More Books

It's not often I abandon a book half way through but Steve Job's biography is one.
It is an interesting enough history of Apple but the repetitive description of Job's manic and self obsessed behavior wears a little thin after a few hundred pages.

                         "Flight 32" is the absorbing story of a QANTAS Airbus A380 flight from Singapore to Sydney that suffered an almost catastrophic engine explosion a few minutes after departure.
Written by the flight's captain, it is a detailed story of how the crew kept the plane in the air and eventually landed safely without injury to anyone on board. Some people on the ground in Indonesia were hurt by falling debris.
It will either put you off flying for life or give you additional confidence in the air crews who pilot us around the world, usually without incident, on a daily basis.
It has a six degrees of separation element for us. Stirl's nephew was cabin crew on that flight. A little known fact is that after a few days rest and recovery in Singapore, the crew was put on another flight which also had to return to Singapore with mechanical problems.
The nephew is still flying.

George Smith is one of Australia's all time great Rugby players.
He played 110 times for his country as well as numerous Super Rugby games for the Canberra Brumbies.
Raised in a large Tongan family on the northern beaches of Sydney, he had a checked youth, falling in with the wrong crowd and getting expelled from school.
But Rugby saved him from an uncertain future.
An interesting biography from a social and sporting point of view but really one for the Rugby tragic only, one of whom resides in this house.

"Revolutionaries" is a detailed account of both the American Revolution and the Revolutionary War concentrating on those who went into battle, those who kept the country running during the conflict and drew up the states' and national constitutions (and subsequent amendments), the diplomats seeking foreign support abroad, the treaty makers and those who took up the challenges, political, social and economic, of making a success out of a newly formed nation.
A lot of well known names and some not so well known. For a change this book delves into their personalities, motivations and private lives, not just their actions.
Hard going in a lot of places, especially when it comes to constitutional matters, but rewarding in the end.
Definitely one for American history buffs only.

My daughter bought me a Kindle for my birthday.
Takes a bit of getting used to but I am warming to it.
Lots of free books available as well as latest releases.
We buy most of our books from Amazon USA and even with freight added they are about 50% of the prices in Australian book stores.

So with a book being downloaded within a few seconds, we will now be saving the freight costs.
The upshot of all this is my 'reviews' may now be minus a cover shot although I have a lot of real books stacked up to read. Hopefully I can work my way through them all during summer.