This doesn’t mean I have stopped reading, just slowed down a little.
But we had a recent week’s Internet outage (thanks a lot, Telstra!) and quite a few hours sitting in airports which ramped up the reading activity considerably.
Here are a few of the recent reads, a few of which had been added to our Kindle list by the co driver.
The Finding Billy Battles trilogy continues with the second installment, The Improbable Journeys of Billy Battles.
It's 1894 and Billy, mourning the loss of his wife, has left the USA and is heading for the Far East.
After visiting Hawaii, fending off pirates and meeting a very mysterious German baroness who subsequently becomes part of his life, he gets involved in the beginnings of the French Indochina conflict (that decades later would become the Vietnam War), fights in the Spanish-American War in the Philippines and the resultant Philippine-American War when the USA refused to recognize the nascent First Philippine Republic.
Then in Europe with 'his' baroness, he becomes involved in the German plot to invade the USA.
I like historical fiction novels especially those written about events that I know very little about.
This is one.
Written in a rollicking and at times humorous style this is a 'can't put down' read especially if one suspends reality for a while.
I am really looking forward to Part 3 which has already been published.
Highly recommended!
The Passage of Love by award winning Australian author Alex Miller falls into the autofiction genre ie. a memoir written in the style of a novel.
This is the story of Robert Crofts (Miller) who moves from a northern Queensland cattle station to 1950s Melbourne (my home town in that era) with desire to become a writer. Here he experiences all the pitfalls of an innocent in a big city and ends up marrying a complete mismatch in Lena.
With things not working out for them, their solution seems to be to move.
And they do. Often!
From suburban Melbourne to a sterile Canberra, to London, to pre-gentrified Leichhardt an inner suburb of Sydney and finally to a remote run down farm outside Braidwood (just up the road from where we live.)
Miller has said “The book is about a tormented relationship, magnified by the bonds of marriage, that neither of us understood. Friendship suited us better."
I found this an enjoyable read (despite the 600 pages) about complex relationships which was enhanced by knowing so many of the places where the story took place.
Fire and Fury really needs no introduction.
It was probably the first book about the Trump White House and was the subject of many interviews, TV news show discussions and literary critiques.
All I can say is if only 50% of what is written here is true, then the groundwork for 4 years of chaos has been laid.
How the USA could have elected a lying, incompetent, misogynistic, sexist, racist and six times bankrupt buffoon as President is beyond me.
But sadly for the world it did.
Much of this book is now old news but it is still compulsive reading. Whether or not you want to throw the book at a wall more often than not probably depends your political leanings.
Luckily I had the Kindle edition so the wall was spared.
Hopefully Robert Mueller will be able to stop all this nonsense sooner rather than later.
The Secret Wife is another historical fiction.
This one is about the Russian Revolution and the demise of the Romanovs and the rise of Lenin and communism.
However in this story it wasn't Anastasia who survived the royal family's massacre as is regularly suggested (she didn't), it was another daughter of Czar Nicholas, Tatiana.
She is the secret wife married to cavalry officer Dimitri who manages to extricate her from her fate then loses her.
This is a well written story that melds the fiction and fact seamlessly while at the same time giving a great insight into how and why the Revolution evolved and the horror that the royal family must have gone through while in captivity.
The hero is more than convincing.
The modern day tie in on how this story is uncovered by Dimitri's great grand daughter is a little flaky but doesn't distract too much from the tale.
I liked it.
Reckoning: A Memoir is by Australia's beloved TV and screen actress Magda Szubanski (she was Esme Hoggett in the movie Babe).
Born in the UK to a well off Polish father and poor Scottish mother, the family migrated to Australia where she grew up in outer suburban Melbourne.
The memoir centers on her relationship with her father. But this man who mowed the lawn, joined the local tennis club, wore shorts and long socks, wasn't your regular suburbanite.
He had been an assassin for the Polish resistance against the German occupation during WW11.
She also had to deal with her secret awareness of her sexuality at a very early age at a time when 'coming out' was always fraught with danger on personal relationship as well as career levels.
This is a very honest, open and, at times, moving autobiography even more so for many of us who only knew her as the affable 'clown' who appeared on our TV screens in classic comedies like Kath and Kim or who recently became a very public face of the Yes Campaign during the Same Sex Marriage debate.
One review I read said "a heartbreaking, joyous, traumatic, intimate and revelatory story".
Indeed it is!
Recommended.
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