Spring break means no school library hours for me this week. (Sadly, no actual spring break trip in sight, merely additional hours at my other part time job.) Naturally, many faculty and staff members were raiding the magazine rack and new fiction shelf on Friday before scattering for the week-long hiatus. I gave them the benefit of a head start (I have constant access, after all), and then snatched a number of magazines I had my eye on: the two most recent Newsweek issues (the second most recent because I haven’t had the chance to see it yet, and it has an environmental focus), the most recent Time (for its cover story on Senator Obama’s mother) and a ‘Special Issue’ National Geographic (the irresistible sanguine cover reminiscent of a Hannibal Lecter novel with its headline: ‘China: Inside the Dragon’). Since the two most recent Vogue issues were long gone, I settled for the March copy which I hadn’t properly looked at yet, with Drew Barrymore gracing the cover.

I don’t ordinarily muse about magazines on Re:Print but the truth is they represent a considerable amount of my weekly reading fare. I fondly remember reserving Friday afternoons as an undergraduate student for reading Newsweek cover to cover in a campus cafe. It was my end of the week treat, catching up on the news and issues I’d missed. These days I spend less time with more varied publications, which is probably a good thing. Naturally there are certain subscriptions I am more drawn to than others, but just the other day I found myself skimming a humorous ‘Last Word’ style editorial commentary in Outdoor Life, as it had just arrived and I was checking it in. Not one of my usual reads, but I do try to explore the materials on offer.

With spring recently arrived in New England and the current intermission from my usual book-filled surroundings, the opportunity to get through large chunks of Bray’s work of historical fiction and also enjoy the sun has presented itself, even if there is no tropical getaway in my near future.

And you? Is your vacation reading different from your usual fare? When the sun comes out do you get in more reading than usual while you work on your vitamin D levels?

—Lara Killian

J.M. Coetzee

So it’s no surprise to see that J.M. Coetzee, newly naturalized as an Australian citizen, is already thoroughly “one of ours”. The South African-born novelist and Nobel laureate has spent most of his professional career in his homeland, but now resides in Adelaide. His recent works have even taken on Australian characters and locations.

The latest sign of his adoption as an Australian was his invitation to attend the Australia 2020 Summit this weekend. Australia 2020, a talk fest convened by new Prime Minister Kevin Rudd, has some vague nation-building aspirations and Coetzee’s role is to join with 99 others to plan pathways “towards a creative Australia”.

The “creative Australia” stream is heavy with celebrities and big names, so it’s no surprise that our only living Nobel Prize for Literature winner would be invited. Many commentators are asking whether celebrities are the best people to determine national direction—as is how 100 people with individual ideas and agendas can agree on concrete plans for national creativity in two short days. Perhaps Hugh Jackman will go head to head with Baz Luhrmann’s wife Catherine Martin in a battle over theatre funding, while screenwriter Geoffrey Atherden will try to pitch his latest TV show to Joel Edgerton.

The choice of Coetzee, for all his newness as an Aussie, is one of the better selections. Unlike many of the established voices invited to attend, Coetzee is not part of any local mafia or interest group. He can bring a freshness of approach that the patronage-hungry locals may lack. In all likelihood, though, the notoriously taciturn Coetzee will probably just smile benignly throughout the weekend and write a book about it later.

A problem for the Summit is the vague nature of “creativity”. Australia’s working-class roots still impart to residents a distrust of “high” art from an early age. Television and movies are generally popular, although Australian movies are currently out of favour. Books by footballers and cricketers and J.K. Rowling are popular, but Coetzee sells far fewer copies than fellow South African expat Bryce Courtenay. Opera, ballet, and theatre that isn’t Mamma Mia! are niche tastes.

Yet the 2020 attendees span all these aspects of art and culture—so discussions of funding and priority may be particularly heated. Just exactly who “needs” funding and what Australia as a nation gets out of the arts—these are questions that will hopefully be asked. The contrast between a writer such as Anna Funder, whose excellent Stasiland was assisted by local arts funding, and Coetzee, who comes from a completely different system, will be interesting.

Maybe even a celebrity-heavy discussion forum can give some guidance on the future of Australian art. At least Germaine Greer’s invitation was lost in the post.

—David Pullar

‘Open Secret’, Anthony Caro, 2004. Ivory Press
Courtesy VAM.ac.uk

The Guardian Arts Blog is raving about the show, calling it “a sumptuous celebration of the endurance of the book as one of the most perfect forms of art, even in the face of the nebulous digital age”. Arts and design magazine, Wallpaper, notes that the exhibition is “an opportunity to challenge our idea of what constitutes art and to re-examine the cultural significance of books, but perhaps more interestingly, and more simply, it is a chance to view a wonderfully eclectic range of lesser-known work by some of the most important artists of the 20th and 21st centuries.”

Read up about the whole thing here. The V&A website has some photos, too, of the various exhibits. If, like me, you can’t make it to London in the next few weeks, a Google Image Search will bring up a number of the exhibits, including Francis Bacon’s “Detritus” and Henri Matisse’s “Swimmer in a Tank”.

—Nikki Tranter

Then, as my mother read those first few pages of The Yearling, I saw blue-gray smoke rising from the chimney of a simple cabin, and watching the smoke drift into the sky was a boy named Jody Baxter. I recognized him right away. He was so like me: skinny, blond, solitary. I moved, as my mother read the words, into the clearing in the Florida swampland where the Baxters lived their hardscrabble lives. I could hear the insects buzzing and the bubbling sound of the little spring, and I could see the glisten of the dark magnolia leaves and smell the thick pines.

Lois Lowry tells NPR‘s “You Must Read This” how Marjorie Kinnan Rawlings’ influenced her later years as a Newberry Award winning writer. Originally hoping to write about young, triumphant women like those in Little Women and The Secret Garden, The Yearling, Lowry says, showed her the importance of and the poetry in lives without triumph, lives of loneliness and struggle. Her works have come to resemble this one far more than those other classics for little girls.

The illustrations, wistful sketches that adorn each chapter, should have been rendered by Edward Gorey. The Secret Garden is about neglect. Of plants and of people.

Two different, fascinating readings of books considered classics for young adult readers. I love how these writers, Lowry and Crosley, are generations apart, and yet one particular book links them. Lowry read The Secret Garden

”You Must Read This” is one NPR’s best features.