@Alan_Noonan_10 , you mentioned the Cicero Trilogy by Robert Harris a week or so ago, and today a Granddaughter gave me a hardback book with all three volumes.
Started reading tonight, so far it is very good. Thanks for the tip.
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I’ve recently finished two very good non fiction books relating to Australia in WW2 that are well worth the read if you’re interested in Australian Military History.
Borneo by Michael Veitch: Tells the story of Operation Oboe, Australia’s last major battles of WW2.
Blamey by Brent D. Taylor: A biography of Field Marshall Sir Thomas Blamey, Australia’s only locally born soldier to reach that rank.’
What made this one so interesting is the fact that the writer had no prior experience as a military writer/historian.
I became interested in Blamey after reading “The Battle of The Generals” which was about Blamey and MacArthur and how they interacted during WW2.
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Brown takes a bit of getting used to with his spare style of writing. Short and sharp. Few adjectives. No fluff. Very direct. Loves swearing.
I started with his first, which a collection of shortish stories under the banner of ‘Sweet Jimmy’ and I wasn’t overly impressed. Can’t quite put my finger on it, but they lacked something.
However, I am enjoying his first novel ‘The Drowning’ very much as the plot is more intricate, engaging and well rounded. It’s given me the incentive to buy his latest, ‘The Hidden’, which will be next cab off the rank.
I’m enjoying The Hidden. It’s a very different style of writing, a little in the vein of James Elllroy (LA Confidential, The Black Dahlia), short, sharp sentences.
Oh that’s a good one! Enjoy!
That’s a good three, you mean.
After you finish them, try Pompeii. That’s really good, and much more of the days leading to the eruption. He concocted an ending that had a possibility of being true based on contemporary reporting.
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A deliberate Caesarian ploy to ensnare you!
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I would love Michael Veitch to do his audio book in the voice of the airline steward character he did on Fast Forward.
He was in a choir-type thing, not a band, as he sang at my cousin’s wedding about 1993. I can’t remember much more about the group. Memory is shot. It was only 32 years ago.
Finished Bryan Brown’s The Hidden. I really enjoyed it, even though it was a fairly slow start. But this is what’s so good about this recent batch of Australian rural and regional crime fiction. You get interested in the towns and the people’s interactions. It’s not just about the crime.
I just tacked this review onto the back of my previous post, to avoid the objections discourse hits me with when I post 3 times in a row. Next book is The Neighbours, set in Sydney, and written by the English-born editor of Woman’s Day.
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$10 books at Big W today!
https://www.bigw.com.au/books/c/78?srsltid=AfmBOoqFUrU6pjxm6MO1wbhm4OyCg4INbk4M2L_9-eyb-ONDTmZZpoDx
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That’s a good deal. Regrettably, there’s no Big W near me and I already have those that I want.
I’ll have to make do with the $18 from KMart/Target.
Got through 2 analogue and 1 audible
Neighbours by Emma Babbington
Dr Richard Wellington, morning TV doctor and scandal-ridden plastic surgeon, is found dead in a gully on Sydney’s Middle Harbour. His next neighbour, Liv, is worried that her daughter Gracie was down by the gully that morning and is utterly determined that the uncommunicative Gracie will not be implicated. Richard’s wife, Sandra, and colleague, Meredith, are dragged into the investigation, as is a desperate Martin Finch, who’s both sued Richard and had an AVO taken against him, because Martin’s wife was seeking breast replacement after cancer, and died after the operation. I did get a little tired of Liv’s obsessions, but it all panned out. A little slow in parts.
Twisted River, by James Dunbar, was an easier read. Rory and Cate return from a trip to Paris to find themselves victims of an appalling identity theft, where everything seems to have gone against them. Cate’s finds that she’s “resigned” from her previous job at a charity, and on the way out, dished the dirt on all her colleagues. Their dog’s been stolen, credit cards, car, everything, been turned off, and the cops aren’t sympathetic. Hard to put this one down. Set mostly in Kiama, south of Wollongong on the coast highway.
And an audible, Totally Fine by Nick Spalding, an English author I’ve been reading for years. Charlie King is an events organiser with two great mates and a serious girlfriend. He’s totally fine, until he has a major panic attack, and absolutely refuses to see a doctor because he’s “totally fine”, the sort of totally pig-headed we all know, and often are. It turns out he’s blocked out a car crash from his memory. Everybody is trying to get him to the doctor but he’s totally fine. Nick Spalding and Matt Dunn write some pretty good stuff.
Now onto another Robert Harris, Fatherland, on Audible. It’s 1964 and WW2 ended in a different way. The Nazis had a treaty with the Brits in 1944 and the Yanks in 1946, still fighting the Russians, but most of the prominent Nazis are still alive and it’s two days from Führertag, Hitler’s 76th birthday (no sign of the syphilis which in reality would have killed him by 1964). The Jews have all been “relocated” to the unspecified East. The dead body of one of the survivors from the Munich beerhall putsch has been found, and Kripo detective, Xavier March, disobeys orders to hand over to the Gestapo.
A short story. I don’t know why I bought it, but I did. I was intrigued, I guess.
It’s about a Mormon’s (not incredibly relevant, just saying) afterlife.
It’s written quite simply. It’s thought-provoking. It stays with you. It uses extremely large finite numbers to force the reader to contemplate meaning, in this life or any other.
Anybody read or planning to read the new Trent Dalton?
“Gravity Let Me Go”
Mixed reviews, but fark book critics really.
Friends whose opinions i respect absolutely hated his first book, and their review dissuaded me of reading anything of his.
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There’s no real evidence that Hitler had syphilis. He had symptoms as the war went on that were consistent with syphilis, but consistent with a lot of other things as well.
His first book was good. Not the best book of the current century as the Radio National Readers’ Poll voted it was, but very readable.
He’s certainly got a distinctive style which I can understand would chafe some sensibilities.
I thought “Lola in the Mirror” was a farking delight from start to finish. Haven’t read Boy Swallows Universe because I find it hard to picture Ragnar now without recalling the epically pungent “taste” of Travla.
Which in turn reminds me of X.
No good can come from it.
Things like overplaying the see-through didgeridoo? Firing off too many shots on the crystal pistol? charring the chops on the glass BBQ?
I’m afraid I don’t have any idea what you mean. I guess I’m too old and out of touch with you young ‘uns.