READINGS OF THE WORK BY PHILIP HARVEY

Day 8 Having met the challenge to post the cover of seven books that I love (no explanation, no review, just the cover), I will come clean with my explanation. All the covers I posted are of books that I read, either in whole or part, every year. Hence the absence of novels. Some are there just for consultation, some to touch base, others are essential to my general well-being. The 100 word entries that go with the books are my creative interest, being neither explanations or reviews of the book. Being thus inspired, I will continue with this exercise until either I or the reader, probably the latter, wearies of it. Today is a book I found in a Hobart second-hand bookshop, ‘The personal papers of Anton Chekhov’ (Lear, 1948) Here are 100 words on a word in the title: Personal (July)   “It’s personal” is an admission you make to fend off discussion about religion, love life, latest argument. Reading Chekhov’s notebook again this July, you’d be pushed to find anything

Day 7 I have accepted the challenge to post the cover of seven books that I love: no explanation, no review, just the cover. Today, ‘Hope against Hope' by Nadezhda Mandelstam. Each time I post a cover, I’ll ask a friend to take up the challenge. Meanwhile, here are 100 words on a word in the title: Hope (July) Nadezhda is Russian for Hope. Hope will see through the Salon of Betrayal. She’ll survive departmental politics. Hope will live in a new town to be near his last known sighting. She sometimes wonders why he chose her. Hope is an actress, she can remember lines. July, August, September, she knows the metre. She secretes them around the apartment, where mustachio’ed beetles cannot nibble. She secretes them in her mind where they laugh, gust, flame. Absence makes a manuscript grow. Hope doesn’t give it a title. Hope sits in her bed scribbling memories. Someone else can name the manuscript, afterwards.  

Day 6 I have accepted the challenge to post the cover of seven books that I love: no explanation, no review, just the cover. Today, ‘The Art of Living’ by Saul Steinberg. Each time I post a cover, I’ll ask a friend to take up the challenge. Meanwhile, here are 100 words on a word in the title: Living   (July) Lessons from Saul Steinberg’s ‘The Art of Living’ (1945). Half the news is got looking over someone else’s shoulder. Staircases to underground platforms come all the way from the bottom. It takes a tree to make a wooden chair. Art is 90% decoration, 10% indication. Pavements are made to be broken. All ideologies lead to 14th July Square. Grand railway stations were the people’s palaces. Music begins with a bang or a whimper. Martians are just human, after all. If you must faint, have someone to catch you. Some artists draw long bows. A bird’s song is the cat’s whiskers. 

Day 5 I have accepted the challenge to post the cover of seven books that I love: no explanation, no review, just the cover. Today, Melway Greater Melbourne Street Directory, first created by Merv Godfrey and Iven Mackay. Each time I post a cover, I’ll ask a friend to take up the challenge. Meanwhile, here are 100 words on a word in the title: Melway (July) Bunjil Way. Narambi Crescent. Toomuc Road. Toorak Road. Tooronga Road. Moonee Parade. Tullamarine Freeway. Narbethong Drive. Turramurra Road. Yan Yean Road. Carapooka Avenue. Nardoo Court. Wahgunyah Drive. Moondani Drive. Neeroonda Drive. Wallaroo Square. Coorabong Avenue. Nerang Court. Waradgery Drive. Murrumbidgee Street. Waratah Mews. Nillumbik Square. Yow Yow Rising. Yallambie Road. Murrumbeena Road. Yanoniwon Avenue. Nulgarrah Crescent. Yarra Boulevard. Yarrambat Street. Myall Place. Woori Yallock Road. Tali Karng Close. Woorrwarren Lane. Djerriwarrh Track. Woorigoleen Drive. Myoora Road. Woiwurung Crescent. Wimm

Day 4 I have accepted the challenge to post the cover of seven books that I love: no explanation, no review, just the cover. Today, The New Shorter Oxford English Dictionary on historical principles, edited by Lesley Brown, in two volumes, Clarendon Press, 1993. Each time I post a cover, I’ll ask a friend to take up the challenge. Meanwhile, here are 100 words on a word in the title:   English (July)   It’s riverish, it ravishes. Lavish and established, it’s never squeamish. Prone to the embellish and churlish, the gibberish and purplish, whether brutish and shortish or bookish, too-longish, yet it keeps its parish, still will relish the waggish, cherish the blemish, and astonish the foolish. Publish or perish, still it will flourish. The rudish fish where the prudish pish. The wish is to burnish, to spit and polish, accomplish the stylish, the swish, outlandish, to garnish undiminished. Cleverish, it will distinguish the weather’s more than July, it’s Julyish.