In-flight Entertainment...Books

I listened to several talking books as I drove. I didn't really watch the videos in the car, but I thought I'd throw them in – I did watch them at various houses during the journey. And as for the secret men's business, well, I saw the inside of a Masonic Temple.
Torquing Books
UndergroundIf you read or listen to only one more book for the rest of this year, make it this one. Canberra has been nuked and Australia is in security lock down. How this happened and the consequences of it makes for a furiously paced story of frightening plausibility. Though set in the near future its roots are in the decade beginning with the election of the Howard government. Read this story to understand why you hate what happened in the Howard years – or why you should.http://www.smh.com.au/news/book-reviews/underground/2006/10/02/1159641243961.html

Dirt MusicDo you know a family whose members are immensely talented and whose skills are highly sought after, yet are treated as pariahs? Like the Jews in pre-holocaust Europe. Or Aboriginal artists in today’s Australia. The male lead in this story is from such a family. His reluctant rival is top dog in the district, but is sick of the role everyone expects of him. Their girlfriend (sic) is the blow-in who can see and respond to both sides of the story. It’s a ripping yarn whose pace builds to a crescendo – as is appropriate for a story with the word “music” in the title. Who gets the girl? Well, it’s not really about that. Though the book ends before reconciliation is achieved, that is the inevitable outcome, so the story itself is about what we have to endure and what we have to shed on our way to mutual respect. While I found the whole story engaging, the chapters in which whitefella ways collide with blackfella intuition, and music is re-invented, are utterly sublime.http://home.vicnet.net.au/~abr/Nov01/McFarlane.html

TheftSet, in its early stages, in Bellingen, northern NSW, and later in Sydney and New York, this is about the art world. Relax. It doesn’t require any knowledge of art. By the time you have finished, however, you’ll almost certainly be highly motivated to either take an interest in the way art is made and marketed or stay clear of the whole crazy trip. There’s a very clever device for putting across two points of view about what’s going on in the story. There are two narrators: the artist and his brother – the latter described as an idiot savant. He’s certainly not wired the way most of us are, but he’s no idiot. There’s a female who drives the action of the story. What a piece of work is she!!http://dspace.flinders.edu.au/dspace/bitstream/2328/1063/1/Theft5UV.pdf
http://home.vicnet.net.au/~abr/April06/Lamb%20review.htm

BreathEveryone seems to be breathless about this book. It is, indeed, an astounding story – until a somewhat after half way, when it becomes quite alarming. In the early part two boys earn a privileged relationship with a mentor, compared the likes of whom, Alpha Males are parodies of their own potential. The three amigos become a “boys own” secret society that transcends ordinariness by engaging with the forces of nature – so to speak. What they achieve is breath taking – literally. Inevitably, as they reach early maturity, the lads find themselves on divergent paths and the narrator loses his way big time under the influence of another adult – an older woman. This is the part of the book that alarms me, because up to this point I would readily have given it to kids in upper primary and lower secondary to read. I changed my mind about that in Chapter []. Tim Winton has written about people taking risks. In so doing it is he who has, in my view, taken a very real risk – I can’t help wondering, for example, what the media, responding to a politically motivated ‘feminist’ reading, might yet made of this story. I am absolutely certain that, had it been about adolescent girls, one of whom went down the same path as the narrator with an older male, the book would be regarded as an outrage. That said, I readily recommend it anyway, to parents of older teenagers. But read it yourself first so that you can respond to their grief when they read it. I would put this book in the same category of cautionary tale as Bill Henson’s photographs.http://www.powells.com/review/2008_07_28.html
http://breath.timwinton.com.au/

WantingA meditation masquerading as narrative – which is by no means a bad thing. Set in Tasmania, where Sir John Franklin was governor, and London, where Charles Dickens was the toast of English literature, it is the story of Mathinna, and Aboriginal girl adopted by the Franklins and effectively abandoned when it was no longer convenient to have her around. Life in the Franklin and Dickens families provides a foil against which the changing fortunes of Mathinna (and Aborigines generally) rise and fall. And her story is the measure with which the feted families can be judged. Opportunity and misfortune – wants pursued to destructive ends – bring insights regardless of class or station in life. In the end, all are equal. All are found wanting, yet the insights they have had make the details of how they lived utterly irrelevant. This is a meditation on redemption which comes to all no matter what.http://www.richardflanaganwanting.com.au/review_tasmanian.aspx
http://reviews.media-culture.org.au/modules.php?name=News&file=article&sid=3025

NakedThere is no other word for this but funny – though funny is not nearly a strong enough word. Beyond funny, it is deeply engaging. You cannot look away because the narrator is truly naked – in the sense that he is utterly defenceless – free of the kind of defences that often camouflage the truth about oneself. God, it is said, looks after drunkards, fools and Americans, but is particularly fond of fools. In which case, this guy’s going to heaven.http://www.digihitch.com/review13.html
http://stress.about.com/od/books/gr/nakedreview.htm

Canterbury tales
Apart from the fact that this is the book that kicked English off as a national language, and therefore deserves to be read for that reason alone, it is one of the most engaging books I have ever listened to (I haven’t yet actually read it). There is a delightful diversity of characters whose tales ripple with insight and wisdom – even when they’re being gross, which is often. My favourite is the Wife of Baths’ Tale in which Chaucer answers the question, What do women want and leaves you wondering why Freud and C20 feminists bothered.

Last DrinksThe narrator was best mates with a restaurateur during Queensland’s Jelkie era, who did very well out of police corruption. He never ever had to call “Last drinks!” Until, that is, the Fitzgerald Enquiry fired a cannon through the crowded bazaar, taking down a government minister, the police commissioner and a cast of thousands. Well, hundreds. Scores? Tens, perhaps. Whatever, some very powerful people went to gaol. But not the top scone. Ten years later, half a dozen of the people who were either investigated, or in other ways close to the event, are drawn together again by the death of that very same restaurateur in suspicious circumstances. As the story unfolds, it becomes clear how little things hve changed in Queensland.http://www.dotlit.qut.edu.au/reviews/drinks.html

The White Earth
The son of a farm hand on a grand Darling Downs estate, is given unrealistic expectations about his future role there. He is disabused of his fantasy by the daughter-of-the-house and spends the rest of his life manoeuvring to get his way. This is achieved at great cost, not least to his relationships with everyone who should be close to him. When his son-in-law dies in a farming accident he begins to groom his grandson as his heir. The boy’s mother, emotionally crippled by her sense of dependence, sees his role as securing their future in what she anachronistically conjures as the Queensland squattocracy, …… stifling the boy’s relationship with his grandfather. The boy and the old man, however, have preternatural insight about the future. They inhabit a world of brutal political conflict and soaring spiritual ambition. The two opposing dispositions, mother and grandfather, reach a crescendo of mutual destruction. The boy is left orphaned and penniless, and the author is left with a sequel to write, because the boy, now free, can choose who he can become… can’t he?http://www.theage.com.au/articles/2004/05/12/1084289744278.html