Living in Shanghai late last year, I found myself one evening around a banquet table with a large group of expats – writers, journos, academics – in one of the city’s pricier Chinese restaurants. I don’t remember how the conversation steered toward Cuba and Castro, but, before long, there were coos of admiration and toasts to the hero of the Cuban revolution.
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Living in Shanghai late last year, I found myself one evening around a banquet table with a large group of expats – writers, journos, academics – in one of the city’s pricier Chinese restaurants. I don’t remember how the conversation steered toward Cuba and Castro, but, before long, there were coos of admiration and toasts to the hero of the Cuban revolution.
Vote ‘No’, some republicans said at the 1999 republican referendum, and then we will work towards a republic that is a better one than the one being put forward. When the referendum failed, many of those republicans disappeared, and the movement lost momentum. Others who campaigned hard for a Yes vote have continued to push the republican agenda along. A similar group of tenacious Australians is undeterred by the federal government’s sidelining of the reconciliation process. Since joining Australians for Native Title and Reconciliation or their local reconciliation groups, they have maintained the commitment to social justice for indigenous people that they demonstrated when they walked across the bridge or signed the ‘Sorry books’.
Book 1 Title: This Country
Book 1 Subtitle: A reconciled republic?
Book Author: Mark McKenna
Book 1 Biblio: University of New South Wales Press, $29.95 pb, 160 pp
Book 1 Author Type: Author
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Vote ‘No’, some republicans said at the 1999 republican referendum, and then we will work towards a republic that is a better one than the one being put forward. When the referendum failed, many of those republicans disappeared, and the movement lost momentum. Others who campaigned hard for a Yes vote have continued to push the republican agenda along. A similar group of tenacious Australians is undeterred by the federal government’s sidelining of the reconciliation process. Since joining Australians for Native Title and Reconciliation or their local reconciliation groups, they have maintained the commitment to social justice for indigenous people that they demonstrated when they walked across the bridge or signed the ‘Sorry books’.
‘Wildflowering’, a term coined by Judith Wright, describes the activity of searching for wildflowers in the bush. In letters between the poet and her friend, wildflower artist, writer and activist Kathleen McArthur (1915-2001), ‘the language of flowers’ becomes part of the mutual exchange of their friendship and epitomises the interactive and intimate relationship they maintained with landscape. Over the years, these women took the knowledge and love of their places into political campaigns to preserve the fragile ecology of an ancient coastland against the ravages of development and commercial exploitation.
Book 1 Title: Wildflowering
Book 1 Subtitle: The life and places of Kathleen McArthur
Book Author: Margaret Somerville
Book 1 Biblio: University of Queensland Press, $24.95 pb, 250 pp
Book 1 Author Type: Author
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‘Wildflowering’, a term coined by Judith Wright, describes the activity of searching for wildflowers in the bush. In letters between the poet and her friend, wildflower artist, writer and activist Kathleen McArthur (1915-2001), ‘the language of flowers’ becomes part of the mutual exchange of their friendship and epitomises the interactive and intimate relationship they maintained with landscape. Over the years, these women took the knowledge and love of their places into political campaigns to preserve the fragile ecology of an ancient coastland against the ravages of development and commercial exploitation.
After nine books, Nick Earls is renowned for his slacker-male novels and his short stories of twenty-somethings in various stage of arrested development. Like his English equivalent Nick Homby, Earls specialises in a particular emotional state of the male psyche: a post-adolescent, pre-adult period usually spent chasing unobtainable women, getting drunk on green alcoholic beverages and behaving badly in amusing ways. Written with self-deprecating wit and dollops of humour, Earls’s previous books are the equivalent of a fizzy soft drink, easily ingested and with a sugary residue.
Book 1 Title: The Thompson Gunner
Book Author: Nick Earls
Book 1 Biblio: Viking, $29.95 hb, 290 pp
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After nine books, Nick Earls is renowned for his slacker-male novels and his short stories of twenty-somethings in various stage of arrested development. Like his English equivalent Nick Homby, Earls specialises in a particular emotional state of the male psyche: a post-adolescent, pre-adult period usually spent chasing unobtainable women, getting drunk on green alcoholic beverages and behaving badly in amusing ways. Written with self-deprecating wit and dollops of humour, Earls’s previous books are the equivalent of a fizzy soft drink, easily ingested and with a sugary residue.
One of the most outlandish Hollywood action films, relatively speaking, is The Final Countdown (1980), in which the nuclear-powered US aircraft carrier U.S.S. Nimitz is enveloped in a bizarre electrical storm in the Pacific and transported back in time to 1941, conveniently just before the Japanese attack on Pearl Harbour. The ship’s commander is played by Kirk Douglas, with Martin Sheen in the role of an enigmatic civilian who just happens to be on board. One memorable exchange between the two Hollywood heavyweights occurs just after the crew has realised that something strange has happened. Douglas muses that it could all be a Russian plot, perhaps involving parapsychology. ‘Excuse me, Captain,’ interjects Sheen with an impeccably straight face, ‘we also have to consider one alternative possibility: the possibility that what is happening here is real.’
Book 1 Title: Weapons of Choice
Book 1 Subtitle: World War 2.1
Book Author: John Birmingham
Book 1 Biblio: Macmillan, $30 pb, 520 pp
Book 1 Author Type: Author
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One of the most outlandish Hollywood action films, relatively speaking, is The Final Countdown (1980), in which the nuclear-powered US aircraft carrier U.S.S. Nimitz is enveloped in a bizarre electrical storm in the Pacific and transported back in time to 1941, conveniently just before the Japanese attack on Pearl Harbour. The ship’s commander is played by Kirk Douglas, with Martin Sheen in the role of an enigmatic civilian who just happens to be on board. One memorable exchange between the two Hollywood heavyweights occurs just after the crew has realised that something strange has happened. Douglas muses that it could all be a Russian plot, perhaps involving parapsychology. ‘Excuse me, Captain,’ interjects Sheen with an impeccably straight face, ‘we also have to consider one alternative possibility: the possibility that what is happening here is real.’
If such issues can be measured, then John Birmingham’s Weapons of Choice: World War 2.1 is even more far-fetched than this Reagan/Rambo-era retrospective revenge fantasy. He also has US warships travelling back in time to World War II, but from the future rather than the present. Birmingham thus adds a layer of implausibility to an already incredible scenario. In doing so, he makes fellow techno-thriller writer Matthew Reilly appear a stubborn realist.
