I’m in the red for this week’s #ThursdayBooksandBeer, reading the love letters of Frida Kahlo after seeing the Kahlo exhibition at the Bendigo Art Gallery and emerging wanting to know more about this remarkable woman. This beautifully composed volume was edited by Suzanne Barbezat and published just this year. I’m drinking a ‘Fang’ Red IPA from Tallboy & Moose, also ‘published’ this year. “So I had to wait days and days just like an idiotic till I met Marcel Duchamp (a marvellous painter) who is the only one who has his feet on the earth, among all this bunch of coocoo lunatic sons of bitches of the surrealists.” (Letter to Nickolas Muray, February 1939) #literature #reading #fridakahlo #surrealism #craftbeer #loveletters

For this week’s #ThursdayBooksandBeer I’m reading Hunchback, the debut novel by Saou Ichikawa, who was the first author with a physical disability to win Japan’s prestigious Akutagawa Prize. It was also long listed for this year’s International Booker Prize, in the translation by Polly Barton. I’ve accompanied it with GSB ESB with lovely toffee notes from Gales Brewery. “That was my account name—Buddha. For twenty-nine years now, I have resided in Nirvana. Ever since the day that my underdeveloped muscles had prevented my heart and lungs from maintaining a normal level of oxygen saturation, and I’d grown faint and passed out by the classroom window in my second year of middle school.” #literature #reading #bookerprize #akutagawaprize #japaneseliterature #hunchback #craftbeer #microbrewery

I’m finally getting around to one of the classics of post-colonial literature for this week’s #ThursdayBooksandBeer: Tayeb Salih’s Season of Migration to the North, translated from the Arabic by Denys Johnson-Davies. I’ve made my own migration to Melbourne’s inner north to obtain a ‘Pint of Dread’ porter from new kid on the block, Subculture Brewing, to accompany the book. “It was, gentlemen, after a long absence—seven years to be exact, during which time I was studying in Europe—that I returned to my people. I learnt much and much passed me by—but that’s another story.” #reading #literature #postcolonial #tayebsalih #craftbeer #subculture #porter

Wonderful to see the hugely entertaining Colm Tóibín in conversation with Jason Steger this evening, mostly talking about his new novel Long Island. #colmtoibin #literature #irishliterature #longisland

For this week’s #ThursdayBooksandBeer I’m hanging out with the Eurotrash, which is the latest novel by Swiss author Christian Kracht (translated by Daniel Bowles). It made the longlist for this year’s International Booker Prize. I’ve paired it with a ‘Faust’ Marzen from Working Title Brew Co. out of Queensland for that European flavour. “Then there was this: I’d written a novel a quarter century ago called Faserland—a forgettable title—which ends in Zurich, out in the middle of the lake, somewhat traumatically.” #literature #reading #bookerprize #christiankracht #craftbeer #marzen

For this week’s #ThursdayBooksandBeer I’m escaping Melbourne’s wintry weather and mentally travelling to Zanzibar and Dar es Salaam, the setting for Theft, the new novel by Nobel Prize-winner Abdulrazak Gurnah. This is the third of his novels I’ve read and I’d as captivating at the first two. It’s accompanied by a Radical Hazy IPA from the team at Bodriggy in Abbotsford. “His one redeeming quality for Raya was his ability to tell stories. Those stories had charmed her childhood.” #literature #reading #nobelprize #craftbeer

Sublime music from #Slowdive tonight at Festival Hall in Melbourne. So brilliant live. #livemusic #shoegaze

This was my final post on Meta platforms before I delete my accounts, so I’ve directed people who would like to see any more #ThursdayBooksandBeer posts here to Pixelfed. It’s nice here. No ads. No corporate f**kery. This week I’m reading On the Calculation of Volume I (the first in a seven book series) by Solvej Balle, translated from the Danish by Barbara Haveland. It’s been shortlisted for this year’s International Booker Prize and won the Nordic Council Literature Prize. It’s like Groundhog Day (which I teach as a profound work of philosophy), but taken in the interesting directions you might expect from an intellectual European novelist. I’m ALSO reading Careless People: A story of where I used to work, by Sarah Wynn-Williams, which is about Facebook and confirms why I’m right to be leaving it. I’ll be interested if its presence in this post meant that fewer people saw it, because despite pretensions to free speech Zuckerberg and Sandberg have tried strenuously to block the book. In keeping with the experimental nature of Balle’s book I’m accompanying it with Tom’s Elixir, an experimental IPA brewed with terpenes. And Careless People’s is accompanied by Grumpy Dave’s NEIPA, because who wouldn’t be grumpy about how greedy and stupid these corporate billionaires are. #literature #bookerprize #literatureintranslation #craftbeer #groundhogday

New sculpture spotted on my morning walk along Merri Creek. Sign of the times? #streetart #sculpture