Zen and the Art of Motorcycle Maintenance by Robert Pirsig (1974). A book I avoided when I was doing psych nursing, in my thirties. Many of my friends read it and raved about it. I judged it by its title. Now, reading it in my eighties, I [...]
Lark Rise to Candleford brings together three books that are autobiographical social history: I can't find a single term for this. I read the full version in paperback, now falling apart; then a few years later, I acquired an abridged illustrated version, which I have carried around [...]
At times I had my doubts about this book. At times I wanted to stop reading it. But I kept returning to it, and have just spent much of my day finishing it. Part of the reason I wanted to stop is that I found the descriptions [...]
Ruth, by Elizabeth Gaskell, published in 1853, challenges the archetype of The Fallen Woman, and asks us to consider: what is the dividing line between a good woman and a woman who has sinned against the rules of morality that religion has built around sexuality? Gaskell was [...]
The Father of the Lost Boys: A Memoir, by Yuot A Alaak, tells the story of how, in 1991, teacher and community leader Mecak Ajang Alaak led 20,000 lost boys and many adult refugees from Ethiopia, where they had fled from attacks in Sudan by northern government [...]
Two civilisations that are alike but different encounter each other in this winter world, where light and darkness, like lovers, are bound together. Ursula K le Guin's 1969 story, The Left Hand of Darkness, is one of a series of science fiction novels about civilizations of human [...]
Voss, Patrick White's fifth novel, first published in 1954, won the inaugural Miles Franklin award. The story was inspired by the failed inland expedition of the German explorer, Ludwig Leichhardt. The mystery surrounding the disappearance of Leichardt and his men in the desert is recreated and resolved [...]
Austerlitz by W.G. Sebald was his last work and fourth book of fiction, published in German in 2001, the year of Sebald's premature death. A literary myth has grown around this author, who became a Professor of European LIterature in England. His works won major awards and [...]
For Love Alone was Christina Stead's fifth novel, written after The Man Who Loved Children, her more famous book, and published in 1945. It is, for me, a memorable book, one I first read many years ago and have never forgotten. Set in Sydney and London, it [...]
Popeye Never Told You by Rodney Hall is a brilliant and original memoir of a little boy's life in England during the Second World War. Rod is five when his story begins, and nine when it finishes, when the war ends. It is original because it is [...]
