entranced by The Rosie Project

This book was recommended to me and sadly I just missed hearing the author Graeme Simsion talking in one of the free sessions at this year's Brisbane Writer's Festival. However, I was prompted to buy the book and reading it was easy. OK so my first impression was that this was a scientific attempt to identify love. I was prepared to be swept along on Don Tillman's journey, given that he was a professor of genetics. However, it quickly became apparent that while he was very intelligent and he used an evidence-based approach, he was behaving like a person 'on the spectrum'. His obsessive need for control made his low emotional intelligence quotient fairly obvious. However,his insightful honesty was endearing, and I decided to travel with him, for his wife project; using a survey to filter out women who drink, smoke and arrive late! So when Don met Rosie Jarman, who was quickly disqualified, he was somewhat disarmed, and ended up helping her on her personal quest to find her biological father. So that began the challenge as to whether he would or could recognise the friendship as anything more...

Lurid (surrealist) Beauty at National Gallery Victoria

I have always been fascinated by surrealist art and the somewhat successful communication of a very intellectual message through the visual senses. Renee Magritte is one of the few artists that have challenged and rewarded me with a deeper insight. So the recent exhibition in Melbourne set out by proclaiming that surrealist artists used techniques such as automatic drawing and collage to liberate the unconscious mind and disrupt current social and political realities. I remember the reaction in northern Europe to the psychological theories of Freud and Jung, and how artists explored ways of communicating with and about the unconscious mind. I enjoyed reminding myself of some of our classic and esteemed painters such as Albert Tucker and Russell Drysdale and the wonderful photographer Max Dupain. But the most surprising insight for me was that I just enjoyed the visual and sensory experiences as I escaped from my own reality for part of an afternoon.

Tracy Chevalier recreates Remarkable Creatures

It was such a luxury to enjoy reading a historically factual novel without realising it. Tracy Chevalier transported me back to the early 1800's in Lyme Regis, along the southern English coastline. I enjoyed her interacting story of 2 women of different ages and social classes, united by their love of fossil hunting. For Mary Anning, the fossils were her survival as she sold them as curios to passing travellers. Elizabeth Philpott had been sent to the coast with her 2 sisters by her brother upon his marriage. They were quite physically dislocated from London and socially disconnected as none of them had ever married. Elizabeth genuinely enjoyed collecting and categorising objects of difference. So as they gathered fossils of increasing magnitude, they both began to question the traditional view of creation in their very conservative society. So while it was fun to read the alternating chapters in the language of their heroine, the great challenge was in how the two ladies reacted to the attention and perhaps love of a passing gentleman. The personal and class differences were so powerful yet the personal courage and integrity of Elizabeth in requesting credit for the discovery work by Mary was impressive, by any time or standards. A totally captivating read.

Catherine the Great appreciates art: from St Petersburg to Melbourne

I was excited to virtually revisit the Hermitage at the National Gallery Victoria in Melbourne today, to learn more about the art loves and life of Catherine the Great. I was glad that I opted for the multimedia tour because Virginia Trioli, my favourite ABC news reader took us on a journey to recreate important aspects of Catherine's life through the metaphor of art masterpieces in each of the 8 rooms themed by country. I was surprised to learn that Catherine was born Sophie in Stettin, on the German Polish border, and that she was sent to marry another German, all within the Russian aristocratic tradition. She was married young at 16 and while she didn't leave Russia, she had a very open mind and communicated with French philosophers and travelled virtually through her artistic acquisitions. She seemed to be an educated, energetic and resilient woman.

I was surprised to learn that her marriage was not a happy one and that her lovers had conspired in the overthrow, abdication and death of her husband Peter; leaving her space to take the throne. I loved that she chose not to marry but instead seemed to have a series of influential lovers that she moved on as and when appropriate... Meanwhile the art was also a great surprise; with several otherwise unseen Rembrandts, one a private scene of a lady admiring her pearl earrings. I loved the majestic Rubens, and even enjoyed some of the traditional scenes of aristrocratic kitchens alongside peasants doing the washing and travelling with their donkeys. All in all a great exhibition for art, culture and history.

reflecting on the novel Still Alice

I have just finished reading this novel, after being unable to watch the movie, given my parents' double diagnoses of Alzheimers and vascular dementia. I am almost immobilised by the uncertainty of my own risks and I seriously wonder about the power of self-fulfilling prophecies. Do I want to know the reality of my risk, or am I really prepared to take the gamble of living life to the full? While I am clear about my own preference, I wonder if I really should be more socially responsible and investigate my real risks. Regardless, I thought it wise to read this novel in the safety of my own house. I wanted to read about an alternative reality to the life I am living. Lisa Genova has completed some serious research to write a very compelling story about Alice, an accomplished Harvard professor in cognitive psychology, who is diagnosed at 50 with Alzheimer's disease. The dramatic disintegration of her career and her consequent academic worth is tragic amidst a family who pulls together to care for her. The question of whether her husband can stand beside her is left unanswered, and this adds a real credibility to the whole story. Can he, as an equally esteemed academic, learn to care for her, while letting his own career slip, is a question perhaps too great to ask of any single person. The story is both compelling and terrifying, however, Still Alice is a moving and vivid depiction of life with early onset Alzheimer's disease. This is not just a light story of diversity. Nor is it melodramatic or emotionally manipulative. It isn't the Alzeheimer's equivalent of tell me about my cancer diagnosis book. Instead, this is a deeply moving psychological portrait of a woman's deteriorating mind and how this gradually affects her relationships with the people around her. It's about an intelligent woman suddenly finding that she can no longer rely on her mind. She tried every day to hold onto her memories and her sense of understanding, and we are taken on a terrifying journey into what it must be like to know you are slowly losing pieces of yourself day by day. The book is frightening on both biological and psychological levels. It describes many of the common assumptions about Alzheimer's; from the forgotten memories, of faces without names, and of everyday places that have become unfamiliar. It also describes current thinking about the biological explanations of what is really happening in the brain. The story raises the important questions for Alice; how much can she lose and still be herself? If our entire personalities are built from memories, sensory experiences, from the things we've said and done, who are when we longer remember any of that? How can you make today matter when tomorrow you won't even remember it? This is a sad book but it does not fail to leave you with a glimpse of light in the darkness.