The week is a wicked self-inflicted creation. It starts off fine enough, before it descends into madness, limping towards the sweet release of Friday afternoon.
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But there's still a lot to get done before then.
Colin Steele takes us into the world of this great social construct in a review this week. But the conclusion seems to be sluggish Monday mornings will be with us for some time yet.
You can find all the books we've reviewed this week below. And I welcome your thoughts and feedback on what we've been reading. You can reach me by email at jasper.lindell@canberratimes.com.au
Before we doomscrolled, we surfed
The internet didn't always feel like it does now. You had to go looking for things instead of waiting for them to be served to you in an infinite scroll.
French-Moroccan journalist Marie Le Conte tackles the early years of the internet, and the experience growing up as it did, in Escape: How a Generation Shaped, Destroyed and Survived the Internet (Blink, $34.99).
The generation that had this unique experience, Le Conte says, was born between 1985 and 1995. Any earlier, you would remember a pre-internet life and any later, you wouldn't even know there was a difference.
I reviewed her book this week and found it to be like a long, smart email from a very clever friend.
A lost and wasted prime ministerial life
Poor Harold. Was he anything more?
Michael McKernan takes a look at Ross Walker's Harold Holt: Always One Step Further (La Trobe University Press, $34.99), a new biography of the Australian prime minister most famous for going missing.
"This book seeks to return Holt to national memory and as an Australian prime minister he probably deserves that. Holt was, apparently, an affable man, charming, urbane, slow to anger, and a womaniser," McKernan writes.
But it was always going to be tough following Robert Menzies.
Recording the climate horrors to come without losing hope
Spend too much time reading about global warming and climate change and it is easy to give in to despair.
So spare a thought for the scientists who volunteer their time to read the countless studies to inform the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change reports.
But Joëlle Gergis still retains a skerrick of positivity for the future in her book Humanity's Moment: A Climate Scientist's Case for Hope (Black Inc, $34.99).
Ian McFarlane considers Gergis' case, in a review this week.
Back home in a novel of depth and insight
Journalist Ky Tran returns home to Sydney's Cabramatta to find out what happened to her brother, Denny. It's the 1990s and a heroin-related crime surge is sweeping the city in Tracey Lien's All That's Left Unsaid (HarperCollins, $32.99).
"At the centre of everything in All That's Left Unsaid is the unflinching, fierce character of Minnie, frequently subjected to abuse as a child. I desperately wanted to know more about Minnie's fate after the end of the book. Lien has succeeded in creating a character who will stay with the reader for a very long time," writes Penelope Cottier in a review this week.
"This is an important and often beautiful book, in which the investigation of a death reveals far more than mere clues. History, memory and character are brought together in a novel of depth and insight."
A flash of inspiration from a Renaissance portrait
Award-winning novelist Maggie O'Farrell tells Amy Walters this week about the Renaissance portrait and the flash of inspiration that led to her new book, The Marriage Portrait (Tinder Press, $32.99).
"Waiting in the car for her daughter to finish a playdate, she took the opportunity to reacquaint herself with Robert Browning's dramatic monologue "My Last Duchess". Intrigued, she googled the renaissance painting that inspired it: a portrait of 15-year-old Lucrezia de'Medici, third daughter of the Duke of Florence, Cosimo de'Medici, and his Spanish wife Eleonora," Walters writes this week.
O'Farrell says: "There is something very unsettling about her picture, because she looks really frightened
"Her eyes look very apprehensive and she looks like she wants to tell you something.
"As soon as I saw it I knew I had my next novel."
What happens when a poet takes on other voices?
Our reviewer Geoff Page takes a look at a new collection from Alan Wearne, who Page says is one of the most distinctive poets of his generation.
"Wearne wanted to hear what happened when one took on the voices of others and used them as starting points for often complex narratives, revealing in the process much about Australian society of his own, and slightly earlier, times," writes Geoff Page in a review this week.
"For this he chose to a variety of traditional forms but used a diction that was far from that of his mentors. Because of his Melbourne emphasis and employment of local slang, Wearne also reminded readers of an earlier Australian narrative poet, C.J. Dennis, creator of The Sentimental Bloke."
Case of Mondayitis? It's our own doing
David M. Henkin's The Week: A History of the Unnatural Rhythms That Made Us Who We Are (Yale University Press, $41.95) reveals the seven-day cycle we subject ourselves to is a dastardly device of our own making.
Colin Steele, in a review this week, considers whether the working week cycle will stay with us in the way it has, given COVID had rewritten the relationship with desk-bound jobs. They are no longer so desk bound.
"When I began this project, I had the sense that maybe I was documenting the modern experience of the week just as it was about to unravel. But by the end of it, I was less sure about the unraveling," Henkin has said of his book.
That sinking Monday feeling might be with us for some time yet.
Jasper Lindell
Jasper Lindell joined The Canberra Times in 2018. He is a Legislative Assembly reporter, covering ACT politics and government. He also writes about development, transport, heritage, local history, literature and the arts, as well as contributing to the Times' Panorama magazine. He was previously a Sunday Canberra Times reporter.
Jasper Lindell joined The Canberra Times in 2018. He is a Legislative Assembly reporter, covering ACT politics and government. He also writes about development, transport, heritage, local history, literature and the arts, as well as contributing to the Times' Panorama magazine. He was previously a Sunday Canberra Times reporter.
