Miles Franklin, My Brilliant Career

Miles Franklin, My Brilliant Career and My Career Goes Bung. Angus & Robertson, 1990. The debut novel from one of Australia's first major authors, and the follow up (not so much a sequel as a subversion), bound as an omnibus edition. The former, written in 1899 and published in 1901, was a milestone in Australia's early literary history. It describes the coming of age of a young woman in the Australian outback during a period of drought, when families on the land were struggling to hold onto their properties. The later, written in 1902 but not published until 1946 due to the manuscript being lost for many years, is a less significant work, but still and interesting read.

Stats to Date

Books Read: 24

Books by Male Authors: 17½
Books by Female Authors: 6½

Books by Australian Authors: 6

Fiction Books: 17
    Genre Books: 9
Verity Books: 7
    Literature Books: 3
    Science Books: 2
    History Books: 1
    Fitness Books: 1

Week 26: The Dragons of Eden by Carl Sagan

Carl Sagan, The Dragons of Eden. Coronet, 1977. Another re-read from the last millenium. Subtitled Speculations on the Evolution of Human Intelligence, Carl Sagan discusses what was then known about how intelligence and the brain evolved. Obviously any 40 year old science book is going to show its age, but it still offers a fascinating insight into the development of intelligent life on Earth (and the speculation that other primates and the cetaceans share many of the same characteristics as humans as regards self-awareness and language).

Stats to Date

Books Read: 22

Books by Male Authors: 17½
Books by Female Authors: 4½

Books by Australian Authors: 4

Fiction Books: 15
    Genre Books: 9
Verity Books: 7
    Literature Books: 3
    Science Books: 2
    History Books: 1
    Fitness Books: 1

Week 25: Training for Cycling

Davis Phinney and Connie Carpenter with Peter Nye, Training for Cycling. Perigee, 1992. A re-read of a book I haven't read in a long, long time. Although pitched at competitive cyclists, a lot of the material is still of use to recreational cyclists. I did the Rapha Challenge last year, and while I successfully completed it (unlike about 65,000 people who signed up and didn't finish), I'd like to do better this year, so I need to do some training.

Stats to Date

Books Read: 21

Books by Male Authors: 16½
Books by Female Authors: 4½

Books by Australian Authors: 4

Fiction Books: 15
    Genre Books: 9
Verity Books: 6
    Literature Books: 3
    Science Books: 1
    History Books: 1
    Fitness Books: 1

Week 24: The Three Musketeers

Alexandre Dumas père, The Three Musketeers. Wordsworth Classics, 1993. For once on of my books coincides with the weekly book bingo, as this one is set in the 17th century, during the reign of Louis XIII.


Stats to Date

Books Read: 20

Books by Male Authors: 16
Books by Female Authors: 4

Books by Australian Authors: 4

Fiction Books: 15
    Genre Books: 9
Verity Books: 5
    Literature Books: 3
    Science Books: 1
    History Books: 1

Week 24: Henry James

Henry James. The Turn of the Screw and The Aspern Papers. Penguin Classics, 1984.
This is an omnibus edition of two of James’ tales, which I have been reading for some time while commuting on the bus, and have finally finished.

The Aspern Papers (1888, revised 1907–9). This took a long time to read, far longer than the length would suggest, even given that it was read on relatively short commutes, which accords with the novella failing to hold my interest.
The Turn of the Screw (1898, revised 1907–9) on the other hand was riveting—to the point of becoming lost in the story and being carried some 3½ kilometres beyond my bus stop. A horror novella which works not by jumps or explicit gore, but by simply and slowly ratcheting up the tension. It’s never clear whether the ghosts really exist, or whether they are entirely the narrator’s delusion.

Stats to Date

Books Read: 19

Books by Male Authors: 15
Books by Female Authors: 4

Books by Australian Authors: 4

Fiction Books: 14
    Genre Books: 9
Verity Books: 5
    Literature Books: 3
    Science Books: 1
    History Books: 1

Week 23: Professor Challenger

Sir Arthur Conan Doyle. The Lost World and Other Stories. Wordsworth Classics, 1995.

This is an omnibus edition of Doyle’s three Professor Challenger novels (more like two novellas and a novelette) and two short stories.

The Lost World (1912) is the prototypical “lost world” novel, where explorers in some remote, uncharted area (the Amazon) discover an area which somehow has been isolated from the rest of the world (geological uplift causing unscalable cliffs) filled with prehistoric life. Quite an enjoyable read.
The Poison Belt (1913) is an early science fiction novel, where the earth enters a poisonous region of space and the consequences it has on the human race. Interesting read, the more so because I finally caught Doyle mading an error of fact (trains have deadman’s brakes, so if something happens to the driver they don’t go careering on at full speed into a crash).
When the World Screamed (1928) and The Disintegration Machine (1929) are two science fiction shorts, both good reads.

So that’s four good works in one volume.


The Land of Mist (1926) is otherwise. Doyle was for most of his later life a Spiritualist, and the novel spends far more pages proselytizing than it spends on story-telling. What little story it does tell consists of the conversion of the main characters from The Lost World and The Poison Belt to the cause of Spiritualism. Thoroughly disappointing.

I’m certain I’ve read The Poison Belt and When the World Screamed at some point in the (dim, dark, and distant) past, and may have read The Disintegration Machine, but it didn’t have quite the same level of déjà vu.

Stats to Date

Books Read: 17

Books by Male Authors: 13
Books by Female Authors: 4

Books by Australian Authors: 4

Fiction Books: 12
    Genre Books: 8
Verity Books: 5
    Literature Books: 3
    Science Books: 1
    History Books: 1

Catch Up, part 2

Things aren't quite as bad as I had throught--I missed two of the books I had read during the disturbed period:

• Wilkie Collins The Moonstone: a brilliant detective mystery.
• Geoffrey Blainey The Tyranny of Distance: A history of Australia from the early European exploration until the 1960s (when the book was written), showing how Australia's geographic isolation influenced its settlement and development.

Stats to Date

Books Read: 14

Books by Male Authors: 10
Books by Female Authors: 4

Books by Australian Authors: 4

Fiction Books: 9
    Genre Books: 5
Verity Books: 5
    Literature Books: 3
    Science Books: 1

    History Books: 1

Week 5: A Brief History of Time by Stephen Hawking

Stephen W. Hawking. A Brief History of Time. Bantam Books, 1988.

This is a re-read, but I read it while I was living in Sheffield—that’s late last millennium, so I can count it for the challenge.

I'm struggling to put pen to paper with this one. The man is a genius—one of the most important physicists of our, or any other time. The book is an important attempt to bring at least a basic understanding of a number of important developments in physics to the lay person. Yet I find it rather unsatisfying.

The science, at the level presented, isn’t particularly difficult (at least for some definition of difficult—although it wasn’t my speciality, I have done some introductory undergraduate physics, albeit many, many years ago, which gives me a bit of a head start), although you do have to spend some time thinking about the concepts.

It’s more that the author is so far beyond we mere mortals, and he struggles to connect with us, the prose coming across as stilted and at times rather forced. This was reinforced because I’d recently re-read In Search of Schrödinger's Cat by John Gribbin (although old, it’a still an excellent introduction to quantum physics), and the contrast between the writing styles is dramatic.

It's not a bad book, and it's certainly one that will exercise the brain cells, but the prose doesn’t read as easily as it might.

And now that I’m somewaht ahead of the game, time to tackle a weightier tome: Cervantes is next.

Stats to Date

Books Read: 6

Books by Male Authors: 3
Books by Female Authors: 3

Books by Australian Authors: 2

Fiction Books: 4
    Genre Books: 1
Verity Books: 2
    Literature Books: 1
    Science Books: 1