Synopsis: The world of Scarlet O’Hara, an intemperate, ruthless and self-centred plantation owner’s daughter is turned upside down by the US Civil War and further, by that scoundrel, Rhett Butler. It’s a hell of a story apparently – 30 million people can’t be wrong. My Take: The things we do for those we love. When [...]
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Synopsis: Socially maladjusted US nerd consumes all 44 million words in the Encyclopaedia Britannica then provides an alphabetical cliff’s notes of the experience. The sum of the parts is less than the whole. My Take: I am a bit of a sucker for condensed knowledge. It’s a deeply shallow (if that’s possible) way of learning, [...]
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Synopsis: Twenty years after the Nazi’s have won WW2 a criminal detective in the SS starts investigating the deaths of a number of senior party officials in the lead up to celebrations for Adolf Hitler’s 75th birthday. It’s Agatha Christie meets George Orwell. My Take: Let’s face it – the main appeal of historical fiction [...]
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Synopsis: I think everyone pretty well knows the deal here. My Take: WARNING RANT AHEAD I would have never picked up this book if left to my own devices but I was bullied into it by both friends and family who accused me of being a shallow snob for turning my nose up at a [...]
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Tags:Dan Brown
Synopsis: Autobiographical account of Boy meets girl. Boy marries girl. Boy and girl live happily until girl dies of pulmonary embolism. Boy spirals into depression before loving again etc etc. My Take: Hmmm. I was rooting for this one to come off. The subject matter has great potential – very emotionally rich. Unfortunately, the author [...]
Tags:Rob Sheffield
Synopsis: An aspiring writer and practising bartender is shot dead in a mugging gone wrong on the streets of Manhattan’s Lower East Side. It’s written by a screen-writer for The Wire – what more do you need to know? My Take: I hadn’t even heard of Richard Price when a friend recommended “Lush Life” to [...]
Tags:Richard Price
Synopsis: Two Korean babies are adopted by American families with different approaches to ethnicity. My Take: I only picked this one up because I thought the little Asian girl on the cover of the Australian edition was cute – and yes, you can judge a book by it’s cover. A totally lightweight book targeted at [...]
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Tags:Anne Tyler
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
Synopsis: Set in a dystopian 1980s cold war alternative reality in which superheros help America win the Vietnam war and Richard Nixon stay in the White House well beyond constitutional term limits, a group of out of favour and long retired superheros investigate a series of attacks on ‘masked adventurers’. My Take: I can’t say [...]
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Tags:Alan Moore·Dave Gibbons
