I like reading books set in Adelaide. Some of them are:
- Space Demons and Skymaze by Gillian Rubenstein. Set in the city and North Adelaide, where I now live. Note, I no longer live in North Adelaide. Contains various institutions such as the Mad Mouse (now defunct), the Come Out festival, etc. The final book in the series, somewhat disappointingly, was set in Japan.
- My Boyfriend's Father by Ben Winch. Partly set on Gould Rd., Stirling, just down the road from my parents' place, but also mentions the renovation of Adelaide Arcade and The Austral. A ripping yarn. What a pity Ben hasn't written more! He seems to have moved overseas and gone back to indie music.
- Lonely Planet's book on Australia. It's a bit of a stretch to include it here, but it is interesting to see what they think you should see. It's also interesting to read an older edition and see how many places have shut down or upped their prices. I see urban development as a conspiracy to sell more Lonely Planet guides. Travel books are cheating but Bill Bryson's "Down Under" was great too.
Anyone know of any others? I know there were a bunch more by Gillian Rubenstein (one with an alien springs to mind) but I don't remember what it was called. I got a list of some others from someone on Orkut before it went to hell but the old Adelaide group was taken over by randoms and disabled. Ooh, there's an orkut complaint generator.
Not a book but a song:
- Restless in June by Emily Davis. Apparently about the tendency for people in Adelaide to go somewhere else around June.
Not a book but a movie:
- Look Both Ways, set in Port Adelaide. I don't go there often so I didn't really recognise any of the settings, but it was an interesting movie with a nice soundtrack.
- Spank, set in various empty (at the time) businesses around the city.
- Centrespread. According to IMDB, "the Story of a photographer's struggle in the glamorous world of nude modeling". I remember seeing this on TV late at night when I was about ten and recall being vaguely disappointed by it even then, but it always stuck in my mind as a vaguely disappointing cinematic soft porn feature filmed in a dystopian Adelaide.