Zed

33-year-old Singaporean Nick heads to Ho Chi Min City to ride with the local people via bus to Hue and then a flight to Hanoi to meet up with a bunch of old University pals. On his trip Nick tried to talk to the locals, but had little to say to them due to language barriers and hung out with other English speakers.

I suspect that this is a roman à clef and even though this was an easy-to-read novella, it lacked the depth that a more mature writer may have been able to flesh out.

The Timeless Land was released in 1941 and had a great impact in Australia at the time. Author Eleanor Dark had been annoyed at a reenactment of the First Fleets landing in 1938 in which the local tribe was chased away by the colonists. She wrote this historical fiction in reaction to that event.
Dark makes it abundantly clear in the preface that she wrote this as interpretation of the various writings available to her. Some of the protagonists are historical figures, while others are figments of her imagination. She has used available sources and occasionally quotes from them. This copy is also a long 600 pages and the first of a trilogy. At times this has been on the school curriculum in the various states and territories. I could imagine it may have been a difficult read for some students based on the length and the at times dense prose. This reader had no issues and enjoyed both the narration and the descriptions of both the land and the thoughts of the individuals. There are no heroes or villains, just people from differing tribes that have no understanding of the other and both tribes have their faults and strengths, their idiosyncrasies and the majority a lack of patience in understanding the other tribe.
The title is excellent as the timelessness of the land ended with the first fleet on the continent of Australia and the inhabitants of the previous thousands of years had their lives and land changed forever. It was timeless to them, to the new people it became a place to exploit in a way the ancient tribes could never understand. Though an historical novel the author attempts to understand that loss of its timelessness. That loss is evident today with the dominant tribe now utterly dismissive of the loss suffered to the other tribe.

Bennelong witnessing a hanging.
It was almost dark now. The swinging shape under the tree was all but invisible, and lights were appearing here and there among the tents, and on the ships moored in the Cove. Everything was very quiet. Bennilong was frightened. He had seen many men die, he had slain many himself, but he had never thought of death as a shameful thing before. It was a thing which came to all men, and sometimes in a terrifying guise; to fall in battle was a fitting end for a warrior, but even the stoutest heart might quail with the knowledge that sorcery had been invoked that somewhere for instance, an enemy was working an evil magic upon one's footprint in the sand, or that the pains inflicted vindictively upon an image of oneself would presently pass into one's real body, gnawing at one's vitals; or that the bone was being pointed, and one's death “sung' from afar. Yes, such death was terrible indeed, but here was a different kind of terror. He moved uneasily, glancing over his shoulder, the whites of his eyes showing, the hairs on the back of his neck pricking like a dog's. For this man had gone out of life in a dreadful silence. Where were his family, his women- folk, who should have been about him, beating their breasts and tearing their faces with their nails till the blood ran down? Where was the wailing, the grief which was not so much for the death of one man as for the defeat of mankind by the great enemy? ‘Our brother we shall not see again... Where was the frenzy of the living who have seen a fragment of life annihilated, and who must express, in yells of fury, in fierce threats and savage maledictions, their hatred of the unseen power which can snatch a man from his fellows, and make him no more than the dust upon the ground?

Arabanoo witnessing a flogging.
When it was over Arabanoo went away by himself. He was as much alone as he was ever allowed to be. The guard detailed to attend him stood at a little distance, conversing with another man, glancing only occasionally at his charge – a grotesque figure in his ill-fitting European clothes and his bare feet, wearing a fetter on his ankle, and sitting on a rock by the water's edge wrestling with an overwhelming sense of shame and despair.
These were two emotions so foreign to him, and so agonising, that he wondered if he would, perhaps, die of them. Such a feeling in one's breast must be almost a death. And yet his body lived and moved, his breath came smoothly, he could teel the damp sand cool beneath his feet. He had seen blood and pain. That was nothing at all. His own people in their rites of initiation suffered far greater physical pain, shed far more blood. It was part of the lot of mankind and womankind that such things should be endured stoically, the spirit dominating the quailing flesh.
He squatted on his rock, rubbing his hands backward and forward along the coarse cloth of his trousers, his dark eyes fixed and opaque with the intensity of his thoughts. He had seen pain and blood, but it was not that which had aroused his every nerve to an agony of horror. It was that a man should be helpless while he suffered - that he should be bound, dragged, held up to contempt, humiliated in the eyes of his whole tribe. It was not that pain should be inflicted on him, but that it should be inflicted on him against his will; it was that he should struggle, and beseech, and beg for mercy. Arabanoo lifted his head slowly and looked round at the cove and the settlement, now sinking into dusk. His eyes had a searching, puzzled look. His land had not seen such things before. In his closeness to it he seemed to feel its aloof untouchability, and he made, for the first time in his life, a conscious effort to join its spirit with his own, and share its inviolability. This feeling of death within him. He had been shamed because he was a man and had seen another man suffering indignity. He had protested, he had cried out in horror. What did it matter what they had done? If they had attacked his tribe were not its menfolk warriors who could avenge them- selves? Could not the Dereewolgal see that this was an evil magic which they were spinning about themselves? Could they not see that for one man to shame another destroys them both? Let them release these men let his own people meet them in battle...
But it was no use. They had not seemed to understand. They had stood quite calmly, watching. Could it be that they were...?
Arabanoo jerked his head round like an animal cornered. The whites of his eyes shone in the twilight. For he, who had witnessed this thing only once, had the feeling of death in his heart. Could it be that they, who had witnessed it so often, were indeed not dying, but already dead within? Were they evil spirits - mawn - inhuman beings wearing the guise of humanity? Did this not explain everything their weapons which could slay without touching, their miraculous power over fire, the superhuman skill of their carrahdy, the strange wickedness which one could feel in them?
Ah, but it was not only wickedness. He sighed, tormented by the confusion of his thoughts; for he had felt goodness in them, too. Not only he, but his fellow-countrymen had felt the goodness in the Be-anga, the close firm bond of their common humanity. In many of the others he had felt it also - kindness generosity, even sometimes the blessed spark of gaiety which was so precious to his people. And he had played with the children, fondled them, told them the tales which his ow children loved to hear, joined in their games which his ow children also played...
No, they were men; but men terribly beset by an evil mag of unhappiness. Men without peace, men without serenity, men without law.

Barangaroo on religion and taboos.
They were quite kind people the Bereewolgal, and her docile and affectionate nature had taught her to obey them. Was it possible that one so great as Mr Dyon-ton, before whom even the Be-anga sometimes bowed his head, whose dignified gait and solemn mien marked him as spart from his fellows, who was obviously the chief sorcerer whole tribe, the leader of their weekly corroboree and the of the plunder of their Law, should speak other than truth? She could not believe it possible. She listened attentively when he spoke, stored his words in her retentive memory, repeated them glibly when so instructed. At first, learning to understand them tongue, she had been astonished and delighted to find their new words may clothe an old, familiar story. For she found that these people were trying to teach her of the Maker. of-all, though they called him by a different name, and they pointed, as her own people did, to the Heavens as his dwelling-place. Eagerly she had nodded her comprehension when Mrs Johnson was instructing her. The Law of the white tribe, she had thought cheerfully, was evidently very much the same as her own Law, so she would get along very well with them. But no. It was the same, and yet not the same. There were incredible things in it. She repeated them dutifully, and tried to understand them, but could not. This heavenly Being of theirs, it seemed, expected that one should love one's enemies, which was, obviously, nonsense. The white people themselves considered it nonsense, for they were always quarrelling. Booron had never seen so much hatred and vindictiveness as she saw in their camp. Immanuel said that if someone stole one's coat one should give him one's cloak also - another absurd saying which the white men never thought of heeding, for if any member of their tribe stole so much as a handkerchief, let alone a coat, he was promptly flogged or put to death. Immanuel said that if a man smote you upon one cheek you should turn the other so that he might smite you again, and this was surely a shameful saying which would enrage any warrior worthy of the name. She could understand why the white people ignored these ridiculous commands, but she could not understand why they went on repeating them. A Law, if it was anything at all, was surely something to live by, something to which one might anchor one's spiritual life.
Among her own people it was exactly that. It made hard, but not impossible demands upon their courage and their self-control. It was so intricately interwoven not only with their own physical and spiritual needs, but with the peculiarities of the land itself, that all three became one, a mystical trinity functioning in harmony the Law, the Land, the People.
But among these Bereewolgal what division! What conflict! A Law endlessly repeated and endlessly disobeyed! Booron grew quite melancholy in her bewilderment. They were kind to her; they were clever beyond words; surely, they must also be good? And yet, being clever, why were they so afraid? For they were afraid. Life itself seemed to terrify them. There were, for instance, certain simple matters the very mention of which seemed to throw them into a panic. There had been that extraordinary incident of the mirror. Mrs Johnson had a mirror magical, shining, silvery thing in which one might see the image of oneself as one did in a still pool, only much more clearly, and it had been to Booron, once she got over her first vague uneasiness, a perpetual delight. When she had been brought to the settlement she was just ceasing to be a child, just becoming aware of her body and her gently swelling breasts. Alone in the room with the mirror she had dragged off her frock and strutted delightedly, turning this way and that, practising those movements in which she had already received some instruction from the old women of her tribe, and which where some day, to enhance her desirableness in the eyes of her husband. When Mrs Johnson entered she had turned happily, proudly confident that this mature and experienced woman would commend and encourage her. But she saw only a stare of blank horror and disgust. What was the matter? With a chill of fear she turned back to the mirror. Was there some blemish - some deformity? Had she, in her still imperfect knowledge, done something amiss, offended against some mysterious taboo? She never discovered. She only knew that Mrs Johnson was terrified. ended. Her face was as red as sunset, her hand trembled, her voice trembled. She hustled Baroon into her dress again. She scolded violently in a voice which sounded shrill and unnatural. It was wicked, wicked, this thing that Booron had done! It was immodest and disgraceful! Weeree! weeree she kept on saying, that being, at the time, almost the only native word she knew.

Beeron had wept. She did not know why it was weeree, and she could not find out. Mrs Johnson had taken the tears a sign of repentance, and the incident had closed, but in Booron's mind it remained as a symbol of the inexplicable fear which haunted these people. It was a fear which affected her very nearly, for in those eighteen months she had changed from a child to a young woman, and she had had to do it quite alone. Things were not managed thus among her own people. When a girl neared marriageable age she was carefully watched and instructed. There were rites and ceremonies. Womanhood did not creep upon her silently and shamefully, shaking her with wild desires which must not be mentioned, strange ecstasies which must not be betrayed. It was welcomed, discussed, suitably dealt with, and made an occasion for pride, rejoicing, and congratulation.

Some may never return to their homeland.
Looking at the man's drab and earth-stained figure, Tench felt his imagination stirred. He remembered the shock with which he had realised, on that first day of their arrival, nearly three years ago, that there were some among them who would never see their native land again. Here was one. Already his roots, so rudely torn up from Cornish soil, were establishing themselves in the new land; already he was drawing sustenance from it. Already he had found himself a wife, and from the chimney of the tiny hut nearby the smoke of his hearth rose and faded into the clear air. To his children this land would be home, and England a name which their parents spoke sometimes when they had finished their long day's work, and sat wearily on their doorstep to watch the stars come out. For a moment Tench saw the truth which Phillip had also seen, though with the difference that, being Tench he saw it consciously, and, shaping it into epigram, lost some of its substance. ‘We don't build the future after all, he thought wryly; ‘we only beget and bear it.'

Tench considers theft.
He found himself worrying at the same question which had puzzled Patrick Mannion not long before. Would he himself, Watkin Tench, starve rather than steal? Steal? In such a community as this, words challenged one to examination and analysis. He found himself thinking of the black people and their system in a land which gave them enough, but only just enough, for survival. Here, they said, was the land, and no man had a greater claim than his neighbour upon what it offered in the way of subsistence. A shield, a spear, a canoe these were things which one fashioned out of one's own skill, and which became, therefore, immutably one's own personal property. But food - no! Food was the right of every man. One took it. The word ‘steal' had no meaning here
Captain Tench shook his head impatiently. Impossible to compare the life and the laws of savages, he thought, with the life and the laws of civilised men. Property must remain sacred or the whole elaborate structure of the white man's world, its complicated social and economic system, its highly adaptable code of ethics, ins triumphant culture, must collapse; and though he was capable of compassion he was far from conceiving that as anything but an appalling calamity. He went on writing the fire gone out of him, his pen and his thoughts returning soberly to a recitation of gloomy facts: ‘Hence arose a repetition of petty delinquencies which no vigilance could detect, no justice reach. Gardens were plundered: provisions pilfered; and the Indian corm stolen from the fields where it grew for public use.'
It was inevitable. Life was so strangely precious that even those to whom it had become a burden refused to lie down tamely and die. Theft was the inevitable consequence of hunger: punishment was the inevitable consequence of theft: rebellion was the inevitable consequence of punishment; and so the vicious circle swung round to theft again. In it the inhabitants of Sydney Cove, from the Governor to the lowest of the convicts, moved as in a treadmill, captive, desperately, physically and spiritually exhausted, but still grimly alive.

Rain and Floods.
Prentice thought of the natives he had seen last night. These people knew; they had means of knowing. They talked mysteriously to other tribes over long distances, making signals with the smoke of their fires. They had said that it would be a big water. They had pointed high up into the branches of the trees. Prentice felt a pang of uneasiness thinking of his cattle, but he stilled it with reassurance. They would get up into the hills. Milbooroo was there; he would not let any harm befall them. Nor did it matter now, if his fields were inundated, or even if his hut were swept away. All the better, indeed! He had no further use for it, and it must be destroyed by fire if not by flood. Cunnembeillee would be safe enough. These natives knew how to look after themselves.
Reason told him that there was no need for him to go. But he knew in his heart that nothing would have made him move from this spot while a chance still remained that he might see discomfiture overtake one of ‘them.' Lying there in the rain watching avidly, he almost prayed.

When reading this I was reminded of a story that I was told in my late teens. In 1974 there was huge flooding in Queensland and NSW with other areas seeing flooding downriver even if they had received no rain. Brisbane where I live was inundated in low-lying areas and on the flood plains. I talked to a man who was working for the state Department of Primary Industries. He told me he was in outback Qld in mid-January 1974 and was driving an Aboriginal tracker they had hired. He said that the tracker was a very quiet man who said little unless asked. As they drove along a dry and dusty road the tracker said big rains coming. How do you know asked the driver. He pointed to pelicans up in a few trees. The man told me that he laughed at him and said how could he think that a few pelicans in trees could make him say there were big rains coming. The tracker just shrugged and said no more. Tropical Cyclone Wanda crossed the Queensland coast a few days later on January 24, 1974, and brought five days of torrential rain. Brisbane was flooded, 16 people died, 300 were injured, and 8,000 homes were destroyed. The damage bill was estimated at a then $980 million.

Highly recommended.

On a short subchapter on Probiotics, the author wrote that “People have been eating probiotic bacteria since time memorial. Without them, we would not exist. A group of South Americans had to learn this through bitter experience: they had the clever idea of taking pregnant women to the South Pole to have then babies. The plan was that the babies born there could stake a claim to any oil future reserves, as ‘natives' of the region. But the babies did not survive. They died soon after birth, or on the way back to South America. The South Pole is so cold and germ-free that the infants simply did not receive the bacteria they needed so survive. The normal temperatures and bacteria the babies encountered after leaving the Antarctic were enough to kill them.”

That's interesting, I thought, and immediately had to read up on this. I have to admit that I can find nothing about babies not surviving after Antarctic births. I am not sure that this is a fact. A look on the www has come up with nothing concerning this other than there have been at least 11 births and I can find nothing to show that they all died. Emilio Marcos Des Palma Morella, the first documented human born on the Antarctic mainland in 1978 is still alive from what I can ascertain.

If I am going to question this book, I might add a couple of other things I have struggled with, and that is the line drawings that are pointless and childlike and a lack of index.

Other than that, this is, to be fair, a good read that has enhanced my understanding of our gut. After reading a book on ultra processed food, I am even more determined that I will treat my stomach and all the other gut organs with the respect it deserves. My copy is the first print run, so I read that some of the information has been updated (babies born in the Antarctic?) in later editions. The author makes it clear that a lot of what is discussed is in its infancy, so that is understandable.

As far a popular pop style science goes, there is a lot going for this very easy to read book for anyone such as myself who is not that good at taking the sciences of any type into their brain due to it all being very complex. Simple explanations such as this book provides are ideal.

A book that asks about fate. The author states this very early in the read. A strange quirk of fate made me read this. I walked to the railway station and passed the neighbourhood swap library and could not resist that the front cover said that Brick Lane was a Booker nominee. Tucking it into my bag, I headed to the station and got on the train I catch to go 2 stations to my place of employment. Trouble was that no one told me that the train was to go along a spur line and head into inner city Brisbane because the signals were faulty on my line. I got the book out and began to read the first chapter. And I did not stop until I got to work 2 hours late. Fate (or maybe I just did not hear the PA announcement.)

Brick Lane has 34,500 plus ratings and over 2,300 reviews as I write so what can I add? Not much to explain the premise as many reviews do, but I can bump the rating up a little. This reader thought that this book had its faults, but by the same token the character driven story had me wanting to know the fate of the family of Nazneen and her arranged marriage husband Chanu.

Faults? A bit too long. There was also a scene towards the end when the eldest daughter, very much a youth of English background, ran away from home in reaction to the father's decision that the family should move. Her return back into the family fold by the heroic actions of her mother were far too contrived. The end was a touch saccharine as well.

Be that as it may this is not just about fate but also about how cultures react to each other, those that can except our differences, those that can't, how a young girl from a Bangladesh village is hurled into a life utterly alien to her and how she copes with such things she never imagined such as modernity and freedoms, the attitude of her peer group, a husband that meant well but was in between and in betwixt culturally. It was a hard book to put down.

I knew there was a film, so decided to watch that straight after finishing the read. It was very good, though it did not reach the depths of the book in terms of some of the characters. Where the film had a strength was the casting, the characters were as they should be in comparison to the book and Satish Chandra Kaushik who played the father Chanu was perfect. This is also that rare occasion I actually thought that the film offered a better outcome to the daughter running away from home. It was actually more realistic.

A good read and recommended to those that are interested in fate and the mixing of cultures.

Found in my local neighbourhood library with a blurb on the back saying that it was “.....perhaps the finest novel of the war...” A big call. Released in 1944, so I imagine this would have been a popular novel of its times considering that the war was not over. It seems to have kept it popularity enough to have a 4-hour TV series made in 1980. I have no recall of that on the ABC here in Australia but have had a look at the YouTube. I got about 20 minutes in and gave up. To be truthful it is not my kind of thing, and I am not sure that I have been particularly entranced by the book itself.

A basic plot of a Wellington bomber crash landing in occupied France with the lead character John Franklin being badly injured. Along with the rest of the crew they are taken in by a French farming family and at great danger to themselves the family assist the pilots. Franklin falls for the farmers' daughter as she does for him, and we get a mix of romance and derring-do escape adventure. It all felt a touch contrived to me and the French daughter being constantly called ‘the girl' throughout did not sit well with me.

Be that as it may I have to take into consideration that it was aimed at a British wartime audience and I think my mum, a child of the war would have enjoyed this. I suppose for me, it has not stood the test of time, not even as a period piece.

It is an easy read at only 254 pages and I have finished it in 3 days so it did hold my attention. I thought that the writing at times was less ambitious than it may have been.

Ian's has enjoyed this a bit more than I have, and I recommend his review for an alternate view.
https://www.goodreads.com/review/show/4923923935

A very disappointing bio. After 150 pages I was overwhelmed with the miniature, there was lack of economy of the author's writing and there seemed an inability of the editor's to cut some far too long sentences and paragraphs back. As the read reached the times I was specifically interested in, it did not get any better, it took a lot of energy to complete this read. Having to reread areas that were of much interest to me such as Weary Dunlop's courageous work on the Thai Burma railways during World War 2 was dissatisfying.

The main text is 640 pages long. Major historical figures have biographies half this length, such was the depth of the research. There are very good Maps and Line Drawings throughout, and the plates sections are excellent. Endnotes states that “All unsourced quotes in this book are taken from many hours of tape-recorded interviews.....” that the author had with Weary Dunlop. In my opinion, this is a mistake for obvious reasons. The Select Bibliography is very useful. The author states in the acknowledgements Weary Dunlop was the main source of information, and unfortunately this leads to what is almost hagiography.

Sir Ernest Edward “Weary” Dunlop is an Australian Surgeon who was and still is highly respected in Australia and other parts of the world where there is knowledge of his work as a surgeon and Lieutenant Colonel on the Thai Death Railway during World War two.

In acts of bravery that were beyond the call of duty, he stood up to his Japanese captors and along with a disciplined but fair attitude to those under his charge, it meant that mortality rates among the Australian troops were lower than other Commonwealth countries.
These diaries were written under great danger and their survival is beyond useful for historians, scholars etc to understand the horrific conditions that the prisoners of war suffered.

The vast majority of entries are dry in detail as to the daily life in the POW camps and on the railway. They can be tough reads. Be that as it may they are written entry of daily events that left one wondering the guts and courage of the POWs and also the sheer cruelty of the Japanese.

An historical document of high importance.

A collection of a few badly written oral tales. Lots of white space throughout and a few blurry pics. An easy read and knocked off in a couple of hours. At least I know a few more places I need to check out on my next visit to Van Diemen's Land.

The Last Summer of Hair. Great title.

“What the tram stop incident rendered undeniable was that the dream which took him to the city had finally run its course. Not simply that he had failed to achieve what he set out to, but that he no longer had the desire to pursue it any further. To be the man in the ad campaign. The one who uses hair dye and wilful delusion to obscure the truth of time. The older dude who pursues younger partners. Who flings himself ridiculously at the clay feet of youth, mortgages his self-respect for pretty faces and firm flesh. The hypocritical cynic, still begging for morsels of status and sexual approval. Still doing the same old vanity shit that leaves him feeling sad and alone and useless and old. Here on the porch, coffee cup resting warmly in his hands, birds twittering sweetly, he is savouring a modicum of distance from the buzzing, busy life he once put so much energy into. He knows that nothing can compel him to return to it, only the fear of change and the ease of the familiar.”


Antonio ‘Tony' Timone was not a good fit for his coastal home town of Bravery Bay. Bravery Bay? Yes. Australian towns that younger people run from are sometimes portrayed as these bush towns, when in truth the far majority of the population live in cities and the coastal areas. Is Bravery Bay synonymous with Summer Bay of Home and Away kitsch? Maybe. The Bravery Bays of this world did not fit the youthful good looks of the sand surf sun fakery of Summer Bay. Bravery Bay was the Australian coastal town during the 1980s and prior. No matter what, small-town conservatism made life difficult for those that did not fit the norm. Many moved to the city. Author Paul Ransom's character-based novel explores the need to move, but also that that move can in the long term prove that we maybe forced to return to our roots. Antonio ‘Tony' Timone was a bit to suave, good-looking, flash for the local generational cockies. He moved to the big smoke and made a slight name for himself, leaving the youthful love of his life Christa behind.

But even that slight success leaves a bitter taste on his forced return to Bravery Bay.

“He wants to let her know that his unease is more than mere snobbery, more than disappointment or bitterness. Yet, he realises that this would be pointless - not because she believes the industries breathless hype, but because she does not. What is on the table is a deal, nothing more. The signatories could be Tony, even the client, they are simply placeholders. Examples of a market mechanism. Product, model. Payer, payee.Ah, so that's it, he thinks, penny dropping. The inherent dehumanisation of life to a rectangle.”


Inherent dehumanisation is not the point of this novel, it is an exploration of lost youth and how we deal with that, but just maybe another point is we are all still expected to conform to the norms of our tribe and that can lead to disappointment if we fail. As to disappointment, that depends on how one handles that.

A character driven novel and should appeal to anyone that likes that kind of read.

Robbie Arnotts 4th novel and I have again listened via Audiobook.

This is the first of his very good stories that I had an issue with the audio narrator. Fine in most instances except for the narration of the male characters. There was something forced about the breathlessness that I found off-putting.

Audio complaints aside, it is hard to be nothing but impressed that Arnott has again given his readers a fine tale of the Tasmanian goth kind, one that had me enjoying the descriptions of the land and being fairly gripped by the story of the hunt for Dusk, a Puma, a survivor of several brought to Van Diemen's land to hunt feral deer. At least I think it is Van Diemen's land, as the 2 main protagonists, twins Floyd and Iris, are the children of convicts. And a big cat in Tasmania? Stories worldwide abound with tales of big cats being where they should not be, so why not Tasmania.

The one part of the tale that I liked was the peat diggers being a testament to the past, first nations people that had little to say until it counted. With one sentence alone, Lydia, the matriarch of the tribe, clarified as to what became of all that were ever disposed of their land.

Arnott is now high on the list of must-read Tasmanian authors. His sheer consistency of story telling and his ability to write descriptive prose with an economy of words gives him a power that one could only aspire to.

There was a lot to digest (sorry) in this extremely informative audio as told by the author himself, Chris Van Tulleken. To quote one source who the author interviewed (whose name escapes me, the drawback of audio I suppose) they used the term “manufactured edible substances” for many foods that we consume. What it means is that there are some substances we modern humans eat that are just not part of our many thousands of years of eating via evolutionary process and that some of these substances are not even digested, they go through the mouth and then out the other end. Some substances can have other effects that may not be of assistance to us or our general wellbeing.

I have no intention of writing a detailed account of this must-read book/audio. See these links to GR friends who have written fantastic reviews.
Donna https://www.goodreads.com/review/show/5704371138
Numidica https://www.goodreads.com/review/show/5800421404
Last but not least a big think you to J.C who recommended this book to me via her her must read review.
https://www.goodreads.com/review/show/6841399226
To quote J.C “I can't rate Chris van Tulleken's book highly enough, for its comprehensive, well-researched and simply explained approach and the incredible amount of detailed examination of ultra-processed ‘food' (“UPF”) and what it does to us.”

What I did think was about the subject of eating in general and how my wife and I eat. Actually a lot better than I realised. We are fresh fruit and veg people. We might be in that small percentage of eaters that are not prone to have highly processed food eating habits. However, I have been looking at the packaging of a fair bit of stuff in the cupboard.
Out go the processed breakfast cereals that we occasionally have, stick to the fruit that we eat most days.
Out go the weekend only lunchtime wraps.
Out go...................... you get the picture.


I have realised that as a couple we are not that fond of the likes of fried chicken, never have Pringles (and other snack foods) in the house, and in general don't have a lot of red meat because we just don't really like it. On the other hand, I was given some Kensington pride / Bowen Mangos while listening to this audio by a client. We are eating them with salads and to say that we prefer these to grease ridden chicken from a vat, burger in surgery sweet shining bun would be an understatement. On the odd occasion we have been to friends and relatives' kids' birthday parties and have had this presented as the food, we have not really enjoyed it at all.

Enough of my non review......Just listen to / read this book. It may surprise you.

Kurt Vonnegut's 11th novel and as so often before challenges his reader.

A global financial disaster has ruined the world. One million years later the ghost of Leon Trout, son of recurring Vonnegut character Kilgore, narrates the story of a boat cruise for the rich and famous, Mick Jagger was to be one of the famous voyagers, that is off to the Galápagos Islands to see the wild life, a voyage of a lifetime. The celebrities don't make it as a financial collapse, a useless war between Ecuador and Peru breaks out and the entire world suffers an apocalypse. No one survives the worldwide catastrophe except those on the boat. It eventually makes its way to the Galápagos Islands and from there all life on earth is descended from the survivors.

The thematic points are that human species is a blend of greed, evil, and good. It is generally Humanist if it likes it or not, at times technophobic and just maybe Darwinist survivors. Vonnegut has always claimed that man is essentially a good creature. FWIW, I wonder if I agree with him on that point, though. On the other hand, he survived Dresden and I pontificate from the safety of a place that has never seen war in its existence.

Vonnegut was as usual, and strangely in my opinion, able to make Sci Fi tropes among the satire, comedy and social commentary very prescient. There was a machine called Mandarax, that was a voice translator and able to suggest quotations from literature and historical figures. I have to admit that I was scurrying down the internet wormhole just to read where a lot of these quotes used came from, and what a joy that journey was. Strangely I said? Sci Fi can fail the vast majority of the time in an attempt to use future tropes that work but for many of Vonneguts futuristic ideas he has had in his books, he has senibly used them as thematic tools. Mandrax was the invention of a Japanese man who was going on the cruise at the behest of a US millionaire who had profitable plans to its use. Google now offers on our phones an app that translates text with one's camera. Mandrax future demise in the book may have been a comment on older generational thought not enjoying new technology. This was sad for the survivors of the apocalypse, really. No longer would they have the joys of (as per wiki and in order of their appearance in the book) Anne Frank, Alfred Tennyson, Rudyard Kipling, John Masefield, William Cullen Bryant, Ambrose Bierce, Lord Byron, Noble Claggett, John Greenleaf Whittier, Benjamin Franklin, John Heywood, Cesare Bonesana Beccaria, Bertolt Brecht, Saint John, Charles Dickens, Isaac Watts, William Shakespeare, Plato, Robert Browning, Jean de La Fontaine, François Rabelais, Patrick R. Chalmers, Michel de Montaigne, Joseph Conrad, George William Curtis, Samuel Butler, T. S. Eliot, A. E. Housman, Oscar Hammerstein II, Edgar Allan Poe, Charles E. Carryl, Samuel Johnson, Thomas Carlyle, Edward Lear, Henry David Thoreau, Sophocles, Robert Frost, and Charles Darwin.


Again, one for the Vonnegut reader in my opinion and recommended as such.

My review of number 1 Player Piano.
https://www.goodreads.com/review/show/6205354368
My review of number 2 The Sirens Of Titan. https://www.goodreads.com/review/show/6267103559
My review of number 3 Mother Night.
https://www.goodreads.com/review/show/6287961968
My review of number 4 Cats Cradle.
https://www.goodreads.com/review/show/231371451
My review of number 5 God Bless You, Mr. Rosewater.
https://www.goodreads.com/review/show/231371734
My review of number 6 Slaughter House Five
https://www.goodreads.com/review/show/231370983
My review of number 7 Breakfast Of Champions.
https://www.goodreads.com/review/show/231371515
My review of number 8 Slapstick, or Lonesome No More!
https://www.goodreads.com/review/show/6478713647
My review of number 9 Jailbird.
https://www.goodreads.com/review/show/1815571880
My review of number 10 Deadeye Dick.
https://www.goodreads.com/review/show/6904714753

Kurt Vonnegut's 10th novel and more of life's absurdity.

Vonnegut is one of those observers of life's foolishness, its inanities. Who did he base Rudy Waltz on, the black sheep of the family and nicknamed “Deadeye Dick” for the accidental manslaughter of a neighbour? Rudy's father was friends with Hitler and at one point was popular in the city they lived as he knew a head of state. Imagine that, one knows a head of state and everyone thinks you are a fine fellow indeed.

A neutron bomb exploded over the city. There is this passage in the book; “Nations might think of themselves as stories, and the stories end, but life goes on. Maybe my own country's life as a story ended after the Second World War, when it was the richest and most powerful nation on earth, when it was going to ensure peace and justice everywhere, since it alone had the atom bomb.” Mankind's lack of civility to his fellow man is an odd take when one considers that Vonnegut has said that there is at heart a goodness in us all. Bomb one of your own cities?

Rudy Waltz claims he is a neuter. If this is a comment on the human rights of minorities, and that Rudy's dad was a Nazis, is the obliteration of an arts centred city some kind of metaphor I am missing?

At this point, I am an unmitigated Vonnegut fan; one has to be to read 10 of his novels in nine months.
As usual, Vonnegut give me plenty to think about even if I might not get it.
One more for the Vonnegut reader and recommended as such





My review of number 1 Player Piano.
https://www.goodreads.com/review/show/6205354368
My review of number 2 The Sirens Of Titan.
https://www.goodreads.com/review/show/6267103559
My review of number 3 Mother Night.
https://www.goodreads.com/review/show/6287961968
My review of number 4 Cats Cradle.
https://www.goodreads.com/review/show/231371451
My review of number 5 God Bless You, Mr. Rosewater.
https://www.goodreads.com/review/show/231371734
My review of number 6 Slaughter House Five
https://www.goodreads.com/review/show/231370983
My review of number 7 Breakfast Of Champions.
https://www.goodreads.com/review/show/231371515
My review of number 8 Slapstick, or Lonesome No More!
https://www.goodreads.com/review/show/6478713647
My review of number 9 Jailbird.
https://www.goodreads.com/review/show/1815571880

Excellent. Being a cricket fan I can be highly appreciative of how a lot of the reference to the characters, both the real, fictional and a blend of them made the tale. There is a pivotal event at the 80% mark that had me wondering how the final 20% could be relevant to the story so far told. Relevant? It made the story.
The following is a huge spoiler and I strongly recommend that it not be read by anyone that intends to read this wonderful book.

Spoiler. There is an unpublished manuscript that holds no punches in terms of Sri Lankan Cricket and probably the mass corruption in the country itself. We also get an insight to the civil war and that the game of Cricket also takes on a religious fervour for the vast majority of the population, be they Sri, Tamil or any other of the ethnic divide. The writer of the book (or in my case narrator) is searching for a bowler by the name of Pradeep Mathew who has disappeared and is seemingly deleted from all records. The last 20% of the book covers the attempt to get the book published. After getting agreement, the publishing company wants to edit the book. The point, to me at least, is that the reader (listener in my case), is challenged to decide as to the author's alcoholism and mental health during the first 80% of the book, then consider in the last 20% what was fact or fiction. One example; would the editors take the British consulate employee involved in paedophilia out of the book to make it more palatable, even if he did or did not exist. Why was that person in the book in the first place, his role seemed superfluous. But was it? End Spoiler.


Audio narrator Shivantha Wijesinha is outstanding and this might be the first book audio in that narration added to my overall enjoyment and what has also made this an exceptional experience. I had no idea he was all the parts, Male, Female, accents both Sri Lankan and others. Fantastic.

I might eventually get a physical copy of the book to read along to another listen of the narration. A masterful book and highly recommended.

Another impressive read by William Dalrymple about a subject that I knew little about. The subject being intermarriage between British and Indians in the Mughal world of the late 18th to early 19th centuries. The dominant event in the telling is the relationship/marriage between Lieutenant colonel James Kirkpatrick, Resident in Hyderabad, to Mughal noblewomen Khair-un-Nissa. To say this caused a stir with the British Indian authorities at the time would be an understatement. Under Clive, they had an investigation, and Kirkpatrick was certainly not well received in some quarters. He converted to Islam so as to marry Khair-un-Nissa who was 14 at the time and he in his 30's, going native as was the saying but to do so was later to be harshly looked upon. Their story and life and times though is very interesting.

Interesting enough for Dalrymple to write 3 pages of “Lists of illustrations”, 2 pages of maps, 2 sets of family trees, 6 pages of Dramatis Persona, 3 pages of acknowledgments, a 13-page introduction, 501 pages of the narrative, countless footnotes through the narrative, 3 sets of plates, a 7-page glossary, 40 pages of endnotes, a 14-page Bibliography and last but not least a 14-page index. Phew!

This is one heck of a well-researched book, everything you may want or not want to know about this famous love affair in Hyderabad; to this day hardly known to anyone else other than those that may have an interest in the more esoteric events in British Indian history. At the time of writing this review, I have just recently had a conversation with a Muslim Indian from Hyderabad who was very aware of the story of Kirkpatrick and Khair-un-Nissa. He was taught this at school, he said, but added that it was not taught elsewhere in India, as the history of India is taught differently from state to state. He also had smiles on his face as he corrected my pronunciation of names, places and words.

I wrote above that the relationship between Kirkpatrick and Khair-un-Nissa dominated the book, but Dalrymple has also given the entire subject a life and times approach. The reader can feel his admiration of the mixing of the east and west, but there was always the feel that this was romanticised, as the mixing/intermarriage seemed to be more an officer class and beyond. I don't see Dalrymple as some supporter of British colonialism in India, but he does have a view that in the early days relationships were less strained than it later became. I am less sure on this based on recent reading of Indian attitude towards their erstwhile coloniser's. There is also a little wishful thinking on his part for the future. He says in the final sentence of the narrative “As the story of James Achilles Kirkpatrick and Khair un-Nissa shows, East and West are not irreconcilable, and never have been. Only bigotry, prejudice, racism and fear drive them apart. But they have met and mingled in the past; and they will do so again” Well yes, but my reading of history shows that we as a species are incapable of long-term mingling, much to my personal disappointment.

In the end, though, this is really a book I would only recommend to those that are interested in the subject of the “white Mughals”. The length of the book is not a problem for me personally but when one gets many, for example, quoted letters that could have been edited back some may find this tedious if they are looking for, as the subtitle says, “Loss and Betrayal In Eighteenth Century India”.
The subtitle just might disappoint.

I found this 600-pager hard to put down, to use the old cliché. I recall when I purchased this one many years' back being attracted to the cover blurbs premise and the comment that it was a “masterpiece”. It is not for me a masterpiece, but it sure has a certain literary je ne sais quoi.

This is an alternative history of the death of an independent parliamentarian that causes a fascist takeover of the Australian government during WW2, this government then negotiates a disadvantageous truce with the Japanese. Read how Curtin became Australian PM during the war via the wiki.

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Curtin_government

This states that “Labor under Curtin formed a minority government in 1941 after independents crossed the floor, bringing down the Coalition minority United Australia Party-Country Party Coalition government which resulted from the 1940 election.”
In this alternative it is the Curtin government that falls after the death of MP Norman Cole and then into that void authoritarian takes over.

It is difficult to write too much about the story itself as to do so would give away the plot and so many other events of interest in this fascinating political and cultural thriller. There are few main characters and many that come in and out of the tale. Many are based on real life characters in both the political and the artistic world. The point of those worlds being that the fascist government is typical of fascism in that artists and intellectuals are the mortal enemies and treated as such.

There are two major characters that both tell their story in the first person. Very middle-class public servant Robin Telford tells his in a kind of British University educated manner that I did not at first recognise as Australian but then after a while realised that he was of his times when Australia was still very much part of the British Empire. Britain playing a less than hands on role in the war in Asia and the Pacific plays a large part in the Curtin government falling and later of the decisions of the fascist government and its capitulation to Japan. The second main character is Missy Cunningham the wife of firebrand anti-fascist artist Roy with whom she has a loveless marriage. Telford and Missy's are parallel telling of events that at times join.
The author is a wonderful writer and the structure of the story is very layered in that we move rapidly from one character to another and one event to another very quickly. It makes for compulsive reading in the “what happens next” needs of the reader. There is use of many literary tricks, we get many characters referenced from their times with both the fictional and the real. Roy Cunningham for example is based on Noel Counihan.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Noel_Counihan

Even literary nods such as Picnic at Hanging Rock and David Meredith of My Brother Jack fame make fleeting appearances. One of the stranger nods to something obscure is that there is a sanatorium called Graylingwell. This is a nod to a place of the same name in Chichester, West Sussex, England. I was intrigued that the author used this as a device, and it turns out he came from Littlehampton, not too far away from the original Graylingwell. I wonder as to how many other nods to names and places I have missed.

What just stops this being a masterpiece? It just lacks a little realism in certain areas. The vast majority of the book is a serious alternative history but, for example, the use of a Bunyip at one point? I could see no metaphor or analogy in its use other than magical realism as a device. We also got a seer who is important to the intrigue, but I just felt that a more realistic device could be used to bring the story together and into its, admittedly fulfilling, conclusion.
Be that as it may, I have enjoyed this immensely and would read again.

Recommended specifically to Australians who know their local art and literature and who looking for an exceptional alternative history. (That cuts out just about the entire reading public on the planet☺.)

Addendum. To give an idea of the research that the author put into this long read, I have attached his notes on research in the spoiler below.

NOTESDrew Cottle's book The Brisbane Line-Reappraisal (Leicestershire: Upfront Publishing, 2002) provided much of the original impetus for N, as did conversation with film and documentary maker John Hughes. Two other books were of particular importance - Bernard Smith's Noel Counihan: Artist and revolutionary (Melbourne: Oxford University Press, 1993) and Craig Munro's Wild Man of Letters: The Story of P. R. Stephensen (Carlton: Melbourne University Press, 1984), On Counihan and Stephensen, see note, below.The attack on Sydney in Part 3 is written over Erle Cox's Fools' Harvest (Melbourne: Robertson & Mullen, 1939), Fools Harvest, along with a number of other fictional accounts of the invasion of Australia, have been basically treated as non-fictional (historical) texts. The actions of the Japanese in Sydney however are based on events detailed by Iris Chang in her book The Rape of Nanking: The Forgotten Holocaust of World War II (Ringwood: Penguin, 1997). Warwick's tales of Japanese cruelty in Part 8 come from information in Hank Nelson's Prisoners of War: Australians under Nippon (Sydney: ABC, 2001). The descriptions of artists' studios are variously drawn from Émile Zola, Patrick White, Honoré Balzac and John Berger. The description of Mahony's gallery at Teffont is taken from Zola's The Masterpiece. Roy's painting of his 'lover' in Part 6 is derived from Balzac's story, "The Unknown Masterpiece'. The poem Elegy is by Tsujihara, a sergeant in the elite Konoe Division in the Imperial Japanese Army. The English translation is by Richard Tanter. In Part 9, Wood-Conroy's wealthy friend's view of the Japanese weighed against the Curtin Government is taken from E. P. Dark's, Medicine and the Social Order (Sydney: F. H. Booth, 1942), The guerrilla tactics adopted by Mischka and his companions are based on those outlined variously in Rupert Lockwood's Guerrilla Paths to Freedom (Sydney: Angus and Robertson, 1942). The Social Realist painters found their beginnings in the world of Noel Counihan, Vic O'Connor and Yosl Bergner. As did Albie Henningsen in that of P. R. 'Inky' Stephensen, and Wood-Conroy in Alf Conlon. And so forth. ‘N' is, however, a work of fiction and any similarity between a character and any person living or dead is wholly coincidental. Epigraphs taken from Goya's Disasters of War in Part 3 may be translated thus: Esto es peor, This is worse; Yo le ci, I saw it; Por qui? Why?; Qué bai gue bacer mas? What more can one do?;, Fuerte casa es! This is too much!; No saben el camino, They don't know the way.'Fadden, War Cabinet', 'Pencil on Paper, September 1941', 'The Americans Arrive' and 'The Americans depart' first appeared in Southerly, Vol. 66, No 3, 2006. 'Curtin, War Cabinet, April, 1942', 'John Menadue: Syria, 1942' and 'Mahony's Soirée' first appeared in Heat, No 17, 2008.An additional narrative strand, chronicling the history of Surrealist André Breton in Melbourne, 1942, omitted from this version of N for reasons of overall length, appears in Southerly, Vol. 73, No 3, 2013 ('The Naked Writer').

http://melbourneblogger.blogspot.com/2011/09/anti-fascist-art-exhibition-melbourne.html

https://www.ngv.vic.gov.au/essay/the-violent-vision-of-the-1940s/

http://www.australianpoetryreview.com.au/tag/john-scott/

What's in a surname? Says the title and that why this is an interesting book for the likes of me.
A few years back, my wife knew that a DNA test would be the ideal birthday gift for my insatiably curious mind. Via Ancestry a rabbit hole opened.

I found I had a gateway ancestor that led me to Adam and Eve. Anyone can find these gateways if they search hard enough or just get lucky. Time and patience, or someone else has done the research.
As with the title of this book, I became very curious about these surnames that I was discovering along my own journey into my past. As I was building my family tree, the breadth of the unusual ancestral grandparent names was very interesting for this novice genealogist. My paternal grandmother's maiden name was Elson, and they had deep roots from the district in Surrey, England, around the Godalming area. The Elson's were generally farm labourers, the working poor, usually illiterate. This area of Surrey is now greenbelt London commuter country and now hardly impoverished. My Great Grandmothers mother's maiden name was the fairly common Simmonds and through them, I found the name Goddard. I recalled that this was thought to be an old variant of French names that may have come with the Norman Conquest. From there I came to the name Hooker and that led to a Sir William Hooker 1612 to 1697. He is my 10th time Great-grandfather, was Lord Mayor of London and is mentioned by Pepys when both an Alderman and a Sherriff.

“.....and meeting Sir William Hooker, the Alderman, he did cry out mighty high against Sir W. Pen for his getting such an estate, and giving 15,000l. with his daughter, which is more, by half, than ever he did give; but this the world believes, and so let them.”
“Up, and all the morning at the office. At noon to the 'Change, and thence after business dined at the Sheriffe's [Hooker], being carried by Mr. Lethulier, where to my heart's content I met with his wife, a most beautifull fat woman. But all the house melancholy upon the sickness of a daughter of the house in childbed, Mr. Vaughan's lady. So all of them undressed, but however this lady a very fine woman. I had a salute of her, and after dinner some discourse the Sheriffe and I about a parcel of tallow I am buying for the office of him. I away home, and there at the office all the afternoon till late at night, and then away home to supper and to bed.”

Hooker's wife, Lettice Coppinger, is of the nobility through both her parents and has some historically significant ancestors in her family tree.
I read that Hooker can come from being a hook maker or agricultural labourer, and that makes sense in an odd way as his descendants via my Elson line fell back into poverty as illiterate farm hands. The name Coppinger has several thoughts as to its origin with some thinking from the Norse areas, hence Norman and that maybe why I have 2% Norwegian DNA from my paternal side. Maybe not as well. As to that Coppinger name, I took that back to Edward III who is both my 22nd and 23rd GGfather and according to further reading he just might be everyone of English stock's GG. Along with just about everyone else, I am Danny Dyer's cousin.

https://www.theguardian.com/tv-and-radio/2019/sep/23/danny-dyer-who-do-you-think-you-are


So that's the good stuff about some surnames in my family tree. What about the surnames in this book that may relate to me?

A couple have leaped from the pages. David McKie the author of this enjoyable social history picked a village name, Houghton, to do a study of surnames from the various records both past and present. He found places named Houghton in Hampshire, Furness, Cambridgeshire, Northamptonshire, Lincolnshire, North Wales, Borders and Orkney.

As early as page 15 he mentioned Pragnell as an old name from the Hampshire Houghton and its diminishment. The name has variations of its spelling from one census to the next, writes the author and yes it has. My Great Grandmother was a Prangle and further back the name is changed to Prangnell with other census variations. In the 1841 census there were 16 Prangles types in Hampshire's Houghton, but by 1911 they were no more.

Another name that is related to me by marriage is Casson. The Casson name had 23 people on the 1841 census in Furness. By the next census, none appeared. I know that one family of them ended up in Grafton in Northern New South Wales.

The author's personal survey of several communities of Houghton's is to see if, among other things, the surnames had changed over the years, where they came from and where they moved to. It is with the advent of easier and cheaper transport that the vast majority of people moved away from their ancestral homes in approximately the last 150 years. Prior to that, they stayed where they were. My Elson ancestors never moved from the Goldalming area until the turn of the 20th century. The Casson's never left Houghton in Furness until, one family at least, upped and moved to the other side of the world.

There is much more to this book than my connections. We get discussions on literary surname, DNA, name changes and a fair bit more. Why are there many so Johnston's but no Georgson's for example.
We get a very useful bibliography for anyone that seeks further information.
Is it worth a read for anyone searching for maybe more depth on the subject? Probably not.
It is more a jaunt by an author with an interest. And with that, I personally got a fair bit out of this easy-to-read tour.


As an aside, here are a few of the more interesting surnames from my family tree. In no particular order Rishman, Batten, Puddicombe, Chackington, Colpus, Machray, Greenway, Seagrave and Upperton.

Published in 1957 this is a fairly easy read on the Battle of Cassino. Bear in mind that that battle was not all just the Monastery, and that it was fought in and around the town of Cassino. There were 4 battles in total. These took place over 4 months from the middle of January to May 1944. It has also been called The Battle for Rome as the objective was to break through the Germans line of defence, a line that was exceptionally strong, and take Rome. The objective was met though with heavy loss to both sides. There were approximately 55,000 allied troops and 20,000 German troops killed or wounded in the 4 months.

Was it worth it? There is plenty of debate to this day as to what it achieved. My own opinion is only based on the reading of this book, but there seems to have been several mistakes made at military level that caused more casualties and losses than may have been warranted. The terrain and weather also played a significant part in the battle. Typical of these events, it is best to read further.

As far as this book goes, I would suggest that it is useful to the individual that has an interest in the event and the Italian theatre during World War 2. It is of its time in presentation and writing style. The author gives his opinions, and that has tended to not be a style that this reader prefers when reading history. Also, there are no footnotes and a very limited bibliography.

Considering that the war in Europe began with the invasion of Poland back in September 1939 there was, to quote the author, “.....particular poignancy in the inscription on the Memorial in their war cemetery which now stands on the slopes of the hill known as Point 593.

‘We Polish soldiers
For our freedom and yours
Have given our souls to God Our bodies to the soil of Italy
And our hearts to Poland.'

By their selfless immolation, the Poles converted that grim mountainside into a memorial to soldiers everywhere.”

An extract from the chapter called The Reckoning
“So many engineers were seized that factories came to a halt, so many railway men died that some trains did not run; so many colonels and generals were shot that the almost leaderless Red Army was nearly crushed by the German invasion of 1941.

In the Congo, as in Russia, mass murder had a momentum of its own. Power is tempting, and in a sense no power is greater than the ability to take someone's life. Once under way, mass killing is hard to stop; it becomes a kind of sport, like hunting. Congo annals abound in cases like that of René de Permentier, an officer in the Equator district in the late 1890s. The Africans nicknamed him Bajunu (for bas genoux, on your knees), because he always made people kneel before him. He had all the bushes and trees cut down around his house at Bokatola so that from his porch he could use passersby for target practice. If he found a leaf in a courtyard that women prisoners had swept, he ordered a dozen of them beheaded. If he found a path in the forest not well-maintained, he or- dered a child killed in the nearest village.

Two Force Publique officers, Clément Brasseur and Léon Cerckel, once ordered a man hung from a palm tree by his feet while a fire was lit beneath him and he was cooked to death. Two missionaries found one post where prisoners were killed by having resin poured over their heads, then set on fire. The list is much longer.

Michael Herr, the most brilliant reporter of the Vietnam War, captures the same frenzy in the voice of one American soldier he met: “We'd rip out the hedges and burn the hooches and blow all the wells and kill every chicken, pig and cow in the whole fucking ville. I mean, if we can't shoot these people, what the fuck are we doing here?” When another American, Francis Ford Coppola, tried to put the blood lust of that war on film, where did he turn for the plot of his Apocalypse Now? To Joseph Conrad, who had seen it all, a century earlier, in the Congo.”

At times, this has been a brutal read that highlights man's inhumanity to his fellow human being. It has also highlighted others courage in the pursuit of justice.

I had been aware of the treatment of the peoples of the Congo via Mathew White's atrocity website. His site stated the following.

• Roger Casement's original 1904 report estimated that as many as 3 million Congolese had died of disease, torture or shooting since 1888 (cited in Gilbert's History of the Twentieth Century; also in Colin Legum, Congo Disaster (1972)).
• E.D. Morel estimated that the Congo's population began with an original 20 or 30 million, and bottomed out at a mere 8 million. Morel, The Black Man's Burden, 1920, Chapter 9 (“[W]hen the country had been explored in every direction by travellers of divers nationalities, estimates varied between twenty and thirty millions. No estimate fell below twenty millions. In 1911 an official census was taken. It was not published in Belgium, but was reported in one of the British Consular dispatches. It revealed that only eight and a half million people were left.”). This estimate also appears in
- Encyclopaedia Britannica, 15th edition, “Congo Free State,” v.3, p.535
- Bertrand Russell, Freedom and organization 1814-1914 (first published, George Allen & 1934) p.453 in the 2001 Routledge ed., citing Sir H. H. Johnston, The Colonization of Africa (Cambridge Historical Series) p. 352
- Fredric Wertham A Sign For Cain : A Exploration of Human Violence (1966): the population of the Congo dropped dropped from 30M to 8.5M, a loss of 21.5 million
• Peter Forbath, The River Congo (1977) p.375: “at least 5 million people were killed in the Congo.”
• John Gunther (Inside Africa (1953)): 5-8 million deaths.
• Adam Hochschild (Leopold's Ghost, (1998)): 10 million, or half the original population.
• Rummel:
- 2,150,000 democides, 19th Century (based on 10% of Wertham)
- 25,000 democides, 1900-1910.
• AVERAGE:
- Median: ca. 8M
- Mean: ca. 8.5M
• NOTE: Because this event began in 1886, it tend to get relegated to the 19th Century; however, 40% of it occured in the 20th Century, so we need to keep this in mind when splitting the death toll into century-based subtotals. Also, it took awhile for the atrocities to get up to speed, so the dying probably intensified as more time passed.


As the reader can see this book by Hochschild is at the high end of deaths. Hochschild does cover the slaughter in the same chapter I have quoted above, called A Reckoning. He states he did not think that the authorities were of a genocidal nature to the Congolese peoples, they just worked them as slave labour and to death, profit was everything in the pursuit of ivory and rubber with rebellion ruthlessly put down. So that meant that murder through to starvation played a part in the plummeting drop in population numbers. There was also a huge fall of the birth-rate as men left their villages with women under hostage so as to force them to not abscond and join rebellions.

There have been some historical characters in this book that were unknown to me prior. Roger Casement and E D Morel, campaigners from Ireland and England, both deserve further reads, they lead fascinating lives.

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Roger_Casement
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/E._D._Morel

As does George Washington Williams from the USA.

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/George_Washington_Williams

All three contributed heavily to the public campaign to expose the inhumanity that was the Congo Free State.

Known to me, but more as someone taught to the English schoolboy with stories of derring-do was Henry Morton Stanley. He does not come out of this book with any honour.

There are 2 sets of illuminating black and white plates and an excellent bibliography. I have David van Reybrouck's Congo to read and will do so sometime into the future.

This was a fascinating if sad history and highly recommended.

DNF. Only 100 pages in and have not got back to it for 6 months at this point. I will put this one aside for another day.

I am an admirer of both Junger's War and Tribe so the chances to listen to him narrate his latest book was taken. In My Time of Dying is his story about his near-death experience (NDE) after a pancreatic vein burst that caused major internal bleeding.

He gives a detailed medical account of the actions of the medical staff that took him from his NDE to his survival of an event that generally take the life of the individual. During this medical emergency, he tells of his NDE meeting with his dead father. After full recovery, Junger looks at the NDE from both his journalistic eye and then that from his atheist view point with a reflective writing and telling on the physical and spiritual nature of the individual as he sees it.

Junger is a fine writer, and in this case narrator of his writing. It never felt like a matter of me agreeing or disagreeing with him, confirming one's bias is a futile exercise at the best of times anyway, but his ability to explain his NDE and added to the quality of his layman research makes for a very thoughtful telling and listening experience. My general realist attitude to all things makes me think that NDE is actually what Junger described and researched; the brain shutting down and making death palatable to the individual. What's beyond that? Not much in my opinion as no one has come back to tell the tale. What is beyond can never be known, Junger says as much, but his NDE has made him less sure of his future beyond death.

A very good read and recommended to those of us reaching the end of our days.

Bodies of Light by Jennifer Down I listened via Audio book and my first comment would be that Casey Withoos, the first-person narrator for protagonist Maggie's story, was superb to my ears. She was able to tell the story in a kind of world-weary manner that suited the tragic challenges that could have become a chore to narrate. No histrionics, just a telling of the tragedy of a life that goes wrong from the very beginning.

The short story is that Maggie gets a facebook message from someone, who she may or may not trust, about who she once may have been. This leads to a long tale of Maggie telling of her life story from a young memory of her dad going to jail through to middle age opioids addiction. Set across Australia, New Zealand and the USA, Maggie's life is a story of her attempts to lift herself from her foster care/institutionalising childhood and lead a normal life. This reader felt there was a constant theme of hiding from a past and disappearing into one's own mind as a form of protection. It made a difficult read/listen for this mid-sixties male who has led a life of comfort and care.

And that brings me to a point that seems to occur in my mind about that life of comfort and care that I have lead. Born into a loving and hardworking family, not particularly scholastic I have been able to work a long life in an industry I enjoyed, own a home and get comfortably superannuated to the point that retirement beckons, life's been good to me so far. What's that to do with this book?

After finishing this, I was curious as to whom the story was based on and read interviews with Jennifer Down. Her parents were welfare workers; tales of woe were commonplace discussion. She had also read up the subjects, such as child abuse when it was investigated by various levels of governments. I suppose that the book is a mash-up of some peo0ples lives. Jennifer stated in one interview I read, that readers had made contact with her to say that it reflected something true from their own experiances. What is true is that abuse of children is hardly new, just read Victorian literature, just read deeper into the media than the headlines, Jennifer Down cited Don Dale Detention Centre in one interview as an example. One can search plenty more instances in any part of the world.

And that leads me to my feeling that my generation in Australia, white male and well off in the vast majority of cases, just has no idea or sometimes have even give thought to subjects such as this. If indicative of people I know the headlines are enough, why read more? And a book such as this? It is hardly derring do, and why read it when the cost of an Olympic stadium is the headline of the day?
As thought-provoking as this story is, it will make no difference.


My only criticism of this read is it may be a bit too long. Other than that it is a fine winner of the 2022 Miles Franklin Award, awarded to “a novel which is of the highest literary merit and presents Australian life in any of its phases” and recommended as such to my generation who in my opinion have no idea how good they have it.

Kurt Vonnegut's 9th novel and he reverts to a more conventional style of novel last seen in his third,
Mother Night.

I had read Slaughter House Five as a late teen in say 1977 or 1978 and had devoured it; such was my Sci Fi bent of the time. This, Jailbird, was purchased on its release in 1979 probably based on my then thoughts that it may have had Sci Fi elements. I recall liking it in my youth, though now reading it into my older age I suspect I had no idea what it was about thematically. I have been surprised how much I recalled of this tale of Walter F Starbuch and his life and times, told as an autobiography. I must have reread it a few times back then.

Starbuck tells his story in a world-weary manner about his estrangement from his son, his trial for a minor part in Watergate through to a strange meeting with a past love that brings him to a position of power in a large corporation.
Thematically the human condition is still at the centre of Vonnegut's writing, greed and power come forth as does religion and labour relations. What I found interesting was his inclusion of a historical labour event in the US that leads to the judicial murder of Nicola Sacco and Bartolomeo Vanzetti. I have realised that my overall knowledge of US history other than WW2 and a few other topical events such as Watergate is sparse. Vonnegut has led me, through the reading of his books, down a rabbit hole as he interweaves fact and fiction into his oeuvre. This is an occurrence that I did not particularly take note of on the way through but recognise now that I am into his later books. In Jailbird we come across RAMJAC Corporation that is interesting conceptually. RAMJAC is a comment on massive corporations that are an entity all to themselves in terms of control of individuals purchasing habits and economies. It takes small mishaps to bring about RAMJAC's downfall. This beggars the question, how long can Amazon survive small mishaps?


Again one for the Vonnegut reader in my opinion and recommended as such.

My review of number 1 Player Piano.
https://www.goodreads.com/review/show/6205354368
My review of number 2 The Sirens Of Titan. https://www.goodreads.com/review/show/6267103559
My review of number 3 Mother Night.
https://www.goodreads.com/review/show/6287961968
My review of number 4 Cats Cradle.
https://www.goodreads.com/review/show/231371451
My review of number 5 God Bless You, Mr. Rosewater.
https://www.goodreads.com/review/show/231371734
My review of number 6 Slaughter House Five
https://www.goodreads.com/review/show/231370983
My review of number 7 Breakfast Of Champions.
https://www.goodreads.com/review/show/231371515
My review of number 8 Slapstick, or Lonesome No More!
https://www.goodreads.com/review/show/6478713647

I noticed that I shelved this travelogue in 2015. At that time it had one scathing review and to this day that is still the only review available on GR. One-star reviews are always memorable and having just finished Charlie Pye-Smiths religious travels and discovery of Christian India from the early 1990's I am not sure that that review is anything but partisan itself in my opinion.

Pye-Smith is a Christian sure, but be that as it may I did not find it a “partisan view of India, which is written for missionary purposes” as stated in that review. I personally found it an interesting research as to who Indian Christians are/were and their thoughts as a minority.

Including his travels, interviews and some history, this has made for a fascinating read. This reader was scurrying down rabbit holes to read up on the places and the cultures of various areas, that is what makes India astonishing for all those with a curious mind.

Pye-Smith has given us a useful map of India that references the places he travelled to. From Kerala in the south to Meghalaya in the north he made contact with many people from the disparate factions of the Christian religions that eah seemed to give a differing view of both how their specific version of Christianity was faring as a minor player in the everyday lives of the Indian people's religious life. Back in the early 90s Christianity was surviving. In places such as Meghalaya it was the dominant religion. For anyone interested, this is a subject delving deeper into. Meghalaya is very much a minority state in the scheme of India as a Hindu nation though. In some areas, the local Christians accounted for numbers hardly worth caring about.

Pye-Smith is actually very praiseworthy of Indians as a people who have been “...remarkably tolerant of other people's customs and ideas” and this also includes religion. He writes that Hinduism itself has an assimilatory nature and quotes a Hindu scholar saying tolerance is duty and not a concession. He adds that there has been criticism of Christian endeavour in that it has at times portrayed Hinduism “...in the worst possible light.” Pye-Smith did see the less than savoury side of the caste system within Christian India. He covers this often, I suppose millennia of what is in one's DNA is very hard to shift. Caste prejudice seemed more ingrained than religious prejudice.

Typical of books such as this that cast a view over many differing peoples it is impossible to even attempt to typecast Christian India, the entire gamut of Christianity's factions are covered from the adherents to the Catholic faiths of nearly 2 millennia past to the present inrush of the proselytising god botherers of modern born agains, Christianity covers the entire strata of Indian caste and demographics. Based on my reading of this book local versions of Christianity that are interlaced with the local culture; lets say the more tolerant versions of Christianity, survive.

Meghalaya Christians have a propensity towards unusual, by western traditions, Christian names. Pye-Smith meets Rev. Overland Snaitang who he asks about his Christian name. Snaitang says that the people of Meghalaya enjoy the sound of names. So we meet individuals called Memory and Forget, brothers called Shoulder and Moulder, young men called Milky Way and Mount Everest. One priest had to stop a lady calling her child Prostitute as she liked the sound though had no idea as to the meaning. The lucky baby was called Prosper in the end. Pye-Smith met a Rev Peace Arrow Challam, a name that struck him “...as an excellent choice for a Christian leader...” I was so enthralled by this that the rabbit hole threw up to me this delightful site.

https://www.nancy.cc/2014/01/06/colorful-names-meghalaya/

I have read the wiki on Indian Christianity, and it states that modern India has 26 million adherents in 2011 and that accounted for 2.3 percent of the then population. Hindu India has little to fear from other religions in my opinion, as that seemed to be a stable number over time. As one Indian of my acquaintance suggested when I was reading this book, the vast populace enjoys a good festival and Cricket far too much to listen to fire and brimstone evangelicals who are damning them to a permanent hell.

And as I write, big congrats to the Indian Cricket team on winning the T20 World Cup. I know how much joy that will bring to the nation and its peoples from all walks of life.

This is a solid read of Indian Christianity from the view of a western researcher in the 1990s and is a fine read for those looking at a past of recent times. Recommended.

Below is the last 2 pages of Rebels and Outcasts: A Journey Through Christian India. Maybe this is what offended some Hindus. As a non-believer I may not be able to see any offence as Pye-Smith never proselytised in any part of Rebels and Outcasts: A Journey Through Christian India that I recall and the final few lines are to me but a reason for his faith. Ernest Talibuddin was longing for the day when the established Church would collapse, when its institutions would wither away. In my memory, they have already begun to do so. I remember the cathedrals and churches as monuments to a certain tradition rather than as places of worship: In fact, I can scarcely recall a single word I heard from the pulpit, and the act of communion, the central unifying act of Christian worship, could equally well have been conducted in a forest or cattle shed. When I think of Christian India I see Father Sngi praying for a traumatised woman and the transcendental peace which descends upon her face, I hear a Hindu doctor in the slums of Delhi talking of his duty to go after the lost sheep, the lost sheep being both battered children and abusive parents; I hear the squabbling and laughter of the prostitutes children in the upper room of Bowbazar, and I see the serious faces of the Muslim women of Tiljala who were learning to sew and read. I remember the conversations I had with priests and nurses, with workers and historians, about everything from sex to salvation, from the price of whisky to whether St Thomas came to India. And as I listen to the voices of those I met, I can hear the sounds which went with the voices - of birds singing in the banyan tree outside the vicarage; of engines backfiring and a drunk swearing; of singing in a classroom and fishermen's chanting and I recall too the smells that went with the sounds: the stench of the sewers in Calcutta, the enticing smell of good spicy food in the Catholic seminaries, the tangy odour of fish and rotting vegetation in the harbour at Cochin. I have written much about the conflict between different denominations and different castes, but it is a triumph of sorts that the Christian religion is able to appeal to such an extraordinary diversity of people. The gulf between the Syrian Christian of Kottayam with his neatly tended feet and thriving gold business and the illiterate dalit who works as a coolie on the roads of Madras is as great as that between emperor and slave, and yet they are united by belief, by the message of the cross, with the half-starved fishermen of Vizhinjam and the down-at-heel Anglo-Indians of Calcutta, with the tribal Christians of Bihar and the wealthy Catholics of Bombay, with the recent convert who dares not admit to his new beliefs for fear of persecution and men and women who trace their Christianity back to a few years after the death of Christ. On Easter Day I was invited to lunch with the bishop. 'It will just be you and me and a very old priest,' he said as we came out of the service at All Saints Cathedral. I arrived at his residence at the same time as the old priest, who had doubtless seen the bishop kissing many of the women who had attended the service. As we entered the house he touched the Bengali servant lightly on the shoulder and carefully explained, in English, 'I am afraid I'm not the kissing type. I'm from a different generation, but I love you all the same. I don't think the girl understood a word of what he said, but she smiled broadly and was probably astonished to have been greeted at all. When we were having lunch the priest said he had recently met a Christian fundamentalist who told him that he would go to hell, presumably because he was not a born-again Christian: 'So I said to him, "You may have a greater faith than me, but I have love, and I love even you who condemns me." The priest added that one of the defining moments in his spiritual life occurred when he was a young man, a recent convert from high-caste Hinduism. C. F. Andrews, a leading Christian thinker, leaned over his shoulder and scratched on his notebook the famous words from St Paul's first letter to the Corinthians (13:13). There are three things which last for ever: faith, hope and love; and the greatest of these is love.'I cannot think of a better creed.

Limberlost, Robbie Arnott's 3rd novel, moves away from the fantasy elements that made his first two novels such wonderful reads. This one is a life story of Ned as a youngster during the 2nd world war through to an older age dealing with his apple farm and married life in Tasmania and all of life's other issues. So simple a story that has been told before, but such is the ability of the author to take us deep into the mind of Ned that we hang onto the descriptive words written.

Yes it might be a well-worn tale of many that have lived a similar life, but be that as it may it is very well told and shows that Robbie Arnott is a very gifted writer. He could have written a book that was of saccharine sentimentally, but he told of good a life lived with charm.

Recommended to all that read Tasmanian literature.