Reading By Moonlight by Brenda Walker

Release Date (Australia): 29 March 2010

Rating: 7/10

The first time Brenda packed her bag to go into hospital, she wondered which book to take. Her life had been built around reading and writing. Now she was also a patient, being treated for breast cancer, battling for her life and terrified for herself and her family. But turning to medicine didn’t mean she turned away from literature. Books had always been her solace and sustenance, and now, choosing the right one was the most important thing she could do for herself.

A book that has the subtitle “How books saved a life” is naturally going to catch my eye. I am a firm believer in the idea that art, whether it be in the form of books or music or any other kind, can save your life. It can help you through things you don’t believe you’re strong enough to survive and sometimes you don’t want to burden the people you love with how much pain you might be in or how sick you feel. There are books that I have re-read more than ten times and with those books are the individual memories of who I was and where I was in my life at each reading. “My” books, as I tend to call the ones I hold close to my heart, are the ones that such memories are attached to. They are my lifelines.

Brenda Walker is a Perth author who has written of the books that helped her through the surgery and chemotherapy for breast cancer. Reading By Moonlight is beautifully written and shows the reader how the process of reading can almost mirror the process of healing. Many authors are delved into throughout the book, but some of Brenda’s favourites seem to include Samuel Beckett, Dante Alighieri, Leo Tolstoy, Vladimir Nabokov, and Charles Dickens. The insights into the writers and books are fascinating, intelligent, and often beautiful.

Empathy, the way that we can place ourselves, imaginatively, in the position of another person, is at the heart of what we do as readers, as people striving for a generous understanding of one another.

The book is broken up into Brenda’s five stages of treatment – surgery, chemotherapy, radiation, reconstruction, and survival. Her writing enters a positivity to the horrific process of breast cancer, a disease that affects almost everyone in some way, whether it be directly, or through a family member or friend with the disease. Stories are told with emotional optimism; Brenda’s first thought after her diagnosis was that she can’t leave her son alone.

That’s when it came, the simultaneous sense of falling and of being crushed. I was thinking about my son. He was fourteen then. I knew, urgently, that I couldn’t leave him...

I thoroughly enjoyed reading this book and being given the opportunity to gain understanding about many authors I knew, many authors I have read, and a few authors I hadn’t even heard of until now. I do hope that readers are not put off reading a biography such as this simply because of the protagonist’s breast cancer and the assumption it will be a depressing read; they will miss out on one of the most optimistic and uplifting stories of survival and an author with a natural love of reading and of life.

When I tell myself that books can save a life, I don’t mean that books can postpone death. That is the job of medicine. I mean that certain books, by showing us the inner fullness of individual life, can rescue us from a limited view of ourselves and one another.

Favourite Author Focus: John Marsden

Seven young people go camping in a wild place known as Hell. They emerge to find their homes empty, their animals dead, their country invaded. How much courage does it take just to stay alive?

As a break from exam study, and due to my lack of time to read more than half a book in the last week, I thought I’d update about my favourite author of all time. I started reading John Marsden’s books in 1993 at the age of eight. Since then, I always think of him first as my favourite author. He would be the author I would choose if I could only read one person’s books for the rest of my life, without a doubt. (Sorry, Neil, you know I love you, too.)

Is there something wrong when your main ambition in life is to be dead?

John Marsden, for those of you not from Australia (or somehow not aware of if you are Australian) is an Australian author who is most known for the Tomorrow series, the first of which is soon to be made into a movie. He writes about hard hitting topics in many of his novels - parental abuse and looking different in So Much To Tell You, psychiatric wards in Checkers, juvenile detention in Letters From the Inside, suicide and sex in Dear Miffy, parental deaths with an unexpected twist in Winter, and of course the possibility of invasion and war in Australia in the Tomorrow series. Homosexuality, anorexia, self-injury and many other ‘controversial’ aspects are also delved into across Marsden’s stories.

Dreamed about you again. Like I do most nights. Sometimes it’s nightmares. Sometimes it’s good dreams. Sometimes I have to change the sheets.

There is a band I believe saved my life, because I feel like without them I would never have been able get through some of the things I went through as a teenager. I think the same about John Marsden’s books. I have scattered memories of reading his books in numerous different hospitals, in waiting rooms, while listening to doctors’ have group meetings to talk about their future “plans” for me: taking my face off or breaking my jaw or cutting through my skull behind my ears to reconstruct my ear canals. I pulled ‘packing’ (special gauze) out of my right ear after having surgery when I was 12 years old because I was absent-mindedly fiddling with my ear while reading Burning For Revenge. When it came out, blood went everywhere. While my mother was panicking about my ear and the damage I might have caused, I was only upset about my now blood-covered book. The following year, when I first heard someone say something nasty to my face about the way I look, I thought, “This is how Marina felt.” That’s why So Much To Tell You is my favourite book of all time and the title of this blog.

I don’t know what I’m doing here. Well, I do, really... I have been sent here to learn to talk again. Sent here because my mother can’t stand my silent presence at home. Sent here because of my face...

John Marsden’s stories were, and still are, a significant part of my life and I truly cannot imagine my life without them. He is the only person I’ve ever drafted a fan letter to, multiple in fact (unless you count the letters I’ve drafted to the craniofacial surgeon I saw for 16 years; he is the person I admire most in the world). I felt like I couldn’t put into words what John's stories meant to me and still feel like that today. So let’s just leave it as this: they changed my life.

I’m an expert on fear now. I think I’ve felt every strong feeling there is: love, hate, jealousy. But fear’s the greatest of them all. Nothing reaches inside you and grabs you by the guts the way fear does. Nothing else possesses you like that.

When Dogs Cry by Markus Zusak

Release Date (Australia):

1 November 2001; reprinted 1 May 2010.

Rating: 7.5/10

“You’re a bit of a lonely bastard, aren’t you?” said Rube.
“Yeah,” I answered, “I guess I am.”
But Cameron Wolfe is hungry.
He’s sick of being the filthy, torn, half-smiling, half-scowling underdog.
He’s finally met a girl.
He’s got words in his spirit.
And now he’s out to prove there’s nothing more beautiful than an underdog who’s willing to stand up.

I am a huge fan of The Book Thief and, especially, The Messenger by Markus Zusak. I haven’t read The Underdog or Fighting Ruben Wolfe, both of which feature the family of main characters in When Dogs Cry. However, I found it didn’t matter at all and it is very much a stand-alone novel.

I love the stories that Markus Zusak creates; I like to see the ‘underdog’ stand up and be counted as incredible, as so many of them are. Cameron’s story is one of bravery and family, love and acceptance, and the passage from youth to adulthood. Early in the book, Cameron is seen as the ‘loser’ of his family, but with some guidance from Octavia Ash, he begins to see himelf in a new way and accept that he can be ‘someone’, especially through his ability to write. Each chapter ends with a snippet of Cameron’s writing and the reader receives a chance to see his ‘words’.

The main thing I fall in love with in Markus Zusak’s stories is the poetic beauty of the language he uses to write them. I always admire writers that can use language in such a beautiful and stunning way, yet have it be so simple at the same time.

Silence bent down then, just for a moment, and whispered to each of us.

Although When Dogs Cry is a book intended for young adults, I would recommend it to anyone from age 14 to late 20s that appreciates a story of the underdog gaining the strength to rise up written through magnificent use of the English language.

I think now, of the edges of words, the loyalty of blood, the music of girls, the hands of brothers, and of hungry dogs that howl through the night.

Once, Then, and Now by Morris Gleitzman

Release Date (Australia):

1 August 2005; 2 June 2008; 3 May 2010.

Rating: 9.5/10

Once I escaped from an orphanage to find Mum and Dad.
Once I saved a girl called Zelda from a burning house.
Once I made a Nazi with a toothache laugh.
My name is Felix.
This is my story.

A couple of years ago, I read a book (at age 23) for children aged approximately 10+. It made me cry and laugh and was easily one of the best books I have ever read. Not one of the best kids' books; one of the best books. That book was Once, by Morris Gleitzman, the first in the trilogy of Once, Then, and Now.

Morris Gleitzman is an Australian author known for his funny, yet intelligently written, children's books. Once, Now, and Then all keep this humour in amongst the heartbreaking and beautiful story of Felix and his friend Zelda and their experiences in Nazi Germany during the Holocaust. I won't give too much away about the events that occur in Once and Then, but I really came to love these characters more than almost any other characters I've ever encountered in fiction.

Having just recently finished reading Now, the third book in the series, it made me want to write about how beautiful these books are. Now is slightly different in that it is set in the present day and Felix is now a grandfather, but it is still a moving story of the strength of family and love in times of crisis.

At the end of each of these books, Morris Gleitzman encourages his readers to learn more about the events that occurred during the Holocaust and the voices of the survivors by providing a link on his website to other books on these matters.

I strongly recommend these stories to anyone, not just children, who is interested in reading a beautiful story and learning more about the history of the Holocaust.

I had a plan for me and Zelda.
Pretend to be someone else.
Find new parents.
Be safe forever.
Then the Nazis came.