Zed

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)

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)

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)

Has been updated.

A Robbins book came up in my feed. I recall this one only and enjoying it. Read 40 years back!!!!!!!

Another superb read by David Ireland, Australia's most under-appreciated author. Did I say under-appreciated? The appreciation has risen as the now 89 year old has been nominated for the Prime Minister Literary award 2016 for a short run release of a book called World Repair Video Game, his first new release in 20 years. Damn fine stuff I say, now to find a copy! With that nomination unabashed admirers of his, such as I, can only hope that novels such as this are acknowledged by a new readership, one that is willing to be challenged by this wonderful writer.

Ireland previous novel was the Miles Franklin winner A Woman of The Future. For the first time I was disappointed with an Ireland novel, I put that down to the length. He wrote as the women of the future but it became a bit tedious at times. I have now read this, his next novel. I have also read criticism. Why write again as a women some complained. This does not hold with me and I think this is in fact a better novel than A Woman of The Future for being shorter and with that it has allowed Ireland to focus on delivery. And what delivery. Australian literary critic Geordie Williamson called Ireland a great proletarian writer and City of Women is a proletarian novel. Ireland has used his observations of the proletariat to his advantage in delivering the usual oddball sarcasm, irony and his crazy surreal weirdness. I can binge on Ireland all day. He has hit that my reading G Spot.

I would suggest that the critics made a mistake in comparing this to A Woman of The Future. City of Women owes more to the sublime Glass Canoe. Glass Canoe was Ireland observing life in a Sydney pub with an astonishingly astute ear for a yarn. This is no different. Ireland is too good an author to write Glass Canoe part two. So why not have a city of brutal proletarian women running the city and living the usual lives that include all types of passion from love to hatred to any emotion that one feels fit be when sober or drunk. Complaining about government, each other, life and almost none existent men. All this is written in an Australian context. So in observing the sunburnt city Ireland at one point writes that he “.....loves Australia, but sometimes Australians are hard to take”. It shows!

The protagonist Billie Shockley has 2 loves in her lives, one a leopard and one other female, both called Bobbie. Throughout the book each short sharp chapter reads as almost as a diary written to Bobbie though what Bobbie is sometimes hard to tell. So Billie tells Bobbie about the individuals that she meets in her work as a Doc and who is doing whom and what at the Lovers Arms, her local pub. Billie philosophises about her life. “Why do I drink? I suppose it's because it's not abstract, like other ways to oblivion; it's more direct, there's more to do; it's more social, more cheerful. The sadness of losing someone lifts for a few hours.” Oblivion raises its ugly head in this novel.

Billie complains about noise at night in the city of women. Some of the more drunk women fire their rifles in the air to get the noise to cease. Billie writes in a manner the reader relates to. “It was no use complaining to our own police or public servants: they were just as much outside our day-to-day society as their counterparts in any possible enemy territory.” Bureaucratic inaction. Nothing is different even with women in charge.

Billie has a friend Linda who she visits regularly. Linda was born into wealth. She lets Billie know this. Billie rhetorically asks “After all these centuries of the poor not making revolutions against the rich, why do the rich have the poor so much on their mind.” Linda says “Thank god they can find no more reasons why they should be paid for work that can safely be left to mechanical means, no more reasons why they should be parasites on capital. At last they're facing reality. For so long conventional wisdom had it that business was the parasite; but now capital can exist, and grow, without people, and their beginning to appreciate it. Now that to all intents and purposes without manufacturing of our own the people are not needed as consumers, with mining and raw materials resources and primary industry and its exports the consumers are elsewhere, we don't need them.”

Billie tells of Janey the Jailer. Janey is from the US and was in the jail industry. She moved to Australia to retire but never told anyone other than Billie of her life working in a jail. Then one day she got drunk and spilled the beans on her past while at the Lovers Arms. That was it for Janey. As Janey told her story a crowd gathered but then dissipated. Ireland writes brilliantly “Once back at their usual stations around the bar they gave a look or two back in Janeys direction. Then looked away forever. I mean forever. It was if they all pointed the bone at her. No one from these parts of Sydney was going to turn her back on history, which went back to the first days of our little colony. And history of a goodly number of the people at the Lovers Arms went back to the first inhabitants of the colony, brothers and sisters and mothers and uncles of those inhabitants finished their existence on the end of a length of a rope and they weren't about to drink with an executioner. Or a trusty, a warder, or keeper. And only with a few and very trusted police. The ‘tribe' at Lovers Arms pointed the bone at Janey the Jailer by not pointing anything at her, not even their faces and she withered away and died four months later.” Brutal proletarian observation and writing as such!

Maybe a novel for those that like it surreal but for me as good as it gets. I would have thought it would have been a great afternoon to have a chat over a few beers with David Ireland.

This is narrative history that can keep one enthralled from the first to the last page. Cliches such as page-turner apply. No doubt the game itself can be discussed further, new books published etc etc but who cares. Hopkirk has written a book that had me looking at the maps, researching the characters, marking the bibliography for further literature to read. What more can one want! A wonderful book.

Charles Jager has written an engaging account of his time on Crete after the fall to Nazi Germany in 1941.

Jager lead the life of an escapado who was captured not once but twice. His second capture was interesting. Charles and his mate Ben Travers were having disagreements over Charles swagger. He was obviously not Cretan and the Cretan's who were very sympathetic towards ANZACS would let him know. Ben understood that but Charles? No! While marching like still in the military once too often Ben had had enough and moved to the other side of the road among the safety of the olive trees. Charles gets narky stands his ground and then proceeded to get captured when a Greek quisling gets a German Kubelwagon he is with to stop and check his funny walk. “I am a prize chump” writes Charles.

Written at the request of his family so that his grandchildren would know of his wartime adventures this is a worthy read for anyone interested in the stories of the escaped POW and a really good addition to those that have an interest in the Cretan campaign of WW2.

Released in 1978 Brisbane author Gerard Lee has shown himself to be an observer of the idiosyncrasies of his times. In Pieces for a Glass Piano he has written many short stories with a sharp wit that had me chucking out loud.

Let's start with the negative. I just felt that some maybe had not aged as well as they might have. There is also an absurdist quality to a few of the pieces where others seem observational and biographical and with that they did not, in my opinion, mix well. Also in the acknowledgements it says that some of the pieces appeared in various respected publications such as Meanjin and The Cane Toad times. Perhaps they would have had more effect on the reader as part of these literary journals?

On positive side the highs are fantastic and the first tale, called AJAX and the Dunny Van, is a wonderful tale of the characters in a mining site outside Dysart in central Queensland. This was written well before the recent mining boom hit Queensland, when back in the 70's working at these places did not earn the big bucks and the only people who worked in mining where those that had no choices as they lived local or were down and out or migrant itinerants. With that our protagonist is a reader of the classics and don't his fellow workers, in their rural and earthy way, let him know it.

The scene is now set for a succession of yarns covering love under a bridge on a rainy day outside Beenleigh through to a witty tale of a flatmate bringing home Buddhists with an even more absurd tale of a another flatmate trying to stop our hero masturbating when he could in fact be having wet dreams. One tale, The Legend of Barp Doo-arp was a tale of that distinctly Australian youth culture the Bodgie and the Widgies. Actually affairs of the flesh play a large part in this book.

The very good is so good that I will be reading Gerard Lee further. He has a fine wit and a great eye for life's absurdities. As to a soundtrack to this book? Never The Saints as Gerard Lee was never Stranded. More a Go-Between. In fact wiki claims he was an early drummer!

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=lPErA7NZISM

In this book we get the thoughts of a Red Setter called Archimedes.



I say that his name is Archimedes but as Archimedes himself writes “My name is Harrison B Guest. ‘Happy for short'” His human family, or employers as Archimedes explains early in the book, call him various names with the initial birth name being Spangler Red Brian Boru. “Other aliases I have, courtesy of human superiority are Blue (because I am red) Dog, Mr Dogg, Towser, Buster, Red, Here Boy, Hey You and Hey Mong”.

Archimedes has learnt to also understand what not only humans say but other animals. Archimedes can read. Archimedes is very articulate and can explain things to us human reader's about dog thinking in a very human way. Archimedes explains the way dogs smell us for example. The reality is that we stink. We humans are repulsive to dogs. Not as in the way we physically smell but in the way we smell of things as unedifying as death and desperation. Archimedes can smell our loneliness, defeat, fear but then also our joy. Even our criminality. Archimedes notices that things pray on man's minds, money issues for example. He notices when we are unwell. He sometimes tries to let us know but we never quite get that. He is good at observing us and is interested in everything. Archimedes says that if anyone can tell him of anything that is not interesting he would be “.....interested to see it”

Archimedes watches Seagulls. He watches a protest one day. Gay seagulls are protesting about the “discriminating practises by heterosexual Gulls” As they protest Archimedes asks a profound question as to why they walk when they can fly.

Archimedes observes that he is one of The Fortunate Few. He writes that many dogs lose employment. With that their employers either take them a long way away and dump them or at worst take them to a concentration camp where they get a needle and then are incinerated. All that for just losing their jobs.

Archimedes observes two dogs fighting over territory. Apparently one had once been into “oblivion” but he heard a cat explain that after death there was a beautiful place where there was peace. Now said dog did nothing but fight. Archimedes profoundly observed that perhaps he fought “...to counter the threat of endless peace....”

Archimedes observes human debt. The fact that humans don't have any money but are out to buy the world. In Archimedes opinion “.....the taker of credit is a thief of the future, and the giver of credit aids and abets the theft.”

Archimedes comments on democracy in Australia. He thinks that lies come from the government, press, business, educationalists, and are left lying around. He thinks that the spirit of Australia is the people. Though “not in the land they squat on”. The spirit of the land he thinks will stay a secret forever.

Archimedes see a Gulls wedding. He hears them chatter and finds that the groom is a member of the fire watch and that the bride a food researcher. Interestingly the couple's parents are conservationists who “.....work to save the customs and the attitudes of the past....”

Archimedes wonders why humans think the way they do. He heard a beautiful bird song one day and jumped about to bring it to the attention of his family, they thought he wanted to eat the bird. He was almost annoyed at their presumption.

But in the end Archimedes is satisfied with his lot in life. He is happy in that kindness is “the foundation” of his religious beliefs and he finds kindness most temperate and fair. He has passed through all the stages of a dog's life. And he has written a book! What more can he want!

We have a novel in similar structures of style from the past that David Ireland has written, the standard short, sharp essay like chapters. But the tone of his writing has changed considerably. Interestingly the most positive of his past books was for me The Glass Canoe but this one outshines that as it just glows with a future that is positive. David Ireland delivers Archimedes happy with his lot in life, able to observe human inanity and foibles but able to shrug them all off. Ireland writes with a wittiness beyond his usual dark satire and irony. The book ends on a hopeful note.

Does it work? To a degree but its whimsiness just leaves it short of being very good. Plus the themes of the past appear periodically and that in itself leaves it a little too close to being ‘more of the same'. But I would recommend it. Those that like light fantasy and dogs should enjoy Archimedes and the Seagle. Plus the joke about a dog called Dogenes is worth the entrance fee alone. At 228 pages easy to read. A sunny afternoon book.

Read a looooooooong time ago. My biggest memory was my then brother in law asking to read it. When he gave it back? Hated it he ranted as it (the horror!) “criticised Queensland”. I always wondered what part he never got that Queensland was a political shit hole back then.

A bunch of short stories from an author I had not previously read. I do have the more noted Monkey Grip and also her latest The Season, both of which I intend to read in the next few weeks as The Season is the book of choice for my local book club.

My favourite by far All Those Bloody Young Catholics is what I can only describe as a drunken stream of dribble by a bloke at the pub who catches up with an old female acquaintance from the past. Kind of reminded me of someone's youth, hopefully not mine.

The other of note The Life of Art told in the first person about a female and her artist friend and their observations of life occasionally imitating art and vice versa.

This one is online for anyone interested.

https://bookanista.com/life-art/

An easy collection to read and for me, it showed Helen Garner can write in various styles. I look forward to further readings of her works.

The story is about one of the strange quarks of life that makes the least likely figure, in this case Frank Harland, noted as an artist of extraordinary talent beyond what he could have been considering his circumstances. Born to a dirt poor widower before the Great War we follow Harland's outsider life and that of his outsider family as he becomes closely associated with the flawed middle class Vernon's.

I rapidly got sucked in hard by this brilliant book. Malouf's writing is a pleasure. Descriptive without being overwrought. He has written such wonderful prose that I found myself rereading his powerful descriptions of Harland's art as well as the accidental life and fate that he was immersed by. The writing was so good that it could seamlessly convey the changes in narration from the third person to the first, never making me the reader lose track of the intense power of the words written. Their power made it easy to read of a changing Brisbane, and with that Australia in general, from one being a begotten colonial outpost to a nation becoming part of a changing wider world. All this mirrored through the life of the strange but gifted Harland and his family through to, the sometime narrator, Phil Vernon who in his own way was aware of being an observer to that change.

I was recommended this book by Greg. His fantastic review here.

An Australian literary classic!

Ouch! I have read 4 other novels by the author and have loved them. Two had won the Miles Franklin award and in my opinion are classics of Australian literature. A Woman of the Future also won the Miles Franklin so with that my expectations were high. But........ I found this astonishingly tedious at times. As usual there is the challenging thought provoking prose, the usual dark and satirical humour and the comments on society that make the author so attractive when at his best. The satirical use of those of us that are the Frees and those of us that are the Servers is a brilliant concept that differentiates societies classes. But it is the long winded pointlessness of long tracts of the book that kills the idea off for me. The second half of the book goes a touch over board on the act of sex as well. This book was released in 1980 and may have had impact back then but today less so. This was not meant to be a prudish comment. It is just that in todays day and age the shock value is less than it once was. I wonder if this book would even get shortlisted for an award such as the Miles Franklin nowadays and may have been “of it's time”. Oh well cant win them all and will not stop me digging into the rest of the authors oeuvre.

Very good. A story of the working poor in pre-war Surry Hills in Sydney. Nowadays Surry Hill is probably as expensive as any place on planet earth so the description of this long lost working poor suburb is a look into a past that no longer exists.

The story itself covers the life of the Catholic Darcy family, the sons and daughters of Irish migrants, and makes a humane read of these people and their struggles through life be it tragic loss or love. Their trials and tribulations are well told in the hands of Ruth Park who has a beautiful turn of phrase and also an understanding of the life and thoughts of these working poor.

Many passages stood out and one of a young girl going to the beach for the first time showed an author of rare insight to youthful joy.
“At half past seven that night Dolour, almost purple with sunburn, and with sand in almost everything except her mouth, came bursting into the room. Behind her was a brilliant memory of a day at the beach, of bus rides, of yelling ‘Waltzing Matilda' and ‘Little Nellie Kelly” and ‘Hail Queen of Heaven'; of swooping white roads and sudden revelations of cobalt seas iced with foam; of Harry Drummy being sick all over the three Sicilianos, and Father Cooley being forced to take Bertie Stevens aside and explain to him about the gigantic hole in the seat of his trunks; of Sister Theophilus sitting calmly hour by hour making high turreted sandcastles which were wiped into spinning dust and pygmy willy-willies by the afternoon wind. There were so many things to talk about. Dolour had experienced them all in one day, but it took her weeks to tell about them all.”

The copy of this book that I have is an old Queensland school library copy with a few names stamped in the front cover from back in the early 80's. I got curious and asked around. I was told that this was on the high school reading list of year 11 students for many years. I have no issue with that at all as the book has subjects that young people should read about and understand, abortion, alcoholism, sectarianism and racial prejudice for example. With that I am intrigued as it making the reading lists of Queensland state schools even as late as 1984. I vividly recall Rona Joyner and her anti humanist campaign in schools for subjects such as sex education and reading lists. This book, I would have thought would have been in that spotlight but seemingly passed the censors by. I recall books such as To Kill a Mockingbird, The Catcher in the Rye, Lady Chatterley's Lover and Fahrenheit 451 were attacked. Link here for anyone interested.
http://blogs.slq.qld.gov.au/jol/2016/09/26/rona-joyner-and-the-society-to-outlaw-pornography/
One other character is Delie Stock. I am wondering if Ruth Park modelled her on the infamous Tilly Devine. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Tilly_Devine


A book for anyone interested in Australian literature from the past.

As long a book as I have ever read. Apart from Tolstoy's philosophical rant about history at the end there is not much to do other than say what a magnificent novel.

Author Gerard Lee writes a witty tale of a young man's idiocy. Under normal circumstances I may have just enjoyed this for what it is, light entertainment. But this book is a case of me having been there at the time of the events and being taken on a nostalgic tour of areas I hung out as young bloke. Things I had forgotten about were given a nod. How many Brisbanites recall that Channel 10 was once Channel O for example ? And the Curry Shop gets a reference. Oh how I recall that place being the den of iniquity for us underground hipsters during those authoritarian times when the state of Queensland was ruled with an iron fascist fist. Recommended for any Brisbane reader who is in their mid-fifties or a bit older. They will get a great sense of nostalgia in recalling a culturally changing Brisbane from a sleepy country town to a city making its way in a wider world.

http://www.couriermail.com.au/ipad/river-city-dreaming/news-story/f08076616cbb14dd3809e4161d74fac3

I would have thought that the “A Brief History” series would be aimed at the reader who has a passing interest in the specific subject and just wants to be educated with out delving into the more academic tomes that may be available. I would have thought that the “A Brief History” series would also require good footnotes, a chronology and a bibliography as to where to go next if ones interest is piqued. Most of all it should cover its subject with an easy to read and accessible text. This book covers all that is required of a brief history. Sources covered and explained. Made the subject matter a breeze to read and best of all left one hankering for more.

I have now read a few of these A Brief History's and they are in general very good with the odd one being superb in doing what they should set out to do. This one by Jonathan Clements is as good as it gets. Highly recommended to the lay reader.

No footnotes etc make this book a target for the critics. Being such a controversial subject and to not back ones sources is a huge mistake.

I read this in my youth but remember being spellbound by the very idea of the world being overtaken by plants. Nothing like a bit of disaster sc-fi.

On a personal level this reminded me in style of Voss by Patrick White. https://www.goodreads.com/book/show/1734167.Voss

The differences being that the story itself was stronger, the occasional stream of consciousness delivery at least made sense and I found the characters believable. Voss I detested for confusing me. Bring Larks and Heroes on the other hand never once made me feel like I was missing something.

As far as the story goes it was grim reading. The brutality of a convict settlement, in what I presumed was present day Sydney, made harsh reading. There was a foreboding sense of danger throughout the book that culminated in an ending that was sadly gripping. The main protagonist, Halloran, was a character I could relate to. He was not saccharine sweet by any stretch of the imagination but had a humane touch and was consciously thoughtful in a manner that made him compelling.

Only my 2nd Keneally, I read the more well-known Schindler's Ark many years back, but I may read him some more. Very good.