The CAE this year promoted the summer read 20 short list books through a ‘Tell us what you love about reading in summer’ competition.

The competition was won by Nicki Jennings from the Sale , Ladies by the Lake, CAE Book Group. Nicki wrote about what she loves about reading in summer in verse.

Holiday Haze

Sun melting, sweltering,
Shady verandah lazily beckons.
Book and cool drink in hand
I stretch into an ancient couch
while time suspends.
Immersed in a holiday haze
of soft flowing pages.
Strange times,
Different people,
New worlds unfold.

JOLT!
WHAT?
“MUM! When’s dinner? ”

Nicki says

“Ladies By The Lake is a CAE Book group of twelve avid readers. We were the book Group lucky enough to win a set of 20 Summer Read Titles donated by the Victorian State Library. I had the pleasure of collecting and opening the large parcel from the Sale Post Office. It was exciting as each book in turn emerged from its bed of beaded packing. Crisp unread books hold so much intrigue and anticipation. What a luxury to have 20 at one time!

I would like to thank CAE Book Groups for organising the “What I Love About Summer Reading” competition. It’s not hard to think of good things to write about summer reading. Thank you also to the State Library for donating such a wonderfully diverse and rich collection of books and most importantly thank you to the authors for their creativity and putting pen to paper. Twenty books circulating between twelve of us will provide many hours of reading and animated discussion. There is so much to look forward to!
Several of our members are farmers and we travel round trips of up to 140kms to attend our monthly meetings. As I unpacked the books I noticed that Dennis McIntosh’s Beaten By A Blow contains a chapter devoted to shearing on a property owned by one of our members. I am sure that as we read our way through this newly acquired library, many of the books will hold significance for us. My daughter, who is a student in Melbourne, has syphoned off Radical Melbourne to her bedroom for some holiday reading before it is lost to the hands of the book group. Our group has been reading the Booker Prize Short list over the holidays however I will now abandon that and soak up the Summer Reading Books – but where to start!!!!!”

Well done Nicki! We do hope the ladies enjoy the mini library of 20 summer read titles.

I am writing on hearing the sad news that Dorothy died this morning.

Dorothy was one of the 2007-08 Summer Read and Bedside Books Club authors and always a great pleasure to work with.

Here is her blog post from February 7th, 2008.

Plunging in- Dorothy Porter
This morning I began reading the relatively new translation of Virgil’s The Aeneid by Robert Fagles. I fluffed around for a while in the very interesting Introduction but then decided to just plunge into the narrative. And plunging in is exactly what happens when you read a narrative poem. If it’s a good one you should barely have time to catch your breath. Reading or hearing (apparently literate Romans read by reading aloud to themselves) a narrative poem is like white water rafting. Woosh! Off you go! This morning I quickly found myself clinging to the wreckage as Juno’s terrible wrath wrecked stormy vengeance on poor Aeneas (whom I’ve never really liked after he dumped Dido so piously).

Here’s a taste:

Flinging cries
as a screaming gust of the Northwind pounds against his sail,
raising waves sky-high. The oars shatter, prow twists round,
taking the breakers broadside on and over Aeneas’ decks
a mountain of water towers, massive, steep.
Some men hang on billowing crests, some as the sea
gapes, glimpse through the waves the bottom waiting,
a surge aswirl with sand.

I’ve seen over and over again the amateur video footage of the Boxing Day tsunami in an effort to imagine myself there. Something is always missing. The video footage makes me feel a spectator, even a disaster voyeur. With Virgil I’m there. And it’s personal. It creeps into my skin and soul as my experience, my disaster. Homer’s poetry works on me even more powerfully. It’s more raw and elemental than Virgil, and less filtered for an imperial audience. Blood smells black flies hot and bloody in Homer. And death is death. I love “The Iliad”, but it’s almost unbearable to read. Whenever I write a verse novel I have the greatest poets and most potent story tellers of human history breathing down my neck. They have set impossible standards. Writing verse novels is a profoundly conservative, even archaic, act. Doubtless an arrogant one. Possibly an exercise in futility. I am trying to reclaim fiction for poetry. I have thrown everything into El Dorado - crime, abducted murdered kids, middle-aged angst, old friendship, new love, sex, men, women, foul adolescent girls, the New Puritanism….If as a reader you can’t plunge in ….and woosh! …I’ve failed as a narrative poet.

Dorothy, you will be remembered alongside the great poets and storytellers that have gone before.