Lord of the Books

The SMH has published the results of the top 100 books read by Australians. I guess it’s kind of sweet that everyone likes the Lord of the Rings so much. And I daresay Jane Austen has a lot to thank Andrew Davies and Helen Fielding for the popularity of Pride and Prejudice (oh, and the HSC school syllabus).

But there were some surprises for me in the list, like ‘16. Captain Underpants And The Invasion Of The Incredibly Naughty Cafeteria Ladies From Outer Space by Dav Pilkey’, ‘4. To Kill A Mockingbird by Harper Lee’ and ‘91. Atlas Shrugged by Ayn Rand’ (perhaps Malcolm Fraser put in a few votes). My favourite adult book, Anna Karenin, was # 70; my favourite book when I was 5, The Magic Faraway Tree, was #94.

Brideshead, sigh, was #95.

I wondered what conclusions to draw from the list, like: perhaps Tim Winton and J.K. Rowling are doing the publishing industry and Australian literacy levels a big favour in keeping people who might not otherwise read interested in reading some books.

I also wondered if the popularity of To Kill a Mockingbird is grounded in the fact that it’s presented to teenagers during their formative years at high school: they get opened up to some of the basic small ‘l’ liberal arguments for maybe the first time, they see the film, and those who go on to become small ‘r’ readers remember it as a great read.

I was also reminded of that essay in Jonathan Franzen’s book How not to be alone, when he reviews the findings of some survey which says there are very few American who consistently read and buy books, just a small, sensitive usually female sliver of the educated liberal population, and it’s not likely to get any bigger.

But then, that’s the kind of melancholy thing Jonathan Franzen says (probably suffering from Asperger’s syndrome as well).

I wonder if the electronic book is likely to take off? I tend to think not (too unwieldy compared to the easily portable and readable product of traditional publishing technology), and that the ascendancy of the visual will continue as the dominant story-telling medium.

And so, away from books and to films: I saw two this weekend, The Corporation and Bad Santa. The Corporation really sucked; it was the kind of thing you get sucked into seeing in Alice, too, because it’s promoted as an arthouse film that will only be seen once. I was bored shitless. This film was about two and a half hours long; they could have easily cut out an hour (preferably the first one). It had all the old favourites, Mike Moore, Naomi Klein, et al, saying what they usually say about mass corporations, human rights and environmental destruction. The faithful um’d, ah’d and laughed in all the right places. I kept on looking at my watch. Surely the use-by date for sloganeering, left-liberal American documentaries will soon be up, (unless they can approach their subjects a bit more creatively, as Supersize Me did). Their investigative journalism standards worry me. The only thing that truly amused me was Indian academic Vandina Shiva describing herself as a ‘seed activist’. In all, I think I learned one interesting new thing, that a corporation is a ‘person’ under American law.

Bad Santa, though, is my idea of a feel-good Xmas movie -- Billy Bob Thornton as an alcoholic, sociopathic Santa involved in criminal activities with an African-American dwarf (who knows how to play the disability and the race cards), who turns to good under the influence of a girl who's obsessed with 'fucking Santa' and a 'retard' with an advent calendar (who's likewise obsessed with him, tho for other reasons).

As the film was set largely in an American dept store, there was probably plenty of product placement, but hey! Only my subconscious noticed that; it didn't bother me at all.

Comments

[Nick]

I was thinking about your (rhetorical) question of whether the electronic book will take off. In my (limited) experience, new technology moves from being almost inconceivable to being part of the scenery very quickly. And when such technology does become commonplace, it is then inconceivable that the technology was ever inconceivable.

I remember reading about electronic funds transfer at point of sale about ten years ago. This article was saying that soon we would be able to present a card at almost any shop and directly, cashlessly, transfer funds from our bank accounts to pay for routine items.

I remember being taken aback by this and thinking 'no way' because it really did seem like an almost inconceivable radical change. And then it happened. Who wonders about the magic of EFTPOS anymore?

The electronic book will seem like a weird fringe technology and then one day it will evolve suddenly and it will be everywhere (assuming there are still enough of us using the written word of course).

[john]

Short answer about the "My Favourite Book" show: embarassingly few votes. The announcement was supposed to be a live TV show but got cut back to a pre-record simply because there didn't appear to be much interest. Apart from anything else, let's consider the arrogance of TV in assuming that althought it had been done earlier on radio that it was fine to be done again and there would be no voter fatigue...