Book fair is my friend

Yesterday I went to our uni's massive biannual book fair (also including audiobooks, records, cds, random crap..but mostly books). Apparently they have over a million items!

It's quite an amazing sight. The Great Hall is more full than I bet you've ever seen it - packed out with long rows of trestle tables piled with books, boxes and boxes of books under the tables, people milling about carrying piles or boxes of books and bumping into each other. There's people pawing through the books, some systematic, some turning a page here, another there.. digging through boxes, flicking through rows.. there's a whole row of dear old volunteers adding up the purchases, a guy with a microphone up the front interjecting now and then regarding some exciting book or other on offer.

There are children's books, art books, languages, literature, fiction, crime, collectibles, religion, poetry, cooking, gardening, history, philosophy, psychology, health, and more. Even an "Interesting" section - for all the books they couldn't think where else to put. I found an assessment of London's loos there. Up to date as of the 1920s I think.

And what did I find, on my brief sojourn there?

I was hoping you'd ask!

GK Chesterton: The Everlasting Man

Manalive

The Club of Queer Trades

The Napoleon of Notting Hill

Hillaire Belloc: The Green Overcoat

George MacDonald: Fairytales and Stories for the Childlike (donated by J)

The Marquis' Secret

Prayers of St Francis

Diana Wynne Jones: The Magicians of Caprona

The Rubaiyat of Omar Khayyam

Paulo Coelho: Veronika Decides to Die

Longfellow:Poetical Works

A book on Impressionism

Rudyard Kipling: Kim

T.S. Eliot: Old Possum's Book of Practical Cats (x2)

Four Quartets (love this!)

Arundhati Roy: The Ordinary Person's Guide to Empire

Myth, Magic and Meaning in Tolkien's World (Randel Helms)

Jean Vanier: The Broken Body

Ralph Morton: The Iona Community Story

E.L. Allen: a Guide to the Thought of Karl Barth

a Guide to the Thought of Reinhold Niebuhr (I dunno, sounded interesting!)

the 10 laws of leadership

a couple of cute Joan Walsh Anglund books

a couple of the Number One Ladies' Detective Agency books

Anne Rice: Christ the Lord - the Road to Cana

Barclay's commentary on John

..and I didn't even get to all the tables!

All those for a total of $21.90. Bargain!!

It's on all week, so if you like books you should defo check it out :)

Jonsi Jonsi Jonsi

It's hard to describe what this concert was like, just one of those had-to-be-there things really. The article further down catches a little of it.


What I remember is feeling like I swelled almost to exploding point with some rather weird, rare kind of music-induced joy. And that I wished he could have played all night at the very least.


I remember us walking, loitering dizzily, skipping, maybe even floating down the rainy street afterwards, getting gelato, hanging off chairs in the sheltered entry to a cinema, alternating between bursting with talk and drifting into happy dazed silences... haha

Darkness and light infused with the joy of being alive

Bernard Zuel - August 4, 2010 SMH

JONSI, Enmore Theatre, August 2

MAYBE the way to understand what it is about Jon Thor Birgisson which appeals (but could just as easily deter, I know) is to step inside the celeste-and-thundering-drums song Animal Arithmetic.

Here, the tall, boyish-looking Icelander usually called Jonsi describes a day of seeming mundanity, of haircuts and breakfast and riding bikes. Then he declares with unfettered enthusiasm, ''every day, everywhere, people are alive … we should all be alive'' as the music rattles along like a pack of pre-teens bursting out the school gates at 3pm.

It could be tacked-on naivety, the sort of faux innocence which grates. Somehow, though, Jonsi finds a way to channel the energy and pleasure of childhood without sinking into childishness (certainly not when another line equally excitedly declares ''get it on, let it out, f---ing and erupting''); to revel in optimism without turning into Pollyanna.

His music and his voice marvel at the colour and spirit of just being and churn with the rolling energy of it, and you can't help but be lifted. Just as you find yourself in some unfeasibly sunny corner when Go Do gallops past you. Go on, it says, I dare you to let go.

Jonsi and his small, multiskilled band, whose members all find a way to play various ancient keyboards, vibraphone, percussion, guitar and bass, don't just do sunniness. The show begins with a slow, darkened mood, grows into something like secular hymns (Grow Till Tall is as angelic and moving as anything by Thomas Tallis) and then, as light bursts through, fills out into a meaty and vigorous width.

Although the night ends with a cataclysmic shower of light and volume and cascading drums which is simply thrilling, these songs are not intended to be as dramatic as the music Jonsi makes with Sigur Ros. Instead they trade on a view that innocence and pleasure can sit next to maturity and heartbreak. We should all be so alive.