Synopsis: A collection of newspaper columns on Chinese/Western society written by the a columnist on Chinese life for The Guardian. My Take: I grabbed this wanting an accessible layman’s guide to the quirks of Chinese society. Unfortunately this collection is very uneven, ranging from shallow and patronising observations about the west to insightful explanations of […]
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Tags:Xinran
Synopsis: Politics is about voters, not politicians. It’s not what politicians say, it’s what voters hear. My Take: Frank Luntz has an impressive CV. An Oxford University PHD, Luntz rose to prominence as the chief pollster for Ross Perot’s outsider presidential bid in 1992. After providing polling for Rudy Giuliani’s successful NYC mayoral campaign, Luntz […]
Tags:Frank Luntz
Synopsis: Man slaps boy. Mother sues man. The fragile and interdependent settlements of modern suburban life are disturbed. My Take: “The Slap” is clearly a very special book. As the editor of The Australian Literary Review, Stephen Romei, has noted, the book has realised: “a rare quadrella in publishing: it’s a page turner that sells […]
Tags:Christos Tsiolkas
Synopsis: Tony Blair’s Director of Communications and general master of the dark arts tells (almost) all about The Blair Years. My Take: Ordinarily I steer clear of political biographies (diaries in particular!) but beore I moved to the UK I thought I needed a bit of a crash course in the who’s who of the […]
Tags:Alastair Campbell
Synopsis: In/famous Clinton pollster, Burson-Marsteller CEO and Bowser look alike claims that small-scale, niche trends, identifiable through statistical analysis, are the key drivers for societal change. A long bow, stretched WAY too far for its own good. My Take: Love him or hate him (and let’s face it, most people hate him these days), Mark […]
Tags:Mark Penn
Synopsis: Freed from the constraints of European morality, a man confronts the underlying nature of humanity. Madness ensures. My Take: For quite a short novella, “The Heart of Darkness” has certainly prompted a lot of meta-discussion. The subject of critical attention as a part of the Western cannon, as a flash point in post-colonial literary […]
Tags:Joseph Conrad
Synopsis: The bite and bile of the greatest Treasurer Australia has ever had. My Take: Published in 1990, this collection of Keating quotations comes from the golden era of PJK. The period before he became PM and was forced to moderate (at least to some extent) his more extreme instincts for public, rhetorical bloodshed. Most […]
Tags:Edna Carew·Patrick Cook·Paul Keating·Quotes
Synopsis: Boy meets girl. Boy commits suicide. Boy’s best friend falls in love with girl. Girl loses grasp on reality. Boy meets another girl. Metaphysical angst ensues. My Take: The cover blurb of Norwegian Wood describes the novel thus: “When he hears her favourite Beatles song, Toru Watanabe recalls his first love Naoko, the girlfriend […]
Tags:Haruki Murakami