assigned to Calma’s English class. The kids call her the Pitbull, and while she is mean to everyone, she has a particular vengeance for Calma’s mate Kiffo. Though Kiffo and Calma seem to have nothing in common, they have a special bond that is explained in a small side story throughout the book. Trying to bring down Miss Payne, the two of them get in over their heads, with consequences that are sometimes hysterical and sometimes tragic.

While I personally prefer the teen angst in the second book, The Crimes and Punishments of Miss Payne is a great read with wonderful descriptions — some of them with a true Australian flavor. Take the first paragraph of the book, in which Calma is writing an assignment to use similes:

Kiffo’s hair is like a glowing sunset. However, unlike a sunset, it lasts for a long time and doesn’t suddenly turn black and become studded with stars. It is as wild as a dingo on drugs and sticks up like ears of corn after a cyclone. Maybe like a field of corn that is the color of sunset and has been trampled by a whole load of drug-crazed dingoes during a cyclone.

In describing Calma’s overabundant chest, the author uses the imagery of her having a “couple of wombats tucked down there.” The writing is clever, and again sharp-funny. One caveat: Both books are recommended for home reading only, unless you like laughing out loud in public and having to explain yourself. I’ve done that too many times myself, and it never feels less awkward.

Now go take a virtual walkabout of the One Shot World Tour via the full list of participants at Chasing Ray. Until next time, ooroo.

Why travel to Australia on vacation, halfway around the world, when you can just read a book about it?

Or that is how I justify it to myself.

Lost in Rooville, by Ray Blackston, showed great promise in my armchair journey. A cute, light green cover with the kangaroo warning sign and a kangaroo jumping on top of a car in the background. It looked light and easy, which was just what I was after. I found myself wading through forty pages of two guys talking about getting engaged to their girlfriends with the enthusiasm I would expect to see from two guys talking about getting laid, but I knew kangaroos were coming, so I hung in there. The two couples split up to explore the Outback separately, and the book picks up. One couple gets lost, and as they run out of water and wonder if they will be found in time, they think about having sex. But they don’t, because their values are too strong.

Hold on. This is a grown couple and they haven’t had sex yet? What’s going on here? It all comes back to me. The passing reference to praying for help. The woman has been working with a mission. Is this... Christian fiction?

I flip ahead, and while the author must have contained himself for the first part of the book, suddenly the God, praying, and minister references are all over the place. I have no problem with the existence of the genre, and this book was probably a decent expression of Christian values in a new setting. But hey, warn me. You don’t play rap on a country music station; you don’t slap a chick-lit-ish cover on a book of Christian fiction. It’s just wrong.

I had to clear my head, and went for an old favorite, One for the Road: An Outback Adventure, by Tony Horwitz. Tony is an American journalist who gets the idea to cross the outback by hitchhiking. He meets lots of crazy characters, crosses a landscape similar to the moon, and sees his first kangaroo after the driver runs into it. This is the Australia adventure about the people, not the tourist attractions, and it is fascinating and funny.

But, my old favorite wasn’t there, so I decided to try Bill Bryson’s In a Sunburned Country. I am halfway through it, and it is good but not great. He talks a lot about various tourist attractions or cities that he assumes we have a working knowledge of. But I don’t, and wish that there were a few pictures and maps to help me follow his descriptions. His books incorporate more history and facts and actual information. It’s a little too much work for me. I just wanted the funny or interesting stories and some clever writing.

Because, face it, I’m on vacation.