Reading matters

'Venice: Tales of the City' edited by Michelle Lovric

Fiction & non-fiction - hardcover; Little, Brown; 448 pages; 2003.

Venice is one of those wonderfully intriguing cities that has inspired artists and writers alike for centuries. London-based author Michelle Lovric is no exception. She has penned several novels set in the watery Italian city, including Carnevale and The Floating Book, but this time around she leaves the writing to others and selects some of her favourite poetry, fiction pieces and non-fiction extracts and brings them together in this varied collection.

"In this anthology," she writes, "the voices of today's Venetians mingle with those of their ancestors, just as they still do on the streets of the city". And she is right: some of the writings included here date back centuries (several have been translated in English here for the first time) and others were written as recently as the late Twentieth Century.

'Autobiography of a Geisha' by Sayo Masuda

Non-fiction - paperback; Vintage East; 224  pages; 2006. Translated from the Japanese by G. G. Rowley.

This remarkable autobiography written by 32-year-old Sayo Masuda and first published in 1957 documents her struggle to seek out an ordinary life.

As a six-year-old, Sayo's mother sent her to work as a nursemaid for some wealthy landowners who tied her up if she misbehaved, forced her to sleep on a "hempen sack stuffed with rags thrown into the corner of the storehouse" and only allowed her to eat scraps that they left under the kitchen sink.

Unable to go to school, unable to read, I had grown up as an abandoned dog does; and then, at the age of 12, I was sold. Actually, I didn't know how old I was; but around that time I heard someone saying that the child was twelve, and I recall thinking "So I'm twelve years old then, am I?" Given that, it must have been about 1936 or 1937.

The place I was sold to was a geisha house in Upper Suwa called the Takenoya. At first I was wide-eyed with astonishment at its splendor, like a palace in a dream. [...] But the rigors that began the following day taught me that this was not the soft life I thought it would be, that this was no haven or refuge.

'Race to Dakar' by Charley Boorman

Non-fiction - hardcover; Little, Brown Book Group; 320 pages; 2006.

As I write, the 2007 Dakar Rally is in full swing. It is the world's most gruelling and challenging off-road endurance race for motorised vehicles. One motorcyclist, South African Elmer Symons, has already died in this year's race and last year's claimed the life of Australian Andy Caldecott.

So when actor Charley Boorman finished the 20,000 mile road trip from London to New York (the long way round via Russia) with his best mate Ewan McGregor in 2004, the Dakar Rally seemed like the next logical challenge. But, as Charley was soon to realise, there's a big difference between riding a route you've organised yourself to racing along one that has been designed to test your off-road navigational skills, your physical capabilities and your mental strength to their absolute limits. It has often been compared to climbing Everest or sailing around the world it is such a difficult feat to achieve.

'Venice' by Jan Morris

Non fiction - paperback; Faber and Faber; 336  pages; 1993.

I am not a great fan of travelogues or travel memoirs, because I often think they don't really make sense, or resonate strongly enough, unless you have been to the places depicted. For instance, it's all well and good to read a travel tome about Australia and how terrible the flies are in the desert, but until you've actually experienced flies swarming around you and crawling into every face crevice it really doesn't mean anything -- you think you know but you really have no idea!

I decided to read Venice in preparation for a week-long stay in the Italian city. I had been to Venice several years ago, so felt I knew a bit about the city and its famous landmarks, which is why I wasn't so bothered about reading this memoir. I'd done the homework already, so to speak.

'A Thousand Days in Venice: An Unexpected Romance' by Marlena de Blasi

Nonfiction - paperback; Ballentine Books; 272 pages; 2002

I have just discovered that the medication I am currently taking for a chest infection is the same medication given to people with Anthrax, so this might partly explain the snarky review which is to follow. Then again it might not.

A Thousand Days in Venice is one of those lovely-looking personal travel memoirs that promises everything and delivers not very much at all.

There's no doubt that it is well written: the prose is clear, lucid and free from too much 'waffle' and de Blasi definitely knows how to write about food in a wonderfully evocative way.

But the story -- how can I say this without sounding too mean? -- is woefully sappy and overly sentimental, which is fine if you like those things, but terrible if you don't.

'Memoir' by John McGahern

Nonfiction - paperback; Faber and Faber; 288 pages; 2005

I read this beautiful, lyrical and tear-inducing autobiography in just two sittings. With no chapters or natural breaks, I just could not tear my eyes away from McGahern's seamless narrative.

Concentrating mainly on his childhood and adolescence growing up in rural Ireland in the 1940s and 1950s, it is very much a love letter to his adored mother, an accomplished school teacher, who died of breast cancer when he was eight years old.

It is also a heartfelt exploration of the ambiguous and complicated relationship with his father, a police sergeant, who ruled the family -- McGahern, the eldest child, had six younger siblings -- with a vicious tongue, temperamental mood swings and powerful fists.

'Windows on the World' by Frédéric Beigbeder

Fiction - paperback; Harper Perennial; 312  pages; 2005. (Translated from the French by Frank Wynne.)

Windows on the World won the Independent Foreign Fiction Prize 2005, but this book could just have easily won a non-fiction award too. This is because the chapters of this brutally searing book alternate between reality and imagination, so what you get is three stories in one: the factual account of what happened the day that two planes deliberately slammed into New York's World Trade Centre on September 11, 2001; the fictional account of a divorced father trapped in the Windows on the World restaurant at the top of Tower One with his two young sons at the time of the attack; and the author's own personal memoir about the event and its aftermath a year after it happened.

Strangely enough, despite being written by a Frenchman, it is also a homage to America and how the terrorist attack sowed doubt into the American dream for the first time.

'The Dog Fence' by James Woodford

Nonfiction - paperback; Text Publishing; 260 pages; 2003

This is a delightful personal account of one journalist's quest to travel the full length of the Dog Fence, a man-made structure that runs 5,400km across three states in the Australian outback, which is designed to keep dingos away from livestock.

Much of the fence traverses inhospitable land - gibber plains, rocky outcrops, desert, sand and salt plains - on private property, so it is a journey that very few people have experienced. Not even the patrol men, who repair the fence, have followed it for its full continent-dividing length.

'Long Way Round' by Ewan McGregor and Charley Boorman

Non-fiction - hardcover; Time Warner Books; 320 pages; 2004.

I'm often not very quick off the mark at the best of times, but when it came to discovering the wonder that is the 20,000 mile road trip from London to New York (the long way round) undertaken by actors Ewan McGregor and Charley Boorman I am positively turtle-like.

This book, published in late 2004, accompanies the 10-part television documentary of the motorbiking adventure, now available here in the UK on DVD. I recently watched the DVD and fell immediately in love with it, so much so I promptly tracked down a secondhand copy of the book to immerse myself in.

'The City of Falling Angels' by John Berendt

Non-fiction - hardcover; Penguin Group (USA); 382 pages; 2005.

"The air still smelled of charcoal when I arrived in Venice three days after the fire." So begins John Berendt's unique travelogue of the world's most romantic city.

Taking the fire that destroyed the Fenice theatre in 1996 - one of the most important theatres in Italy if not the world - Berendt takes his readers on an extraordinary voyage into the (quite literally) stinking heart of the city that has intrigued and delighted mankind for centuries.

Having read Berendt's much-acclaimed Midnight in the Garden of Good and Evil when it was first released a decade ago, I had expected The City of Falling Angels to be a tour de force that would not only capture the essence of the city and its inhabitants but weave a spellbinding account of the Fenice fire and its aftermath. What I got was a disappointing and, quite frankly, aimless narrative that leaves the reader wondering if they've missed something along the way.