5★ [This review is from my review of the print version, but the audio version is also 5★.
“When it came to which weapon of mass destruction, the atom b5★ [This review is from my review of the print version, but the audio version is also 5★.
“When it came to which weapon of mass destruction, the atom bomb was simply the final choice. . . . While the world still grieves for the dead of Hiroshima, outside Japan who grieves for the firebombing of Tokyo, which saw perhaps even more die from conventional bombs than the first atomic bomb—an estimated 100,000 victims? Which is the greater war crime? Who do we remember and who do we forget?”
This amazing combination of family memoir and historical research, has been simmering away for a long time in the uniquely imaginative mind of one of my favourite authors. It is a thoughtful reflection about connectedness and how remarkable it is that he was born at all, considering his father’s harrowing wartime experiences during WWII.
“By the time Thomas Ferebee released the lever over Hiroshima, my father had somehow survived more than three years of Japanese internment. He had somehow survived Changi and the Death Railway.”
When the bomb fell, his father was a prisoner of war and slave labourer in the Ohama Coal Mine at Hiroshima. How did that man return to Tasmania, raise a family, and lead a seemingly normal day-to-day life?
Flanagan writes much about his father, his family, his youth, and his own death experience when he drowned as a river guide. Around that is the long history of Tasmania, particularly its dark days as a violent penal colony that slaughtered and tried to eradicate the local Aborigines. More questions.
He writes about a world of love and passion and brutality and consequences. He quotes Russian author [author:Anton Chekhov|5031025] about the purpose of literature.
“One of Chekhov’s earliest stories was a parody of mental arithmetic questions asked of schoolchildren, of which Chekhov’s question 7 is typical:
’Wednesday, June 17, 1881, a train had to leave station A at 3 a.m. in order to reach station B at 11 p.m.; just as the train was about to depart, however, an order came that the train had to reach station B by 7 p.m. Who loves longer, a man or a woman?’
Who?
You, me, a Hiroshima resident or a slave labourer? And why do we do what we do to each other?
That’s question 7.”
That is Flanagan’s real question. Why? This is almost the way children will keep saying, “But, why?” no matter what answer you give them. With kids, it's partly because they can keep you talking and partly because no answer is ever enough… until of course you get to the usual grown-up’s last word, “Because I said so!”
Flanagan was born and raised in Tasmania, and much of his focus is on his unusual father, who comfortably blended Catholicism with his belief that people return to the world as animals.
After his father's death, a family letter said his father’s mother had Aboriginal heritage, but it would have been kept secret in those days. His father was dark enough that he was nicknamed “Nugget” (a shoe polish) and “half-caste”. Could that explain anything about the man, his keeping things to himself, his endurance?
Flanagan's great-great- grandfather, Thomas Flanagan, came as a convict slave to Van Diemen’s Land (now Tasmania). It was the worst of all convict hellholes, if such a thing can be measured. What stuff was he made of that he survived?
How might inherited and/or intergenerational trauma affect descendants? Richard’s father was obviously made of strong stuff (his mother was a bright, resourceful woman, too).
Researching his questions about the bomb, Flanagan explores a warren of rabbit holes, including the story of how science fiction writer H.G. Wells's long love affair with Rebecca West influenced his writing, which in turn inspired a student of Einstein, which in turn led to the development of nuclear fission and Hiroshima.
“The US only did what it did creating the atom bomb because a man called Leo Szilard, haunted by questions, persuaded its president it should and then helped make the impossible possible. And Leo Szilard only did what he did because he had once read a novel. The novel was written out of a terror of love and it terrified Leo Szilard and entranced him in equal measure until it became his destiny. The novel was written by H. G. Wells.”
He writes at length about the Wells-West affair and of Leo Szilard’s background, fictionalising scenes as he does. About Wells seeing West, he writes:
“…women made him quiver like a fish and the one now smiling at him from the sitting room door—top teeth slightly prominent in her gypsy face and her bottom somewhat more prominent in a blue silk hobble skirt—electrified him. She was a question mark he intended to answer.”
He also covers Leo Szilard's own story, how his thinking was nudged as he watched traffic lights change, how he discovered the nuclear chain reaction, what happened to the patent and how. How it ended up in American hands.
He moves back and forth between stories, always marking breaks between thoughts, chapters, essays, reminiscences. It’s easy to follow and makes sense when we accept that
“all writing is trapped in tenses when life isn’t. Life is always happening and has happened and will happen, and the only writing that can have any worth confounds time and stands outside of it, swims with it and flies with it and dives deep within it, seeking the answer to one insistent question: who loves longer?”
In the acknowledgments, he writes about something I’ve heard of before, which relates to an Aboriginal concept of time.
“Some years ago I was sent a remarkable essay by a then eighteen-year-old Yolnju woman, Siena Stubbs, about the use of a fourth tense in the Yolnju language. It was, in its own way, the equivalent of Szilard’s traffic lights for my thinking, and it informs this book deeply.”
I love Flanagan’s writing. I was unsure if this non-fiction book was going to be too much dry information. How silly. Of course I found it fascinating. I listened to the author read a lot of it, because he has a manner of speech which seems to give his words even more impact. It’s worth finding one of the many interviews and podcasts out there.
But to really appreciate it, I had to read it for myself as well. Wonderful....more
5★ “And just that clearly, in the muddled, whiskey-soaked place where terrible ideas pose as good ones, I knew what I had to do. It made perfect sense.5★ “And just that clearly, in the muddled, whiskey-soaked place where terrible ideas pose as good ones, I knew what I had to do. It made perfect sense. I would write my obituary.”
That is an excerpt from John Kenney’s new novel I See You've Called in Dead: A Novel, which reads smoothly, easily, amusingly and sounds as if it might actually live up to what the publisher claims it to be: “The Office meets Six Feet Under meets About a Boy in this coming-of-middle-age tale about having a second chance to write your life’s story.”
Kenney’s won several awards and is a contributor to 'The New Yorker', so you know you’re in the hands of an experienced writer.
Much-loved author Emma Donoghue, (with sixteen novels, including Room under her belt, or in the back of her brain, or wherever she keeps them) is releasing The Paris Express soon. It’s historical fiction, based on an 1895 train disaster, described by the publisher as “a propulsive novel set on a train packed with a fascinating cast of characters who hail from as close as Brittany and as far as Russia, Ireland, Algeria, Pennsylvania, and Cambodia.”
It opens with a young woman hesitating as she’s about to board the train, and I imagine many readers will want to know what happens to her.
The next one that caught my eye is a debut novel, The Names, by Florence Knapp, who has previously written nonfiction. The excerpt was compelling and I hope I get to read the rest of it. Cora’s husband, Gordon, has instructed her to register the baby’s name, today. Cora and her young daughter walk to the registry office and the little girl suggests a name.
“Cora has never liked the name Gordon. The way it starts with a splintering sound that makes her think of cracked boiled sweets, and then ends with a thud like someone slamming down a sports bag. Gordon. But what disturbs her more is that she must now pour the goodness of her son into its mold, hoping he’ll be strong enough to find his own shape within it. Because Gordon is a name passed down through the men in her husband’s family, and it seems impossible it could be any other way.”
Does a person grow into the name or does the name define your trajectory? I completely forgot this was a debut, at least for fiction, and that is was only an excerpt. It’s imaginative and thoughtful and I’d like to read more, please.
Notes on Infinity is a debut by Austin Taylor, who is a recent Harvard graduate with joint degrees in chemistry and English, which she certainly put to good use here. The excerpt opens with Zoe in a dressing room, feeling manic, getting sick, and finally downing four pills before getting her makeup redone and going onstage.
She introduces herself and says she’s going to tell the audience a story.
Then the book cuts to Part 1, and I got caught up in the meeting of two bright students, kind of competing against each other in chemistry classes, which was a lot more interesting than I’ve made it sound - sort of a cat and mouse, unspoken rivalry between exceptionally smart young people.
The publisher describes it as two people going into a biotech startup and discovering a cure for aging, That got my attention, too. I immediately thought of Tomorrow, and Tomorrow, and Tomorrow by Gabrielle Zevin, although this may be completely different, of course.
There are excerpts from 49 books, but there are a lot more titles and release dates for books by acclaimed authors. There are no excerpts, but many authors are famous, so you may find a favourite with a new book to look forward to.
Get a copy and have a look.
Thanks to #NetGalley for my copy for review, but you can download these books for free....more
3★ “Crouching like a sunbird ready to fly, Nabila Yasmeen peered through the window of the village school. The children had taken their places, in rows3★ “Crouching like a sunbird ready to fly, Nabila Yasmeen peered through the window of the village school. The children had taken their places, in rows four deep, eager for their learning to begin. . . . He was the school’s only teacher and he taught the children everything they needed to know.”
I think this is for readers who are unfamiliar with the ancient and ongoing conflicts in the Middle East. I saw a review by someone who said they had no idea what the situation has been, so I guess this novel has served that purpose. In her author’s note, she writes,
“It is necessarily brief, to counter the narrative that the question of Palestine is complicated...”
It is brief, but nothing is simple.
Palestine, December 1947. Nabila is a bright five-and-a-half-year-old girl who is desperate to join the other children at school, and the young teacher kindly pretends to ignore her, with an occasional almost-smile, until he has to shoo her away.
Today, while she’s still watching, he seem serious and nervous and hasn’t shooed her away yet, so she listens.
“He was good-humoured and easy in his manner, but today Nabila noticed something different in him. He seemed distracted, unsure. There was a lightness missing.
He cleared his throat, adjusted the collar around his neck and began to relay the news that had come to him via the radio. But Nabila found it hard to follow what he was saying. He told his class that, on Monday, the United Nations (whatever that was) had passed something called Resolution 181. He talked of partition and special committees. Of welfare and friendly relations among nations. Of mandates and immigration and freedom of worship. But it soon became apparent that the children in the classroom, most of whom were much older than Nabila, had no idea what he was talking about either.
So, he began again and in the simplest of terms he distilled the information for them. He told them that their country would be divided and a new country formed within it. Nabila was still confused. How could a new country be put inside a country that was already there? Where would the new country go? Where did it come from? What would happen to the people who were already there? Would they be squashed into the ground like ants under a boot? Would Nabila’s village be in the new country? Why was this happening? Nabila didn’t understand at all.”
This is Nabila’s and the reader’s introduction to the partition of Palestine into two states: Arab and Jewish.
The book goes on to follow the displacement of Palestinians from then until now. Then it shifts timelines to December 2023 in Australia, where Nabila is now an old lady.
I believe the author is presenting this moving story to show Palestine’s plight since WW2, when the UN moved to split one country into two. For readers who have not followed the continuing conflict in the Middle East, the UN resolution may be as much of a surprise as it is to Nabila. Jewish people supported it, but Arabs didn’t, and it has been ever thus.
People today, certainly those of Nabila’s generation, know about the Holocaust and perhaps about the promise to establish a safe, free Jewish State.
I humbly suggest the United Nations was between a rock and a hard place, as the saying goes, and agreed to select part of the ancestral Jewish homeland for the new country.
Contrary to the author’s statement that this is simple, I think it’s a conflict that goes back more than two thousand years and is still complicated.
There’s a saying I like: “It’s a reason, but it’s no excuse.” For me, it applies to most forms of revenge and the brutality that’s been used over the years. The behaviour on both sides has been to provoke the other until someone makes a move and then stomp on them.
Any conversation about this becomes, “Yes, but…” vs “Yes, but…”, noting past atrocities, past take-overs, past political upheaval, going back probably to pre-Biblical times. And then it becomes bomb vs bomb.
But one genocide doesn’t justify another.
The book does not mention the October 2023 Hamas attack on Israel, and there is no mention of hostages. The only indirect reference is in December 2023 when Nabila is attending protest marches where she lives in Australia. Readers are obviously expected to know what the protests are.
The author includes many pages of links to articles and research, and I have no doubt at all that she knows what she has written about.
Not long ago, I read Apeirogon, the award-winning biographical novel by the incomparable Colum McCann, where two fathers – Israeli and Palestinian, each of whom had lost young daughters to the ongoing hostilities – hoped to work together to create some kind of peaceful co-existence.
It wasn’t simple then, and it isn’t simple now. I sure wish it were.
Read this and see what you think - and then get curious.
For some reasonably basic background, I suggest you check the articles by Britannica (now based in the US) and the BBC.
P.S. I read this because it is one of the five books sent to all Australian parliamentarians for summer reading about the Israel-Gaza war. (Remember the Aussie summer is Dec-Jan-Feb.)
5★ “Patrick—the little boy who dreamed of pitching baseballs—became the world’s greatest quarterback. He proves that sometimes the most incredible vict5★ “Patrick—the little boy who dreamed of pitching baseballs—became the world’s greatest quarterback. He proves that sometimes the most incredible victories come from the most unexpected dreams.”
Fans of American professional football know Patrick Mahomes as the star quarterback of the Kansas City Chiefs. [Taylor Swift fans know the Kansas City Chiefs as the team of her boyfriend, Travis Kelce, but I digress. ...more
5★ “Music ‘moves’. It can travel from place to place, just like any human.”
Music moves people as it moves itself from continent to continent and cultur5★ “Music ‘moves’. It can travel from place to place, just like any human.”
Music moves people as it moves itself from continent to continent and culture to culture. Rural folk and blues get electrified and become a kind of international urban blues-rock. Prown opens the book with the statement above, followed by this (which was news to me).
“Case in point, think about Mexican mariachi music, with its jaunty rhythms and festive horns. Now compare that to the strangely similar sounds of European polka music. A coincidence? Not at all. In the nineteenth century, millions of German immigrants arrived in Texas and Mexico, bringing their polkas and waltzes with them. As these songs mingled with northern Mexican music, it evolved into what we loosely call mariachi. This underscores the essential premise: when people move, their music moves with them.”
I am still going through this massive book – it will take me some time – but I’m going to “review” it now so those who need to know about it will find it in plenty of time for the gift-giving season. I have only a digital PDF copy for review, but I can imagine the real thing.
The author begins by referring to the port cities in the US south, especially New Orleans.
“ It’s where seagoing vessels from the Americas, the Caribbean, Africa, and Europe arrived with slaves, sailors, and passengers, inadvertently bringing together shards of song, rhythms and reels, hollers and calls, and lyrics of many languages. As they mixed and spread inland, tuneful new hybrids emerged, among them ragtime, jazz, Dixieland, and the blues. The latter further developed in Black farming communities and brutal cotton plantations throughout the South and, within decades, began spreading by boat, train, horse, and foot.”
Prown talks not only about how the music styles blend and morph, but also how the sound and instruments changed. Basic acoustic became electrified so that Jimi Hendrix playing The Star Spangled Banner is a far cry from that of a classic acoustic rendition.
Acoustic anthem by Adrian Holovaty, from Amsterdam. [He says the last chord was intentional because it was recorded when George W. Bush was president ...more
5★ “A month is too long to talk online. In the time we have been talking, my imagination has run wild. Based on his liberal use of the semicolon, I jus5★ “A month is too long to talk online. In the time we have been talking, my imagination has run wild. Based on his liberal use of the semicolon, I just assumed this date would go well. But everything is different IRL.”
You think? This is an excerpt from Luster by Raven Leilani. A black English girl, 23, flirts online with a white married man twice her age, and they do meet In Real Life in the sample provided by Buzz Books. I always enjoy these samplers. Fiction, non-fiction, debuts, Young Adult, plenty of choice. I read some, skim some, skip some. No matter what, I always find something I really want to read.
My favourite this time is an Irish debut, The Ghost Factory by Jenny McCartney, told in the first person by a boy from Belfast. He describes an uncle.
“He was a tame man, really. Any rebellious sinews in him had long ago been replaced with a convenient machine-washable stuffing.”
His father: “You could relax in the expanses of Big Jacky’s silence. It was the mental equivalent of an endless highway stretching out of sight, carrying within it peace and possibility.”
I loved the whole thing and wish I could have kept reading!
A very different book is Migrations by Charlotte McConaghy about a woman who is tracking the fast-disappearing arctic terns. She's put bands on three, and I left her cajoling fisherman into taking her to sea with them by promising the terns will show them where they can still find fish (also fast-disappearing). I can see some interesting relationships developing in this one, and it's also a topical story.
The Last Flight by Julie Clark promises to be a real page-turner. It's about two women switching identities, but one misstep, and it's curtains for someone! A good plot and it seems well-written, too.
The Book of V. by Anna Solomon shows second wife Lily dealing with constant comparisons to her husband's first wife, Vira, who didn't want children. He and Lily have two children, and Lily is struggling in her mind to compete with what she imagines Vira's life is like now. Could be a good one.
“Because Gloria Ramírez might not know much on this morning, February 15, 1976, but she knows this: if he hadn’t passed out before he sobered up enough to find his gun or get his hands around her throat, she would already be dead.”
Odessa, Texas, 1976, the wee hours of the morning after Valentine's. Gloria, 14, had been hanging around bored and took a ride in a truck with an oil-worker for something to do. Now she’s stranded in the desert while he’s asleep (maybe?) propped up next to his truck with his gun handy. Can she get to the farmhouse she sees off in the distance?
“Every day that I am in here, is a day that puts them at risk, for unpaid debts can mean a death sentence in my country. This is the reality for nearly every migrant from Central America who flees to the United States.”
She and the other women being held in cells rely a lot on prayer. She has a dream while in detention.
“Then, I turned to the back of the Bible, where there are blank pages for notes, and I wrote the dream down. I knew immediately what I had to do. I had to let go. I had to be a believer who has great faith. I had to be someone who gives without asking. I had to surrender fully to God, to stop asking for what I want. I had to say, simply, ‘God, let Thy will be done.’”
I’m a great fan of American Dirt, which caused a lot of controversy about a white woman telling the story of a Mexican migrant woman fleeing from a cartel boss to the U.S. I will be interested to see if Rosy’s own story will have as much impact as the Lydia’s fictional one. Link to my review of "American Dirt"
Another story of an undocumented family in the States is The Son of Good Fortune, the debut novel of Lysley Tenorio who has won awards for his short fiction. Here we have a Filipino mother who makes her living scamming men on the internet (convinced she is still overseas and needs airfare to the U.S. to meet them). Her teen-aged son, Excel, has apparently left home and returned more than once, but this time he's determined to get out. Interesting premise and the writing makes me want to read more.
It concerns me that we are headed to George Orwell's famous Nineteen Eighty-Four where history is erased in the Ministry of Truth and replaced by whatever Big Brother would like history to look like now. I'm happy to listen to Yunkaporta's opinions in spite of his 'apology' for not having a full traditional education in the law and the lore.
“. . . in fact, I’m uninitiated, which means that at the age of forty-seven I still only have the cultural knowledge and status of a fourteen-year-old boy. A swimming pool was built on the initiation ground back home, so those rites of passage don’t happen anymore.”
I’ve just grabbed a few that caught my eye, but there are heaps more, so grab a copy of this issue. They are free from their website. http://buzz.publishersmarketplace.com/
Many are available for NetGalley reviewers to request (no guarantees), and many already have some reviews on Goodreads already to help you decide.
So many books, so little time!
Merged review:
5★ “A month is too long to talk online. In the time we have been talking, my imagination has run wild. Based on his liberal use of the semicolon, I just assumed this date would go well. But everything is different IRL.”
You think? This is an excerpt from Luster by Raven Leilani. A black English girl, 23, flirts online with a white married man twice her age, and they do meet In Real Life in the sample provided by Buzz Books. I always enjoy these samplers. Fiction, non-fiction, debuts, Young Adult, plenty of choice. I read some, skim some, skip some. No matter what, I always find something I really want to read.
My favourite this time is an Irish debut, The Ghost Factory by Jenny McCartney, told in the first person by a boy from Belfast. He describes an uncle.
“He was a tame man, really. Any rebellious sinews in him had long ago been replaced with a convenient machine-washable stuffing.”
His father: “You could relax in the expanses of Big Jacky’s silence. It was the mental equivalent of an endless highway stretching out of sight, carrying within it peace and possibility.”
I loved the whole thing and wish I could have kept reading!
A very different book is Migrations by Charlotte McConaghy about a woman who is tracking the fast-disappearing arctic terns. She's put bands on three, and I left her cajoling fisherman into taking her to sea with them by promising the terns will show them where they can still find fish (also fast-disappearing). I can see some interesting relationships developing in this one, and it's also a topical story.
The Last Flight by Julie Clark promises to be a real page-turner. It's about two women switching identities, but one misstep, and it's curtains for someone! A good plot and it seems well-written, too.
The Book of V. by Anna Solomon shows second wife Lily dealing with constant comparisons to her husband's first wife, Vira, who didn't want children. He and Lily have two children, and Lily is struggling in her mind to compete with what she imagines Vira's life is like now. Could be a good one.
“Because Gloria Ramírez might not know much on this morning, February 15, 1976, but she knows this: if he hadn’t passed out before he sobered up enough to find his gun or get his hands around her throat, she would already be dead.”
Odessa, Texas, 1976, the wee hours of the morning after Valentine's. Gloria, 14, had been hanging around bored and took a ride in a truck with an oil-worker for something to do. Now she’s stranded in the desert while he’s asleep (maybe?) propped up next to his truck with his gun handy. Can she get to the farmhouse she sees off in the distance?
“Every day that I am in here, is a day that puts them at risk, for unpaid debts can mean a death sentence in my country. This is the reality for nearly every migrant from Central America who flees to the United States.”
She and the other women being held in cells rely a lot on prayer. She has a dream while in detention.
“Then, I turned to the back of the Bible, where there are blank pages for notes, and I wrote the dream down. I knew immediately what I had to do. I had to let go. I had to be a believer who has great faith. I had to be someone who gives without asking. I had to surrender fully to God, to stop asking for what I want. I had to say, simply, ‘God, let Thy will be done.’”
I’m a great fan of American Dirt, which caused a lot of controversy about a white woman telling the story of a Mexican migrant woman fleeing from a cartel boss to the U.S. I will be interested to see if Rosy’s own story will have as much impact as the Lydia’s fictional one. Link to my review of "American Dirt"
Another story of an undocumented family in the States is The Son of Good Fortune, the debut novel of Lysley Tenorio who has won awards for his short fiction. Here we have a Filipino mother who makes her living scamming men on the internet (convinced she is still overseas and needs airfare to the U.S. to meet them). Her teen-aged son, Excel, has apparently left home and returned more than once, but this time he's determined to get out. Interesting premise and the writing makes me want to read more.
It concerns me that we are headed to George Orwell's famous Nineteen Eighty-Four where history is erased in the Ministry of Truth and replaced by whatever Big Brother would like history to look like now. I'm happy to listen to Yunkaporta's opinions in spite of his 'apology' for not having a full traditional education in the law and the lore.
“. . . in fact, I’m uninitiated, which means that at the age of forty-seven I still only have the cultural knowledge and status of a fourteen-year-old boy. A swimming pool was built on the initiation ground back home, so those rites of passage don’t happen anymore.”
I’ve just grabbed a few that caught my eye, but there are heaps more, so grab a copy of this issue. They are free from their website. http://buzz.publishersmarketplace.com/
Many are available for NetGalley reviewers to request (no guarantees), and many already have some reviews on Goodreads already to help you decide.
5★ The Publishers Lunch Buzz Books are always fun. There's fiction from several genres as well as non-fiction. Each excerpt has a good summary of the w5★ The Publishers Lunch Buzz Books are always fun. There's fiction from several genres as well as non-fiction. Each excerpt has a good summary of the work and some background information about the author to give a fair idea of whether or not this might interest you.
This edition is for books due to be published roughly between September 2018 and February 2019 (the dates I remember seeing - I haven't checked each one).
If the books are available on NetGalley for review, there is a direct link to click to request the book from a Kindle.
There are many Buzz Books publications for various seasons, genres, months - and they're all Read Now on NetGalley or on the Publishers Lunch website.
I got mine from NetGalley, (so thanks, NetGalley), but if you'd like to read one yourself and aren't a NetGalley reader, find a free download here: http://buzz.publishersmarketplace.com/
Enjoy whetting your appetite!
Merged review:
5★ The Publishers Lunch Buzz Books are always fun. There's fiction from several genres as well as non-fiction. Each excerpt has a good summary of the work and some background information about the author to give a fair idea of whether or not this might interest you.
This edition is for books due to be published roughly between September 2018 and February 2019 (the dates I remember seeing - I haven't checked each one).
If the books are available on NetGalley for review, there is a direct link to click to request the book from a Kindle.
There are many Buzz Books publications for various seasons, genres, months - and they're all Read Now on NetGalley or on the Publishers Lunch website.
I got mine from NetGalley, (so thanks, NetGalley), but if you'd like to read one yourself and aren't a NetGalley reader, find a free download here: http://buzz.publishersmarketplace.com/
ARGH!*@! I hate it! I keep telling myself I won’t fall for these insidious publications again, but Publishe5★ “You’ve just read an excerpt from . . . “
ARGH!*@! I hate it! I keep telling myself I won’t fall for these insidious publications again, but Publishers Lunch keeps making previews freely available, and I can’t resist. They have so many previews of all kinds of interesting books that I keep adding to my great mountain of books To Be Read!
I didn’t count how many are in this particular volume which covers Fiction and Non-fiction and debuts. I have my eye on a few that looked interesting. You may recognise favourite authors here, but I'll just mention a few books that caught my reluctant eye.
Roar by Cecelia Ahern has three of the stories in her book of 30 stories of women. I liked these three, but I have no idea what the rest are like.
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The Guest Book by Sarah Blake is another that had an interesting chapter with a startling ending. The blurb says it follows three generations of a powerful American family that used to run the world.
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The Seven or Eight Deaths of Stella Fortuna is the debut novel of Juliet Grames, about a pair of elderly Italian sisters who aren't speaking to each other. The premise doesn't sound nearly as interesting as the chapter I read would suggest. I'm afraid the title may suffer because of similar titles that are out now, but that shouldn't detract from the story. I enjoyed what I read.
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Another quirky debut is Ellie and the Harpmaker by harpist Hazel Prior, who doubtless knows her harps. The excerpt here features a bored wife, walking in the woods and finding an unusual man in a barn filled with harps he's made. Good reading, I hope.
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I really enjoyed what I read of How Not to Die Alone, a debut by Richard Roper, who was inspired, he says, by an article he read about a guy whose job it was to track down any kin of people who had died alone. The chapter included is the protagonist "representing the family" (whom nobody's found) at the funeral of a man who died alone. It shouldn't be a funny situation, but it is. The publisher refers to fans of Eleanor Oliphant Is Completely Fine as the sort of readers who might enjoy this.
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On Earth We're Briefly Gorgeous by Ocean Vuong is poetically horrendous! I may have to read it because it's so compelling. Vuong is a poet, but this is a debut novel, and the combination of poetic language and a macabre scene in Vietnam introducing a character is sort of can't-look-away awful. But also awfully good.
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Thanks to NetGalley and Publishers Lunch for the preview. Buzz Books are all Read Now on NetGalley, or available to all free at http://buzz.publishersmarketplace.com/
There are editions for Romance, Young Adult, etc.
Merged review:
5★ “You’ve just read an excerpt from . . . “
ARGH!*@! I hate it! I keep telling myself I won’t fall for these insidious publications again, but Publishers Lunch keeps making previews freely available, and I can’t resist. They have so many previews of all kinds of interesting books that I keep adding to my great mountain of books To Be Read!
I didn’t count how many are in this particular volume which covers Fiction and Non-fiction and debuts. I have my eye on a few that looked interesting. You may recognise favourite authors here, but I'll just mention a few books that caught my reluctant eye.
Roar by Cecelia Ahern has three of the stories in her book of 30 stories of women. I liked these three, but I have no idea what the rest are like.
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The Guest Book by Sarah Blake is another that had an interesting chapter with a startling ending. The blurb says it follows three generations of a powerful American family that used to run the world.
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The Seven or Eight Deaths of Stella Fortuna is the debut novel of Juliet Grames, about a pair of elderly Italian sisters who aren't speaking to each other. The premise doesn't sound nearly as interesting as the chapter I read would suggest. I'm afraid the title may suffer because of similar titles that are out now, but that shouldn't detract from the story. I enjoyed what I read.
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Another quirky debut is Ellie and the Harpmaker by harpist Hazel Prior, who doubtless knows her harps. The excerpt here features a bored wife, walking in the woods and finding an unusual man in a barn filled with harps he's made. Good reading, I hope.
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I really enjoyed what I read of How Not to Die Alone, a debut by Richard Roper, who was inspired, he says, by an article he read about a guy whose job it was to track down any kin of people who had died alone. The chapter included is the protagonist "representing the family" (whom nobody's found) at the funeral of a man who died alone. It shouldn't be a funny situation, but it is. The publisher refers to fans of Eleanor Oliphant Is Completely Fine as the sort of readers who might enjoy this.
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On Earth We're Briefly Gorgeous by Ocean Vuong is poetically horrendous! I may have to read it because it's so compelling. Vuong is a poet, but this is a debut novel, and the combination of poetic language and a macabre scene in Vietnam introducing a character is sort of can't-look-away awful. But also awfully good.
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Thanks to NetGalley and Publishers Lunch for the preview. Buzz Books are all Read Now on NetGalley, or available to all free at http://buzz.publishersmarketplace.com/
There are editions for Romance, Young Adult, etc....more
Want to know what’s making a noise in publishi5★ UPDATE: You can download a Buzz Books publication for free here: http://buzz.publishersmarketplace.com/
Want to know what’s making a noise in publishing? Check out the Buzz Books editions when they’re released. Heaps of excerpts from fiction by established authors to debut fiction as well as plenty of non-fiction selections.
Each piece has an introduction with a summary or publisher’s blurb with a basic description of the book followed by the excerpt itself, which can be anything from a few pages to a lengthy chapter. The better you’re hooked, the more likely you are to look for it, of course! Some have a direct link to NetGalley to which you can connect from a Kindle to make a request, although I find it a lot easier to do online.
There were several books that appealed to me, and many have been reviewed on Goodreads already. I'll leave you to find the blurbs there. Here are a couple by established authors.
” Naomi always began by learning to love the world where the child went missing. It was like carefully unraveling a twisted ball of yarn . . . each missing place was a portal.”
Then there is the debut fiction offering. Many looked good – here are a few I will look for. Stay with Me by Ayobami Adebayo has already been nominated for the Baileys Women’s Prize for Fiction in the UK, so I’ve added that to my reading list.
A.F. Brady's book The Blind looks intriguing. A psychologist who treats patients nobody else will deal with comes up against a mysterious case, and it looks like gets pretty scary. Gary, who is assigned as her partner, reckons he will get this uncooperative, non-talking, ex-con mental patient to confide in him because he's going to "talk to him like a man." Says it's not rocket science, but Sam wouldn't understand because she's not a man. Looks to me like Gary's riding for a fall.
And I liked the introductory chapter to The Woman in the Window by A.J. Finn, which begins with a woman watching across the street as a wife welcomes a contractor into her house and into her bedroom after her husband leaves for work. The woman pervs on them a while and then sees the husband return home for something he’s forgotten. But like a good nature photographer (or journalist?) she can’t interfere, just observe. She goes back and forth as the deceitful couple disrobe, piece by piece, and as the husband gets closer to the front door, step by step . . .
And I can’t resist Bill McKibben's debut novel Radio Free Vermont: A Fable of Resistance. Bill is widely known for his non-fiction environmental books and articles and his founding of 350.org. I think his first fiction is going to fit in nicely and may attract a whole new audience.
The opening chapter has local activists arranging the detour of a Coors beer truck so they can temporarily hijack it and swap the “imported” beer with local brews to promote local goods. Mind you, they’ve made the driver a lovely picnic lunch to keep him happy while they let down his tires so he can’t drive off while they empty all the Coors bottles.
”’Hey lady This is going to take forever—I’ve got twelve hundred cartons in the truck. Why don’t you just toss them over the side and let me go?’
The woman looked up at him from above a draining carton of beer. 'This is Vermont. We RECYCLE.’
Then they pump up his tires again and off he goes to New York with the microbrew on board!
Sounds like my kind of book.
There are many non-fiction selections, and one that could be interesting is Amy Tan’s Where the Past Begins: A Writer's Memoir. I’ve enjoyed some of her novels, and I’m aware that her Chinese heritage has played a big part in her upbringing and life.
She begins by saying she was recognised as an especially talented artist in her youth. Although very accurate at portraying likenesses and drawing things, she had no imagination, according to her art teacher! But she was so good, a piano teacher offered her free piano lessons in exchange for teaching his daughter to draw.
She was insulted (who wouldn’t be?) by her art teacher’s criticism, but when she discovered her talent for writing, the light dawned. She certainly does have imagination, and it shows in her writing in ways she couldn’t express herself with her drawing. It promises to be an interesting book.
Want to know what’s making a noise in publishing? Check out the Buzz Books editions when they’re released. Heaps of excerpts from fiction by established authors to debut fiction as well as plenty of non-fiction selections.
Each piece has an introduction with a summary or publisher’s blurb with a basic description of the book followed by the excerpt itself, which can be anything from a few pages to a lengthy chapter. The better you’re hooked, the more likely you are to look for it, of course! Some have a direct link to NetGalley to which you can connect from a Kindle to make a request, although I find it a lot easier to do online.
There were several books that appealed to me, and many have been reviewed on Goodreads already. I'll leave you to find the blurbs there. Here are a couple by established authors.
” Naomi always began by learning to love the world where the child went missing. It was like carefully unraveling a twisted ball of yarn . . . each missing place was a portal.”
Then there is the debut fiction offering. Many looked good – here are a few I will look for. Stay with Me by Ayobami Adebayo has already been nominated for the Baileys Women’s Prize for Fiction in the UK, so I’ve added that to my reading list.
A.F. Brady's book The Blind looks intriguing. A psychologist who treats patients nobody else will deal with comes up against a mysterious case, and it looks like gets pretty scary. Gary, who is assigned as her partner, reckons he will get this uncooperative, non-talking, ex-con mental patient to confide in him because he's going to "talk to him like a man." Says it's not rocket science, but Sam wouldn't understand because she's not a man. Looks to me like Gary's riding for a fall.
And I liked the introductory chapter to The Woman in the Window by A.J. Finn, which begins with a woman watching across the street as a wife welcomes a contractor into her house and into her bedroom after her husband leaves for work. The woman pervs on them a while and then sees the husband return home for something he’s forgotten. But like a good nature photographer (or journalist?) she can’t interfere, just observe. She goes back and forth as the deceitful couple disrobe, piece by piece, and as the husband gets closer to the front door, step by step . . .
And I can’t resist Bill McKibben's debut novel Radio Free Vermont: A Fable of Resistance. Bill is widely known for his non-fiction environmental books and articles and his founding of 350.org. I think his first fiction is going to fit in nicely and may attract a whole new audience.
The opening chapter has local activists arranging the detour of a Coors beer truck so they can temporarily hijack it and swap the “imported” beer with local brews to promote local goods. Mind you, they’ve made the driver a lovely picnic lunch to keep him happy while they let down his tires so he can’t drive off while they empty all the Coors bottles.
”’Hey lady This is going to take forever—I’ve got twelve hundred cartons in the truck. Why don’t you just toss them over the side and let me go?’
The woman looked up at him from above a draining carton of beer. 'This is Vermont. We RECYCLE.’
Then they pump up his tires again and off he goes to New York with the microbrew on board!
Sounds like my kind of book.
There are many non-fiction selections, and one that could be interesting is Amy Tan’s Where the Past Begins: A Writer's Memoir. I’ve enjoyed some of her novels, and I’m aware that her Chinese heritage has played a big part in her upbringing and life.
She begins by saying she was recognised as an especially talented artist in her youth. Although very accurate at portraying likenesses and drawing things, she had no imagination, according to her art teacher! But she was so good, a piano teacher offered her free piano lessons in exchange for teaching his daughter to draw.
She was insulted (who wouldn’t be?) by her art teacher’s criticism, but when she discovered her talent for writing, the light dawned. She certainly does have imagination, and it shows in her writing in ways she couldn’t express herself with her drawing. It promises to be an interesting book.
4.5★ “[L. Ron] Hubbard was not just gunning for contemporary mental health practitioners; he claimed that 75 million years ago, psychiatrists helped ca4.5★ “[L. Ron] Hubbard was not just gunning for contemporary mental health practitioners; he claimed that 75 million years ago, psychiatrists helped carry out genocide in the Galactic Confederacy.”
Got that? 75 million years ago? Galactic Confederacy? FAR-fetched, you think?
You should probably turn away now if you are a member of this “criminal organisation that hides behind its so-called religious beliefs”(Australian Senator Nick Xenophon, Nov 2009 in Federal Parliament). Or, no, actually you should read this book to get the facts on who the founder really was and what his followers are really up to.
I thought I’d read and watched enough about Scientology to have a pretty good grasp of their aims and methods, but I didn’t really understand the depth of the violence and abuse: forced abortions, dungeons, slave conditions, forgeries, theft, home invasions, threats – the list is endless.
Steve Cannane, a respected Australian journalist, has done a terrific job of pulling this all together. Every allegation, quotation, and comment is footnoted and indexed. He sure had a lot of material to work with, and I can’t think of anything he’s overlooked. He makes it quite clear that he’s not blaming the people who have been sucked in and truly believe that this pseudo-science has helped them. He’s blaming the obviously deranged founder, L. Ron Hubbard and his disciple David Miscavage and those who have carried out their orders over the years.
L. Ron Hubbard was a science fiction writer who wanted to make money – and did. “Former Scientology spokesman Mike Rinder estimated that by 2014 the IAS’s cash reserves were probably in excess of US$2 billion.”
And that’s five years ago.
Hubbard was a man who couldn’t lie straight in bed. He wouldn’t get away with some of it now.
“Hubbard had been caught out lying about his rank, his war wounds, his war decorations, and where he served. In the United States it is referred to as ‘stealing valor’ and if Hubbard were alive today he could be subjected to laws that prevent fake war heroes from benefiting from false claims about their service records.”
He invented his own ‘science’, Dianetics
“According to Dianetics, to get ‘clear’ you have to go and relive all the traumatic experiences filed in your reactive mind going back to conception. For Hubbard the womb was a world of pain.”
Scientists, real ones, didn’t mince words.
“Prominent scientists were scathing of Dianetics. Nobel Prize-winning physicist Issac Isidor Rabi began his review in Scientific American with a damning assessment: ‘This volume probably contains more promises and less evidence per page than has any publication since the invention of printing.’”
The publisher was so appalled with the response, that he sold a critique of it instead!
“Later, publisher Art Ceppos withdrew Dianetics from sale, when he came to the conclusion it was a scam. He replaced it with Winter’s critique ‘Dianetics: A Doctor’s Report.’”
I didn’t realise how much Australia figured in the beginning of Scientology. Hubbard was in Australia during WW2, but didn't arrive as he claimed, saying he'd paddled a life raft over 1000 miles across open waters. No. He’d never been to any of those places, but he did arrive in Brisbane on a ship and was later sent home in disgrace.
He recruited many Aussies over the years, and of course most Australians are aware of the Nicole Kidman / Tom Cruise marriage and subsequent debacle. There is a long section about that in the book. There are also many details about James Packer’s connection (since lapsed) when the Scientologists hoped to use him to get to Lachlan Murdoch, son of Rupert Murdoch, who called their program ‘Bunkumology’ in his Melbourne paper and was responsible for triggering the first ban on them in the world.
“The Church of Scientology in New York had been mailed two bomb threats; one of them had Paulette Cooper’s fingerprints on them. Cooper denied the allegations but was indicted for the bomb threats and for perjury. The trial was delayed. Evidence eventually emerged that the Church of Scientology had attempted to frame her. Cooper believes her fingerprints were accessed as she signed a petition. ‘A mysterious girl named Margie Shepherd came by with a petition for me to sign supporting the United Farm Workers,’ she later told journalist Tony Ortega. Margie Shepherd was wearing gloves. Cooper believes she placed a piece of stationery under the clipboard, which would have picked up her fingerprints. That piece of stationery, the theory goes, was then used to write a bomb threat against the Church of Scientology. It was five torturous years before Cooper was exonerated.”
They were still following her in 2010. They break into government offices, steal files, and battled with Julian Assange. Hubbard took to the high seas with Sea.org to escape government control on the 75% of the earth that is covered by water. Those on board were virtual slaves, starved and maltreated.
Why? Power, I guess. The ‘auditing’ to train you and clear your mind is probably soothing in the initial stages for those who need support – like James Packer at a low point in his life. But why anyone would stay, give up their children, suffer abortions, is beyond me.
“[Kleitsch, a] former Scientologist says he was forced to run on the road up to two hours a day for around a year. ‘It was painful,’ Kleitsch says. ‘Your feet would wind up bleeding.’”
No surprise that he’s a ‘former’, is there? This really is warts and all with every claim verified and documented. Scientology has been banned in many places, including Wikipedia, which must be particularly galling! Almost anybody can edit anything on Wikipedia, which is the whole point, but even they have limits!
For anyone who wants to know more, here’s a brief summary of Hubbard’s invention.
“Central to Hubbard’s new cosmology was the theory that ‘thetans’, or ‘theta-beings’ as he called them then, created the universe as their own playground. Thetans, according to Hubbard, are immortal spiritual beings. But having inhabited so many bodies over trillions of years, they have become so consumed by the universe they live in, that they have forgotten about their special powers and degenerated to the extent that they believed they were simply ‘meat bodies’. Their super-powers could be restored through Scientology, the goal being to make an individual an Operating Thetan, or OT, who could ‘operate’ independently of the human body.
Hubbard’s new belief system turned into a nice little earner. With Dianetics you only had one lifetime to audit. In Scientology, the ‘thetans’ running human bodies came burdened with engrams from past lives. That meant auditing past lives from this and even other universes. And it wasn’t just the thetans that needed work, there were engrams lurking from the primordial swamp that needed clearing too. Hubbard told his followers their bodies were also occupied by another ‘lower grade’ soul called a ‘genetic entity’, or GE. The GE, according to Hubbard, passed through an evolutionary line going back to molluscs, seaweed, right back to single atoms. Hubbard believed many engrams could be traced back to clams. He warned of the dangers of talking about ‘clam incidents’ with the uninitiated. ‘Should you describe the “clam” to some one [sic], you may restimulate it in him to the extent of causing severe jaw pain. One such victim, after hearing about a clam death, could not use his jaws for three days.”
And there’s more where that came from – YIKES!
This is NOT to be shelved under RELIGION, please! (Maybe CRIME would be more appropriate.)
4.5★ Muslim feminism. An oxymoron? Many people would assume so, because the prevailing view of non-Muslims seems to be that Islam classifies women as s4.5★ Muslim feminism. An oxymoron? Many people would assume so, because the prevailing view of non-Muslims seems to be that Islam classifies women as something less than men. Well, no. In fact, many of the world’s great religious texts have appeared to favour men, but probably because they’ve been translated and interpreted by—you guessed it—men.
I think the male is usually the default position in language. Things have changed, changed to the point that when I once said something about “A farmer, when he . . . ” and my son interrupted and said “or SHE” I realised that his teachers were bringing their students up to date with the real world, and I was the one lagging behind. The irony is, that my husband and I were farming together, and we both identified as farmers. Then again, my father called all dogs “he” and all cats “she” although language was his field. Maybe his field should have been like our literal fields and included animals.
Merged review:
4.5★ Muslim feminism. An oxymoron? Many people would assume so, because the prevailing view of non-Muslims seems to be that Islam classifies women as something less than men. Well, no. In fact, many of the world’s great religious texts have appeared to favour men, but probably because they’ve been translated and interpreted by—you guessed it—men.
I think the male is usually the default position in language. Things have changed, changed to the point that when I once said something about “A farmer, when he . . . ” and my son interrupted and said “or SHE” I realised that his teachers were bringing their students up to date with the real world, and I was the one lagging behind. The irony is, that my husband and I were farming together, and we both identified as farmers. Then again, my father called all dogs “he” and all cats “she” although language was his field. Maybe his field should have been like our literal fields and included animals....more
FICTION! - SCIENCE - SCIENCE FICTION! – SPORTS! – TRAVEL! and more.
Pardon my enthusiasm for this wonderful Noah’s Ark of articles, stories, and essa5★
FICTION! - SCIENCE - SCIENCE FICTION! – SPORTS! – TRAVEL! and more.
Pardon my enthusiasm for this wonderful Noah’s Ark of articles, stories, and essays. The stories march through the book two by two, all intact and complete. two samples from each of the larger collections published for each category.
“I have lived in autocracies most of my life, and have spent much of my career writing about Vladimir Putin’s Russia. I have learned a few rules for surviving in an autocracy and salvaging your sanity and self-respect. It might be worth considering them now: Rule #1: Believe the autocrat. He means what he says. Whenever you find yourself thinking, or hear others claiming, that he is exaggerating, that is our innate tendency to reach for a rationalization.”
She wrote the article just after Trump’s election and was trying to prepare the American public for life with an autocrat. She has just won the (US) National Book Award (Nov 2017) for The Future Is History: How Totalitarianism Reclaimed Russia.
This will give you an idea of the quality of the selections included in this terrific publication. There’s fiction, fun, a long article about Kaepernick’s “stand” (which is a kneel), another about how many people rely so much on GPS that they’ve lost all sense of geography and direction. That would be funny if people didn’t drive off the ends of bridges and such.
“Enough people have been led astray by their GPS in Death Valley that the area’s former wilderness coordinator called the phenomenon ‘death by GPS.’
. . . we are letting our natural wayfinding abilities languish.”
The only downside is that after reading these, you will want the entire collection of the eight books in the series. These are full-length articles and stories, not brief extracts, and I enjoyed almost everything, even those outside my usual reading choices.
This volume is still available on NetGalley, and I’d like to thank Houghton Mifflin Harcourt for the review copy from which I’ve quoted. I can’t recommend this series highly enough.
Merged review:
5★
FICTION! - SCIENCE - SCIENCE FICTION! – SPORTS! – TRAVEL! and more.
Pardon my enthusiasm for this wonderful Noah’s Ark of articles, stories, and essays. The stories march through the book two by two, all intact and complete. two samples from each of the larger collections published for each category.
“I have lived in autocracies most of my life, and have spent much of my career writing about Vladimir Putin’s Russia. I have learned a few rules for surviving in an autocracy and salvaging your sanity and self-respect. It might be worth considering them now: Rule #1: Believe the autocrat. He means what he says. Whenever you find yourself thinking, or hear others claiming, that he is exaggerating, that is our innate tendency to reach for a rationalization.”
She wrote the article just after Trump’s election and was trying to prepare the American public for life with an autocrat. She has just won the (US) National Book Award (Nov 2017) for The Future Is History: How Totalitarianism Reclaimed Russia.
This will give you an idea of the quality of the selections included in this terrific publication. There’s fiction, fun, a long article about Kaepernick’s “stand” (which is a kneel), another about how many people rely so much on GPS that they’ve lost all sense of geography and direction. That would be funny if people didn’t drive off the ends of bridges and such.
“Enough people have been led astray by their GPS in Death Valley that the area’s former wilderness coordinator called the phenomenon ‘death by GPS.’
. . . we are letting our natural wayfinding abilities languish.”
The only downside is that after reading these, you will want the entire collection of the eight books in the series. These are full-length articles and stories, not brief extracts, and I enjoyed almost everything, even those outside my usual reading choices.
This volume is still available on NetGalley, and I’d like to thank Houghton Mifflin Harcourt for the review copy from which I’ve quoted. I can’t recommend this series highly enough....more
5★ This is the first Buzz Books I’ve tried, and my only complaint is that my To Be Read pile is growing faster than I can possibly manage!
Publishers Lu5★ This is the first Buzz Books I’ve tried, and my only complaint is that my To Be Read pile is growing faster than I can possibly manage!
Publishers Lunch calls itself “the publishing industry’s daily essential read” and also hosts Bookateria “a giant online book discovery store driven by an ‘industry insider’s’ view. Our focus is books making news and building buzz, as we tap into our comprehensive coverage of the books and authors that booksellers, editor, agents, rights-buyers, reviewers and others are talking about. Our own staff catalogs ‘buzz books’ that the industry is touting as new discoveries of note, and some of the other featured Bookateria lists draw on recommendations from a variety of booksellers and bellwether award nominations to connect avid readers everywhere to great reads.
There’s an extensive publishing preview article with a list many pages long of authors and titles to look forward to.
Then comes the fun part, the short blurbs for and excerpts from 40 selected works. Part One: Fiction. Part Two: Debut Fiction. Part Three: Nonfiction.
Many are also on NetGalley, for any NetGalley reviewers. And thanks to NetGalley and Publishers Lunch for my copy.
Merged review:
5★ This is the first Buzz Books I’ve tried, and my only complaint is that my To Be Read pile is growing faster than I can possibly manage!
Publishers Lunch calls itself “the publishing industry’s daily essential read” and also hosts Bookateria “a giant online book discovery store driven by an ‘industry insider’s’ view. Our focus is books making news and building buzz, as we tap into our comprehensive coverage of the books and authors that booksellers, editor, agents, rights-buyers, reviewers and others are talking about. Our own staff catalogs ‘buzz books’ that the industry is touting as new discoveries of note, and some of the other featured Bookateria lists draw on recommendations from a variety of booksellers and bellwether award nominations to connect avid readers everywhere to great reads.
There’s an extensive publishing preview article with a list many pages long of authors and titles to look forward to.
Then comes the fun part, the short blurbs for and excerpts from 40 selected works. Part One: Fiction. Part Two: Debut Fiction. Part Three: Nonfiction.
PattyMacDotComma
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