Ancient Binding Media, Varnishes and Adhesives

By L Masschelein-Kleiner

Alright so I know none of you out there will be reading this book anytime soon, unless you're also doing a thesis about the history of adhesives, but it's a book and I read it during the 'thon, so just dealio, OK??


This is actually a very useful little book, much better than that stupid one by Mills & White, "The Organic Chemistry of Museum Objects". Classification of materials MUCH more easy to follow; useful summaries of how various materials produced. Also, I finally have a definition of what "mucilage" is!! Hurrah!! (I'm not going to tell you what it is, in hopes that it will pique your interest enough to actually read my thesis - or at least a bit of it).

Diagrams not as good as McGee's, but ICCROM not known for the flashiness of their publications.

I don't have a nice picture of the cover to include so I'll put one of my glue bottles in here instead.

Rating: 8 out of 10

McGee on Food & Cooking

By Harold McGee

OK so I didn't read absolutely every word of this book, but it's over 800 pages and I reckon I read more than enough of them to equal a decently long novel. I'm actually reading it for my thesis, what with McGee being a pre-eminent food scientist and all, and it's so much more pleasurable to read than your average science textbook. Describing the science behind food - why does bread rise? Why should you start stocks with cold water? - McGee takes you not only through the science but also into some of the history, and this is a large part of its charm. Where else can you learn about why the outside of egg yolks turn yellow on boiling while also enjoying fantastic quotes like this one from Miss Leslie in 1857: “But to stir butter and sugar is the hardest part of cake making. Have this done by a manservant”. Quite - why didn't I think of that? Only bad point from my current perspective is that it's so easy to get distracted by other non-thesis related topics, like how to make cakes and how beer works. Also, nice diagrams!

Rating: 10 out of 10

The Unpleasantness at the Bellona Club

By Dorothy Sayers
By Gad, it was such a relief to read this after “Let the Right One In”!! Yes, in Dorothy Sayers’ books there are actually characters that say “By Gad!”. If you already read Sayers books with gusto then you won’t need to read this review, unless you want to confirm your own righteousness. The Wimsey novels are kind of addictive and you just have to read them all. Unless, of course, you didn’t warm to Sayers’ detective hero, Lord Peter Wimsey, or if you find characters that say things like “By Gad!” deeply annoying. You might have guessed by now that I LOVE the Lord Wimsey novels. Admittedly, some are better than others – this is a strong one - but regardless I have yet to convince anyone else I know that these books are as fabulous as I think they are.

This novel begins with the death of General Fentiman, who is found in a chair by the fire at his club, the titular Bellona Club. Needless to say this shocks other club members, but it is supposed that he merely died of old age while reading the newspaper. Then it is discovered there are complications involving the will of his estranged sister, Lady Dormer, involving which of them died first. So our hero Wimsey is asked to investigate.

I thought I was reading a Wimsey novel I had previously overlooked, but I suspect I have read it before as I had strange premonitions about who did what that I couldn’t chalk up to simple cleverness. The nice thing about having a terrible memory for books you have read, though, is that you forget the words and phrasings, the small details, machinations, characterisations and convolutions of the plot, and so the pleasure of reading it for the second time is undiminished – augmented, even, as you can kid yourself that you must be cleverer than you really are because you think you know whodunnit.

Lord Peter Wimsey helped me through a rough patch once, so perhaps I am biased. Go on, give him a go – you know you want to! A word of advice, though – don’t start with The Five Red Herrings or Murder Must Advertise. These aren’t his best. The Unpleasantness at the Bellona Club is classic Wimsey, though.

Rating: 9 out of 10

Star of the Sea

By Joseph O’Connor
Really I picked up this book because it was on sale (only $3.95!) and because the cover blurb mentioned something about a monster stalking the decks of a ship, at night. So naturally I thought it would be about vampires. Really, there should be some kind of government inquiry into book jacket blurb writers because needless to say this book has nothing to do with vampires. OK, possibly I am obsessed with vampires, but what would you think the word “monster” is meant to represent, particularly when associated with “night”? (Apart from werewolves, maybe).

Lack of vampires not withstanding, this book was actually very absorbing. When I am trying to recommend a film to someone, I might say “I wouldn’t mind paying full price for that” or “Cheap Tuesday flick, man” or “Wait for it on video, bud” or just a bald “Don’t bother”. I think Star of the Sea classifies easily as a Cheap Tuesday book, possibly even a “Wouldn’t mind paying full price”, so feel free to ask for a lend of my copy.

The Star of the Sea is actually about the Irish potato famine. There are many characters involved, one of whom is a poor Irish peasant who has been appointed the task of murdering an Irish aristocrat on the trip over the Atlantic to America. Though the present-day plot is set on board, there are many flashbacks, in order to highlight who the characters are and how they got that way. It is very successful in showing the reality of the famine and how shocking it must have been; also the realities of travelling by ship back then and how yucky that must have been; also also some of the realities of immigration, and how enormous a decision this must be.

There is even a bit of post-modernism in there (I think it’s post-modernism, anyway, you post-modernists will have to tell me) where the aspiring author character despairs of writing a novel about the famine because it is impossible to write about something so terrible. And yet – we are reading a novel about the famine!! How post-modern.

The book is written as if it is a “piecing together of the facts”, well after the events occurred, and so is written from many different viewpoints and includes parts written as the Captain’s Log, unpublished memoirs or fiction by some of the characters (drawing heavily on actual factuals, of course) and so on. Also, in between each chapter the author has included an extract from letters written by Irish immigrants to the US. Chapters are subheaded things like “In which are sketched certain recollections of The Star of The Sea; the condition of her passengers and the evil which stalked among them”. (Seriously, stalking evil-doers? That can only mean vampires!). I found this all a bit of overkill and distracting from the story; I think it would have worked much better had the author left out all the frilly clever bits. All the chopping and changing made the story seem a bit overworked and diminished its credibility, rather than adding to it. I think the author did A Lot Of Research for this book and By Gad He Was Going To Use It All.

Still – it did make me stay up past my bedtime.

Rating: 7.5 out of 10

The Vesuvius Club

By Mark Gatiss
Well, I really quite enjoyed that. Mind you, I passed this book onto a friend straight after I’d finished, and she didn’t go for it at all – not gritty enough, apparently. So be warned.

This book is written by one of the people behind “The League of Gentlemen”, which was that simultaneously macabre, wicked, camp and occasionally disturbing show that was on the ABC a few years ago. So that should give you a bit of an idea about the style of this novel, although disappointingly there was no local store for local people featured in the book.

The Vesuvius Club introduces us to Lucifer Box, by day merely a devilishly handsome, charming and stylish painter and by night (and often also by day) a secret agent for Her Majesty’s government. (Or is that His Majesty’s government? It’s set in Edwardian times). Oh, and he’s also extremely vain, selfish and a general rake, not fussy about the gender of his conquests. (To quote Living Colour, everybody loves you when you’re bi). Box must investigate the mysterious deaths of some high-profile scientists, which lead him through the houses of fashionable London, some graveyards, some naughty clubs and eventually to the tunnels of Naples, nestled beneath Mount Vesuvius.

There were maybe a few too many unbelievable cliff hangers at the end (this isn’t a Beethoven symphony, after all!), but by and large quite an enjoyable novel. Cads make such attractive heroes. Isn’t that terrible?? Excellent holiday reading.

Rating: 8 out of 10

Silas Marner

By George Eliot
It’s been a while since I read Middlemarch; I remember enjoying it immensely (a good book to read while travelling on trains through the UK, incidentally) but had forgotten why. Reading Silas Marner reminded me – George Eliot takes you right into a community, building up the many characters and their foibles, illuminating the customs and beliefs of their society, and when she depicts foolishness, weakness or error, she does it kindly.

Silas Marner, a weaver, was brought up in “Lantern Yard”, an unspecified religious community, but is banished after a “friend” sets him up for stealing the church’s moolah and steals his chick. Marner makes his way to Raveloe, where he is not the most popular of residents, as the pain of his betrayal and banishment has made him a bitter and withdrawn person. He hoards his gold, earned through long hours on the loom, which is the only precious thing to him. So when it’s stolen, he kinda goes to pieces. Through chance, however, a young orphaned child turns up on his doorstep, bringing about his personal salvation. (He names the child Hephzibah, after his mother and sister; when it is noted that this is a bit of heavy duty name for a child he says, don’t worry, she will be called Eppie for short. I don’t know why I feel the need to note this – it’s just such a terrible name!! NB Apologies to all people called Eppie out there).

I have obviously been watching too many television soaps, because I expected many more twists and turns and disappointments and much more anguish before the finally happy end of the novel. Apparently this was Eliot’s favourite of her own work; I found it enjoyable and I love Eliot’s gentle style; but overall the story was a little bit “so what”. To channel the Queen for a moment, one isn’t always in the mood for a bit of nineteenth century novel. But if you are, this is a nice one.

Rating: 7 out of 10

She (2006)

By H Rider Haggard
I have a vague memory of seeing the film of this book, probably from when I was about 12, something about a woman stepping into a pillar of blue light and shrivelling up into a very old woman. How could I not want to read the book?? So, finally I got around to it.

Written by the same author who wrote King Solomon’s Mines and other tales of derring-do, She sees our heroes, Holly (a bloke, not very attractive, by his own admission, about 40-odd, the narrator of our story) and his adopted son Leo (very attractive, twenty-five, not quite as brainy and wise as Holly) travelling to deepest darkest Africa in search of a legendary race of people (the Amahagger) and their legendary Queen, Ayesha, who is said to have lived for thousands of years on the wild plains of Kôr. (This is the titular “She”, always italicised and short for “She-who-must-be-obeyed”; yes, this is where Rumpole got it from).

Our heroes know about all of this because of the writings on a ancient potsherd and various other bits and pieces left to Leo by his birth father, all contained in a locked chest with strict instructions not to open it before Leo’s 25th birthday. (And in true Victorian fashion, they even stop to have a cup of tea before opening it – obviously those Victorians would have passed the delayed gratification marshmallow test with flying colours, but I fear those Victorian adventurers could have waited so long for the second marshmallow that the original marshmallow would have rotted away, if such a thing is possible. I mean, imagine if the delayed gratification tester went out of the room and got hit by a bus? They might have waited for ever! Certainly the Victorian adventurer would never survive in a modern movie version of such events).

Anyway, Leo is apparently descended from Kallikrates, an ancient Greek priest loved by She but (mysteriously) also murdered by her. I think we can all see where this is going, can’t we? So Holly and Leo struggle through wild seas, fever-filled swamps and fight off dastardly natives (who speak Arabic, interestingly enough, which when translated into English for our benefit, contains lots of “thees” and “thous” and "didst thy knowests" and so on, which I must say was a little tiresome) who would kill them by putting a large red-hot cooking pot on their head, before eating them for tea, in order to find She and (supposedly) avenge Kallikrates death. Amazingly, it turns out that Leo is the exact image of Kallikrates!! Who would have thunk it??

This book is interesting in that Ayesha is not presented as evil – both men fall in love with her, although Holly concedes it might be because she is so amazingly beautiful and nothing to do with her brain, which is in pretty good shape, it must be said. (Ayesha holds her own in lots of philosophical discussions about right and wrong, good and evil, life vs. death and so on). In fact, Ayesha reminded me a lot of Akasha, Anne Rice’s Queen of the Dead – a two-thousand-year-old babe with a brain, neither truly good or bad, but wrapped up in her own desires. I wonder if Rice may have been influenced by Haggard? Anyway, call me Alisha from now on, obviously this style of name has got something going for it.

Rating: 6 out of 10

The Leopard (2006)

By Giuseppe Tomasi di Lampedusa
What can you say about a book that is an acknowledged masterpiece? It is beautiful, terribly sad, frequently amusing (in a sly kind of way)…not a book to read if you’re looking for an upper, though. Apparently it also made a lovely film, but I haven’t seen it so I can’t add my two bits on that.

The Leopard tells the story of the dying days of the Sicilian nobility, during and after the 1860 revolution, led by Garibaldi, that resulted in a unified Italy under King Victor Emmanuel. The main character is the Prince, Don Fabrizio, a Sicilian nobleman, who reflects on the changes to his country and way of life, while negotiating the rise of a new and increasingly wealthy middle class and the corresponding decrease in the fortunes and status of his own family. The novel seems to be about betrayals (personal and state), the sadness of things ending, the feeling that lives have been wasted, mortality, yet this is all presented gently and eloqently, so the the sadness steals over you while you think you are just enjoying the language.

I do wish I could read Italian, so I could read the original and then compare it to this translation. I wonder how different they are? It must be like writing a whole new book…well, kudos to Archibald Colquhuon (the translator), kudos. I remember being disappointed with Umberto Eco’s The Name of the Rose, because I thought the writing would be more beautiful than it was – it felt kind of clunky, and I wondered if the original Italian novel was more lyrical and poetical, or if Eco just wasn’t a poetical kind of guy. No such worries here, though.

Rating: 9.5 out of 10

The Prisoner of Zenda (2003)

By Anthony Hope
Okay this one’s not being counted in my Readathon tally either – again, I only got up to about page 50 before giving up. This is one of those “oh-my-god-you-look-just-like-the-King-who-has-just-mysteriously-disappeared-can-you-fill-in-for-him-and-get-it-on-with-his-chick?” books, written in “Boys Own Adventure” style. The Swashbuckling Hero is Rudolph Rassendyll, on holiday from England in the green forests of Zenda. The Bad Guy is “That damned hound, Black Michael”, the King’s brother. People say “Courage, lad!” to each other, look “paler than was his wont” and seem to bite their moustaches a lot when they’re nervous (??). There’s lots of drinking and smiting. It even features the odd buxom wench and rosy damsel!

I often like this kind of book (I’m eagerly waiting for the word “cad” to come back in style) but this was very tedious – too tedious to laugh at even. Don’t bother – I’m pretty sure a film was made of this one and for once I feel that the movie must be superior.

Rating: 0 out of 10

The Legend of Sleepy Hollow (2003)

By Washington Irving
In case you were wondering, this book bears very little resemblance to the recent movie of the same name – there is a headless horseman in the book, and many of the characters’ names are the same, but that’s about it. There are no wicked stepmothers, no crazy witches, no secret Wills, no bizarre dreams about long-dead parents, no magical symbols drawn on the floor, no autopsies and not much of a love story. Also, the hero isn’t anywhere as good-looking as Johnny Depp, but then dentistry wasn’t as advanced back then, was it?

The book isn’t very scary either, but it was written in the nineteenth century and tastes were different then – after all, in Bram Stoker’s Dracula, everyone seems to sit around drinking cups of tea, despite the presence of an all-consuming evil that could destroy the world at any minute.

It is well written, and kind of cute, but not very relevant, somehow – it’s good, but not compelling. I can’t see that many people would find it very interesting these days. It does have the advantage, though, of being very short.

Rating: 5 out of 10

Slaughterhouse 5 (2003)

By Kurt Vonnegut
I think I’ll find it difficult to say anything meaningful about this book because although it’s written in an amusing style it is about terrible things – the experiences of members of the American army during the fire-bombing of Dresden in the Second World War. Vonnegut himself was in Dresden at this time, as he says in the first chapter, but writes the story through the eyes of Billy Pilgrim, a chaplain’s assistant who became a successful optometrist after returning from the War but who also became “unstuck in time” – he may be in Dresden during the war one minute, and then 40 years ahead in his life the next, writing letters to the local paper about the planet Tralfamadore and how he was kidnapped by its inhabitants and kept in an intergalactic zoo for over 6 months. It manages to be both light and tragic simultaneously. Hmm I’m not sure what to say next, only that I thought this book was excellent and I will be reading more of Kurt Vonnegut soon. Although it has some science fiction overtones, it is primarily a book about how horrible people are to each other, so I don’t think despisers of science-fiction should worry.

Rating: 10 out of 10

An Instance of the Fingerpost (2003)

By Iain Pears
Iain Pears does Umberto Eco – I am being tough on poor old Iain Pears, aren’t I?? Set in England after the restoration of King Charles, this book is essentially a murder mystery – who murdered Dr Grove? – and consists of four sections, each told by a different character, relating certain events from their own viewpoint.

This is an interesting idea, as the four people have very different ideas about who killed Dr Grove and why, and often works very well. However, as always happens to me in these kinds of books, I lost track of who all the different doctors and monks and Earls and Lords were and tended to get bogged down in all the philosophical and religious discussion. (I skipped quite large sections of Eco’s The Name of the Rose; all the bits that seemed more like advanced lectures in religious history). The first section, told by the Venetian Marco da Cola, was especially tough going. However, it did get better as it went along, and the following three sections were easier to get into. These sections were written in a less formal style and dealt less with esoteric topics and more with revenge and betrayal and all those other topics close to all our hearts. The last two sections I did enjoy quite a lot.

Overall, though, the book did have a slight feeling of “effort” to it – Iain Pears had obviously done a lot of research for the book and was determined to include everything he possibly could. And what’s with the title? I’m still not sure what the “fingerpost” is exactly, it did come up near the end but by that stage I wasn’t terribly interested as it didn’t seem to have much bearing on the plot. Could I use it in a sentence? Nope.

Rating: 6.5 out of 10

Call for the Dead (2003)

By John Le Carre
A story involving Le Carre’s famous hero, George Smiley, the ultimate spy. Set around the same era as the James Bond novels (Cold War), but so much more interesting – probably because George Smiley has much more depth than Bondy, and because it’s a book it doesn’t matter so much that he’s a bit podgy and sweats a lot.

Smiley interviews an MP who’s been accused of having Communist sympathies – and the same man turns up dead the next day, apparently having killed himself after his talk with Smiley. There’s a scandal, and Smiley senses he’s about to be made the sacrificial lamb. Then someone tries to kill him and all sorts of other exciting things happen.

This is spying as I had always imagined it, with people sending each other coded messages on postcards and swapping secret documents in music cases at the theatre. Why is this so much more suspenseful than the shark attacks and voodoo magic of James Bond? Perhaps because it is easier to feel empathy with poor, sad, tired George Smiley.

Rating: 8 out of 10

Jeeves and the Feudal Spirit (2003)

By P G Wodehouse
If you like books where people say “Ho!” and “Ha!” and even “What Ho!” a lot then I reckon you should try the adventures of the hapless man-about-town Bertie Wooster and his unflappable butler, Jeeves.

This is not my favourite Jeeves book so far but still very enjoyable. Bertie Wooster is interrupted in his reading of a thrilling new novel “The Mystery of the Pink Crayfish” by Rex West (I wish someone would write this novel) to attend to the problems of his Aunt Dahlia, who is trying to sell her woman’s literary magazine Milady’s Boudoir to some difficult house guests, without her husband discovering that she pawned her pearls to pay for its publication. As usual things go terribly wrong and Bertie gets himself engaged (accidentally) to a woman who would prefer him to read the works of T.S. Eliot and Auden. As usual, however, everyone is saved by Jeeves in the end.

I picked up a few good insults in this one – how does “inhuman gargoyle” grab you? Or “You ghastly sheepfaced fugitive from hell”? Or even “You revoting young piece of cheese”?
I should say, that although I love these books, I expect a lot of people won’t – my friend Tash can’t stand them.

NB Some of Rex West’s other thrilling titles include Murder in Mauve, The Case of the Poisoned Doughnut and Inspector Biffen Views the Body.

Rating: 8 out of 10

Prester John (2003)

By John Buchan
I got a bit confused reading this book because I kept getting mixed up between the author’s name and the name of one of the main protagonists. Too many Johns – what was the author thinking??

Most famous for his novel The thirty-nine steps, which has been made into a movie several times, this book sees our young hero, David Crawfurd, travelling to Blauwildebeestfontein (yes, that’s right, Blauwildebeestfontein – Monty Python couldn’t have done better if they tried) in sort of deepest darkest colonial Africa, in order to sell lots of foodstuffs and other goods to all those intellectually challenged natives. Not surprisingly, our hero runs afoul of a native uprising, in particular the compelling and powerful figure of the black minister John Laputa, who claims to be the incarnation of an ancient African hero, Prester John. Also, of course, there are large amounts of diamonds around – apparently one of the worst things you could do at the time was to engage in “IDB”, which is something to do with the illegal sale and purchase of diamonds, but I didn’t quite manage to figure out what “IDB” stood for at any time during the book.

This book is so well written, and an excellent adventure story – it is just peculiar to read now because of its obvious racism, which I guess was typical of the era (1910-ish). The most peculiar thing is, though, that it’s almost as if Buchan wrote it deliberately so that the reader would see through Crawfurd’s xenophobia and sympathise with the Africans’ point of view. The “anti-hero” himself, Prester John, is much admired by the hero, for his strength, his education, his integrity and his ability to inspire and lead the people of Africa into war with the European settlers. If someone now was trying to write a book about that time, and therefore trying to “infuse” the text with contemporary views, this is the way it would sound.

Rating: 8 out of 10

Frankenstein (2005)

By Mary Shelley

Heyyy, wait a minute…where’s Igor? Where’s the lightning? Where are the bolts coming out of Frankenstein’s head?? Where’s Sting???

Well it certainly was interesting finally reading the original. There is no Igor about to say “A brain, a brain, I need a brain for my master!” and Shelley is surprisingly coy about the whole how-to-bring-a-bag-of-bones to life thing. All of a sudden, Frankenstein’s monster opens his eyes, and there he is. Descriptions of the monster are few, apart from a general suggestions of supreme ugliness and the yellowness of his eyes. He is also very agile and strong, which does not suggest the lumbering zombie of the films.

What is more surprising than the lack of Hollywood special effects, though, is that whatever brains Frankenstein managed to get hold of (yes he did all his own dirty work), they appear to be top quality. No grunting here – Frankenstein’s monster teaches himself to read and write and is quite happy to converse on topics as in-depth as man’s inhumanity to man, the nature of God, the meaning of life etc…You see, the monster taught himself to read and speak from such noble texts as Milton’s Paradise Lost and Plutarch’s Lives. Also he finds Frankenstein’s diary, carelessly left lying around when he fled his laboratory, and so learns the circumstances of his creation.

The creation of the monster casts Frankenstein into a deep existential funk, into which he relapses numerous times throughout the novel, beating his breast and cursing himself for bringing this evil upon the world. (This gets a bit tiresome). He makes it his mission to destroy the “daemon” he has created. Yet we seem almost invited to side with the monster, who was created imperfect and then spurned – mirroring Satan’s struggle in Paradise Lost.

Rating: 8.5 out of 10
Even though Frankenstein drones on a bit, beautifully gothic.

The War of the Worlds (2005)

The War of the Worlds
By HG Wells

I grew up listening to the 1975 rock opera of “The War of the Worlds”, co-written by someone from The Moody Blues and featuring the voice of Richard Burton as hero-voiceover man. It was one of my favourite pieces of music in the whole world, along with “Carmina Burana” by Karl Orff. (Yes, my mother was worried). So, which is better – the book, or the 1970s rock opera?? The rock opera. No wait a minute, of course I didn’t mean that…the book, the book is better, of course, it’s the book. But the rock opera will always hold a special place in my heart…

Still it was peculiar reading the book knowing the words to the rock opera nearly off by heart – bits of sentences would lapse into Richard Burton voiceover and synthesisers in my head and then lapse back into my imaginary 1890s voiceover, which made it a bit of a disjointed reading experience. The rock opera was quite clever at pulling out Wells’ really striking sentences though. I will have to go and see the film now and find out if they used any of the original text – I hope not, because I really don’t want to have Tom Cruise voiceover in my head as well.

Interesting to compare the differences between 1895 and 1975 though – in the book the main character is married (i.e. does not have a girlfriend called Carrie living in London with her Dad), there is no “Beth” who is the pastor’s female companion (I think they must have decided they needed at least one chick in the rock opera so they made her up), the whole section with the Parson is much more “Lord of the Flies” than I expected, and the aliens do not run around going “Ooohhhlaaaaaa!” (spelt “Ulla”) like they do in the rock opera. (There are a few Ullas at the end of the book when the Martians are feeling a bit poorly). The aliens still get killed by “minute, invisible bacteria” though – oh dang, I just gave away the ending!

It was also interesting reading this book in today’s climate of terrorist attacks and live media coverage. Back in 1895, when the book was written, Martians could attack Woking and it would take a few days for the news to reach London, all communication was by telegram, and even then no one really believed it. (MARTIANS LANDED STOP SEND REINFORCEMENTS STOP). The hero and his wife escape on a horse and cart. People learn all their news from the papers. (Golly the hero reads a lot of papers – including the St James’ Gazette!). Not being from 1895 and therefore unable to check matters of accuracy, the book seemed a surprisingly realistic account of how an alien invasion may have progressed at the time, and I’m not surprised it fooled some people when it was broadcast as a radio show a few decades later.

Still, I’m very glad to find out that Wells was not responsible for the line (on discovering one of the Martian attack machines has headed off to London) “London! I hadn’t dreamed there could be danger to Carrie and her father so many miles away!” which struck me as a stupid thing to say even when I was 10 because after all they’ve already made it from Mars.

The 1890s make themselves felt in other ways, as demonstrated by the following excerpt: And before we judge them [the Martians] too harshly, we must remember what ruthless and utter destruction our own species has wrought…upon its own inferior races. The Tasmanians, in spite of their human likeness, were entirely swept out of existence in a war of extermination waged by European immigrants, in the space of fifty years. I’m not sure which was the more startling assertion – that the Tasmanian Aboriginal people were “like” humans, or that a war of extermination was waged – it’s not often you hear of that part of our history actually called a war, or even that there was a conscious effort to kill the Aboriginals, and it is particularly unexpected in a nineteenth-century text.

Rating: 8 out of 10
A book to read because it is interesting, rather than because it is emotionally involving.

The Poisonwood Bible (2005)

By Barbara Kingsolver
This is one of the best books I have read for some time; I found it quite unputdownable. I nearly chucked at sickie on the Monday after I started reading it so I could stay home and finish it. (Bosses, take note: I did not chuck a sickie).

This book tells the story of a family from southern USA who move to a small village in the Congo (now Zaire) in 1959 to convert the Congolese to Christianity. The family consists of Dad (Nathan Price), Mum (Orleanna Price) and four girls (Rachel, Leah, Adah and Ruth May). On arrival, the family proceeds to slowly unravel. The father is a evangelical Baptist preacher, truly astonishing for his incapacity for empathy or to recognise the strain his choices placed on his wife and children. Ooh, I really didn’t like him – neither did anyone else in the book, much.

The story is told from the perspective of the four girls and occasionally through Orleanna’s eyes. Alternately fascinating and dreadful, the book shows how the Congo slowly begins to shape the girls’ thoughts (adaptability – or the lack of it – is an amazing thing), and how their experiences there make a return to “normal” life impossible. Nathan Price’s original plan was to stay there for a year; some of the characters never return to the US.

Quick soapbox: This book also triggered a chip I have on my shoulder about Europeans – I reckon they get let off really lightly when it comes to colonial crimes against humanity. There is no question that the English committed many crimes in their bid to conquer the world, or whatever they were doing, but so did the French, the Portuguese, the Spanish and (in this case) the Belgians – we never seem to hear about their histories so much. But then, maybe that’s because we live in a country colonised by the English.

Rating: 10 out of 10
This is a book that stays with you for some time.

The Diary of a Nobody (2005)

By George and Weedon Grossmith
Well I have to say this book didn’t quite live up to Evelyn Waugh’s testimonial on the back cover: “The funniest book in the world”. Mind you, Waugh did write Brideshead Revisited, so he wasn’t exactly a laugh-a-minute kind of guy. Maybe he had lower standards when it came to humour than the rest of us. In fact, were Waugh still about today, I’d write him a terse but witty note and ask him to refund my purchase money. Not that it was a terrible book or anything, it was well-written, and somewhat amusing, but in a Mr Bean kind of way, or like the boss in “The Office”, in which the humour comes from people being made to look foolish – only in a much milder form.

The hero of the book, Mr Charles Pooter, is an ordinary and unassuming man and a well-drawn character, just not a particularly interesting one. He writes in the introduction as follows: I fail to see – because I do not happen to be a “Somebody” – why my diary should not be interesting. This book proves that interesting diary entries are entirely independent of the status of the diarist, fictional or not.

The book was originally published in Punch magazine, in serial form, and might have worked better this way – familiar friends, who’s modest adventures you could enjoy each week; not required to be astonishing or confounding. Interesting aside: both of the authors worked with Gilbert and Sullivan, of “The Pirates of Penzance” fame. There are no babies swapped at birth in this story though. One good thing, Pooter’s son is called Lupin, possibly a good name for a future son of mine, if my husband will stand for it – it might end up being the name for the cat.

Rating: 5 out of 10
A bit dull, really – probably only for extreme turn-of-the-century literature fans.

Queen of the Flowers (2005)

By Kerry Greenwood

You know, I find that I don’t really like Greenwood’s heroine, Phryne Fisher. I tried to read one of her mysteries before and gave it up quite fast; Phryne is kind of cold and superior, and, to paraphrase her own words, not prone to guilt or remorse, or to any extreme kind of emotion, in fact. I did warm a bit towards her in the end of this book, for being so capable, and the plot is quite satisfyingly twisty, so I might be persuaded to read another one. (Plot of this one in a nutshell: Phryne is hired to locate a missing girl who is to be part of the Flower Parade at St Kilda; also one of her adopted daughters is having who-is-my-real-father issues).

There is something quite insufferable about Phryne, though. I started to wonder whether I was succumbing to culturally indoctrinated ideas of what women should be like – you know, all warm and nurturing, or at least prone to a good bit of irrational PMT. I wondered, am I judging her more harshly than the boys? (Boy private eyes, I mean). For example, I am quite fond of Sir Peter Wimsey, another toffee-nosed well-to-do detective-because-he-can-afford-to-be literary character. But Sir Peter is tortured, sometimes, and prone to self-doubt. I also enjoyed Sherlock Holmes stories when I was younger, who is not renowned for his emotional depth - but we could excuse him a bit because he was a genius and because there was good old Dr Watson there with him, who had a more normal range of human responses and got hurt when Holmes left him out of things and so on. It’s all that personal growth business – Phryne doesn’t seem to feel she needs any. Also it annoys me that she’s called “Phryne” because it’s so difficult to spell.

In any case, I have the impression Greenwood wouldn’t be the slightest bit perturbed at Phryne not being universally liked – and I’m quite certain that Phryne herself wouldn’t give a toss.

Rating: 7 out of 10
A good lazy Sunday read when you’re in a superior mood – or, to feel, like Phryne, read it in the bath with a good French red.