Attended a community theatre production over the weekend: “The Hunchback of Notre Dame.” The Disney version, not the Victor Hugo. Excellent stuff.
This event took me back to all those dreadful prescribed reads in order to gain the Higher School Certificate all those years ago. Chaucer, Shakespeare, Victor Hugo et al. Why the hell would 16 and 17 year olds be interested in the love poems of John Donne? And D H Lawrence. No wonder truancy was so prevalent back in the day……
I’ve been trying to remember if the curriculum at that time included any Australian authors and could only come up with Alan Seymour’s ” One Day of the Year.” This was problematic too in that the play centred around the older generation’s reverence for Anzac Day whilst younger folk were questioning the situation in Vietnam. To this day I can hear my Economics teacher announce that she was “not allowed” to discuss Vietnam because it was “political.”
Anyway, I’ve just read another book by Australian writer, Charlotte Wood. “The Natural Way of Things” won the Stella prize in 2016 and covers ten young women who have been kidnapped and are hidden in the Australian bush. It is a brutal read covering humiliation, incarceration, starvation, and abuse of power. Bit like a female version of “Lord of the Flies”. Highly recommended for keeping bums on seats in a classroom.
I also picked up this little gem from a throw out table: a board book for Little People about Audrey Hepburn. This one is going into grand daughter Audrey’s Santa Sack.
Next visit to the Library I’ll give Quasimodo another try. I’ll also book tickets to the theatre group’s coming production of ” Strictly Ballroom”.
Brizzy Mays Books and Bruschetta 
After spending several thousand hours in theatre productions, I can attest that the cringe is real!😂 Here s to a better experience for you next.time Brizzy🥂😊💚 As for the book, I may need to check that out!🤔😊
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The Disney version of The Hunchback on stage was excellent. A wonderful performance. Couldn’t manage the book all those years ago at school. Maybe age and wisdom( ha ha ha) will remedy that…..
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Somethings are better in the artistic representation perhaps!😂
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Glad to see your post. Good news, it’s back in my READER. I decide to un-subscribe… the re-subscribe. That seemed to work. 😉🌺
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You had me thinking about Australian books I read at high school. I was one of those enraptured by DH Lawrence and intrigued by John Donne. At home I collected the entire series of the Billabong books by Mary Grant Bruce and at school we began First Year with To the Islands by Randolph Stowe. We also read The One Day of the Year and The Summer of the Seventeenth Doll. Apart from those it was pretty much British isles – Shakespeare, Stevenson, Hardy, Austen, Lawrence, Swift and one American, Mark Twain. However that was 60 years ago so I imagine things have changed quite a bit.
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I certainly hope so:) I love DH Lawrence now but in hindsight those books that were prescribed texts back in the day don’t seem age appropriate ( or life experience appropriate.)But then, I was sweet and innocent in those days. Hahaha
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My English teacher told us this is where we would learn about real life (in the English class). Several students walked out in protest against the “rude” books. I’m glad to say I wasn’t one of them.
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I can’t even remember the books I read in class all those years ago. They can’t have been very memorable. But I devoured my friend Flicka and those series plus, of course, Black Beauty and the famous five books. So many years ago. 🙄
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Pauline, you were one of those horse girls, weren’t you! I had a friend who was horsey mad. Oddly, though I am a mad animal lover preferring pets to people, horses have never been my thing. And Black Beauty…….way too sad.
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Yes I was a horse mad kid and all my early life was peppered with horses. My daughter, in NZ, has my passion and now owns 5 horses + a foal…
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