The Narrow Road to the Deep North by Richard Flanagan

December 28, 2014 by Christina

Fiction — print. Alfred A. Knopf, 2014. 334 pgs. Library copy. Winner of the 2014 Man Booker Prize and nominated for the 2014 Miles Franklin, Flanagan’s novel centers on a single day in a Japanese slave labor camp in August 1943 where Australian prisoners of war struggle to survive horrific and torturous conditions as they are forced to build the Burma Railway. Dorrigo Evans, an Australian doctor, tries desperately to save his follow POWs in the camp while recollections of […]

Categories: 2014 Reads, Asia, Fiction, Oceania • Tags: Richard Flanagan

All the Birds, Singing by Evie Wyld

November 3, 2014 by Christina

Fiction — audiobook. Read by Cat Gould. Blackstone Audio, 2014. 6 hours, 51 minutes. Library copy. Wyld’s novel straddles time and space — its main character Jake Whyte, a woman in the male-dominated sheep industry, lives on an unnamed British island during the odd chapters and spends the even chapters growing up outside of Darwin, Australia. The older Jake lives alone and is distraught to find one of her sheep has been killed by someone — or, something — in […]

Categories: 2014 Reads, Audiobook, Europe, Fiction, Oceania, United Kingdom • Tags: Cat Gould, Evie Wyld

The Husband’s Secret by Liane Moriarty

October 13, 2014 by Christina

Fiction — audiobook. Read by Caroline Lee. Dreamscape Media, 2013. 13 hours, 44 minutes. Library copy.  My darling Cecilia, if you’re reading this, then I have died. Cecilia Fitzpatrick finds a letter addressed to her from her husband instructing her to open the letter upon his death tucked amongst tax returns and receipts from the past twelve or so years of their marriage. Assuming her unorganized husband forgot to pass the letter along to their solicitor, Cecilia is unable to […]

Categories: 2014 Reads, Audiobook, Book Club, Crime, Fiction, Oceania • Tags: Caroline Lee, Liane Moriarty

The Myth of Continents by Martin W. Lewis and Kären E. Wigen

July 14, 2014 by Christina

Nonfiction — print. University of California Press, 1997. 344 pgs. Borrowed. Subtitled “A Critique of Metageography”, Lewis and Wigen offer a critique of the way we divide the world – East versus West, First World versus Third World, the seven (or eight depending on who you ask) continents. Going beyond the argument that holding the “West” above the “East” or assigning countries into rank is racist and paternalistic, Lewis and Wigen argue that topographically the continents of the world do […]

Categories: 2014 Reads, Africa, Asia, Cartography, Europe, Middle East, Nonfiction, Oceania, South America • Tags: Kären E. Wigen, Martin W. Lewis

Wanting by Richard Flanagan

January 9, 2012 by Christina

Fiction — print. Atlantic Monthly Press, 2009. Originally published 2008. 272 pgs. Library copy. Flanagan’s novel is set in Van Diemen’s Land (present-day Tasmania) and intertwined two storylines set over twenty years apart – Sir John Franklin and his wife, Lady Jane, as they adopt an Aboriginal girl named Mathinna during Sir John’s tenure as governor of Van Diemen’s Land and, later, Charles Dickens as he helps refute (at the request of Lady Jane) a popular story that Sir John […]

Categories: 2012 Reads, Fiction, Oceania • Tags: Richard Flanagan

Surprise Island by Barbara Willard

January 11, 2011 by Christina

Willard’s novel was a childhood favorite of either my mother or my father; I cannot recall exactly who now. But within its yellowed pages is a story about Jill and Lambert (known as Limpet), whom in anticipation of winning a South Sea island in a dog food contest, trespass on their neighbor’s estate along with their friend, Brandy the Saint Bernard, to try out island living. Since the book has been on my shelf for years, it qualified for the […]

Categories: 2011 Reads, Fiction, Oceania • Tags: Barbara Willard

The Thorn Birds by Colleen McCullough

August 4, 2009 by Christina

Fiction — print. Avon, 1977. 692 pgs. Received from PaperBackSwap. Last Christmas, while waiting for a table at a restaurant, my dad and I perused the shelves of Barnes & Noble. He was shocked at how many books on display I had read, but he was equally shocked that I had never read nor heard of The Thorn Birds. I ordered a copy off PaperBackSwap and opened to the first page to find a quote that made me aching to […]

Categories: 2009 Reads, Chunkster, Fiction, Oceania • Tags: Colleen McCullough

The Unknown Terrorist by Richard Flanagan

January 1, 2009 by Christina

Fiction — print. Grove Press, 2007. Originally published 2006. 320 pgs. Library copy. What would you do if you turned on the television and saw you were the most wanted terrorist in the country? Gina Davies is about to find out. After spending a night with an attractive stranger, she has become a prime suspect in the investigation of an attempted terrorist attack. When police find three un-exploded bombs at a stadium and her enigmatic lover goes missing, Davies spends […]

Categories: 2009 Reads, Fiction, Oceania • Tags: Richard Flanagan