Blog Archive

1 June 2024

Norfolk Island and beyond

Me at Colleen McCullough’s grave with my copy of Morgan’s Run"

I stopped posting to this blog about the middle of last month because Jenny and I went to Norfolk Island. The internet at our accommodation crashed virtually every night as everyone tried to access it, so I thought I’d leave everything until I got home.

I managed to locate the general area where Richard Morgan, the historical protagonist of Colleen McCullough’s Morgan’s Run, lived on the island. It has an interesting history which I will eventually reveal in a review. I also made a film around Kingston, which is the convict settlement, the second settlement of the island after it was first abandoned in 1814. I haven’t had time to edit that, but it had been my hope to include it with my review of Morgan’s Run. The review and the film are somewhat delayed at the moment by another death in our family. I’m focussing my time on fulfilling commitments I have made to others, as well as the upcoming funeral and cleanout.

On a happier topic, we also visited Colleen McCullough’s house on Norfolk Island, where we met her long-time housekeeper, Rebecca, who gave a tour. The art in the house is amazing, as is Colleen McCullough’s study and library. We managed to acquire one of Colleen McCullough’s last few author copies of her books from her publishers. There are only copies of The Masters of Rome Series left. All else has been sold (although not her personal library, of course, which remains intact and is not for sale). Even though I already had a copy and have read it, I bought a first edition of The First Man in Rome. I thought it would be good to have, since the volume has an interesting provenance.

It may be another fortnight before the Reading Project can return to normal postings and planned updates. One piece of progress made that was not recorded in last month’s blog posts is that the main page of the website is now also phone friendly. I plan to make more progress on the updates in the future. And I’ll try to get what content I can published in the meantime.

- bikerbuddy

14 June 2024

We’re back with a new video and a review pending

The Reading Project has been pretty dormant the last few weeks, since Jenny and I went to Norfolk Island. I had planned to complete a review of Morgan’s Run when we returned and cut together a video I made on the island, but a family death and other commitments have put all that on hold until now.

I finally edited the new video yesterday and I’ve made it available on YouTube. It’s 54 minutes of me rambling about Kingston (as in walking and talking), but the history is fascinating and the place is beautiful, so maybe those may outweigh the length and my dull presentation. I plan to get the review of Morgan’s Run published by Monday (Sydney time), and the video will appear at the bottom of the review. But if you are genuinely interested, here it is now:

- bikerbuddy

Women’s Prize Announced

The Women's Prize was announced on 13 June 2024, with two separate Prizes this year.

The Women's Prize for Fiction was won by V. V. Ganeshananthan for Brotherless Night a book set in Sri Lanka during the vicious civil war in the 1980s.

The inaugural Women's Prize for Non-Fiction was won by Naomi Klein for Doppelganger.

To read more about both Prize winners, and to see what other books made this year's Shortlists, check out the Women's Prize website, womensprize.com

- Toriaz

15 June 2024

Some Dystopian cheer

Today was meant to be my first opportunity to get back into reviewing books after almost a month of downtime for one thing and another. But I felt a little lethargic this morning and under motivated. So when I had an opportunity to go to Penrith, instead, and browse the bookshelves of Harry Hartog, my resolve completely melted. My son had recently given me a gift certificate for Harry Hartog and it was, as my mother used to say, burning a hole in my pocket.

In short, I felt like buying a book to cheer me up, even if I don’t need another. And here is where the irony comes in. I found two books that somehow appealed to me which I had no familiarity with: Karin Boye’s Kallocain and Kōbō Abe’s The Ark Sakura. Both are Dystopian novels from last century. If you read on you’ll see they’re hardly the stuff of cheering up!

Here’s the blurb from the back of my copy of Kallocain:

Written midway between Brave New World and Nineteen Eighty-Four, as the terrible events of the Second World War were unfolding, Kallocain depicts a totalitarian ‘World State’ which seeks to crush the individual entirely. In this desolate, paranoid landscape of ‘police eyes’ and ‘police ears’, the obedient citizen and middle-ranking scintist Leo Kall discovers a drug that will force anyone who takes it to tell the truth. But can private thought really be obliterated? Karin Boye’s chilling novel of creeping alienation shows the dangers of acquiescence and the power of resistance, no matter how futile.

Here’s the blurb from the back of The Ark Sakura:

In this unnerving science-fiction fable, a recluse known as ‘Mole’ retreats to a vast underground bunker, only to find that strange guests, booby traps and a giant toilet may prove even greater obstacles than nuclear apocalypse.

I look forward to reading them!

- bikerbuddy