books, books, books
At the back of The Wonder Of Little Things, Vince and I include a list of the books we read and talked about as Vince recalled his life. Some were about people he knew, like Charlie Perkins, John Moriarty, Lowitja O’Donoghue, and his Aunty Doris and Uncle Cecil Graham. Others were academic books I’d read over the past decade or two that Vince and I used to cross-check facts and dates.
Here’s a small selection. Some are my own copies, others I borrowed from my library.
Over the years I’ve read a lot of memoirs and life stories, and I gave some to Vince to read. With each one, we’d talk about what we thought the author was trying to achieve by writing their story, and whether there was too much historical information or too little.
One book was very academic. It had great factual information in it, but not much actual ‘story’ about the person and their life. After he finished reading that one, Vince said he wished they’d written more about their friends. He wanted his own story to celebrate his friends as well as the big historical events that he witnessed and took part in.
Reading the history books gave us lots of information about the laws and policies that had controlled so much of Vince’s life. He wanted to share some of that with readers, so we decided to have a timeline with a potted history at the back of the book. That way people curious to know more of the history that affected Vince and his people so profoundly could easily find it – story and history placed alongside each other.
Working with Vince on his story meant I read quite a few books I wouldn’t normally pick up, like a history of AFL football, and another you can see in the photo, titled Grain Handling: The Way It Was. Vince opened up my world in many unexpected ways.
Here’s a shout out to all the wonderful people who work in libraries and bookshops. Thank you for all you do to put stories and ideas into people’s hands for them to enjoy, to learn from, to be moved by, to have their imaginations stretched by, and everything else books do.
© 2023 This work is licensed under CC BY-NC-SA 4.0
Acknowledgement: Vince’s continuing legacy has been assisted by the Australian Government through Creative Australia, its principal arts investment and advisory body.