Posts Tagged ‘book’
That’d Be Right – William McInnes
William McInnes, star of stage and screen was born in Queensland but I won’t hold that against him. He has a beautiful speaking voice and has used that to great effect as the ‘voice’ of so many characters. I’m wondering when he’ll follow in the late Leonard Teale’s footsteps and set Australia’s poems into audio form.
That'd Be Right - William McInnes
McInnes has an interesting writing style, I quite like it. This book illustrates Australia and our interest in both sports and politics, it makes me wonder if I’m really Australian despite being born here as I don’t like either sport or politics.
McInnes takes a simple walk down to the shops or a visit to the beach to take us back to a particular time in our history and examine the sport of the day and the politics. His father was a big Labour supporter, giving our How To Vote cards during elections and even running on one occasion so he had some inside knowledge but he didn’t leave it at that, he’d often ask people about politicians of the day and share the other person’s thoughts.
I loved this book. I thoroughly recommend it to Australians new and old, and to other nationalities if you’re wanting to try and understand the Australian psyche and why the majority of us are so excited by sport. There is the odd swear word in it.
Squid Ink fights The Three Musketeers
Squid Ink fights The Three Musketeers
This is one of those all time great books. It’s been made into a movie several times and brings with it that immortal phrase “all for one, one for all” (“tous pour un, un pour tous”). It was originally published in serial form in 1844 and by 1846 had been translated into three different English versions. Many of explicit and implicit references to sexuality had been excised. I believe the most recent translation by Richard Pevear (2006) has corrected most of those and makes it easier to understand the relationship between d’Artagnan and Milady.
The story of d’Artagnan is continued in Twenty Years After and The Vicomte of Bragelonne: Ten Years Later. Those three novels by Dumas are together known as the d’Artagnan Romances.
Moby Dick – Squid Ink Style
Moby Dick is one of the books that everyone should read and I’m only mildly embarrassed to say that I haven’t. I did pick it up a few months ago and stymied myself by insisting I read the introduction. One day I’ll get back to it and I’ll ignore the introduction and get straight into the book.
Moby Duck - Squid Ink
Rocky & Gawenda – Michael Gawenda
I picked up this book with some small amount of trepidation as well as a little excitement. Michael Gawenda is my cousin’s uncle and I must have seen and probably spoken to him when I was young but I don’t actually recall doing so. I was trepidacious about reading a book written by someone so close to me and excited as I know his background and I expected him to be a fairly good writer. I was not disappointed, the writing was polished and professional and has a lovely use of words, I really appreciated Gawenda’s word usage. I has to reread many parts as I found myself thinking there was a typo as it just didn’t look right, but on rereading I found I was just putting the pauses or the emphasis in the wrong place and when I changed the way I read it the passage meant something entirely different…it was delightful. I was particularly taken with the chapters written by his children, Chasky and Evie, as the writing was a completely different style to Gawenda, it was great to see the difference in writing between the generations and to get a different view of him and his interactions with his dogs.
The book was originally published as a blogon the Crikey website and only some of the entries were deemed suitable for publication in book formatha. It is composed of the things that occurred to him while he was walking his dog, Rocky and covered so many different topics. Gawenda posted his last entry on 18th November 2009, he is still around and I’m sure we’ll see him doing other things, just not posting on his blog.
Last weekend I was at Limmud Oz, a Festival of Jewish Learning and Culture. It was an exciting weekend and was jam-packed full of fabulous presentations. One of the sessions was taken up by a Media Q and A, just like the programme on ABC1 but with Jews who work in the media as the panel, one of whom was Gawenda. I was still in the middle of this book and took it with me although I’m still trying to figure out why. I’m sure I’ve already discussed that I’m generally not interested in signatures and I feel it would have been a little crass for me to hold it out to him asking for his signature so as to increase the selling value. I was within earshot when he spoke to a friend of his who asked about his book and I could have easily pulled it out in time and popped over there but I didn’t.
I do think I’ve been totally mixed up by the internet’s social media. The Media Q and A took about an hour and during most of that time I was wanting to refresh my screen so I could check out what other people were saying on Twitter. I generally don’t watch the ABC1 programme on TV, Q and A, as the other members of my house want to watch other things but I do watch it on Twitter and it’s most amusing reading what other people think of the programme. If you’re interested you can check it out yourself using the hash tag #qanda I particularly missed Leslie Cannold who regularly comments on the number of men and women on the panel, she would have had a field day as we had one woman and four men.
I will have a couple of other sessions to write about in the future when I’ve had time to idigest them and look over my notes. They were not easy sessions to attend as you’ll find out in due course and I hope you’ll stay tuned in here to find out more details, but it could be a while.
A Nest of Occasionals – Tony Martin
Tony Martin was born in Te Kuiti, New Zealand but I promise I won’t hold that against him. This book is a collection of stories from his childhood and told with an eye to humour. I’m not going to make light of his childhood as some of it can’t have been fun but it’s just the way he tells it, he just makes the experiences funny.
I do like Martin, I’ve been watching him on television for years and have always enjoyed his work. It makes it hard to review this book as I can’t tell whether I like the book or the man. Yes, the writing is good and he has a great turn of phrase that makes me tingle with pleasure. One of the chapters that had me laughing with pleasure was when he and some friends decided they should be The Three Investigators. I read the books at the same time as they did and got the same pleasure from them. They liked the same things about the books, such as their headquarters, as I did.
His descriptions of people and situations are such that I can almost see them; in some cases I can, such as when he mentions Milford Sound, a place I visited in 1978, a most beautiful place. It was such a delight to see his aunt and find out about his grandparents when he visited Te Kuiti as an adult; having spent a number of years in Australia, and to see her character.
Anyone who likes The Three Investigators must be good.
Warnings:
The occasional swear word
We do see a young boy growing up and hoping to go through puberty and experience what other young boys experience at this time.
Dream Dancer – Janet Morris
Shebat was 16, she was the lowest of the low, her services sold to others by her employer. She was taken off her world by Marada Seleucus Kerrion, next in line to take control of the Kerrion Consortium. This is her story, how she rose to find herself almost at the top of the family and was then dismissed back to her original world.
I found this book to be really challenging to read. There were a number of new ideas that weren’t explained until quite some time after they were first introduced and I had trouble with this. Many of the books I’ve read have the new concepts explained fairly early on and I have contemplated the idea of introducing the concept and then explaining it much, much later in the book. Now that I’ve seen it used I find I don’t like it. I do wonder if it’s possible for it to work with a different author. Some of the ideas were very similar to other books. In Dream Dancer there is a prototype space ship that totally melds with the mind and can think and reason properly, the space ship is the brains while the pilot is the brawn, just like the space ships in The Ship Who Sang series by Anne McCaffrey.
Parts of the story are a rollicking good read and I had trouble putting it down, it was just hard to understand some of the concepts. The one I’ll speak about is the concept mentioned in the title. I’m still rather confused but I think the author is saying that dreaming is a commodity and that you can go to an illegal organisation and have a person create a dream for you. You can only qualify as a Dream Dancer within one of the illegal organisations when you can demonstrate all the approved Dreams and also create one within approved parameters. Shebat becomes a Dream Dancer and is very good at it. She creates a dream that startles and worries her fellow dream dancers so they have great trouble deciding if she should pass the test. I think I’ve explained it properly, although one bit that worried me with her Dream is that I couldn’t understand why it upset her fellow Dream Dancers so much, this just wasn’t sufficiently explained and I felt it was a relatively important point as it helped to round out the explaination as why Shebat was so desirable. She was wanted by all and sundry for her talents.
Warnings:
Violence
Sex scene