Zed
Journalism by Jolliffe of the highest order. In the modern world pretend media such as the Murdoch press will not report the truth unless it is their truth. Sad that this book exposes the appalling decisions by western governments, with specific reference to Australia, and the lack of interest by the media to the abysmal treatment of East Timor by Indonesia.
A very good overview of the Queensland political landscape from a non LNP point of view. Full of the authors personal anecdotes and observations this is a breezy and lively read and an antidote to the abysmal and self serving nonsense recently served up by the gone and not missed Campbell Newman.
I had forgotten I had read this until trawling through 2nd hand music books in my eternal quest to find John Cale's autobiography.
Billy and his Aztecs made some good music and were in some parts of the world famous. With that fame came this memoir by the good Billy, a memoir about Billy's sex life.
All anyone anywhere needs to know is that is hagiography about an individual that attacked the world of literature and then attempted to demean those that disagreed with that cheap attack. This hagiography is about an individual that told many that their jobs were safe and after lying about their jobs compared them to Canine Faecal matter in the Qld state parliament.
Will this hagiography cover the fact that in the Qld state parliament this individual also called the people of an entire city a derogatory name. This hagiography has the audacity to claim that it is about the challenge of reform when in fact it is a hagiography that blames all others for the individuals demise. Hagiography at its finest so buyer beware.
Well that was interesting. Easy to read and an odd kind of antidote to the black arm band history that I tend to devour. I am convinced that most of these yarns and the almost rustic writing style would not have been out of place in an English (not British) high school essay writing competition. But the subject matter? Bit more high/low brow shall we say? Almost a challenge to the more conservative in society? I mean the title of the collection and also the last story in the book, Gentleman's Relish. A “a highly seasoned anchovy paste” says the google search but go look at the urban dictionary! I looked that up after finishing and I have to be honest this was all new to naïve little old me. I have to admit though that I did laugh out loud when I considered a few of these stories in hindsight. Clever writer this Patrick Gale and what an imagination. Might read him again one day.
Patrick Gale is indeed an interesting writer.
I am an admirer of the music of Ed Kuepper. From his early days in seminal punk rock band The Saints, followed by the amazingly underappreciated Laughing Clowns, through to film score and solo recordings, I seem to have been along for the musical ride, be that live or via studio recordings. He recently released his 50th album Lost Cities. This release was the first new material for 8 years and for me personally it was worth the wait. The opening track is called Pavane, a word I did not know. I initially just thought it a lovely dreamy atmospheric song based on a dance as per a wiki search. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Pavane No I was wrong! Ed Kuepper played a live gig that I attended recently and I was surprised to hear him tell his audience that the song was about a very “poetical” book he had read called Pavane by Keith Roberts. Well that blew away what I had thought the song was about. With that I had to read this book.
To give Ed Kuepper his due his use of the word “Poetical” was a good choice. I have now finished the book and have to admit that there is certain descriptive feel about Keith Roberts writing and poetical is certainly a very fair description, lyrical would also be a good descriptive I might add. For a novel that is alternate history supposedly in the Sci Fi genre I have come out the end of the book feeling that the writing itself is beyond the sci fi fantasy pulp that is the vast majority of that genre.
The book itself gets its title, in my opinion, from a beautiful philosophical conversation in the final chapter, or Measure as the author calls them, between two of the characters. “It's like a . . . dance somehow, a minuet or a Pavane, somewhat stately somewhat pointless, with all its steps set out.” So I suppose that we are reading an alternative history that is “somewhat stately”, yes it is, and “somewhat pointless” and indeed that it is, it never happened.
The six Measures themselves are captivating. There is a loose thread that (eventually) joins them together in the excellent final Measure, Corfes Gate. These alternate England Measures covers all social classes, peasant through to aristocracy. There is a feudal system that supports the suppression of technology, an England as a poor nation with class suppression from an authoritarian Catholic Church. The author also delves into the pagan past of what once was. The superstitions of the rural peoples is there in the background with some beautifully written prose about the Old Ones. All a delight to read.
Most of the events take place in Dorset. Having had the pleasure of a visit to Dorset I was heading to the maps to check out the places mentioned. Lulworth Cove is a fond memory, as was a night in Lyme. No Regis tacked on in this alternate history. Dorset is a truly beautiful part of the world and at times the author gave the county a certain poetical atmosphere that was a delight to read. The author also used Romanised place names at times and had me looking up the modern equivalent.
This is a fine read, very good indeed but for one flaw. The final part of the book is a Coda that to me just feels tacked on for the sake of it. It lacks the spirit of the Measures and almost killed my own personal thoughts as to what the future of this alternate England was. Almost but not quite. I will reread this book one day. Thanks Ed Kuepper for bringing this to my attention.
A fascinating subject and I learnt a lot. The author has backed his sources with a huge 140 pages of footnotes. The text itself is “only” 448 pages.
Coming in I could not wait to start but in the end found myself happy to end. In my opinion as informative as this book is the author is not that good a writer. His lack of economy in his words and his ability to repeat himself became annoying. For example “the white gold” was used instead of just “cotton” so often it became a distraction. Very early I actually thought at times it read as a translation such was the convoluted text and the length of some sentences. To have to reread long tracts just to get the point was disappointing to say the least.
After reading the Acknowledgment's I suspect that the author may have done most of his own editing and I think that that was a mistake. I like to think that, even though a lay reader, dense tomes such as this do not bother me but sadly this one just became at times tedious.
In the end though this is no doubt a more than a useful book to any that have an interest in the global history of cotton and how it fits into the capitalist world. It is a book that is an indictment of colonialism, forced labour, slavery, child labour, etc. Unfortunately, as the author highlights towards the end of the book, there are still issues in this area in cotton production to this very day. For all my editing complaints I can see me delving into this book periodically to reinforce certain points of view I may have.
Frustratingly poor. There is nothing wrong with oral history being used to give a history on a specific battle etc. This is a book on a “specific” battle and with that an author has to make sure that he has backed his narrative and quotes with a source. Why not at least tell the reader via footnotes as to the source of the comment. A two page Acknowledgments and one page bibliography is just not good enough considering the many comments that where used to justify the narrative.
I reached rock bottom when on page 114 as the author writes that in total 23 doctors and 827 corpsman lost their lives on Iwo Jima. In appendix 8 “Casualties”, the total deaths quoted are USMC 5885 and US Navy 881. He then writes the following “These figures include 195 medical corpsman, 49 Seabees, and 2 doctors and/or dentists killed; 2,648 marines suffered combat fatigue”
I am either missing something in translation or this an utter cock up in contradicting ones own quoted figures.
At this point I stopped looking at the acknowledgments, bibliography and the appendix. They hardly mattered. I have read the book out and am happy to have read the story of this appallingly brutal battle that was the taking of Iwo Jima in WW2 on behalf of the allies. Yes, it was an interesting book. It was presented in a chronological order and the appendix was very worth while (considering the contradiction I have highlighted above).
I would also not tell anyone with an interest in the battle of Iwo Jima not to read this book. I am a hard task master on sources etc. but with that in mind I urge caution. Enjoy the book for what it is but it may not stand up to scrutiny.
I am crap at chess. I spent a lot of money on books that I thought would at least make me competitive. Nothing worked. I think these chess books will all sit in a box gathering dust and one day I might get the urge to rejoin the local club and get butchered by 12 year olds so then may have a further look. (Generic review for all half finished chess books I will never finish)
IIRC I thought this was Ok assisting duffers like me.
I am crap at chess. I spent a lot of money on books that I thought would at least make me competitive. Nothing worked. I think these chess books will all sit in a box gathering dust and one day I might get the urge to rejoin the local club and get butchered by 12 year olds so then may have a further look. (Generic review for all half finished chess books I will never finish)
For anyone interested in the life and times of New Zealand's wonderful Dunedin Sound and with that the independent record label Flying Nun, this autobiography by founder Roger Shepherd is essential reading.
As a fan in love of the music he was listening to live, Shepherd went out and did what the majority could only dream of and started a record label to record what he wanted to hear. With that he gave the world some of the finest DIY recordings in contemporary music.
In love with this book.
I found this not much different than the various autobiographies that are thrown up by sportsmen and women. In truth they do not lead that interesting a life. They are born and go to school and play footy and coach/manage a team and then tell the heartache of having to drop a favoured player etc etc. For this to be interesting there has to be a certain style of writing that at least keeps one interested. Sadly the great Sheeds (and his ghost writer) failed in this regard.
One of the better Australian Rules Football tomes I have read. Flanagan is a fine journalist / writer but then it is in the blood as he is the brother of Richard Flanagan, a winner of the Man Booker.
This is a 3 part book with an essay tacked on the end.
The first part 1970 tells of the famous Grand Final of that year between Carlton and Collingwood. Excellent read.
The second part is his book called Southern Sky, Western Oval and is about a year he spent following the battling Footscray team in season 1993. Not bad but the editing was disastrous and distracted the flow at times. One instead of won????? Lots of errors such as that.
The final part was called The Game in a Time of War. This was a collection of essays and newspaper items he had written while Australia was involved in the Iraq war. Beginning with September 11 and taking the essays through to March 2003, I found this part of the book to be at times outstanding.
The final few pages cover the life of Tom Wills in what is a personal view of this enigmatic individual, a pioneer of the game. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Tom_Wills
This book well worth the time of Australian Rules Football lovers and may be of interest to those who like to read about sports in terms of cultural impact on a nation.
(EFA)
As editor-in-chief of The Australian Chris Mitchell ran into the ground this intellectually limited mouth piece owned by a US plutocrat. A loss making publication it has failed to make a cent even with the largest editorial budget in the country for more than twelve years. This complete fantasy, deeply reveals to the white mono cultured male over 55 reader who will read this drivel without thought, hardly anything insightful into the quirks and foibles of some of the most powerful politicians and phone hacking News Corp media executives that fit into it's limited world view.
Though a controversial figure due to being derisively called The Order of Lenin Hunter by those who have known him throughout his quarter of a century as a daily editor, Chris Mitchell maintained close regular contact with past prime ministers, editors and media CEOs and with that has blown whatever credibility he ever had with any of them by revealing all private and confidential conversations. Making Headlines highlights his bad judgements and thinking that has caused a massive circulation drop of the only national daily newspaper, now nicknamed the Qantus Club times due to it being the only place one can find this garbage newspaper. His journalism is of such the poor level that he actually writes columns bitching about youth radio to the only readers he has, generally over 55 year old middle class males who have forgotten their own youth and also think that they have had a tough life. He really thinks he has fought battles to publish tough stories about not only youth radio but historians he dislikes and that toughest of all battles, defending his plutocratic boss's deranged world view.
Making Headlines is compulsory reading for the only class that care about this rot, that being the political class who live in the rarefied air of never having worked hard in their life and wannabes of the lowest of the low in terms of employment, journalists.
A very clever collection of short stories that at times left one using the imagination as to the endings. Written for its times and with that I wonder how a contemporary author would write these stories. My favourites were Pig and Georgy Porgy. Pig is just a macabre little story that made me laugh. Georgy Porgy is a very witty tale about a sadomasochistic sexually repressed vicar.
How long does it take an ant to die? 4' 33”.
If this is not satire then it is sarcasm. If it is not sarcasm then it is a book about depression. If it is a book about depression then I should have given it 5 stars.
For me, as a reader of WW2 history for over 40 years, the figure of Heinrich Himmler looms large. At one point the 2nd most powerful individual in the 3rd Reich. A veritable minister for everything. But oddly one of those characters who I had never really read about in too much depth. So with Peter Padfield's 1990 biography I had high hopes of learning as to what made this sinister individual tick. I have, unfortunately, finished this lengthy book feeling let down by what I can only describe as a lost opportunity.
He quotes from Himmler's diary and with that builds a “psychological profile” quoting everyone from Hugh Trevor-Roper to Buddhist thought to build his (obvious) disdain for Himmler's mental state. This was not what I was expecting but I found it initially extremely interesting. Added in between all this “psychological profiling” was a short history of various other terrors perpetrated in the name of ideology. Witch hunts in Bavaria 400 odd years previously through to the Spanish Inquisition and how they equated to “public demands” (my words) to “find a scapegoat for social frustration” (Padfield's words). Padfield quotes Trevor-Roper and Henry Kaman in that the “community itself” “impose” on tyrants” their general social beliefs and the tyrants are able to act accordingly. The problem was that the author did not stop there. Chapter after chapter he referred to Himmler's thought process to events by subjective psychological opinion that became far too intrusive to the story that should have been told.
I will also ask as to who this book is aimed at in terms of readership. As a lay reader of the rise of the Nazis to power and with that WW2 history I would suggest that a book on this subject would have been aimed at those that were aware of general historical events. The author wrote almost with a dual purpose that went either into very detailed discussion of events or was quick to give a short overview of others. If an individual had read little on the Nazis and WW2 this is the last book I would recommend if they were looking to read about the life of Himmler. As someone who had read extensively on the Nazis and WW2 I became very frustrated at times at the length of information I was already aware of with not a mention of the subject at hand, Himmler.
That leads to another criticism, why have a biography about an individual and then write large tracts about events he seemed to have little or no involvement in. The Night of the Long Knives is a prime example. Plenty of detail about the event but hardly a mention of Himmler. This leads me to consider that the book lacks focus. Going off the subject at hand and nonsensical sentences to the subject at hand abound. A glaring example is Chapter 14. The discussion is in relation to Himmler discussing with his staff etc. that the allies breaking up under the strain of their supposed “unnatural” alliance and the eastern borders of the Reich being pushed back to the Urals. The author writes..........
“Consequently it is possible, even probable that when he spoke of pushing out the eastern borders to the Urals, and of the great German future which he saw beyond the hard present, he believed it. Equally, much of the time, and in the small wee hours of the night he must have known it was all a chimera. In early September, as the Red army occupied the Rumanian oil fields and invaded Bulgaria, and Finland dropped out of the war against Russia, he took to his bed with stomach cramps, that sure indicator of his psychic health. Kersten found him in agony with the Koran lying by his bedside. ‘I can't bear the pain any longer,' Himmler told him.”
The chapter ends with that comment about pain and the Koran lying beside him. In discussion on this book I was informed that Himmler had actually been discussing at this point in time the recruitment of Bosnian Muslims so therefore he was possibly familiarising himself with their beliefs. I referred to the index and it has under Himmler a subheading attitudes: religious: and includes this page. Hardly. It now looks like a throwaway line. Himmler also had ulcers hence the pain. The discussion of Bosnian recruitment to the SS had been discussed in an earlier chapter and never does the author discuss an ulcer.
The writing style can also be pretentious. After Himmler has taken cyanide the author writes “Did images of Bavaria flood the timeless moment as the poison stunned his nerve centre...Das Braunek dort so freundlich schaut, zum Geirgerstein als seine Brut...‘What a miserable creature is man... The heart is turbulent until it rests in the ground”.
The ironic thing about all my own personal observations of this lengthy book is that for long periods I enjoyed the information offered. If toned back the psychological analysis would not have bothered me, cut out superfluous information and focus the book on the subject and there was a wonderful read in this.
So what did I learn about Himmler that I did not know? I know that I need to read up on Karl Wolff, SS-Obergruppenführer in the Waffen-SS and Himmler's right hand man for long periods and a man who denied knowledge of a hell of a lot after the war. This individual was seemingly stuck like glue to Himmler for long periods and received some brutal criticism from the author. In fact I found myself constantly referring to internet to find out more about this paradox of a man.
Himmler himself I can only describe as the most boring megalomaniac mass killer I have read about. He was good to his wife and mistress and his children. He was polite and chivalrous to women in general and had a very romantic view of the fairer sex. He was well read and even had copies of banned books. Even at the bitter end he was polite and genial to all he spoke to and never forgetting to give presents at Birthday and Xmas etc. He was a workaholic and took on any tasks to come his way. He was ordered by Hitler, for example, to take over as commander-in-chief of Army Group Upper Rhine, a position he knew himself he was hardly equipped for but did as he was loyal to the point of stupidity to “his Fuehrer”.
In the end though he was a Nazi and Hitlerite of the highest order and nothing can ever save this man from history's condemnation as this book makes utterly clear. His racial views the author quotes extensively. These are frankly tedious to put it mildly. The racial theories of National Socialism are beyond the pale and to have had to sit through some of this stuff would have made me personally want to drink poison than be subjected to long winded, up to 8 hours at one conference, discussions on Nazi racial theory. Apparently the SS and Hitler Youth, among others, lapped it up. His building of the SS into a killing machine is described in detail, as are the methods in the concentration camps be that the murder of not only Jews but also the medical experiments among a few examples the book covers. No matter how often I have read on this appalling subject I am never ceased to be amazed by man's inhumanity man.
Himmler was a cowardly sycophant who followed Hitler without question. He was responsible for crimes against humanity through his unwavering beliefs in a moribund ideology. He had not one redeeming feature.
I am crap at chess. I spent a lot of money on books that I thought would at least make me competitive. Nothing worked. I think these chess books will all sit in a box gathering dust and one day I might get the urge to rejoin the local club and get butchered by 12 year olds so then may have a further look. (Generic review for all half finished chess books I will never finish)
In my case because I was crap! Good title considering that.
One of the many chess books I spent my hard earned on that I got a little way into and gave up on as they made not an iota of difference to me in my short lived pursuit of trying to be what I was in truth never going to be.
I am crap at chess. I spent a lot of money on books that I thought would at least make me competitive. Nothing worked. I think these chess books will all sit in a box gathering dust and one day I might get the urge to rejoin the local club and get butchered by 12 year olds so then may have a further look. (Generic review for all half finished chess books I will never finish)
I am crap at chess. I spent a lot of money on books that I thought would at least make me competitive. Nothing worked. I think these chess books will all sit in a box gathering dust and one day I might get the urge to rejoin the local club and get butchered by 12 year olds so then may have a further look. (Generic review for all half finished chess books I will never finish)
I am crap at chess. I spent a lot of money on books that I thought would at least make me competitive. Nothing worked. I think these chess books will all sit in a box gathering dust and one day I might get the urge to rejoin the local club and get butchered by 12 year olds so then may have a further look. (Generic review for all half finished chess books I will never finish)