One approaches franchise books and films gingerly: ‘massively popular’ often indeed means ‘crap’. But instant franchise books can signal an artistic creation that has seized the public imagination because it is brilliant, at least in some aspects. Take Harry Potter – it succeeds because it deserves to. Stieg Larsson’s Millennium series is another example. The [...]
The Edgar winners (see the official announcement) in the three novel categories range across crime fiction subgenres – I’ll make it my duty to read the first one: Best Novel: The Last Child by John Hart Best First Novel: Stefanie Pintoff’s In the Shadow of Gotham Best Paperback Original: Marc Strange’s Body Blows
Very little light reading on the go at the moment: The Face on Your Plate: The Truth About Food by Jeffrey Moussaieff Masson, a companion read to Jonathan Safran Foer’s masterpiece Eating Food I’ve been hanging out for Michael Lewis’s latest, The Big Short: Inside the Doomsday Machine Unlike many, I didn’t grow besotted with Yann Martel’s [...]
For the list, two books by Australian reviewers whose judgement I respect: Venero Armanno’s review of Martin Westley Takes a Walk by Andrew Humphreys judges it to be well written and with ‘a surprisingly generous heart’. Jason Steger has a tremendously entertaining interview in The Age with Philip Kerr, whose sixth Bernie Gunther (WWII German [...]
Also posted in Literary Fiction |
Last week’s reading: My first Lorrie Moore, A Gate at the Stairs, is a refreshing revelation. Moore’s highly individualistic writing style, all quirky similes and metaphors, laced with lyricism, is nothing like what I tend to read. As with other stylistic writers like Cormac McCarthy, I found the going slow because I needed to roll [...]
Last week’s reading: Parrot and Olivier in America is Peter Carey at his most exuberant, wild almost. Recounting the fictional tale of the trip to the new, troubling democratic nation of the United States of America by French nobleman Olivier-Jean-Baptist de Clarel de Barfleur and an artistic servant thrust upon him, John ‘Parrot’ Larrit. Carey succeeds marvellously in [...]
Last week’s reading: ‘What the Heck Are You Up To, Mr. President?’: Jimmy Carter, America’s ‘Malaise,’ and the Speech that Should Have Changed the Country is an intriguing single-topic book by Kevin Mattson, an Ohio historian. He tells the story of the critical speech given by Carter on July 15, 1979, covering the energy crisis [...]
Last week’s reading: Robert Harris’s Lustrum is the second of two novels recounting the life of Roman philosopher/orator/lawyer/politician Cicero. Harris can write smoothly and entertainingly about any subject, modern or ancient, Lustrum being a good example. It’s an enjoyable and intriguing read, although the five-year period covered by this book is telescoped at the end, [...]
On November 5, on her radio show, Ramona Koval interviewed Peter Temple, author of the scorching, wonderfully written Truth. I found it most revealing of the man, increasing my admiration even further. Here’s the podcast.
Melbourne crime/thriller author Marshall Browne introduced Franz Schmidt to us a few books back (talk about a fecund imagination, Browne’s other heroes are an Italian detective with one leg and a Japanese policeman) in The Eye of the Abyss. Schmidt is as unusual a thriller hero as they come – a one-eyed auditor in preWWII [...]