Rowan is a Victoriana obsessive with the literary habits of a landed Gentleman of Means. He came to us out of a lightning storm in the form of a glowing key, and we have been using his formidable literary nerdism to outstanding effect here at Better Read.
He likes his books dark and is often accompanied by a palpable feeling of tenebrous thunder when he enters a room. Where he came from, we cannot say: but Rowan is the Inner West's new bookseller-aesthete. Tug your forelock as he passes!
House of Leaves
Mark Z. Danielewski
2000
$69.95
If you want your child to grow up to be a cult underground author, give them Z as a middle initial - the rest will take care of itself. Danielewski's deeply disquieting experimental work tells the story of a house which is somehow bigger inside than it should be, and the fate of the family who find themselves lost, both literally and figuratively, in its confines. The tale is contained within not one, but two framing stories, as the reader descends into intricate reams of footnotes, streams of consciousness and textual play not only with narrative, but with print itself. Echoing Lovecraft and Borges, and running the gamut from academic formalism to grungy realism, House of Leaves sucks the reader into a labyrinth which is equally intricate, and compelling.
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The Shardlake series
C.J. Sansom
$22.95
C. J. Sansom's historical crime series follows the (mis)adventures of lawyer Matthew Shardlake as he is reluctantly drawn into the Machiavellian world of high politics and religion during the reign of Henry VIII. Shardlake is introduced during the dissolution of the monasteries, and in each volume (most recently, 2008's Revelation) Shardlake's investigations coincide with actual historical developments, taking in familiar figures from Thomas Cromwell to Anne Boleyn. Sansom provides not only a well-evoked depiction of the pungent world of Tudor England, but a series of mysteries which are fascinating in themselves, and which are skilfully linked to the machinations of Henry's court.
Clean: An Unsanitised History of Washing
Katherine Ashenburg
2008
$32.95
In this fascinating work of cultural history, Katherine Ashenburg points out that a distinguishing feature of the contemporary Western world is an abundance of clean, hot water which, one would appear miraculous to the eyes of our ancestors. While we take the desirability of cleanliness as a given, Ashenburg challenges this assumption: for example, during the lengthy historical periods when immersion in water was considered a dangerous exercise in vulnerability, the aristocracy and royalty would be far less clean than their lowlier subjects. Clean provides not only a highly accessible history of washing and hygiene - and the beliefs that drove hygienic practice - from the Classical period onwards, but the topic extends to reflections on many other absorbing aspects of human history, from biology to hydraulics to epidemiology.
Rip It Up And Start Again: Postpunk 1978-1984
Simon Reynolds
2005
$27.95
While lamenting the demise of serious music journalism, John Harris, of The Guardian, recently called Reynolds' book 'by far the most impressive' of the past few years. In recent times the scratchy frenetics and jangly introspection of the post-punk aesthetic has come back in a big way, but Reynolds takes us back to where it all began: the fascinating years in which an unlikely, experimental fusion in which the DIY spirit of punk melded with genres as diverse as art-rock, disco, funk, reggae and synthpop, to produce a generation of artists whose work was as original as it has been influential. This magisterial work traces these various strands, taking in the contextual backdrop of politics, fashion and the art world, to give a magisterial view of an incredibly fertile period of music history.
My favourite book
Les Liaisons Dangereuses
Choderlos de Laclos
$16.95
While the concept of a 'favourite book' has to be considered a fiction itself, Laclos' epistolary novel, detailing the debauched amorous exploits of two aristocrats in pre-Revolutionary France, must be a serious contender. The work captures a glittering bygone world of leisure and spite where codes of behaviour have been honed to the finest of razor-sharp edges, and where, for those endowed with wit and skill, appearances are infinitely manipulable. The depiction of moral behaviour is stunningly frank, and the deliciously villainous antiheroes make for a compulsive narrative of social intrigue.
My favourite author
Wilkie Collins
While The Woman In White and The Moonstone are acknowledged classics, the rest of Collins' oeuvre is often undeservedly overlooked. His penchant for grotesquerie, combined with sharp social observation, unconventional views and an unrivalled ability to induce a pervasive sense of menace, make his novels dramatic in the deepest sense. Try Basil, a tale of upward mobility and unsuitable matrimony; or No Name, a story of complete self-transformation in the pursuit of justice. The very pinnacle of Victorian fiction.
What's beside the bed
The Suspicions of Mr Whicher by Kate Summerscale
The Victorianaphiliac needs feeding...
The Death of Bunny Munro by Nick Cave
A big favourite with all of us at BRTD, the anticipation that built up waiting for our Nick's second effort in the fictional realm was almost too much to bear.
Mothstorm by Philip Reeve
The third book in Philip Reeve's delightful steampunk trilogy for young adults. The darker Mortal Engines quartet is also well worth a look.