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Introduction:

I'm fond of reading, and in this page I propose to write a paragraph of reactions to the most recent books I've read. If you've read one you might like to comment also.

Summary:

I tend to move in cycles through a range of styles; "railway thrillers" are fine, but I like to try out some of the classics, too, and a book which is well-reviewed also might go on the list. I probably own more biographies and autobiographies than any other single genre (although science fiction paperbacks are numerous, too). I won't discuss technical books here, though.

The last few books I've read have been (most recent first):

• Graham Greene: The Power and the Glory
  Once again I'm not likely to differ from many interpreters, who see the tale as one of love and redemption albeit drawn with charcoal. However, two things struck me - Greene makes the whisky priest supremely ineffectual in his vocation, in that none of the folk he comes in contact with, from his daughter to the Indian baby to the mestizo Judas, draw any benefit from the contact - and yet the whisky priest is at the bottom supremely confident in his identification with God. Recall how he thinks that his demise will be the end of God in the region? I don't think that even the lieutenant would expect that, in his own heart.
  
• Eric Idle: The Road to Mars (humourous SF)
• several 20s to 40s mysteries, holiday reading
• Shane Maloney: Stiff ((hometown humour)
• Kerstin Ekman: Blackwater (novel/thriller)
• David Brin: Heaven's Reach (portentous SF)
  • end of 1999
• WM Thackeray: Vanity Fair
• Graham Greene: Brighton Rock
  A difficult first book - for Greene readers and for Greene, too, perhaps. I've seen some of the commentary, but I also felt that Greene's awful (awe-ful) scenario of social cruelty is, probably, still likely now, but we think that now is worse than the good old days; and after such a black first book it is a surprise that Greene continued (and it didn't seem to be cathartic!)
  
• Judith Armstrong: Anya, Countess of Adelaide (biographical faction; only Adelaide natives could like it, but I didn't)
• George Seddon: Landprints (Essays about my environment)
• E Annie Proulx: The Shipping News (modern novel of place)
• Murray Bail: Eucalyptus (modern novel; the bookshop shelved it in Gardening...)
• Dick Francis: Driving Force (racecourse thriller)
• Janet McCalman: Struggletown (20th century social history)
• Jane Austen: Sense and Sensibility
• David Malouf: Remembering Babylon
• Sue Woolf: Leaning Towards Infinity (modern novel said to be about Mathematics, but it wasn't).