Karl's Reading List

Unknown publication. When we took a family holiday to Australia recently, Elise got this book in order to give it to Ezekiel during our travels. He  loves  it. Firstly, it has spinners in it (the propellers), which Ezekiel loves. Secondly, it is a book with sliding parts (open the hanger doors, slide the people up and down the boarding ramp, etc) that Ezekiel can interact with. And thirdly, for one of the sliding parts in particular (the wheels of the plane going up and down) there is a written "clonk" sound-effect that makes him smile when we voice it. The copy we got, similarly to the Playful Pups book, is very second-hand, and in this instance is missing all the publishing details. I've tried looking the book up online and only was able to find a mention of 'Evans Visual Arts' as the 'illustrator' - so I've added that information. Otherwise, its a pretty obscure publication. There's not a lot more to say about this one, really. Ezekiel has been...

Published by Pan Macmillan Publishers Australia: Sydney, Australia, 1992 (1991). Keith is an optimist. His parents are 'misery guts': always depressed, weighed down by life. Keith wants to cheer them up, but his attempts to do so all backfire - who would have thought that painting their fish and chip shop bright orange to surprise them wouldn't bring them great joy? This odd little book is my first exposure to Morris Gleitzman, an author who has always been on the edge of my radar but never made it to the reading stage. It's fun, and silly, and pretty much the way I assumed Gleitzman's books would be, from the reputation he has. The story is broken into two halves: half one is Keith trying to cheer his parents up while living in England. Half two takes place when the family has moved to Australia, and now Keith is trying to protect his parents from finding out about the Australian dangers that surround them, fearful that if they learn about poisonous spiders, jellyf...

Published in flipback format by Hodder & Stoughton: London, UK, 2011. First published 2003. A book marketed right at me, seemingly, The Adventure of English is a history of the English language, from around 500 AD through til just after the year 2000. The subtitle is The Biography of a Language , and this feels fairly accurate: the focus is always on the language itself, and how the various influences of history has shaped it; events come and go within the pages only as needed for explanation. As a result, we get chapters on figures like Chaucer and Shakespeare, chapters on areas where specific branches of English have developed - such as USA, India and Australia - and even a few chapters devoted to Church History figures like Wycliffe and Tyndale, and their efforts to translate the Bible into English. It's all fascinating - far more than it might at first appear. Although the book eventually dragged on a bit (understandable, as it is covering almost 2000 years of history in a ...

Published by Penguin Random House Australia: Australia, 2022. Followed by 'Everyone on This Train is a Suspect.' This odd whodunnit, written by Benjamin Stevenson, stars the character Ernest Cunningham, an author who is writing the whodunnit that we are reading, based on the 'true story' that happened to him at his family reunion - a family that, as the title suggests - is full of killers. Ernest promises that he will not lie to us - the audience - and begins by sharing the 'ten detective commandments' of real-life detective author Ronald Knox, commandments that the character-author Ernest continually refers back to throughout the narrative. Author Cunningham (as opposed to real-life author Stevenson) has mostly written self-help books for people wanting to write fiction - including detective fiction - and as such becomes the family's go-to detective when a stranger is found dead in the snow outside their resort, killed in a way that reminds Sofia (step-sist...

Published by Barry Crump Associates: Opotiki, NZ, 1990. First published as 'Gulf', in 1964. Most of Barry Crump's books are set in rural New Zealand; this one, as the title might suggest, is set in rural Australia. We follow our nameless protagonist and his wife Fiff, who, bored of their current lives, decide to travel north and become crocodile hunters. They encounter various characters, eventually joining up with renounced crocodile hunter Darcy (and his dog Pruszkowic), from whom they learn the trade. As with most Crump books, there is not much more to the plot as a whole than what I have already described. We get all kinds of yarns based around this theme, with trips to pubs, encounters with eccentric locals, and numerous stories of individual crocodile hunts to pad out the run time, until it is time for the book to end with an event that gives a vague sense of closure to at least one part of the plot. Yet, as is also the case with most Crump books, the stories are inte...

Published by Simon & Schuster, 2022. Audiobook uploaded to Audible 2022. Narrated by the author. In reviewing this book, I find myself strangely glad that I have such a small readership for my blog. Why? Because in seeing how Scientology attacks those who speak up against them, it would be more intimidating to publish this review if I was well-known! I mean, I still would ... but I'm not sure I'd enjoy being picketed and torn apart in the media for it. I kinda doubt they'll bother for me presently. This was a free book on Audible. It tells the life story of the author, Mike Rinder, who grew up in Scientology, rising to various prominent positions, before eventually leaving the organisation and turning whistleblower. When he joined it was still the early days of Scientology, and many of the 'higher-level' beliefs of Scientology (such as the existence of the evil alien Xenu) were either not-yet-developed or were closely guarded secrets, only revealed to members on...

Published by Bridget Williams Books Ltd: Wellington, NZ, 2017. This book is the life story of Tuai, a now-obscure Māori chief who lived in the era of early European missionary work in New Zealand. As a young man Tuai, along with another young Māori named Tītere, travelled to England, living with missionaries in both London and the district of Madeley and learning much about European culture and beliefs (he often wore European clothing), before returning home and acting as a go-between for his tribe in their dealings with Pakeha. Tuai's ability to speak English made him quite an important and well-known figure in his day, with his death even announced in some English newspapers. Not a lot is known directly about Tuai; what he did is now mostly determined through reading European letters that happen to mention him in passages. The fact that the authors have managed to reconstruct his life from these is quite impressive, although in order to 'pad out' his life to full book len...

Published by Hodder Moa Beckett Publishers Limited: Auckland, NZ, 1997. First published by Barry Crump Associates Ltd, 1988. A collection of short stories and poems by Crump. Some elements are a little dated/offensive by modern standards, but otherwise they are an interesting mix of stories, covering a lot more genres than I expected.  'Warm Beer' is a ghost story with a punch of an ending. 'That Way' is a dark drama involving a ruthless man quick to kill his pets. 'Cave' is a slightly supernatural poem involving possible time travel. More than one story has a protagonist contemplating, if not outright committing murder!  And of course, there are a number of the humorous slice-of-rural-life yarns that Crump was well known for. My favourites include 'Overheard in the Pub' which tells a shaggy dog story about a live fish being transported in a four-gallon kerosene tin through the outback, 'Double Scotch', in which the protagonist believes his publi...

Published by Lothian/Hachette Australia: Sydney, NSW, 2016. This is a book I grabbed from the English department while looking for a Year 11 text. I actually thought that I had already read this book at some time in the past, but it turns out I must have been thinking of something else! Maybe Krystyna's Story ? The Bone Sparrow is set in an Australian refugee camp and stars nine year old Subhi, who has lived there his whole life. With such a setting, you know The Bone Sparrow is going to have some intense moments, and it does, but what surprised me is how strangely hopeful and optimistic the book is despite this! Yes, there are abusive guards. Yes, there are tragic deaths. Yes, there are sick relatives who may not survive. Yes, there are depressing backstories. Yes, the actual events happening around Subhi are heavy and sobering. And yet Subhi - for the most part - is upbeat. Later in the book he meets Jimmie, an Australian girl who is also upbeat, and who continually sneaks into t...

Published by Random House New Zealand: Auckland, New Zealand, 2011. Another book I got from the school library as I was researching my Year 10 English module, Tupaia: The Remarkable Story of Captain Cook's Polynesian Navigator is a far more in-depth look at Tupaia than The Adventures of Tupaia was. Considering the time-frame of both releases, I have a strong suspicion that the other Tupaia book was based on this one. This is much more a traditional 'historical biography' than The Adventures of Tupaia, starting with an examination of life in Tahiti pre-European contact, then moving forward to the arrival of the Dolphin - the first European ship confirmed to have visited the island, though the possibility of others having visited earlier is discussed. Tupaia's role in these early encounters is highlighted, and when he eventually decides to join the crew of the Endeavour - the third ship to have visited - we have some understanding of his motivations.  Having the main sub...