
Been meaning to write this for a week now…
Stasiland was fantastic! A poignant kind of travel narrative historical memoir, very easy to read and quite heartbreaking reading about the personal lives of Eastern Germans – both pre- and post- liberation. Highly recommend.
After the Millenium Trilogy, I got a bit of an appetite for detective and crime-y fiction. All in a row I read Ghostlines by Nick Gadd, The Black Russion: A Jack Susko Mystery by Lenny Bartulin, The Low Road by Chris Womersley. The Low Road isn’t really detective/crime (it’s more thriller), though it does have criminals in it and they are on the run so it kind of fits in with the others. It was my favourite of those three books, because oh my it was bleak. If you like your fiction dark I can recommend it. Ghostlines and the Susko book are both art crime novels, but I preferred Ghostlines – it was a little less macho, and it’s set in Melbourne’s inner west to boot. The plot line was also a bit more plausible.
(Psst, I saw Girl with a Dragon Tattoo at the movies. It’s a bit cheesy but the Lisbeth character is perfect, perfect, perfect.)
Bicycle Diaries I’m still dipping in to and it’s fantastic – especially for a traveller and bike lover. Do I want a folding bike? Well, no. But I do want to ride my bike in cities around the world! The tone is a bit earnest which surprised me for some reason, but I enjoy the scrabook-y, diary feel. Highly recommend.
Travels with Herodotus took a bit me a while to get into; because it examines an ancient text it was a bit of a struggle at first, but then slowly Kapucinski’s languid style engulfs you and you ease into it. This was not my favourite Kapucinski book but it’s probably the most ambitious – a memoir of two travellers, living thousands of years apart, Kapucinski and Herodotus. Seriously. Is Kapucinski the greatest travel writer, or what? It’s a great introductory text to Herodotus as well.
Confessions of an eco-shopper I didn’t touch – there’s always one in every pile that gets short thrift! I’ve returned it to the shelf…
I did read Committed: a skeptic makes peace with marriage by Elizabeth Gilbert though. Yes, chick lit, I reads it. I’ll tell you something though, Elizabeth Gilbert may have become a megasuper chick lit star by writing Eat, Pray, Love but she is an intelligent and interesting writer. Eat, Pray, Love is not her first book, and is a departure from her usual style (she has a long history of writing about masculinity), but it is suprisingly good. Not excellent, but not the trash it gets accused of because of its popularity either. Committed is in the same vein, I didn’t love it but it’s an interesting look at marriage and the so-called traditions that go with it.
















