Review: Get Well Soon! My (Un) Brilliant Career as a Nurse | Kristy Chambers

I just finished a brilliant memoir from Australian nurse and first-time writer Kristy Chambers, entitled: Get Well Soon - My (Un) Brilliant Career as a Nurse.
Kristy has a typically down to earth personality and an Aussie sense of humour that shines through in the pages of her memoir.  In Get Well Soon!, Kristy primarily discusses her nursing career, and includes some moving accounts of looking after patients suffering from terminal illnesses or patients from the various departments she has worked in over the years.

However, sprinkled in with these sobering accounts are the funnier moments of nursing which had me snorting and laughing out loud with relish.  Her chapter called 'Shit' was quite memorable and the story called 'The Tampon' is also worth a mention.

At a mere 248 pages, I breezed through Get Well Soon! and was incredibly moved by many of the patient stories Kristy shared.  I'm so glad she achieved a healthy balance between humanity and humour and her natural down to earth writing style made her memoir so accessible.

I've been recommending Get Well Soon! widely since I turned the last page, and everyone I've talked to about it seems to want to get their hands on a copy.  You can read a free extract of Get Well Soon! yourself by clicking here.

My Rating = *****

Carpe Librum!

Interview with Christopher Kemp, author of Floating Gold - The Search for Ambergris, The Most Elusive Substance in the Natural World

Today, scientist, writer and ambergris hunter Christopher Kemp stops by for a virtual chat about his book Floating Gold - The Search for Ambergris, The Most Elusive Substance in the Natural World, his love for ambergris and some of his favourite authors and books.

Interview Questions
For the benefit of those who haven't read your book, what is ambergris?

Author and ambergris hunter Christopher Kemp

Ambergris is a strange and intestinal secretion produced by an estimated one percent of sperm whales. It forms in the hindgut, binding up hard and durable squid beaks that the whale has ingested and cannot digest. Most whales regurgitate this indigestible slurry but, in a few cases, it makes it through the whale's four cavernous stomach chambers and into the small intestine instead. It begins to chafe and irritate the gut lining. In response, the whale's intestine secretes an oily, cholesterol-rich substance that forms a stratified boulder. Once expelled at sea, it drifts on ocean currents for months and years -- and perhaps even decades. As it floats, it ages. Cured by the saltwater and oxidized by sunlight it becomes a white waxy substance. Its odor profile, which was once fecal and fairly aggressive, softens and becomes unique and indescribable. 

What is it used for?
For centuries, it has been used as a principal ingredient in perfume, acting as a fixative -- a stabilizer that makes the scent last longer on the wearer's skin. But it has also been used as a drug, an aphrodisiac, an ingredient in cooking, a commodity, and all sorts of other things too. In many instances, companies have replaced genuine ambergris with synthetic compounds, but it is still used. When it washes ashore, the highest quality ambergris is worth up to $20,000 USD a kilo. Across the world, people still hunt for it, collect it, trade it clandestinely, and dream about it always.

A Molecular Biologist by trade, how did you first become interested in ambergris?
I was working in New Zealand in 2008. One night, I switched on the TV and on the evening news there was a report about a mysterious object that had washed ashore near Wellington, the capital city. Some people claimed it was a meteorite; others thought maybe it was an enormous boulder of Brie cheese. It weighed an estimated half-ton. At some point, someone must have suggested it was ambergris and within hours a crowd of a hundred or so people had descended onto the beach, armed with garden tools. They hacked it to pieces, each trying to claim a piece of it. A group of students used a bed sheet to carry a large piece of it home. I'd never heard of ambergris before. But from that moment on, I was pretty hooked. So the book really tells the story of my educated and infiltration into the ambergris world.

A piece of ambergris
Credit: Christopher Kemp

The pursuit of ambergris has taken you all over the world, even living in New Zealand for a while with your family. Do they share your interest, tolerate your interest or do they think you are obsessed?
My family has always tolerated, and mostly shared, my obsessions. Quite quickly, I began to realize that the possibility of finding ambergris really presented a reason for spending time outside on the coastline with my son, who had just recently been born. It was a portal. I spent so much time outside, exploring the world that, had I not been searching for ambergris, I might never have experienced. The temptation, especially when you have a three-month-old baby who doesn't sleep much, was always to lounge in front of the TV. In search of ambergris, I was always forced, even on rainy, windswept spring days, when the trees are bent over in the wind, to go out after high tide to look for beach cast ambergris instead.

Do you think the value of ambergris will increase or decrease in the future, given many companies use synthetic forms of ambergris now to fix their perfumes?
It's hard to say what will happen. On one hand, one of the larger companies are using synthetic ambergris. On the other hand, more people than ever are becoming artisanal perfumers who make handcrafted fragrances in their home laboratories. Many of them use all-natural products and rely heavily on ambergris.

Can you share some of the more unusual resource material you've consulted or research you've undertaken?
It all seemed to be unusual. The time I spent on remote Stewart Island was very special. The trips to museums like Harvard University's Museum of Comparative Zoology in the US was an amazing opportunity. I was lucky in so many ways to go to the places I did.

What message (if any) would you like readers to take away after reading Floating Gold?
Hmmm. I think I'd like readers to remember that the natural world is an amazing place, which is still filled with mystery. Google and Wikipedia cannot tell us everything. I wrote the book mostly because, after first watching that news segment in 2008, I logged onto my computer and expected to learn everything about ambergris that I needed to know in the next ten minutes. But there was almost no information out there. The few sources that did exist all seemed to contradict one another. I wrote the book simply because no one else had. There are still mysteries out there. And many of them are wonderful.

The ending of Floating Gold was one of the best non-fiction endings I've read in years!  But I've gotta ask, (I have to know) yes, or no?
No.  But I would rather say: not yet. One thing that the book sort of acknowledges is that nothing really ends, or not as neatly as many books would have you believe anyway. (Tracey breathes a sigh of relief.  The suspense was doing my head in.  You'll have to read the book to know what I mean, no spoilers here.)

The Founding Fish
John McPhee
one of Christopher's
fav books

What are some of your favourite books/authors?
I read everything. In the non-fiction category, I loved anything and everything by an American writer called John McPhee. He has a very kind and inquisitive view of the world and writes beautifully. One of my favorite of his books is The Founding Fish. Otherwise, I read a lot of Martin Amis, Salman Rushdie, Julian Barnes, Norman Mailer, Kurt Vonnegut. I like Paul Theroux's travel writing a lot. I'm enjoying David Quammen's new book Spillover. For a long time, I've read everything by the Beats: William Burroughs, Jack Kerouac, Allen Ginsberg, Gregory Corso, etc. I also have a secret weakness for war reporting (probably because I'd never by brave enough to do it myself), including my favorites, Michael Herr's Dispatches and John Laurence's The Cat from Hue.

What's next?  Are you working on anything else at the moment?
I'm doing things backward. Most people start small, trying to write for progressively larger magazines that more and more people read and that pay writers better. And then eventually they try to get a book deal. Instead, I wrote a book, and now I'm starting to write for a few magazines. Almost no one ever got rich writing a book. But it's possible to do okay writing magazine articles. You get paid more and they don't swallow up years of your life. It allows you to sort of screen subjects and potentially find another one with the breadth necessary to support a book-length project. Ironically, my book on ambergris was supposed to be a magazine article. I researched it for a few months and pitched it to editors everywhere I could think of pitching it. By the time I realized no one was interested in it, I'd written half the book.

Anything else you'd like to add?
If you think you've found some ambergris, you can let me know at ambergrishotline@gmail.com

Thanks so much Christopher!  I'm certainly more in awe of mother nature having read Floating Gold, so thank you for sharing your expertise and knowledge in an otherwise secretive industry.  It's fascinating stuff!

Winner Announced: The Crane Wife | Patrick Ness

The Carpe Librum competition to win a copy of The Crane Wife by Patrick Ness (pictured below) closed at midnight on Sunday 19th May 2013.  I received some brilliant entries, the question being: if you had a choice to be a bird for a day what species of bird would you be?  Here's a few of the highlights:

• A pelican because they look ungainly on land but are graceful in the water and air;
• If the range includes mystical birds, I'd be a Roc because they're huge, scary and I could enjoy scaring the code brown out of some people;
• I'd have to be a magpie. They are clever & fearless & a protected species - bonus!!
• I would be an Emu because (like me) they don't conform and they are proud to be weird: they can't fly and can't walk backwards; but boy they give the other animals a run for their money.

Owls were popular, and I was very surprised at the variety of suggestions submitted, so thank you to all those that entered, subscribed and Tweeted.

The winner was selected thanks to random.org and Congratulations go to:

Debbie Rodgers

Debbie's answer was: I admire the tenacious little northern chickadee so would pick that.  Debbie also Tweeted the competition and follows Carpe Librum via Google Friend Connect, giving her three entries in the competition.

Debbie, please email me your postal address in the next three weeks to claim your prize.  If the prize is unclaimed, a new winner will be drawn.  Thanks to everybody who entered and to Allen & Unwin for supplying the book.

Review: Floating Gold - The Search for Ambergris, The Most Elusive Substance in the Natural World | Christopher Kemp

What is ambergris? From the old French ambre gris meaning "grey amber", Ambergris is a grayish waxy substance found only in the intestines of 1% of sperm whales. 

Sperm whales cannot digest the beaks (mouths) of squids, and these accumulate in their stomachs, triggering the slow layering of squid beaks with concrete like faeces to create a hard ball that whale waste can pass.

Once secreted, it can float for years on ocean currents before finally washing ashore.  Ambergris is incredibly valuable and is used as a fixative in the perfume industry although was also used in the recipes of the rich many hundreds of years ago.


Review
I've always been fascinated and intrigued by ambergris, both how it is formed and why it is so highly valued.  After reading Floating Gold by Christopher Kemp, all my questions have been answered, and I have a new-found respect for this substance and the whales that produce it.

Kemp has a natural and engaging writing style, mixing his personal search for ambergris with all manner of information sprinkled in between.  Despite the non-fiction topic, I was never distracted or bored reading Floating Gold.  In fact, the ending made me exclaim out loud, and was probably the BEST ending in a  non-fiction book I've read in years!  (I'm not going to spoil it for anybody wanting to check it out though).

There's also a lot to enjoy for Kiwi readers too, as much takes place in New Zealand and Stewart Island.

Floating Gold is full of interesting tidbits, including that Elizabeth I was more than partial to ambergris, her cooks including it in quail dishes.  I recall one of my favourite segments was when Kemp mentioned:

 "...a French perfumer whose nose was so sensitive that he could smell a vial of jasmine essence and identify not only the country in which the flowers were grown but whether the machines they were processed in were made of aluminium or stainless steel."
                                                                                           -  Page 137

How incredible!  Floating Gold is full of amazing and incredible information, and I thoroughly enjoyed exploring this secretive and widely unknown world.

My rating = *****

Carpe Librum!

Book Cover for The Wolves of Midwinter by Anne Rice is Revealed

It's here!! The long awaited cover for the Wolves of Midwinter by legendary author Anne Rice has been revealed, and I'm so excited!

Anne Rice holding her copy of The Wolves of Midwinter

 The Wolves of Midwinter is part of the Wolf Gift Chronicles and is the sequel to The Wolf Gift.  We have a little longer to wait yet though, as The Wolves of Midwinter isn't due to be released until 15th October 2013.

I count down to any new release from Anne Rice, but the question is, will you be joining me?  What do you think of the cover?

Carpe Librum!

Review: Seduction: A Novel of Suspense | M.J. Rose

What appealed to me about this novel from M.J. Rose entitled Seduction: A Novel of Suspense was the premise that it was about Victor Hugo (arguably one of France's greatest literary heroes), who began holding seances from his house to communicate with the dead ten years after suffering the loss of his daughter. 

It is true that in 1853 he was introduced to the practice of table tapping, and Hugo claimed to receive communication from many spirits, including some famous ones such as: Shakespeare and Voltaire.  For more click here. I've always been fascinated by periods in history - particularly after WWI - when seances were a popular means to communicate with the dead.

Interwoven between Hugo's story is the modern day tale of Jac, Celtic expert interested in investigating the origin of Celtic ruins and renowned for her sense of smell.

While Seduction can be read as a stand alone gothic historical novel, much reference was made to previous books (I'm assuming to The Book of Lost Fragrances, which was extremely popular) therefore if I had my time again I would probably start earlier in the series.

And now to the final review. All the elements were there for me to fall in love with, but I always seemed to be held back a little.  Whether it was because I hadn't read the series from the beginning, or because I wanted more from Hugo's story, or the two elderly sisters set in the present time, I'm unclear.

Nevertheless, Seduction: A Novel of Suspense is doing very well and is certainly a buzz book right now.  The highlight for me was when I saw fellow book blogger Amy Bruno mentioned in the Acknowledgements section. I've been following her from a distance on her blog Passages to the Past and more recently her business Historical Fiction Virtual Book Tours (HFVBT) for some time now.  Her site is published in my list of favourite blogs and her success is an inspiration to all book bloggers.  Congratulations Amy!!

Book Four

My rating = ***

For those wanting to embark on the Reincarnationist series by M.J. Rose from the beginning, here are the books in order:

The Reincarnationist - Book One
The Memorist - Book Two
The Hypnotist - Book Three
The Book of Lost Fragrances - Book Four
Seduction - Book Five

Review: The Complete Book of Stumpwork Embroidery | Jane Nicholas

As well as reading and all things book-related, I do enjoy a few other hobbies, one of which includes cross stitch.  One of the books I want to read is called The Stumpwork Robe by Prue Batten which is about a woman who hides a story in the embroidery of a magnificent robe.

This cross-over of stitching and reading led me on a quest to find out more about stumpwork and what better place to start than with The Complete Book of Stumpwork Embroidery.  What I wasn't expecting to find was that the author Jane Nicholas is a fellow Australian, and an Australian with an Order of Australia Medal (OAM) no less, for her services to hand embroidery as an artist, teacher, and author.

Jane has been researching and working in the field for over 20 years and travels all over the world teaching and designing and is a leading expert in the world of embroidery and stumpwork.  One of her designs, Homage to the Seventeenth Century is printed in colour in the end papers of The Complete Book of Stumpwork Embroidery, and took her 5 years to finish!  Pictured below, it had me spellbound, and staring at her work with my mouth open for minutes on end, then flicking back and forth understanding which stitches she used for which components.

In Jane's words, stumpwork is: a term used to refer to a particular form of domestic raised embroidery practised in England between 1650 and 1700.  Given my love of historical fiction, I find this fascinating, many young girls working on their samplers as part of their coming of age.

The Complete Book of Stumpwork Embroidery is an interesting and instructional book with a nod to history and includes the different styles of stitches used, and many designs to choose from.  My only wish would have been more colour photographs and drawings.

All in all, an inspiring and hefty hardback reference book, and worthy addition to any crafter's bookshelf.

My rating = ****

Carpe Librum!

Homage to the Seventeenth Century by Jane Nicholas

Review & Giveaway: The Crane Wife | Patrick Ness

* From Publisher *

When in Sydney in early April, I was lucky enough to attend a bookish event organised by Allen & Unwin in the CBD. I had to go to a memorial in Martin Place, look for a woman in a Kimono and tell her I was there to read The Crane Wife.  I was then given a copy of the book.

The lucky recipients then adjourned for a flash mob reading of the book which was pretty exciting, despite the rain.

I was lucky enough to pick up an additional copy after the even which will be part of a giveaway, details to follow at the end of this review.

Review
George, a divorced and lonely man is woken one night by a keening sound, only to discover a great white crane in his backyard.  The bird is powerful and has a real presence but is painfully injured with an arrow through its wing.  George helps the bird and his life is changed from that moment on.

I hadn't heard of the Japanese folk tale that formed the inspiration for this story, and I think it was better that I hadn't.  It took me a while to settle into the pace of The Crane Wife - it's quite different to what I usually read - but the writing was beautiful and the themes were all about love and forgiveness.  I enjoyed George's flawed character, the mythology aspects throughout the novel and the ending was very touching.

Favourite quote comes from Page 45:

"... let's-carpe-the-unexpectedly-sunny-diem-and-have-an-impromptu-picnic/endurance-session in the park..."

My rating = ***

Giveaway
For your chance to WIN a brand new copy of The Crane Wife by Patrick Ness courtesy of Allen & Unwin, leave a comment below and tell me if you had a choice to be a bird for a day what species of bird would you be?

To increase your chance of winning you can:

1. Subscribe to follow Carpe Librum by email or Google Friend Connect;
2. Tweet about the competition on Twitter, using my handle @Carpe_Librum1 and a link to this post. 

Tell me what you shared or followed in your comment to receive an additional competition entry for each method.

Entries close midnight, Sunday 19 May, 2013 and the winner has 3 weeks to claim their prize.  (Open to Aus & NZ residents).

Good luck everybody, Carpe Librum!