Lit Chic: Part 2 – Lit Wits

Need an inspirational theme for your next soirée? Take a page from the lit wits, who are leading the way with book-lined parties. It's the hottest thing in entertaining at the moment – or should that be the wittiest thing? If you love books and want to incorporate them into your next dinner party or 'do', begin with some of the beautiful ideas on sites such as pinterest.com/randomhouse/literary-wedding and other bookish sources.

Here are a few of my favourite pix from the Random House Pinterest page, including this (above) - a catalogue of guest seating cards. {Detailed sources from each individual image on this site. NB If I have featured your photos and you would like to be credited here as well as on Random House's Pinterest, please do just let me know,}

The Photo For The Wedding Invitation

I think this image may have originally come from Brides magazine but it's now turning up on a lot of sites. I love this. It could also be a wedding photo.

The Photo of the Dress

Needs no introduction, really. Nor even a foreword.

 The Cake

Seems a shame to slice into it.

The Manicure

Might be going a bit far, but still cute.

And if you're a book lover AND a film lover, you may like to see a new film that's being released next month (it's just been released in the States), called The Words. It stars an impressive cast, including Bradley Cooper, Jeremy Irons and Dennis Quaid, and is being billed as a "layered romantic drama". I suspect it's more than that. It may not be Henry James but I suspect it's a lot more than Fifty Shades of Grey.

The story follows young writer Rory Jansen (Mr Cooper, as brooding as always) who's a struggling writer with aspirations to be the next great literary voice. When he discovers a lost manuscript in a weathered attaché case that he and his wife found in a shop in Paris on their honeymoon, he realizes he possesses an extraordinary book. It's just a shame he didn't write it. After much thought (okay a fleeting moment of guilt), Rory decides to pass the work off as his own. He is soon a literary superstar. However, he soon learns that the words are only the beginning. The trailers look great - here www.thewordsmovie.com

On another note (or page), I was saddened to read on the weekend that writer Bryce Courtenay only has a few months to live. Whatever you think of his books, he is a magnificent writer. Even his off-hand quotes are ridiculously brilliant. I’ll always remember a fantastic line he spouted when he was asked whether he ‘embellished’ the truth.

“Do I exaggerate? You bet I exaggerate! I take a fact, put a top hat on it, a silk shirt and a bow tie and striped trousers and a tail coat and a pair of tap shoes and I do a Fred Astaire with a fact. But I don't ruin the fact. I never ruin the fact. I'm just giving it life.”

Courtenay also said: "Writing a book is never easy. It takes guts, patience and a huge amount of self-discipline to succeed." Courtenay has written 22. Can you imagine how many hours it would have taken, sitting in a room alone, to produce that much work? The man needs an award just for his Hemingwayesque productivity.

Someone else who is staring at his last words is Clive James. Mr James has also announced that he is fighting the Grim Reaper, who wants to make him pay for his excessive and indulgent life of drinking, smoking and eating quality nosh – and lots of it – at top London restaurants.

I have had the extraordinary luck to have met and interviewed James on two occasions. He was the most delightful, convivial, self-deprecating, fiercely witty and fantastically humorous man I've ever met. He didn't just answer your questions with a Kingsley Amis-style sneer and then stare around the room for something better to entertain him. He truly engaged with you, person to person, with spark, warmth, interest and genuine friendliness. He didn't need – or deserve – the horrific publicity that A Current Affair gave him earlier this year.

Did you read the (more pleasing) article about him in The Weekend Australian Magazine recently? I loved the quote by Martin Amis. Amis said that Clive, when asked how he'd like his steak, always replied "Knock off its horns and wipe its arse!" Only Clive James could get away with that.

But he is more than the classic Aussie wit with a dry bite and a sense of humour from left field. He is also a great writer. One of James' critics, the Oxford academic Peter Conrad, now regrets giving him a bad review and says "As an essayist, he is up there with Hazlitt, Wilde, Chesterton and co."

According to The Weekend Australian Magazine, Clive James is fighting for his life. But he has sold his Cambridge house to move closer to his London doctors. When the Australian's journalist, Bryan Appleyard, visited him for the story, the only things left were a single Sidney Nolan painting and piles of books on the floor. "I couldn't bring myself to sell them," confessed James.

Oh Clive, how we shall miss you.


PS Apologies for my absence on this blog. I, too, am holed up in self-imposed isolation writing several books. If I haven't yet emailed you, I am so very sorry, and promise to reply soon. Please wait for me: I shall send a personal reply to each and every one who has kindly written very shortly. I also promise that the itinerary for the The Grand Botanical Tour will be up this week! Can't wait to see you all next May. It will be such a lovely trip! xx

The Books of Our Lives

     

I don't know about you lovely readers, but we're very fond of books in our family. Newspapers too. But we're really fond of books.
      

My parents, who were both schoolteachers, force-fed us books from birth. I'm so glad they did. My frugal mother encouraged us to borrow them from the library because they were free. We borrowed piles. Piles. They used to topple over each other around the house, their aged pages bent from borrowings over the years. I always received library fines because I forgot to return them. Or perhaps I didn't want to? I even loved the smell. Old books. They should bottle that scent.

I still miss those cardboard pockets in the front for the library cards. Remember those? The Browne System. Seems centuries ago. Even Wikipedia didn't have an entry for the Browne System until recently. I'm not sure if that's ironic or not?

Such is the love of literature in our family that it's no wonder I became an author. I couldn't get away from books. A new book is my idea of A Good Time. (Writing them is a different story, but I won't bother you with my personal issues.) Ironically, my partner hates books. I've been trying to get him to read Hemingway's Boat, but he looks as me as if I've offered him a dirty handkerchief. I explained that it's about fishing, and hunting, and manly pursuits, but he's not convinced. "It's quite thick?" he says, doubtfully. He's very clever, but he obviously didn't get it from books.

(On a little aside, I was chatting to a head librarian at a literary breakfast last week. She said they had 40 copies of Fifty Shades of Grey, and 1200 people on the waiting list. Does anybody else think this is disturbing?)

At the moment, I'm writing a book about Picnic at Hanging Rock, the haunting Australian novel about the disappearance of a group Edwardian schoolgirls at the turn of the century. Hubster tries to be supportive by offering cynical helpful suggestions. "You could organise a bloggers' tour of Hanging Rock?" he says. "The Where-Is-Miranda Tour? People could be given the novel, and a GPS. Some of them may also disappear, of course. That might be awkward."

He's not read Picnic at Hanging Rock. But that doesn't stop his attempts at being a witty literary critic. Everyone's a critic now, it seems. Even those who don't read.

If, like some people, you have an aversion to anything with paper, a title and a spine, I'd like to help. Really. Let's call it therapy. Here are some beautiful books. Books that will make you think, and linger on pages, and even cry over lines. You may even read them twice. You may even get a library fine.

These are the books that have defined my life. Have you ever thought about the books that have defined yours?

John Steinbeck | Travels With Charley In Search of America

Half a century ago, John Steinbeck set off on The Great American Road Trip, travelling along the bumpy back roads in a nostalgic effort to find freedom, fulfilment and meaning. Heavy with the weariness and cynicism that comes with age and life, he was intent on searching for the America he remembered from his childhood, and perhaps also for his soul. Steinbeck’s expedition, which eventually became the book Travels With Charley in Search of America, would end up being one of his last. He was dying, and, according to his son Thom, he knew he was dying, and he went out to his country "to say goodbye".

Half a century later, Travels With Charley is still one of the most moving travel books I've ever read. It is the journey many of us wish we had the courage to take: the journey some of us find the courage to do, even if, like Steinbeck, we know at the outset our journey may not end the way we would like it to. I first read it when I travelled across America on my own road trip, to find my own soul. I now re-read it every year. And each time it resonates in an unexpectedly profound way. We are all on a lifelong pursuit to find happiness, quiet horizons, harmony and a place to feel at home. Sometimes we find them. Other times it takes a circuitous route to realize, like Steinbeck and his dog Charley, they might have been back where we started, all along.

The Guernsey Literary and Potato Peel Society

Few books move me to tears. This required an entire tissue box. It's an epistolary tale, a novel of letters between a book editor and the people she meets on the island of Guernsey after the war has destroyed their idyll. But it's more than just a collection of lovely lines. It's an ode to books. And to people who love them. That's why I cherish it. The truly tragic thing though is that its author, Mary Ann Shaffer, died before the book achieved success. She was an editor, a librarian, and a bookshop assistant. This was her first novel. I hope that, wherever she is, she knows how much her small novel has moved so many readers.

Picnic at Hanging Rock

Many years ago, I attended a girls' school, where I met a girl who became a close friend. One year, she invited me back to her family's beautiful house for Easter. While there, she told me that her great-grandmother had gone to a girl's school too – with the author Joan Lindsay. She also told me that her great-grandmother had once told her that Joan's novel was true. Or a surprisingly significant part of it, anyway. 

Since then, I've always been fascinated by this book, which has become one of Australia's most famous novels. 

A few years ago, I started researching the background behind it. Three years on, I've finished writing my own take on the tale. Some of it is indeed true. But what is really haunting is the story behind it all. It involves the history of Hanging Rock. And what happened there a century ago.

Last week, I met a girl at a literary breakfast. A spiritual soul. She took me aside and quietly told me she knew I'd been profoundly affected by the book. It's true. Our lives have been overshadowed by the things I've discovered. When I'm finished editing it, which will be soon, I want to go away and wash the ghosts off somewhere. Possibly on a remote beach. Far from the horrors of Hanging Rock. 

Despite this, it's still a beautiful book. And more brilliant than most people realise.

The Great Gatsby

It's a literary cliche, but for good reason. It's F.Scott Fitzgerald's best. Forget the crazy nonsense of his life. This book shows he did indeed have talent.

As I sat there brooding on the old, unknown world, I thought of Gatsby's wonder when he first picked out the green light at the end of Daisy's dock. He had come a long way to this blue lawn, and his dream must have seemed so close that he could hardly fail to grasp it. He did not know that it was already behind him.

The tragedy of this story is almost unbearable. It's a study of much more than just class, and society. It's a study of dreams. They say you can have anything you want in life, as long as you're willing to sacrifice everything else for it. I've learned this in my quest to become a writer. Gatsby knew it, too. Sometimes, though, the things we sacrifice (children, family, a life) are more than we can bear. Reading the last page of this book gives me chills, every single time.

Following in the (Horticultural) Footsteps of Edith Wharton

There is something incredibly restorative about being in a garden. Don’t you think? Like many of my friends, I came to gardening late in life. Before I turned 25, I was more of a fashion girl. The only flowers I really cared about were those on Gucci’s floral frocks. But then something happened. I went to the Chelsea Flower Show one year where, in the space of three wonderful, fortuitous hours, I met the legendary gardener Rosemary Verey, glimpsed Karl Lagerfeld approving Tom Stuart-Smith’s garden for Chanel (an exquisitely beautiful miniature version of Versailles), inhaled the scented poetry of David Austin's new tea roses and fell under the spell of Prince Charles’ Highgrove garden (or a fantastic replica of it). Enthralled, I took it all in with the wide-eyed wonder of a virginal teenager in a Las Vegas brothel. It was, quite simply, the most seductive thing I’ve ever seen.

Since then I’ve grown to love gardens with the passion that my partner has for vintage cars. It has become an addiction, an addition that has seeped into the soul and stayed there – much like compost in a vegie bed.

So it was an enormous treat (and a long-held wish) to visit an historic property called The Mount in Massachusetts.

The Mount is the creation of the American author Edith Wharton, a woman who readily admitted that gardens greatly affected her, too. The author of Ethan Frome, The Custom of the Country, The House of Mirth, and the Pulitzer Prize-winning novel The Age of Innocence (among many others), Wharton was better known for her books than her horticultural talents, but – curiously – she believed she was a better gardener than a writer. “Decidedly, I’m a better landscape gardener than a novelist,” she once wrote in a letter, and you may think she’s jesting – until you see the grounds of The Mount. They are as grand and as beautiful as any of Le Nôtre’s masterpieces.

The interesting thing is, Wharton started her writing career with an interior design book – one of the first ever published – called The Decoration of Houses. (A superb book; it was published in 1897 but is still relevant today.) Then, in 1904, she penned Italian Villas and Their Gardens. Around the same time, she decided to design her own home and garden, and set to work designing the gracious mansion and grounds that is The Mount. It was perhaps her greatest achievement.

Walking around The Mount was an inspiring insight into the cross-pollinization of interiors and gardens. Wharton believed that the inside and outside of a house should sit in harmony, and The Mount merges formal lime walks, sunken gardens and elegant horticultural symmetry with rooms that are a sheer pleasure to sit in. What is more amazing is that she was able to do it without any training. All she used were her instincts, her experiences of visiting gardens in Europe, and her philosophy that good architectural expression should be based on “order, scale, and harmony”.

I would like to show you The Mount, to show you just what a woman can do if she sets her mind to it.

The forecourt. Wharton believed the exterior entrance to a house should be as welcoming as the interior hall, and liked the idea of an enclosing forecourt – which almost cosseted the visitor as they drove up in a carriage, much like an architectural embrace. However, she didn't design this side of the house with much embellishment. The 'wow' factor was left for the other side, in order to surprise visitors when they passed through the interior and emerged the other side. (See image below.)

The main side. Wharton designed the exterior of the main side of the house, built on a stone terrace overlooking a lake and woods, with striking white stucco, dramatically set off by black shutters. Clusters of gables and white chimneys rise from the roof, which is capped with a balustrade and cupola.

The stables. The main house was augmented by a Georgian Revival gatehouse and stables (shown above). Wharton wanted these stables to be as grand as the house itself.

The doors. Wharton believed in making an entrance – architecturally speaking. The doors at The Mount are wondrous designs that emulate the French chateaux the writer had visited during her travels.

The gallery. Notice how the colour palette is drawn from the garden? Look at the lamp. Isn't it incredible?

Edith's boudoir. My favourite room. I loved the colour of the walls. Unfortunately, the estate's trust decided to embellish this room with bright raspberry drapes, which I think detracts from the lovely delicacy of the pale turquoise.

See?

The stairs. Wharton believe that stairs should never be the centrepiece of a house but rather a utilitarian space. Which is why she preferred hers to one side of the floor plan. But that doesn't mean that they were neglected and under-decorated.

The library. Edith Wharton rarely wrote in this room, as she preferred to write in bed. But she loved this space nonetheless, using it for entertaining beloved guests such as Henry James. The books are Wharton's own.

Best Illustrated Book in Australia Nominees

I'm often told by my lovely publishers that I'm not as enthusiastic about self-publicity as I should be. This is because I've always thought that authors should not have to speak for books. If books are beautiful enough, they should speak for themselves. Authors are really the behind-the-scenes people; the wizards pulling the curtains for the Land of Oz that is literature.

In saying that, it's easy to understand that people like to get to know the names behind the titles. I confess to following the blog of Justine Picardie, who seems to be as much of a lovely person as she is a great writer. And if Hemingway were alive and he had time to pen one, between fishing in Key West, punching out bestsellers and bedding beautiful women, I'd been following him too! I've also been slightly awed when I've had the good fortune to meet writers such as Jan Morris, Frederick Forsyth, Jeffrey Archer, AA Gill, Herbert Ypma, and Bill Bryson. (I interviewed the latter in his South Kensington flat: when I arrived at the open front door he was derriere-up, cleaning the bath. I've always liked an multi-tasking author!) Another writer friend told me she was similarly open-mouthed when she met J.D. Salinger. (Her mother neglected to tell her she'd been having a weekly luncheon with his wife for 20 years.) For the most part, authors adore meeting other authors – especially if The Other Author is stupendously famous and rolling in royalty cheques. (That's when we ask what their secret is.) Authors also adore seeing good books achieve success, even when those books belong to publishing houses that may be their competitors. The publishing world is not a hockey game. It is actually rather civilised. Why is why I've always liked it. (And hated those who play dirty within it.)

The Australian Book Industry Awards (ABIA) are the Oscars of publishing in Australia. It's where
a panel of long-time booksellers and publishers judge and nominate their favourite books each year. I always take a peek at what's nominated, because it's always intriguing to see which books are pricking up people's ears. It's also intriguing to see which books are in the Best Illustrated Book category, as these books are often the most beautifully designed.

This year, it was a huge surprise to receive an email from my former publisher, Mary Small of Pan Macmillan/Plum letting me know that my book Paris: A Guide to the City's Creative Heart has been nominated. It's the first big industry award I've ever been nominated for, after 6 years and 18 books, so I was both touched and thrilled to hear the news. In fact, just as when my friend met J.D. Salinger, I was quite speechless with shock! The winners are announced at the Sydney Writer's Festival next week, when we're in New York. But I don't mind if I don't win. It's just lovely to be considered...

Here are some of the other nominees – and a link to the full PDF here. And here are some of the pages from Paris: A Guide to the City's Creative Heart. Oh – and if, like me, you love illustrated coffee-table books, then I'd like to let you know that I'm working on a gorgeous New York book this month, and then a beautiful new Paris book in June. Will give more details here in coming weeks.

Best of luck to all those nominated for the ABIA Awards! I'm really thrilled for all those authors.