Debra Adelaide
Autore di The Household Guide to Dying
Sull'Autore
Debra Adelaide was born in 1958 in Sydeny, Australia. She holds a BA and MA in English literature and a doctorate in Australian women¿s literature from the University of Sydney. She is an associate professor at the University of Technology, Sydney. Her editing work includes A Bright and Fiery mostra altro Troop, A Window in the Dark, Motherlove, Motherlove 2, Cutting the Cord, Acts of Dog, and The Simple Act of Reading. Her other works include The Hotel Albatross, Australian Women Writers, Serpent Dust, The Household Guide to Dying, Letter to George Clooney, and The Women's Pages. (Bowker Author Biography) mostra meno
Fonte dell'immagine: City of Canterbury
Opere di Debra Adelaide
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Etichette
Informazioni generali
- Data di nascita
- 1958
- Sesso
- female
- Nazionalità
- Australia
- Luogo di nascita
- Sydney, New South Wales, Australia
- Istruzione
- University of Sydney (BA, MA - English Literature, PhD)
- Attività lavorative
- novelist
book reviewer
editor
researcher
associate professor (Creative Writing) - Organizzazioni
- University of Technology, Sydney
Utenti
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I wish, I really wish, I'd found time to read this book before last Christmas—because if I had, by now, you would all have your own copy and so would your friends because you would have given them all a copy as a present. I am not really a fan of books about reading, but The Innocent Reader has brought me so much pleasure, I hardly know how to begin.
Perhaps at the end? In the last chapter titled 'In Bed with Flaubert', Adelaide writes an uncannily accurate description of what it's like to be what she calls an incompetent sleeper. Somehow, she manages to describe the torture of insomnia with humour and grace, listing every trick, remedy, therapy, from folklore tale to contemporary medical advice, and every suggestion from people who claim to suffer from insomnia themselves, and have cured it by one simple method or another:
As she says, your body is unbelievably wily. It is fooled by nothing. And so, just like me, she reads.
Yes. Reliable, patient, responsive to our desire yet always like new. Beautiful books, written just for us, as this book has been written just for me by Debra Adelaide.
I love what she writes about how other people seem to get by with reading the paper and watching the news, but reading—which is supposed to fill up the gloomy void of ignorance—instead expands it. Because we readers are never satisfied:
Arrive at adulthood as I did having read Austen and Dickens, and lo! there are the other classics... and then there are the French and German ones you didn't discover until middle age. And then, what about the wealth of contemporary writing, and translated fiction, and all the underrated women authors that you haven't read? I was reminded of this just yesterday when I was chatting with Joe at Rough Ghosts—he had just written a superb review of Saudade, a book from Angola which had broadened my horizons because I knew nothing at all about Angola until I read it. I could wallpaper my library if I printed out the number of times I've introduced a review with the words 'I knew nothing about this #InsertSubject/Country/History until I read #InsertNameOfBook'.
To read the rest of my review please visit https://anzlitlovers.com/2020/02/12/the-innocent-reader-by-debra-adelaide/… (altro)
Perhaps at the end? In the last chapter titled 'In Bed with Flaubert', Adelaide writes an uncannily accurate description of what it's like to be what she calls an incompetent sleeper. Somehow, she manages to describe the torture of insomnia with humour and grace, listing every trick, remedy, therapy, from folklore tale to contemporary medical advice, and every suggestion from people who claim to suffer from insomnia themselves, and have cured it by one simple method or another:
Nothing works. You count sheep. You count goats. You count animals in masses: fleas on dogs, schools of sardines, a hive of bees. Locusts, budgerigars and ants—anything that lives in large groups—you count them all and still, and after the nine hundred and ninety-ninth termite, the one thousandth fruit bat, sleep remains elusive. You memorise then recite the Periodic Table of Elements and still remain awake by the time you arrive at 118, oganesson. (p.250)
As she says, your body is unbelievably wily. It is fooled by nothing. And so, just like me, she reads.
If you can't sleep but your brain isn't alert enough to be useful and learn introductory Spanish or memorise the Crimes Act (1900) then you can at least comfort and indulge yourself with reading novels, and long romantic poems. Medications wear off, warm drinks go cold, therapeutic pillows and blankets become stiff and lumpy, but the books remains the same. (p.252)
Yes. Reliable, patient, responsive to our desire yet always like new. Beautiful books, written just for us, as this book has been written just for me by Debra Adelaide.
I love what she writes about how other people seem to get by with reading the paper and watching the news, but reading—which is supposed to fill up the gloomy void of ignorance—instead expands it. Because we readers are never satisfied:
The more you read the more you become aware of the enormous holes in your reading, and the more authors there are to read unfold before you.
Arrive at adulthood as I did having read Austen and Dickens, and lo! there are the other classics... and then there are the French and German ones you didn't discover until middle age. And then, what about the wealth of contemporary writing, and translated fiction, and all the underrated women authors that you haven't read? I was reminded of this just yesterday when I was chatting with Joe at Rough Ghosts—he had just written a superb review of Saudade, a book from Angola which had broadened my horizons because I knew nothing at all about Angola until I read it. I could wallpaper my library if I printed out the number of times I've introduced a review with the words 'I knew nothing about this #InsertSubject/Country/History until I read #InsertNameOfBook'.
To read the rest of my review please visit https://anzlitlovers.com/2020/02/12/the-innocent-reader-by-debra-adelaide/… (altro)
1 
anzlitlovers | 1 altra recensione | Feb 12, 2020 |
anzlitlovers | 1 altra recensione | Feb 12, 2020 | 
There are 13 short stories in this collection I skipped straight to the last story in this collection, because I'd rather read a novella than a short story any day...
'Zebra' is an odd confection. It's a whimsical tale of a female prime minister well into her middle years and with a name as ordinary as the dust on her shoes. She has been in power for several years, long enough to take as much pride in the garden at The Lodge as in her other achievements (which are a wishlist of reforms that have not happened in real Australian life).
Accused of not having a 'real' job by her irascible neighbour Kerr, this PM (oddly non-combative for a politician) muses to herself:
However, as the story opens the PM has a report to read in preparation for an overhaul of the national health budget. It rejoices in the title Key Strategic Objectives: Minimising Negative Patient Outcomes, but it fails to keep her attention and sitting so long to read it (literally) gives her a pain in the proverbial:
Her garden is the one project that really matters to her:
The truth is, she's not interested in the slog of governing and she would rather delegate the stuff that bores her to her ministers. What she wants is to generate ideas and indulge her well-hidden life of the mind, but she gets sucked into trivia which the media presents as evidence of fitness to govern:
To read the rest of my review please visit https://anzlitlovers.com/2019/02/13/zebra-and-other-stories-by-debra-adelaide/… (altro)
'Zebra' is an odd confection. It's a whimsical tale of a female prime minister well into her middle years and with a name as ordinary as the dust on her shoes. She has been in power for several years, long enough to take as much pride in the garden at The Lodge as in her other achievements (which are a wishlist of reforms that have not happened in real Australian life).
Accused of not having a 'real' job by her irascible neighbour Kerr, this PM (oddly non-combative for a politician) muses to herself:
He could not boast about making company tax more equitable, about simplifying the paperwork for small business, about establishing a non-profit national telecommunications provider. He had not implemented the quiet triumph of her entire term: people answering the phones again in government departments. He hadn't found a way to keep manufacturers onshore and small schools open in small towns. Nor had he ever got all six state premiers together without a single fight. (p.234)
However, as the story opens the PM has a report to read in preparation for an overhaul of the national health budget. It rejoices in the title Key Strategic Objectives: Minimising Negative Patient Outcomes, but it fails to keep her attention and sitting so long to read it (literally) gives her a pain in the proverbial:
The document she was reviewing, being a commissioned public service report, was woefully unclear. Actual patients did not rate a mention. Their specific health needs were smothered under bureaucratic jargon. Thick clods of managerese fell upon the subject as if it were already dead, shrouded, and six feet in the ground. She did not feel like a Health Service Stakeholder, and the report so far made her feel unenthusiastic about taking her right buttock, or any part of her anatomy, to medical facilities as they currently stood. (p.204)
Her garden is the one project that really matters to her:
She knew that in the years to come, retirement years, the post-leadership twilight world of sitting on boards and running consultancies and working for international charities — the quiet morning-tea existence, as opposed to the nonstop sushi train that was life now — she could easily have regrets. She would look back on this time in her life and never wish she had been to more briefings, overseen more committees, shaken hands with more delegations, attended more conferences, held more cabinet meetings. Especially not cabinet meetings. But she would regret it if she hadn't made the most of the garden. (p.205)
The truth is, she's not interested in the slog of governing and she would rather delegate the stuff that bores her to her ministers. What she wants is to generate ideas and indulge her well-hidden life of the mind, but she gets sucked into trivia which the media presents as evidence of fitness to govern:
All the accusations people levelled at elites being out of touch reached a crescendo when it came to parliamentarians. But she was probably the first prime minister of the country who knew the price of a litre of milk. At both the supermarket and the corner store. Previous prime ministers had been crucified for less than that.
(p. 233)
To read the rest of my review please visit https://anzlitlovers.com/2019/02/13/zebra-and-other-stories-by-debra-adelaide/… (altro)
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- ISBN
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Debra's enthusiasm for books and learning is infectious and I could relate to much of the content. Her passion for literature shines through as she looks back at her discovery of reading, formative reading years and later teaching years. She also includes a handy reference section at the end of each essay, listing all of the works mentioned.
Part memoir and part love letter to literature, Debra freely offers priceless advice for students, writers, reviewers and readers. I particularly enjoyed her essay about the ethics of reviewing entitled The Front Line and this quote:
"Besides, the job of the reviewer is to review the book, not to worry about how what they might say will either further or impede its author's career." Page 182
The Innocent Reader - Reflections on Reading and Writing by Debra Adelaide is a great resource for emerging writers; seasoned writers; wannabe editors; expert editors; teachers and of course every kind of reader there is. As Debra says:
"There can never be too many books, or too many writers. Or too many readers, or too. much reading." Page 166
And of course I wholeheartedly agree.
* Copy courtesy of Pan Macmillan Australia *… (altro)