Blurb: Writers of letters to The Age and The Sydney Morning Herald are poets, dreamers and provocateurs. The overwhelming majority are in search of a better world, even if some disguise their aspiration in a sheath that is crackling dry. They are possessed of good sense and a wicked sense of humour. No topic is off limits.
Yet hundreds of offerings bite the dust every day. Some are too late. Too vulgar. Too confessional. Some writers are victims of thier own success and are at risk of overexposure. Others don't meet the Heralds's strigngent verification rules. Others are delightfully (but unprintably) kooky. All are kept.
From Tony Abbott's dress-ups to Julia Gillard's karate chop, Judith Lucy's sex life and the perils of proposing to your pet, the vault is opened and our writers' wit, insight and imagination are unleashed.
Thoughts: After two fairly quick finishes with
The Help and
Call the Midwife, I was in a bit of a reading funk and struggling to settle to anything. Then
That Book You Like mentioned Pardon Me For Mentioning... on her Facebook page. A quick check of the library and it was soon in my hands.
It's a quick read - most probably all up I spend less than 3 hours reading it. Short, but entertaining, especially if you follow Australian politics and political affairs. Given the letters come from Melbourne and Sydney papers, the letters are very east coast centric. It's also a book that I feel with have a fairly short shelf life as the letters refer to fairly recent events, and as those fade from memories people could be left wondering why the letter in question made the cut at all. Personally I think a short explanation of the news story behind the letters would have been beneficial.
For me it was a good in between read while trying to decide what to focus on next, but it definitely won't be for everyone.
