The book is enjoyable and come complete with pictures (shown to the
meeting for Gill's benefit), and as a bonus you learn a bit of Australian
along the way (for example, red haired people are frequently called
"Blue").
Rory
Doreen liked the book and the people in it, but was bothered by the notion that, the book being thought by some to be autobiographical, the boy would turn out to Melvyn Bragg.
A short discussion followed on the merits or otherwise of Melvyn Bragg,
the meeting being fairly well split between Braggophiles and Braggophobes
- still, everybody liked Dead Ringers, so that's all right then.
Rory
However, with his latest books - including this one - Hiaasen seems to be recycling old material. Further, Doreen's favourite Hiaasen character did not even appear. That said, he does the recycling very well.
Some of the characters were less memorable, and although Hiaasen appears
to have gone off the boil a bit the book is still a good read.
Doreen
Set in World War 2, this is a book about children and how they misunderstand what's happening in the adult world due to a lack of information.
The narrator, a boy, and his friend next door decide that the friend's mother is a German spy. They find her diary and misunderstand it (for instance, the marks made at four-week intervals), they follow her and watch her, and misunderstand everything as evidence of her treachery. The consequences are dire.
Not a comedy but a very good, well done and atmospheric book. Worrying
rather than enjoyable.
Doreen
Quite funny, but over-hyped and therefore disappointing.
Doreen
It's about a class of low achieving boys who are given sacks of flour to look after as if they were babies. The sacks are regularly weighed and checked for cleanliness and so on, and the boys are told they're being watched. Mostly the boys come to hate their "babies," although there is also some fondness. One boy, deserted by his father, works out his feelings on the flour baby; another sets up, and charges for, a crèche.
Very entertaining, funny and moving but not patronising. Thoroughly
recommended.
Doreen
The second half is longer pieces, not on the American theme. For example,
there's an interesting piece on the beginnings of the Taliban and another
good piece by J M Coetzee on arriving in London for the first time.
Andrew
Island is about a rather unlikeable woman in her early 30s, abandoned as a child by her mother and brought up in care - and harbouring a grudge. She realises that she can trace her mother, and finds her living on the island of the title. She moves in as a lodger, not revealing the relationship, and they really dislike each other.
The book is very Ruth Rendell/PD James-ish, and yes, there is a murder.
Andrew
The book is interesting and informative about the time and deals with
women's role in that society, both what it was and what they wanted it to
be.
Gill
The book is written from her direct experiences, and it's heartbreaking. Agnes feels the unhappiness of not fitting into a household, of not liking - or being liked by - parents or children, and great loneliness. Some of the children are ghastly, particularly the boys.
Apparently after the book was published some employers began to treat their governesses less cruelly.
Gill recommends the book.
Gill
Ned Kelly portrays himself as the victim of poor circumstances leading to an almost inevitable downward spiral - he was from a poor Irish family, lower than dirt, all constantly harassed by the police and was apprenticed by his mother to the bushranger (outlaw/highwayman) Harry Powers by his mother and without his knowledge. He was accused of murders he didn't commit, and writes letters to reveal the truth as he sees it to figures he views as influential - not delivered due to betrayal.
The story in convincing and generates much sympathy for Kelly, and the reader is saddened by the inevitable ending (foretold at the beginning of the book).
As an interesting contrast, in Down Under Bill Bryson dismisses the
outlaw with a few brief words along the lines of "murderous thug who
deserved to be hanged, and was."
Seán
He tells anecdotes to illustrate the hugeness of this country/continent, which make the point pretty well.
Seán enjoyed the book, but it's not his best - and one of the anecdotes was strongly reminiscent of one from another book (but couldn't quite
place it).
Seán
Gill and Doreen observed that it was a "cold" book.
Seán
Unfortunately the book didn't really portray Harrison as a character, and Seán wanted to know what made him tick (no pun intended). Similarly, Seán wanted more information about the clocks.
A very popular, popular science book. Too popular and not enough science?
Seán
One person can remember the book, and indeed still has a copy. A childhood friend of the disappeared book's disappeared author, he's one of the narrators of this Alchemist's Apprentice, and soon after the book opens he finds a second copy of Rhodes' book in a Hay-on-Wye bookshop and thinks he might finally be able to solve the riddle of the disappearance. (The second narrator is the disappeared author of the disappeared book).
The real author of the original Alchemist's Apprentice (are you still with me?, the one who's disappeared) unknowingly gains the ability to change reality, changing his train to East Anglia into a rather more worrying train in Stalin's Russia, leading to interrogation and worse, gets out by the skin of his teeth and learns how to use his new power - leading to the whole intertwined spiral story. The beginning and end are good and clearly thoroughly worked out, but in the middle it gets a bit boring...so then I magicked up some money, then a car, then a house, then a good party...
An intricate book. Worth reading.
Seán
The books finished, the meeting discussed Higg's Boson and Theories of Everything, and what the difference was between mass and weight, and whether it mattered. Only to atronauts, cosmologist and particle physicists, was the conclusion.