Books Read Archive 2005
Out of My Comfort Zone by Steve Waugh
A massive 800-page autobiography by ex-Australian Test cricket captain Steve Waugh. It reads surprisingly well. Waugh provides a good balance between the highs and lows of a professional sportsman, and he's quite aware of his own shortcomings.
The First Five Pages by Noah Lukeman
Subtitled: A writer's guide to staying out of the rejection pile. How? Cut the adverbs, cut the adjectives, cut the passive voice, cut the crap. Cut, cut, cut.
Crosskill by Garry Disher
The 4th Wyatt novel. The Outfit is after Wyatt over past discretions, Wyatt is after the Mesics who have his money, and a synergy of interests presents itself.
The Ice Harvest by Scott Phillips
Christmas Eve, 1979, Wichita, and Charlie Arglist has time to kill before he and his partner skip town with the proceeds from their recent scam. There's snow and death everywhere. A brilliant noir debut.
Deathdeal by Garry Disher
Disher's third Wyatt novel. Wyatt is on the run after his payroll hold-up in outback South Australia went horribly wrong. Now there's someone after him for the money (which he doesn't have), and to settle some old scores.
The Drowning Pool by Ross MacDonald
Lew Archer investigates blackmail and death in 1950s Los Angeles.
The Feathered Onion by Clive Trotman
Exploring the origins of life in the universe. Basic but a pretty good overview.
Lost by Michael Robotham
Detective Inspector Ruiz has been dragged from the Thames on the edge of death - he's got no idea of how he got there but his colleagues think he's a murderer. And he's haunted by a missing girl. This novel was the 2005 Ned Kelly Award for best Australian Crime Novel.
Pay Dirt by Garry Disher
Wyatt returns to make a payroll snatch, and to face his past.
The Amber Spyglass by Philip Pullman
The third of Pullman's His Dark Materials trilogy; winner of the 2001 Whitbread Book of the Year Award.
Thursday's Child by Sonya Hartnett
In the face of a disintegrating family and an arid landscape, Hartnett's main characters attempt to escape each in their own way: one tries dig his way to redemption, others run away and the main character writes her way to freedom.
Kick Back by Garry Disher
Disher's first Wyatt novel - tough and spare. A rare Australian entry in this tough-guy genre.
White Time by Margo Lanagan
The precursor to Lanagan's collection Black Juice.
The Broken Shore by Peter Temple
I can't see myself reading a better Australian crime novel this year - and any international ones will have to be at the top of their game to better it. All the reviews you've read of this are true. Will it transfer to a non-Australian audience? I would hope so. But, there's no sign of it in the UK as yet.
Blink by Malcolm Gladwell
Gladwell looks at "The Power of Thinking without Thinking". Trust your instincts and just do it.
The Moving Target by Ross Macdonald
The first of the Lew Archer mysteries. This one dates from 1949 and reads wonderfully well - gritty and brisk, it could have been written yesterday.
Cold Granite by Stuart MacBride
A police procedural set in Aberdeen - a number of young children are found dead around the city and a serial killer is supected. This is a fine debut: gripping, human and funny. I was very impressed.
The Subtle Knife by Philip Pullman
The second in the "His Dark Materials" trilogy. Takes a while to get going as it sets the scene and introduces another main character. Sets up a great finale for the last book.
Code Name Ginger by Steve Kemper
The story of Dean Kamen and his quest to build the Segway - a pioneering self-balancing, electronic 'people mover'.
The Silver Donkey by Sonya Hartnett
Hartnett's latest novel for children. Shortlisted for the Courier-Mail Book of the Year Award, and the Australian Children's Book of the Year Award. A novel that examines the effects of good deeds, and the redemptive power of story-telling.
Rain Fall by Barry Eisler
The first in Eisler's series about John Rain, a paid assassin whose speciality is "death by natural causes". Loses its way a bit in the middle sections but is certainly an interesting first novel. Worth trying further in the series.
Black Juice by Margo Lanagan
Shortlisted for the 2005 Childrens Book of the Year Award - Older Readers. A collection of extraordinary stories which explore the edges of existence.
Surrender by Sonya Hartnett
Hartnett continues her examination of youth under duress. This time in an isolated country town. Very, very dark. She writes beautifully and should be widely read by both children and adults. Though maybe this one is a touch distressing. Look for it come awards time next year.
Run, Johnny, Run by Mungo MacCallum
The story of the 2004 Australian Federal Election, and how John Howard came to maintain his dream of being Prime Minister throughout this new millenium. It also outlines the steady decline and fall of the Australian Labor Party as a political force.
Sixty Lights by Gail Jones
Shortlisted for the 2005 Miles Franklin Award. The life of Lucy Strange, orphaned at eight and shipped from Australia to London to Bombay, is examined through the legacy of her photography.
The Gift of Speed by Stephen Carroll
Shortlisted for the 2005 Miles Franklin Award. The sequel to The Art of the Engine Driver. Set against the backdrop of the 1960-61 West Indies cricket tour of Australia, it tells the story of 16-year-old Michael and his attempt to escape the suburbs. Layer upon layer, Carroll builds a picture of Australian suburban life, the various peoples who live there, and their dreams and aspirations.
The Submerged Cathedral by Charlotte Wood
Shortlisted for the 2005 Miles Franklin Award. A narrative of love lost and regained, spanning Australia and some of Europe's great cities.
Salt Rain by Sarah Armstrong
Shortlisted for the 2005 Miles Franklin Award. Armstrong's first novel is a coming-of-age story of a 14-year-old who must not only discover who she is, but also who her mother really is, was, and what happened to her. The novel's destination is rather predictable but the journey is calm, measured and populated by interesting people.
The White Earth by Andrew McGahan
Winner of the 2005 Miles Franklin Award. A widely praised novel set in the early 1990s around the time of the Mabo decision. An examination of the relationships that all Australians have with the land and how they deal with it. A powerful book which deserves to be read. With this novel McGahan moves in the top rank of Australian writers.
Taming the Beast by Emily Maguire
The story of the ongoing affair between a young woman and the teacher who abused her as a teenager. This is a story of love, sex, and obsession. But which is the beast? Not a successful debut - continual repetition doesn't lead to understanding, just a sense of over-writing and under-editing.
The Tipping Point by Malcolm Gladwell
Subtitled: "How little things make a big difference". Gladwell tries to explain why small changes have big consequences. It's all to do with what happens at the boundaries, out there on the edge. But Hush Puppies? How do they come into it?
The Best Australian Essays 2004 edited by Robert Dessaix
Robert Dessaix took over from Peter Craven to edit this annual offering from Black Inc Books. Highlights include: Tom Keneally, Marion Halligan, Richard Flanagan and M.J. Hyland. The topics covered range from the secret history of magic carpets to the destruction of the Tasmanian old-growth forests. An excellent overview of the subjects concerning Australians today, leavened by the light and the humorous.
Collapse by Jared Diamond
Diamond follows up his award-winning Guns, Germs and Steel with a book that examines why some societies choose to fail and some to survive. Diamond uses Easter Island, the Maya, the Anasazi, and Greenland as his historic case studies to bolster his theories. Special attention is later paid to Australia and where it is heading.
Wild Surmise by Dorothy Porter
Porter continues in the verse novel format, exploring love and fidelity (recurring themes) in the midst of a search for extra-terrestrial life. With each new book you get the feeling that the author is charting territory previously unvisited, or long forgotten.
Three Dollars by Elliot Perlman
Perlman's first book is a big contemporary novel covering the period from the 1970s to the late 1990s Australia. It details the life of Eddie from his humble beginnings to his rise and fall, both in his professional and emotional lives. There's a great book in here struggling to get out. For a first novel it shows a lot of promise, I just wish an editor had trimmed it by about 60-80 pages. There are times when the novel's forward march is stopped in its tracks by the characters' need for dialogue, and more dialogue. But for all that it demands to be read.
Of a Boy by Sonya Hartnett
Hartnett explores the vagaries, the emotions and the peer pressure of being a child on the edge of teenage-hood. Widely acclaimed as a children's author this is her second book for adults. A lot of critics in Australia have been extolling the virtues of Hartnett of late. After reading this book I have no trouble understanding why.
The Tyrant's Novel by Tom Keneally
In what is Keneally's best novel in years he explores the questions of mandatory detention of asylum seekers in Australia, and what makes a politcal refugee. An emotive issue brings out the best in the author as he uses all his skills to tell a story that is quiet enough on the surface and yet positively seething with passion underneath. Keneally uses the stilleto where a lot of lesser novelists would reach for the machete. It's good, whatever way you look at it.
Drown Them in the Sea by Nicholas Angel
A short, spare novel about the brutalities of living on the margins of the good earth. All the major natural disasters are depicted: drought, fire, and bank managers. The novel allows the characters to shine through a bare plot showing their strengths and weaknesses in equal measure. It also shows that dreams can live on even in the face of the blackest despair. And maybe it's the dreams that actually make life worth living after all.
The Shoes of the Fisherman by Morris West
On the surface this novel deals with the election of a new Pope, the first from Eastern Europe and the first non-Italian Pope in over 400 hundred years - this was written in 1963, well before John Paul II became Pope. West uses the Papal election and subsequent Vatican dealings to examine the uses, limits and personal consequences of ultimate power. Even though it's 40 years old now, the novel has a lot of interesting things to say. Some of the scenes are a little slow, and West does lay the religious discussions on a bit thick, however.
Gifts by Ursula K Le Guin
With great power comes great responsibility. How does the possession of this power affect the owner's sense of good and evil, right and wrong? Le Guin continues to explore the differences between the dark and the light and how humanity relates to both. This book is listed as a young adult fantasy, but, knowing Le Guin, it is bound to be more, much more, than that. One of the best writers going around, anywhere, in any genre.
Snake by Kate Jennings
Jennings writes with a pared-down style, leaving out the unnecessary, hinting at the hidden, and cutting to the quick of her subject. In this case it's a doomed marriage after the Second World War between an Australian farmer and his unhappy wife. Life on the edge is not for the faint-hearted.
The Scarlet Rider by Lucy Sussex
The psychological perils inherent in biography: is everything connected to the book's subject, or is the heroine just getting in too deep. Sussex drew on her own experiences in researching Mary Fortune, an early Australian crime writer, when writing this novel. So she knows of what she speaks.
Big Bang by Simon Singh
Singh follows up his earlier books Fermat's Last Theorem and The Code Book with the story of the Big Bang. I'm generally okay with the theory, from an slightly-educated layman's perspective, I just wanted someone to explain the "inflationary phase of the early universe" in such a way that it doesn't seem like pure smoke and mirrors. Singh fudges the issue a bit, so I'm still not convinced. Overall, Singh does a pretty good job of bringing all the disparate strands together into a satisfactory whole. Still no mention of String theory, however.
The Velodrome by Liam Davison
Davison's first novel, shortlisted for the 1987 Australian/Vogel Award, has a lot of things going for it: it's short and to the point, the characters are people you can care about, and the author doesn't waste his time moving the story along. This is pretty damn good for a first novel. Not great, but it sure shows a lot of promise. He just lays the tragedy on a bit thick.
Wrong About Japan by Peter Carey
Carey and his twelve-year-old son travel to Japan to immerse themselves in Japanese culture, and manga in particular, thereby exploring a land barely understood. Modern day twelve-year-olds are not the easiest of nature's creatures to come to grips with.
The Spike by Damien Broderick
An exploration of how technology will change our lives beyond recognition. Sometime around the middle of this century the rate of technological change will "spike" through the roof, causing us to completely re-evaluate our place in the natural world.
Vernon God Little by DBC Pierre
The 2003 Booker Prize winning novel which divided readers into those that loved it, and those that hated it - I'm more at the hate it end. I can't remember the last book I read which contained so many unlikeable characters. In fact, I didn't find a single one in this novel I could relate to. I still don't understand why it won anything.
The Monkey's Mask by Dorothy Porter
A crime novel featuring a missing person inquiry, a P.I., adultery, and murder - all your basic noir ingredients. But this is told in verse that captivated even a die-hard anti-"modern poetry" reader such as me. The problem, to me, about a lot of modern poetry is that it doesn't go anywhere. This book uses the structure of a crime novel to force the pace. The writing is sparse, clean and beautifully handled. Even half-way through I had my doubts that Porter could bring it off. She does. Admirably.
The Light of Day by Graham Swift
A novel of obsession, love, betrayal and loyalty. Swift brings his considerable literary powers to bear on a crime novel, or a novel of a crime, however you like to think of it.
The Five Ages of the Universe by Fred Adams and Greg Laughlin
From the Big Bang to the Heat-Death of the Universe - the "biggest" biography you'll ever read. With no mention of either String or M-theory this exposition is a bit dated, and may be wrong in some fundamental assumptions. It's hard to get your head around the concepts some of the time, but the authors do as good a job as is possible for the general reader.
The New New Thing by Michael Lewis
Michael Lewis set out to write an expose of the new internet businesses at the end of the 1990s, and found Jim Clark - founder of three separate billion-dollar companies: Silicon Graphics, Netscape, and Healtheon - and discovered the best and worst of Silicon Valley all in the one package. Reads like a thriller, even though you know the ending.
Easy Riders, Raging Bulls by Peter Biskind
Subtitled: "How the Sex-Drugs-and-Rock 'n' Roll Generation Saved Hollywood". From "Easy Rider" to the start of the 1980s the book details the deals, the relationships, the movies and the drugs, sometimes to almost obsessive detail. All the main players: Hopper, Altman, Coppola, Scorcese, Spielberg, Ashby and Lucas had major personality flaws. It's a wonder anything got made at all.
Rilke on Black by Ken Bruen
American hardboiled noir transplanted to South London. Three very different characters, with wildly different motivations, plan and undertake a kidnapping. You just know "it's gonna end bad".
Faster by James Gleick
An exploration of, amongst other things, why we keep pressing the lift/elevator button, hoping it will arrive faster. Written in the late nineties this is a tad dated now, and comes across more as a list of how life has speeded up in the most recent generation, but doesn't offer any possible solutions or futures.
Moral Hazard by Kate Jennings
A woman in New York attends to the physical decay of her husband while around her Wall Street heads towards financial meltdown. This novel is emotional without being sentimental, intelligent without being showy, and humane without being soft. It's hard to think how this might have been written better. Short, sharp and to the point. Highly recommended. Shortlisted for the Miles Franklin Award in 2003.
The Final Solution by Michael Chabon
Chabon's take on the last case of a rather famous fictional detective. The unnamed Sherlock Holmes solves a case involving a mysterious mute boy and his even more mysterious pet parrot, which keeps singing a string of numbers in German. The style is wonderful, especially the chapter told from the point-of-view of the parrot(!), but the final product doesn't read enough like a classic Holmes mystery to hold a level of suspense and mystery. An act of love on Chabon's part - not his best.