Please join Alan Brough at a celebration at the State Library on Friday 20 March, 4 - 5pm when he announces the the top five books, as voted by Victorian readers in the State Library of Victoria’s Summer Read program 2008-9, and voter’s prizes.

Experimedia
State Library of Victoria
328 Swanston Street, Melbourne

RSVP by Wednesday 17 March 2009

Telephone                   8664 7555
email                          learning@slv.vic.gov.au
book online                summerreadawards.eventbrite.com

Thanks Fiona for your posts. Historical fiction lovers can look forward to hearing more at your events.

As part of the free Summer Read events across Victoria, Fiona will be appearing at:

• Portland Library, DiscoverIT Centre,  38 Bentinck Street, Portland on Thursday 12 February 2009, 7.00 – 8.00 pm
 For more information phone 0355222 265 or book online at  http://summerread21.eventbrite.com

• Caulfield Library, Glen Eira Town Hall, Cnr Glen Eira and Hawthorn Roads, Caulfield on Thursday 26 February 2009, 7.00 – 8.00 pm
 For more information phone 9524 3623 or online at  http://summerread32.eventbrite.com

Vote for Musk and Byrne or SMS MUSK to 13 46 88

I hope this doesn’t sound rude or ungrateful – because it’s not meant to be either – but I have to admit to being a very reluctant blogger. I’m delighted, of course, that Musk & Byrne has been selected as a Summer Read by the State Library and I appreciate that readers are interested in what writers have to say about what they do. But, the older I get, the more uneasy I find myself becoming with the whole business of talking about myself, my writing and the practice of writing in general. When you write a book you say everything you wanted to say in that book. Anything else you might say about it – at a festival, in a newspaper article, at a talk – is inevitably superfluous to what you originally set out to say. But, of course, when the book comes out you want people to know it exists and so you find yourself doing all these things – talking at festivals, writing newspaper articles, giving talks – for fear that it will sink without trace if you don’t get out there and flog it. Not all writers mind doing this, just as not all writers are introverts like me. I know plenty of writers who enjoy it and I can perfectly understand this. It’s just that I’m not one of them.

I love writing because it’s a solitary activity and because I don’t have to be there when other people read my books. I love surfing for similar reasons. You can be sitting out in the water with a bunch of other surfers, everyone quietly waiting for a set, and you can enjoy the company of your fellow surfers without having to say a thing to them. Everybody knows why they’re there. Everybody knows why they love it. Occasionally, I do fall into conversation with other surfers. Once, a surfer told me about the death of his daughter. But most of the time, I’m happy to remain silent. To treat the whole experience as a form of meditation. The thing that puzzles me about Writers’ Festivals and similar events is that writing and reading, like surfing, are silent activities in which one loses oneself, and yet these festivals are all about performing and talking. What I would love to see is a Readers’ Festival where everyone gathers – if they want company – at a particular venue and sits quietly reading, and occasionally talking to people around them about the books they are reading.

Fiona Capp is next Summer Read author blogging from 16 – 20 December.

Fiona trained as a journalist, has a PhD in English and has worked as a freelance writer and university tutor in English, journalism and novel writing. She is the acclaimed author of Night Surfing, Last of the Sane Days, and That Oceanic Feeling.

Her book Musk and Byrne is one of the books on the Summer Read shortlist.

Musk and Byrne is set in 19th-century Victoria and tells the story of passionate and headstrong Jemma Musk who seeks to establish herself as a painter and an independent woman. But scandal and tragedy set her on the run from the law, and a legend — that of the beautiful Musk and her accomplice Byrne — is born.

As part of the free Summer Read events across Victoria, Fiona will be appearing at:

•    Portland Library, DiscoverIT Centre, 38 Bentinck Street, Portland on Thursday 12 February 2009, 7.00 – 8.00 pm
For more information phone 0355222 265 or book online at http://summerread21.eventbrite.com

•    Caulfield Library, Glen Eira Town Hall, Cnr Glen Eira and Hawthorn Roads, Caulfield on Thursday 26 February 2009, 7.00 – 8.00 pm
For more information phone 9524 3623 or book online at http://summerread32.eventbrite.com

What Fiona says about summer reading

“A few years ago when bushfires were raging through Gippsland and other parts of Victoria I was reading Cormac McCarthy’s ‘The Road’ about a man and his son making their way to the West coast of America through an unrelentingly grey landscape devastated by some kind of apocalyptic event, most probably a nuclear war. The sun is blocked by a thick cloud of dust that cloaks the earth and everything on it. Eerily enough, while I was reading, the smoke from the Gippsland fires had veiled the sun here, creating a lurid, apocalyptic light that made the scenario in ‘The Road’ feel disturbingly close.”