The Longing– A perfect game for Extended Lockdown

The Longing – promo image

With Victoria’s Covid 19 stage 4 restrictions extending for the foreseeable future, it struck me as appropriate to start playing the recently released computer game The Longing.

Classified as slow gaming, it takes 400 days to finish. In fact once you start the game you are not obliged to play, but can wait for the 400 real time days to pass to see the ending.

The time ticks down as you play the lonely Shade, servant to a sleeping king, who must wait out the 400 days so he can wake his master at the preordained time.

Passing time as the The Shade, you can explore the extensive cave structure and keep busy in one way or another by creating a cosy abode in which to pass the time. There are (real)  books to read, music to make and art to create.

I’ve only played briefly over two days so far and have yet to explore the caves in depth. It’s no use being impatient as it’s a slow process and The Shade moves at snail’s pace. In some cases he must wait for a door to open or a stalactite to grow before proceeding further.

It’s an intriguing and very original concept of gaming which I shall enjoy dipping into every so often. I sincerely hope that Covid 19 will be a distant memory by  the time The Longing comes to an end next year.

On the subject of computer games, I’ve played a few engaging escape the room type games recently.

The latest was Agent A: A Puzzle in Disguise, where you play the eponymous hero tracking down the wicked Ruby La Rouge, evil agent of MIA’s arch enemy HAVOK.  This clever game was created in Australia by Yak & Co.

Agent A – promo image

There are five chapters in the game, so it’s gratifyingly  long  with a plethora of intriguing puzzles to solve.

Another, very beautiful, escape the room game is the exquisite Luna: The Shadow Dust. 

Luna – promo image

In this game a boy falls from the sky in a bubble of light. It is your task to guide him up a tall tower to solve the mystery of his fall and recover his lost memories, solving puzzles as you move higher, often with the assistance of the  pet.

It’s a charming, albeit short game, and the puzzles are unusual, beautiful and a pleasure to solve.

On the reading front, after finishing David Mitchell’s new novel Utopia Avenue which I loved to bits, I’ve been reading my way through the Dublin Trilogy, a series of four detective novels by Caimh McDonnell featuring the extraordinary Bunny McGarry . They are page turners,  very funny, but also quite violent.  They were an eBook  gift for my birthday from a friend. At first I was in two minds as to whether I was going to like the books, but I have become quite addicted as I progress through the trilogy. You can get a free eBook of short stories  if you sign up for Caimh McDonnell’s monthly email list.

At this time of the year I would normally be heading off to the racetrack for the Spring Racing Carnival, but alas it doesn’t appear as if the public will be admitted at all this season.

This weekend at Flemington features the Group 1 Makybe Diva Stakes. I wish I could be there to watch it live, as I would have liked to get a look at the highly regarded Russian Camelot who won the South Australian Derby in spectacular fashion and is an early favourite for the Melbourne Cup. But then again, with heavy rain forecast for tomorrow, I won’t regret not being there so much and will be content to watch the action on my computer.

And with such things, like the Shade in The Longing, I pass the time during lockdown.

More Literary Luminaries – David Mitchell & Jonathan Lethem at The Edge

David Mitchell with Suzanne Donisthorpe – Deakin Edge 19/5/15

When David Mitchell last visited Melbourne in May 2011, a big crowd turned out to see him at the Athenaeum Theatre. The venue this time was Deakin Edge at Federation Square, a modern and edgy space – a startling contrast to the old fashioned charms of the Athenaeum -  but an equally large number of fans were present last night.

I managed to get a seat in the front row, as is my wont with music shows, i.e. my favourite spot to be. So my view was unimpeded.  I took along the Canon G16 this time and shot some decent photos.
David Mitchell bounced onto the stage greeting the audience with a friendly hello as he took his seat. The topic of discussion was of course his latest novel The Bone Clocks, a mind teaser of a novel that involves several different narratives like his earlier novel Cloud Atlas. The Bone Clocks however has a central character, Holly Sykes, who appears peripherally in the various other character’s stories. There is a supernatural thread running through the novel, and indeed there’s a terrific supernatural battle towards the end. The prose is dazzling and pleasurable to read.

It was an engrossing conversation and David Mitchell presents as charming and unaffected, funny as well.  It was thrilling to be present in person at the event, seeing one of my favourite writers in the flesh again.

There was some discussion about whether Mitchell is writing an “uber” novel as in each of his books characters from previous books reappear. There is a scholarly work entitled  A Temporary Future: The Fiction of David Mitchell by Patrick O’Donnell, a study of all David Mitchell’s fiction up to The Bone Clocks which explores this idea. I have a copy of it, which I have yet to read in full. It’s somewhat abstruse and hard to read, I must admit, but I’ll persevere with it when I run out of more engaging reading matter.

The video of the interview with David Mitchell is now available on the Wheeler Centre website:


David Mitchell reading from The Bone Clocks –note: the protrusion on David’s lip is the remote mike.

I had taken along a big bag of books – it weighed a ton –  with five Mitchell novels and some of my collection of Jonathan Lethem novels.

One of the disadvantages of sitting in the front row, is getting out of the venue quickly enough to get a forward spot in the book signing queue.  It was a long queue and moved fairly slowly, but after hanging on for at least half an hour, I was able to get the rest of my David Mitchell collection signed, and express my appreciation for the care he takes in creating beautiful sentences, which was something he talked about in the session.


Jonathan Lethem & Chloe Hooper - Deakin Edge 19/5/15

It would have been a perfect occasion seeing just David Mitchell, but Jonathan Lethem was the icing on the cake.

His latest novel is Dissident Gardens, a “multigenerational saga of revolutionaries and activists, the civil rights movement and the counterculture, from the 1930s Communists to the 2010s Occupy movement, and is mostly set in Sunnyside Gardens, Queens and in Greenwich Village” from Wikipedia.

I recently read this novel and identified with the period and its leftist sympathies. It took me back to my revolutionary days in the 1960s and 70s.

The two leading characters are Rose Zimmer and her daughter Miriam and their strong personalities are portrayed vividly, Rose in particular.  Jonathan Lethem said in the discussion that Rose was based on his Communist grandmother and Miriam on his activist mother, who died when he was 13 years old.

His novel The Fortress of Solitude is semi autobiographical, set as it is in Brooklyn, where Jonathan Lethem lived as a child.

He had an unconventional bohemian childhood and originally wanted to be an artist like his father. However, from an early age he steeped himself in counterculture falling in love with books and music of all genres, and spent 12 years working in second hand bookstores whilst writing his early novels. He said he loved old battered second hand books and unfashionable writers of whom nobody, these days, has heard.  


Jonathan Lethem reading an excerpt from Dissident Gardens

Not as many people attended the Jonathan Lethem event, so the signing queue was shorter. Jonathan was friendly and pleasant in person, and obligingly signed the six novels I’d brought along, remarking on my old paperback copies of his first two books. He’d be pleased to know that three of the novels I took along were second hand copies.

A video of Jonathan Lethem's interview is also available on the Wheeler Centre website.

The four literary events that I have attended in the last week, were all different and interesting, from the old school literati of Claire Tomalin and Michael Frayn, to the young bloods of the Internet age  in the persons of David Mitchell and Jonathan Lethem, they were more than worth the cost of entry.

I hope to attend more in the future.

A Literary Smorgasbord–The Wheeler Centre 10 Days in May

I’m excited!

In the past I have been disappointed in missing several writers I should have liked to see in person at Melbourne’s Wheeler Centre but heard about the events too late or not at all.

One of the authors I missed whom I would dearly love to meet was Karen Joy Fowler, author of the wonderful We Are All Completely Beside Ourselves and The Jane Austen Book Club among other fine novels. The event was not advertised and I heard later that it was not well attended, so I figured that if I was to get news  of such events I should sign up for the Wheeler Centre newsletter if they had such a service.

I signed up a few months ago and it paid off handsomely the other evening when I received the Wheeler Centre newsletter with details of their Ten Days In May mini festival -  a spill over of International writers from the concurrent Sydney Writer’s Festival. 

Among them are two of my favourite authors – Jonathan Lethem and David Mitchell.

David Mitchell is famous, a modern literary lion adored by his reader fans for his clever books and beautiful prose style.  I did have the pleasure of seeing David Mitchell live several years ago and got my copy of his book The Thousand Autumns of Jacob De Zoet signed. This time I’ll be taking along a few more of his books including his latest, The Bone Clocks, to be signed.

Jonathan Lethem on the other hand  is not all that well known in Australia, except perhaps in Science Fiction circles.  He actually doesn’t write science fiction, but his books often contain fantastic elements. In my opinion his masterwork is Motherless Brooklyn, a sort of detective mystery whose narrator suffers from Tourette’s Syndrome.

I have been following Jonathan Lethem’s career from his first book titled Gun with Occasional Music, a hard boiled detective satire set in a bizarre future.  His second novel Amnesia Moon was just as strange – described on the cover as an amazing road noir novel of the fractal future. I have yet to read his latest novel Dissident Gardens, but intend to do so before his appearance in Melbourne.

I’ve booked for both of the above authors who will be at the Atrium, Federation Square on 19 May, one after the other.

It seems I have inclination to soak up  culture at the moment, for I’ve also booked tickets for Claire Tomalin and Michael Frayn who will be at the Wheeler Centre on 14 May, also as part of the mini festival. 

Claire Tomalin is a notable journalist and writer of several biographies of historical figures- Jane Austen, Samuel Pepys, Charles Dickens, to name a few. I have her biography of Mary Wollstoncraft in hard cover, which I purchased way back in 1975, so I’ll certainly be taking it along to be signed.

She is married to Michael Frayn who is known for his clever satirical novels. I have only one in my collection – his first novel,  The Tin Men, in a 1974 paperback.

I notice Helen Macdonald, author of H is for Hawk , a book I greatly enjoyed reading last year, is a guest at the Sydney Writer’s Festival. I’m disappointed that she will not be seen in Melbourne during that time, unless she comes later.

Hello 2015 – Cats & Books

I meant to write a post before the New Year, but somehow time slipped away and I didn’t get around to it.

2014 was a pretty good year for me, only marred by the deaths of two friends, who are still mourned and will live on in my memories. I hope 2015 will not be as stressful in that way, and that my friends, family and pets continue to survive in good health and spirits.

Willy, pictured above, will turn 11 in January and this month will also mark the second year that Talya, the Russian Princess, has been part of the Cat Politics domicile.

The happy cat herbal medicine appears to be working and apart from a fracas yesterday morning the cats seem cool and calm in the main.

The fracas occurred when both cats were sprawled on the bed in close proximity and Willy misinterpreted Talya’s body language as a threat. She was actually sneezing or coughing, but he thought she was hissing at him so he advanced on her personal space and the inevitable happened with much sound and fury on Talya’s part.  She sprang off the bed with Willy in hot pursuit and hid under it, shrieking. I persuaded Willy to back off and eventually, as breakfast was in the offing, Talya emerged as if nothing had happened and the cats milled around my ankles as I dished out their food, all aggro forgotten.

Monty the cat next door has been hanging around in our back garden quite a bit, but both he and Willy appear reluctant to come to blows. If they’re facing off on the fence, Willy allows me to lift him down without any fuss and wanders inside without a backward glance. When I got up the other morning I discovered Monty lounging on the back door step. The resident cats were outside as well, looking on, but not game enough to dislodge him. When he saw me he slunk off, which gave Talya and Willy their chance to pester me for breakfast.

Monty lounging on the decking outside the back door

On other matters, this time last year I was anticipating new novels from two of my favourite writers, those being David Mitchell and William Gibson, and I’m pleased to say that neither novel  was a disappointment. In fact The Bone Clocks (David Mitchell ) and The Peripheral (William Gibson) are among the best books I read this year, both being wonderfully written and interesting throughout.

Another book that glows in my brain is Tigerman by Nick Harkaway, a book about fathers and sons with the most unusual super hero in literature. This was the last book I read in 2014, and it is up there with the best. Nick Harkaway is the son of John Le Carré and has written three novels so far – The Gone Away World, Angelmaker & Tigerman-  all of which I have read and enjoyed. He’s a writer I’ll certainly be following in the future.

H is for Hawk by Helen Macdonald, which won the 2014 Samuel Johnson Prize for Non Fiction and the 2014 Costa Prize for Biography, is a standout. It’s a beautifully written memoir wherein Helen Macdonald, in the wake of her beloved father’s death, describes in glittering prose how she tried to cope with her grief by acquiring and training a goshawk.  As well as detailing her life with Mabel her goshawk, she muses on the sad lonely life of T. H. White who also wrote a book on training a goshawk in the 1950s, but is famous for his series of Arthurian novels collected under the title of The Once And Future King.

I’m still waiting for the 25th Anniversary Edition of John Crowley’s Little, Big, despite being hopeful at the beginning of last year it would be published in 2014.  Dare I hope to see it in 2015? It is after all 10 years since I subscribed to it, but surely will be worth the wait.

Speaking of collectable books, I was able to get a signed first edition of William Gibson’s The Peripheral, being alerted on Twitter by a Gibson fan that Barnes &  Noble had them available for pre-order. I was delighted to finally have a long desired, signed edition of one of his books.

And I lashed out on a slip cased, limited, numbered and signed edition of The Bone Clocks, which arrived on Christmas Eve - a nice present to myself.

There are several books I’m looking forward to in 2015. The final book in Hilary Mantel’s Thomas Cromwell trilogy, The Mirror and the Light, will possibly be released this year and Kate Atkinson is mooted to have new novel as well, about one the characters in Life After Life.

And I’ll have to clear another largish space on my bookshelf for Neal Stephenson’s new novel titled Seveneves, another 1000+ page novel due in May 2015. I like collecting his books in hardcover editions, even though they take up a lot of space, but they look wonderful on the shelf and are highly collectable, Stephenson being a nerdish cult hero.

Current hard cover collection of Neal Stephenson novels

No doubt there will be more good reads in the offing, and who knows there may be a new author out there who will blow me away.

With 2015 being barely begun, who knows what is in store in the next 12 months. I’ll no doubt be spending some of it at the racetrack. The Magic Millions 2 and 3 year old (outrageously rich) Classic races are scheduled on the Gold Coast this Saturday. I haven’t a clue as to who the likely winners will be, but they’re always interesting to watch.

The first Group 1 of the 2015 Autumn racing carnival is only a little over a month away, so there’s lots to look forward to on the racing scene.

With that, I wish readers of this blog (if there are any) good fortune, good health and happiness in 2015.

Welcome 2014 – Looking To The Future

It’s not yet a week into the New Year, but I’m thinking that 2014 could be a good one.

One of the reasons why I am feeling particularly optimistic is that two of my all time favourite writers will release new books this year.  New novels from David Mitchell and William Gibson are occasions for rejoicing in my opinion and very much worth the wait for their publication whenever that may be.

David Mitchell’s new novel is called The Bone Clocks and is described thus:

 ‘This  “rich and strange” novel will follow the story of Holly Sykes, who runs away from home in 1984 and 60 years later can be found in the far west of Ireland, raising a granddaughter as the world’s climate collapses.”

In between, Holly is encountered as a barmaid in a Swiss resort by an undergraduate sociopath in 1991; has a child with a foreign correspondent covering the Iraq War in 2003; and, widowed, becomes the confidante of a self-obsessed author of fading powers and reputation during the present decade. Holly’s life is repeatedly intersected by a slow-motion war between a cult of predatory soul-decanters and a band of vigilantes. Holly begins as an unwitting pawn in this war – but may prove to be its decisive weapon.

The publisher (Sceptre) said: “The arc of a life, a social seismograph, a fantasy of shadows and an inquiry into aging, mortality and survival, The Bone Clocks could only have been written by David Mitchell.”

Sounds good doesn’t it? But you’ll have to wait until early September to read it.

Over the past two mornings I have been watching on my iPad a long interview with William Gibson that was recorded at the New York Public Library in April 2013. I hadn’t  known about this interview until I noticed a reference to it on The Guardian Books Blog recently, where readers of the blog were asked what books they were looking forward to in 2014. As soon as I saw the recommendation for William Gibson’s new book, apparently titled The Peripheral, I followed the link and watched an excerpt of the interview where Gibson reads a few pages from the first chapter entitled The Gone Haptics.  I was so riveted by the excerpt that I felt compelled to watch the whole video. It is 1 hour 41 minutes long, but a really fascinating and revealing glimpse into the mind and methods of the acclaimed writer.

Rather than me describing it, there’s a good review of the interview on The Awl . However, it doesn’t mention some bits of the interview that I found really interesting.

William Gibson is an original prose stylist, his style being smart, dry and crisp with apt analogies. During the course of the interview, part of a track from Bruce Springsteen's Darkness on the Edge of Town is played. The ensuing conversation was a revelation for me and also one of those moments when you say to yourself “Of course!”  Gibson’s style is to literature what Springsteen’s lyrics are music.

PAUL HOLDENGRÄBER: Speaking of music, let’s listen to something.

(Bruce Springsteen, “Darkness on the Edge of Town”)

PAUL HOLDENGRÄBER: So you’ve said of this album that it had quite an important influence in some way, that’s Springsteen, and this album of Springsteen in particular. How so?

WILLIAM GIBSON: Around the same time I was looking—looking for an arena that I could write science fiction in, I was looking for voices that resonated for me that I had never encountered in my reading of science fiction and in that album I found that really abundantly. I mean, I would listen to that I think what I thought was, “Wow, what if there was a kind of science fiction in which this is the voice of the protagonist?”

Gibson goes on to say that “when I started trying to put my own science fiction together, it wasn’t as though these characters were springing fully formed from my brow, I couldn’t even figure out how to do characters, but Springsteen, who is a superb writer of fiction, a superb writer of fiction as a lyricist, and an absolute master of terse but intense characterization gave me, gave me that and, you know, I studied him very carefully, and Lou Reed as well..”

The above conversation was about William Gibson’s first novel Neuromancer wherein he is credited with coining the term “cyberspace” and is hailed as the Godfather of Cyberpunk. Gibson explains in the interview how he came up with the word cyberspace...

Dataspace didn’t work, and infospace didn’t work. Cyberspace. It sounded like it meant something, or it might mean something, but as I stared at it in red Sharpie on a yellow legal pad, my whole delight was that I knew that it meant absolutely nothing.

Anyway, if you’ve read William Gibson’s novels or not, I highly recommend watching the interview. William Gibson comes across as modest, humorous and quirky, and talks just like he writes.

Another book that I have been awaiting for over 8 years is a special edition of John Crowley’s wondrous novel Little, Big.

Yes, the Little, Big 25th Anniversary Edition, is by all accounts almost at the printing stage and will - cross fingers - be published this year.  I subscribed to this edition way back in February 2005 and have been waiting patiently over the ensuing time. I’m sure it will be worth it – a book of superlative beauty and highly collectable.

By a curious coincidence, I learned of this edition on the William Gibson message board back in 2003/04, where Ron Drummond who is the publisher Incunabula and also the editor of the new edition, mentioned it in passing on one of the active threads at the time.

So that’s three things I am anticipating in 2014. What other thrills await me?

For a start, I’m heading off with a friend to Bendigo this Wednesday on a day outing, ostensibly to see the Modern Love Exhibition at the Bendigo Art Gallery.  We’re utilising one of our Senior’s free travel vouchers, so it will be a bit of an adventure. I haven’t visited Bendigo for decades, if ever. And there is a Space Age Books connection. The Director of Bendigo Art Gallery is Karen Quinlan, whom my friend and I both knew when she and her sisters worked at Space Age in the 1970s/80s.

Gibson photo credit Michael O’Shea

David Mitchell – Superstar Writer at the Athenaeum

I don’t suppose you can generally call a writer a superstar, but the huge turn out at the Athenaeum Theatre last night for noted literary light David Mitchell, gave the impression that wordsmiths can warrant such status.

David Mitchell himself admitted that he envied musicians, who can obtain an instant response from their audience as to the acceptability of their musical offerings, being out there in the glare of the spotlight a lot of the time, whereas writers, having a solitary occupation, rarely receive such feedback . He did mention though that he enjoyed touring and meeting his readers face to face.

He came across as charming, funny and unaffected; he has an appealing and attractive personality that was friendly and cheerful to all those who queued for his signature.

As these sort of events go, not that I’ve been to many, it was interesting and engaging throughout. It started with David Mitchell reading from his latest novel The Thousand Autumns of Jacob De Zoet, then Melbourne Writers Festival Program Manager, Jenny Niven posed several questions about his writing process. He spoke at length about his methods of research and the problems inherent in writing an historical novel. All very interesting and wittily expressed by the guest of honour.

After a few audience questions, it was a matter of getting in line for the signing. It was a long queue, but David Mitchell seemed indefatigable. I only took my copy of Thousand Autumns, and was pleased to have it signed, though others seemed to have brought along his entire opus.


David Mitchell has been widely praised for his writing, and I have no arguments with that, as I recall my delight when I first discovered his books when Cloud Atlas was published. I was entranced by the novel and awestruck by Mitchell’s clever sleight of hand prose. At my time of life it was thrilling to discover a writer of Mitchell’s calibre as such beguiling writers are all too infrequent.