Together Alone: The Story of the Finn Brothers by Jeff Apter

Release Date (Australia): 1 June 2010
Rating: 7/10

The hits of Neil and Tim Finn read like a checklist of recent pop history. And to think it all began in sleepy, rural Te Awamutu, New Zealand, where Brian Timothy Finn fell in love with The Beatles, an obsession that would also work its way into his younger brother Neil’s DNA. Based on interviews, critical analysis, extensive research, and the author’s 30+ years of following the Finns, Together Alone is the first biography written about the Finn brothers. This is a story of breakthroughs, breakdowns, sibling rivalry and respect – and some of the best pop songs this side of Lennon and McCartney.

I have been listening to Tim and Neil Finn, in some form or another, for my entire life. My mother is from New Zealand and her influence on this love of mine from such an early age is undeniable – she has been listening to them since the late 1970s. The earliest song I ever remember loving by anyone is “History Never Repeats” by Split Enz. Crowded House, the most famous incarnation of their music, formed the year I was born. I was 12 years old the first time I saw Neil Finn live; it was my second live concert and is a large part of the reason I fell in love with live music. Seeing Neil perform live (and he wasn’t even my favourite - Tim was, is, and always will be) blew my mind. As a child with a hearing loss, I still loved music so much but it had to be loud, which wasn’t always possible without bothering other people. Sometimes listening to music could be a struggle and required concentration. I couldn’t understand the lyrics or hear the individual instruments within a song unless the volume was high. Live music never posed this issue for me: it was always loud. I loved seeing live bands at 12 and still love it beyond almost anything 13 years later. I love that feeling in your heart like your whole body can feel the music. Tim and Neil Finn are a large part behind my early development of a love for music in general. Their songs are still among the most beautiful songs I have heard and Tim Finn, especially circa Split Enz, is one of the most inventive, creative and original songwriters I have ever had the pleasure of listening to.

I read a biography Jeff Apter wrote about Silverchair years ago, despite never being a significant fan of Silverchair. But I loved Apter’s biography: it was written intelligently and with just the right amount of distance and personality. He wrote considerately of Daniel Johns' illnesses and the struggle of those young kids learning to cope with such sudden, incredible fame. This book, as well as his biography of Dave Grohl, really made me respect Jeff Apter as a biographer, which is a difficult thing to do successfully. I was therefore intrigued when I heard he was releasing a book on the Finn brothers. I know far too much about Tim and Neil to be deemed healthy, hence I wasn’t sure how much reading a biography would give me in terms of new information. I was also apprehensive because a lot of people can make it all about Neil – and make Tim look somewhat irrelevant – simply because Neil was the 'successful' one to reach fame in the United States, especially with Crowded House.

“I was endlessly fascinated by music, partly by looking at it through Tim’s eyes, because he was six years older than me and what he was doing seemed incredibly evolved.”

I needn’t have worried. Apter wrote beautifully and carefully of the entire story of the brothers – from family days in Te Awamutu to the early days of Split Enz, from the success of Split Enz after Neil joined to the eventual disbanding of the band, from Tim’s solo career and formation of Crowded House, from Tim joining Crowded House to the end of the band, and the joining of the brothers in the two Finn Brothers projects. He discussed the ups and downs of the brothers' relationship carefully and without bias.

Most importantly to me, Apter wrote of Crowded House drummer, Paul Hester’s suicide with dignity and respect: briefly discussing the aftermath on a personal level for Paul’s family, but largely concentrating on the Royal Albert Hall shows the Finns were scheduled to play the days after his death, with Nick Seymour flying in to join them. These shows meant a lot to the musicians and the fans alike, in a sharing of the grief felt after the shock that Paul was gone and that someone so lovable and funny had decided to leave this world in such a way.

When the curtain rose, a row of three mic stands had been set up in the middle of the stage, along with a solitary snare drum, a nod to the usual Crowded House set-up for “Sister Madly” and a very obvious tribute to Hester.

I have read a lot of music biographies, many of them not very good, but to anyone that has an interest in Tim Finn, Neil Finn, Crowded House or Split Enz, this is a perfect introduction to two men from a tiny town in New Zealand who have created some of the most beautiful pop songs in existence (and worn some of the craziest outfits in existence, too).

Eating Animals by Jonathan Safran Foer

Release date (Australia): 1 November 2009

Rating: 9.5/10

“This story didn’t begin as a book. I simply wanted to know – for myself and my family – what meat is. Where does it come from? How is it produced? What are the economic, social and environmental effects? Are there animals that it is straightforwardedly right to eat? Are there situations in which not eating animals is wrong? If this began as a personal quest, it didn’t stay that way for very long...” Jonathan Safran Foer

I am a vegetarian. Let’s just put that out there. I find there are generally two types of reactions to this statement: either the person firmly (read: rudely) states their beliefs as to why meat is necessary for good nutrition and I must be very unhealthy or the person feels the need to tell me how they “barely” eat meat at all and they’re “pretty much” a vegetarian. Either way, I hate it. I hate these reactions because I just don’t care if you eat meat. I stopped eating meat when I was eight years old because I strongly disliked it. I might have become vegetarian as time went on for the animal aspect, but it’s impossible to know. I think that’s why I never thought seriously about trying these foods again as I grew older to see if my tastes had changed. But I’ll never know if I would have the willpower to stop eating red meat, chicken and seafood solely because I don’t like the idea of eating animals.

I have often felt that my vegetarianism matters more to such people than it does to me.

I do, however, like Jonathan Safran Foer. A lot. Everything Is Illuminated and Extremely Loud & Incredibly Close are two of my favourite books in existence. Their beauty, humour and originality still astound me each time I read them and I love recommending them to anyone that will listen to me at the bookstore I work at. I somehow managed to be unaware of his writing of this book until it arrived in the store as a new release. I was thrilled when I realised what the book was, because Jonathan Safran Foer writes in such a beautiful way that I assumed it would translate effortlessly into non-fiction and make the dry, often harsh, facts of meat production more readable. Again, I was lucky to be right about this.

Cruelty depends on an understanding of cruelty, and the ability to choose against it. Or to choose to ignore it.

Despite being a vegetarian myself, I was relieved the book was not an argument for vegetarianism – I don’t like forceful opinions or being ‘told’ what to think, regardless of whether I agree with the person or not. If anything, the book was an argument against factory farming and the way in which animals are treated in such cruel ways, but this is presented in a factual manner without much of the judgements that are usually thrown in with any discussion of eating meat, seafood, eggs, and dairy. Jonathan Safran Foer freely admits his own varying degrees of vegetarianism over the course of his life and by no means states that this is the way in which human beings should live.

On average, Americans eat the equivalent of 21,000 entire animals in a lifetime.

The only minor issue with the book, for me personally, was that it was purely focused on the American meat industry, which doesn’t necessarily provide complete relevance to non-American readers. This is not surprising, given that Jonathan Safran Foer is American and researching even just Western world would be an almost impossible job to undertake. I like the fact that he allows the factory farmers, animal activists and many other people to speak for themselves.

Eating was carefree. My grandmother made that life possible for us. But she was, herself, unable to shake the desperation.

What I loved most about the book was the personal aspect; for example, Jonathan discussing his grandmother who only survived the Holocaust by eating repulsive things from rubbish bins and then her future of savouring food like she was constantly preparing for war. It was these stories interwoven within the often devastating facts that made this easily the most amazing and intelligently written discussion of eating animals that I have ever come across. I struggle to see how anyone could read this book and be the same person they were when they started it.

Food matters and animals matter and eating animals matters even more.

Favourite Author Focus: Henry Rollins

When I was 11 years old, I started to gain an interest in the music my older brother was getting into. The first song I really liked was “Come As You Are” and it’s because of that song that Nirvana is the first band I felt a passion for (other than Split Enz). I didn’t really know who Kurt Cobain was when he died; I didn’t know his music or his words that only couple of years later I would completely fall in love with. Within the next few months of this ‘discovery’ of Nirvana, my brother played me a few other songs he thought I might like; I wasn’t particularly interested in most of them. I just listened to Nirvana incessantly. Then one day not long before turning 12, I walked past my brother’s room and heard a song playing and stopped dead. I went and asked him what it was and he said, “I’m not sure. It’s the second song on that single I played you the other day. All I Want. It’s by The Offspring, I don’t remember what this song is called.” I picked up the single and checked the track listing. “Way Down the Line. It’s called Way Down the Line.” That day changed nearly every aspect of my life to come. It’s because of that band, that song, that I became enamored with music with no return. I had to know everything about them; I learned the lead singer and bass player had a record label – and I had to know all of the bands on that label. (Oh, AFI, how much amusement you have given me over the years and how you changed my life.) It’s through that obsession of knowing everything about that one band and the musicians that they associated with and the music they were associated with by others that I fell in love with a little thing called punk rock.

When I was 14 and I had access to the internet and international online sites where I could order CDs that were impossible to find (or ridiculously expensive) in Australia, I could finally gain access to numerous albums I’d been wanting for a while. I also decided I wanted to learn more about the ‘classic’ punk bands from the 1970s and 1980s. Two of these were Black Flag and Minor Threat. I learned what straight edge was, a movement which still fascinates me a decade later. But more importantly, I learned of the most recognisable ex-lead singer of Black Flag: Henry Rollins. By this time time it was 2000 and Henry was in Rollins Band and, to be honest, the first thing that made me want to know more about him was his tattoos. I became obsessed with tattoos when I was 14 and just never moved past it. Luckily for me that I did develop this obsession, because delving further into the brilliance of Henry Rollins is easily one of the best things I have ever decided to do.

In the last ten years, I am yet to come across someone whose intelligence surpasses Henry Rollins’. His musical talent, his knowledge, his ability to work with such intense energy at all times, his writing, and his love of travel are only a few of the reasons why I find him truly amazing. The fact that I can sit and listen to him talk for three hours and still not want him to stop really does show his incredible ability to speak and keep his audience interested. As a lover of books for my entire life, finding out he wrote books based on his journals was wonderful to me. The first Henry Rollins book I read in early 2001 was Smile, You’re Traveling. It was the latest of his books when I decided to order one from Amazon to see what his writing was like, but I mostly chose to order it because I loved the title. This book was largely focused on the writing and recording of Rollins Band’s last album and, despite the fact that I’m not even a huge fan of Rollins Band, I still managed to finish this book wanting to read everything else Henry Rollins had written and would write in the future. The way he writes about travelling makes me want to get on a plane then and there and go somewhere I’ve never been before and experience a whole new world. As it turns out, all of his books do this for me.

Not long after this, I read Get in the Van and Black Coffee Blues. Get in the Van became my favourite then, because I loved reading about Black Flag and the things that happened in that era - not only of Henry’s life but also of music itself. Black Coffee Blues more fully introduced me to Henry’s wicked sense of humour and even for that alone, I loved it. See a Grown Man Cry, Now Watch Him Die kind of broke my heart. Reading about Henry witnessing the murder of his friend Joe Cole was heartbreaking. You can tell he was in a (particularly) dark place in this book, but despite the anger, violence, loneliness, and pain held within this book, it only made me love Henry more. Broken Summers is my all-time favourite of his books now. I didn’t even know who the West Memphis Three were until I read it but I read the book (and far too many websites about the WM3) in two days because it intrigued me. I am also a nerd for loving this book the most, because of the mentions of Ryan Adams, Tim Armstrong, Lars Fredrickson, Dee Dee Ramone, Iggy Pop, and so many others involved in the recording of the Black Flag cover album they did for the West Memphis Three. More recently, A Preferred Blur is quite similar to Smile, You’re Traveling – Henry generally talks about travel, touring (doing spoken word shows), and all of his usual suspects: religion, music, current affairs, the Bush administration, life. His travels to Pakistan, Iran, Lebanon, and Syria interested me because I haven’t travelled to any Middle Eastern countries as yet. There are numerous other books Henry Rollins has written, but these are some of my favourites. Really, I could write about him all day.

Thank you, Henry Garfield, for becoming the man that is Henry Rollins and in many ways changing my life: my outlook on music and travel, as well as my ability to push myself further to accomplish the things I feel I need to do.

“If I lose the light of the sun, I will write by candlelight, moonlight, no light. If I lose paper and ink, I will write in blood on forgotten walls. I will write always. I will capture nights all over the world and bring them to you.” Henry Rollins

Alice I Have Been by Melanie Benjamin

Release date (Australia): 1 March 2010

Rating: 7/10

“I was inspired to write Alice I Have Been after unexpectedly viewing a photographic exhibit called ‘Dreaming in Pictures: The Photography of Lewis Carroll’. Among the many photographs there, one stood out to me. It was of a young girl clad only in rags, but with an expression on her face that stopped me in my tracks. She was so adult, so frank, so worldly, as she gazed at the man behind the camera. She was 7-year-old Alice Liddell. It was to her that Lewis Carroll - or Charles Dodgson, as she knew him - told the story of a little girl who tumbled down a rabbit hole. She was the one who begged him to write it down.

I wondered what happened to her after she grew up; I wondered what happened between the two of them to result in such a startling photograph. I wondered so much that I decided to write about it, write her story in her own ‘words’ - although of course, with historical fiction, I got to make those words up.” Melanie Benjamin

I am incredibly in love with Alice’s Adventures in Wonderland and Through the Looking Glass and have been since I was a little girl. I have a collection of different versions of these books and really, I’m just a complete nerd about them. When I first read about Alice I Have Been being released, I was a little excited but a mostly apprehensive. I didn’t want the story to possibly taint my love for Alice by focusing too much on the relationship between Charles Dodgson and Alice Liddell when there is not a great deal of fact to work with in regards to this relationship. Luckily, it only made my love for Lewis Carroll's stories stronger and it is a true credit to author Melanie Benjamin’s beautiful writing. The fluidity and poetry of her writing makes me wish I could ever write so well.

Try as I might, I could not understand how one man – one shy man with a camera, a stammer, and an endless supply of stories – could be responsible for so much disarray.

In the story, readers’ see Alice in three phases of her life - as a young child, a young woman, and an old woman. It is as a young child, up until the age of 11, that the reader largely see Charles Dodgson’s involvement in Alice and her siblings’ lives while they were growing up. The lack of facts surrounding Alice Liddell and Mr Dodgson’s relationship is at least partly as a result of missing diary entries around the time in which their relationship ceased. Hence, in Alice I Have Been, this is largely made up and in my opinion, dealt with quite well.

A man who fancied himself a child and a child who thought she was a woman turned to each other on a hot summer day , mindful of nothing, no one, but each other – not even the sister who sat opposite, watching.

One thing I really liked about the book is the reminders of the era that it is set in, because odd things occur which would not happen to the same extent these days (especially in the relationships between those higher up in society, such as Princes, and women or children). The reader is reminded of what is controversial at the time (such as having a skirt a certain distance above the ankle but still below the knee) and how commonplace it is for a young woman of 16 to marry a man 15 years her senior (especially if he is equal to or above her in the social hierarchy).

I was grateful to be in Oxford, at least, where young ladies attending lectures and reading books wasn’t quite as shocking as it would have been in a more fashionable place, such as London.

I enjoyed the way the story unfolded in a non-linear format, from one important era in Alice’s life to another rather than simply year to year. I found older Alice far more fascinating to read about than Alice as a child, which seems to differ to most readers of this story. Small things such as Alice’s sons finding out she is “Alice in Wonderland” after finding her original copy of Alice’s Adventures Under Ground (published as Alice’s Adventures in Wonderland) made the story touching and beautiful at times without being over the top. As a fan of Lewis Carroll’s books, I did not find Alice I Have Been to ‘ruin’ Alice for me or anything to that effect and simply found it to be an enjoyable read which shed some light on Alice Pleasance Liddell and her life.

For eighty years I have been, at various times, a gypsy girl, a muse, a lover, a mother, a wife. But for one man, and for the world, I will always be a seven-year-old girl named Alice.

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.

The Castle in the Pyrenees by Jostein Gaardner

Release Date (Australia): 1 May 2010

Rating: 8/10

Two former lovers meet across space and time. But what brought them back together? And can they really trust their pasts? A dialogue between world views reopens and an old love burns again...

I love Sophie’s World by Jostein Gaardner. I think it’s one of the most amazing creations in this life. That book is a significant part of the reason as to why I became fascinated by philosophy and history at quite a young age. It was a difficult read the first time I read it; I was 11 years old. Reading about Aristotle, Plato, Kant, Descartes, Satre, Marx, Darwin, and Freud, among others was a lot to take in when I didn’t really know any of them or their ideas when I began the book. My favourites were the empiricists, John Locke and David Hume. (Is it any wonder I fell in love with Lost?) I went on to study these two, and Freud, in particular at university and loved every second of it. I thoroughly enjoy reading about the different theories behind human existence and human actions. This and my love for history (especially Russian) is not something I often talk about, but when I find someone that is interested in the same kind of things, I can ramble for hours.

What Jung called synchronicity is just pure, simple coincidence in my opinion.

I’ve never read anything else by Jostein Gaardner, which might seem a bit strange to some people, but sometimes a book has such an impact on me I almost don’t want to ‘taint’ it with another book by the same author that might not live up to my expectations. When A Castle in Pyrenees was released, I gave into temptation given that it is written in a similar style to Sophie’s World and returned to the world of philosophy as well as the possibility of psychic phenomena. This time it is intertwined with a love story that makes the sometimes dry facts much easier and more fluid to read. The overwhelming questions within the book are the issues of science vs. faith, facts vs. destiny, control vs. destiny. Is reason the only aspect that sheds light on human existence or are there greater forces at play?

I see this new contact as a stream of thought vibrating between two souls rather than an exchange of correspondence which will be there between us forever.

Told in correspondence format, similar to Sophie’s World (except this time via email, as it’s no longer 1995), Steinn represents the firm belief in science and Solrunn can’t understand a lack of belief in fate or destiny. Between their emails written over a couple of weeks after they fatefully (or coincidentally) meet again after decades apart, they discuss their different opinions and ideas on how and why they met again and also their contrasting versions of their history together. I loved this book, but I can certainly see how it would not be everyone’s cup of tea. If you have even a minor interest in philosophy or the issue of science vs. faith, you will most likely love it as I did – but if such things bore you, the book’s love story may not be able to make you fall in love with the story alone.

Perhaps Jesus was able to walk on water because the Sea of Galilee was covered in ice!

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.